Samantha Hancox-Li

How Movements Win

On the importance of a strong inside strategy.

Why Movements Fail

Horizontalism and its discontents

In Defense of Economic Liberty

Taking an important idea back from the right

Fascism and the Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century

From Russia to China, from Azerbaijan to Israel and Palestine, fascist political projects are gaining strength.

The Political Economy of Patriarchy

There’s a new program of anti–trans and increasingly anti-queer simpliciter politics sweeping across America. After they lost on gay marriage in courts of public opinion and Supreme, Republicans went looking for a new bogeyman. They found it in trans people. Their new hate campaign is focused on the

Lessons for a New Cold War

I am a child of the 90s. America had emerged from the long twilight struggle of the Cold War victorious, materially and ideologically: liberal capitalism was, it was said, the end of history. As such it was hoped that free trade and free exchange would slowly see the People’s

The Illiberal's Dilemma

In January of this year, media personality Matt Walsh tweeted “Singapore is able to have nice things in part because they execute drug dealers by hanging and arrest even petty vandals and thieves and beat them with a cane until they bleed. We don’t have nice things because we

The Actual Ubiquity of Gender Affirming Care

Our children are in danger and we need to protect them. There is a crisis in America, it’s bad and it’s spreading. You may have heard of it if you pay attention to the New York Times, the Atlantic magazine, or neo-fascist Matt Walsh. No, it’s not

The Protecting America's Police and Strengthening Law and Order Plan

America is facing an epidemic of violence. Our police officers are overworked, overburdened, and faced with increasingly conflicting duties and imperatives. If we want to uphold law and order in America, we must strengthen our police forces and enable them to face the challenges of the 21st century. This essay

NIMBYism Is Segregation Persisting

In a hot convention hall in Philadelphia in 1788, the last member of the Constitutional Convention set his pen to the page and sealed in ink slavery as one of America’s foundational institutions. On Capitol Hill in 1866, after decades of bloody struggle on the battlefield and off it,

Feminism with YIMBY Characteristics

Much hay has been made about the effects of our housing crisis on economic inequality, racial segregation, and climate catastrophe. Today I want to approach the question of housing from a feminist perspective. Does our policy of scarce, expensive housing have implications for the feminist project? Conversely, does the pro-housing

It Will Take More Than Abolishing Bad Laws to Fix Land Use in America

We should abolish the National Environmental Policy Act. Nobody is saying this—but a lot of people are walking right up to saying it. This is understandable, given that “we should abolish the National Environmental Policy Act” sounds like something a Captain Planet villain would say. But it is the

Biopolitics and the Illiberal Project

It is very important that I am banned from weightlifting. Very important that I never compete in mixed martial arts, very important that I never win a swimming competition, very important that I never win a footrace. I am a trans woman, you see, and we are too strong, too

Power and the Liberal Tradition

I have long considered myself a liberal, in the following sense: I believe in liberal democracy. The ideal of a republic of free and equal citizens is my north star, guiding my own politics here in the messy mundane world. I believe that bodily autonomy is a fundamental right, and