Voices of reason - excerpts of interviews with various personalities from 1968 to 1998 - Interview

Reason, Dec, 1998

July 1975

From "Inside Ronald Reagan"

Reason: Do you believe in conscription?

Ronald Reagan: Only in time of war.

Reason: What about the last 10 years?

Reagan: I disagreed with it, and I'll tell you why: I believe Lenin...on that. Lenin said that he would force the capitalist nations to maintain military conscription until the uniform became a symbol of servitude rather than patriotism.

"I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer, just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals - if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can't say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say..."

October 1975

From "Fighting Censorship for Profit," an interview with Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione

Reason: Do you think that the government should have the right to control the price at which you sell a copy of Penthouse?

Bob Guccione: I don't think that Dick Nixon or Gerald Ford have the right, the intelligence, the know-how or the talent to control anything other than their own bowel movements, and even that is somewhat in doubt.

May 1978

From "Reminiscences & Prognostications," a roundtable featuring "10 Key Libertarian Activists," including Reason Foundation President Robert W. Poole, Cato Institute head Ed Crane, and businessman and philanthropist Charles Koch, discussing "the significance of the movement they helped build."

Ed Crane: The right wing is atrophying for good reason, and if libertarianism is going to succeed as a political movement in this country...we're going to have to attract support from the left.... I view that leftward drift of the [libertarian] movement as very helpful."

Charles Koch: We've seen libertarians go into government. We've seen the Milton Friedmans and the Alan Greenspans in government, and they haven't decreased it; they've helped say, "How can this work more efficiently?" which in the end expands government. It is particularly tragic in their case, because they perhaps were very effective when they were out of government. But in government, they get co-opted; they become spokesmen for it and emasculate the opposition.

Robert Poole: We should be radical in our principles and clearly state what they are and make as exciting and attractive a case as we can for our libertarian theory and political principles. But we are failing to attract more than a few percent of voters, of average citizens, because of the way we fail to translate those principles into specific programs that they can relate to in the present political context.... If we use the principles to establish step-at-a-time programs that...show real progress in a direction that is in the self-interest of the individual citizen, we'll get a lot further. We'll be taken seriously as providing an alternative that is real and that's responsible.