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

Reason, Dec, 1998

December 1980

From "Reason Interview: Thomas Sowell," economist and social critic

"One of the problems with the market from the standpoint of those who think they are the brightest, the best, and ought to be telling the rest of us groundlings what to do, is that the market allows ordinary people to go out there and make their own decisions. And people who think they have the Truth and the Light don't want that; they want no part of that. It's really what they hate most, I think, about a market system."

"When you think of all the laws that were thrown in the past at the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Jews, it gives you a very heartening sense of the futility of laws. If laws were really effective, neither the Chinese nor the Jews would be prosperous in most countries of the world. Most of those laws aren't effective. Conversely, most laws designed to improve the positions of ethnic groups have not been effective either."

"I'm pessimistic. Because I don't see any easy way that one reverses - I don't see any way that one reverses - totalitarianism from within. I don't know of any example where it has ever happened. And if democratic nations can always become totalitarian, but totalitarian nations will not become democratic, then in the long run, ultimately, the whole world will be totalitarian."

September 1981

From "Reason Interview: Murray Weidenbaum," chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers

"The capitalist society is very disorderly. The variance is great and may be on the basis of ability, luck, all sorts of happenstance, external circumstances. That upsets people's sense of order. But this is why someone who I think is concerned to find a system that provides more discretion for the individual will put up with all that disorder and unpredictability of results. It's not just that on the average, in an economic sense, you'll do better in a capitalistic society; it's that you have more opportunities for those adjustments as an individual."

November 1981

From "Reason Interview: Mark S. Fowler," Federal Communications Commission chairman

"Why is it that we now single out one form - over-air television - and imbue it with specific social duties when we don't do the same for film, for example? Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don't do the same for Time magazine? Why don't we have a 'fairness doctrine' for Time or the Washington Post, when we have one Washington Post in the city and seven television stations?...The television is just another appliance - it's a toaster with pictures...We've got to look beyond the conventional wisdom that we must somehow regulate this box, we must single it out."

May 1982

From "Reason Interview: Karl Hess," anarchist author and former Goldwater speechwriter

"The thing is, people now understand that...welfare programs are bullshit. They've had experience with them. But they have not had experience with a huge military operation for a while. And I believe there is a feeling generally that our humiliation in Iran and various other places was simply due to not spending enough money on the problem. You see, perfectly reasonable people who can tell you that you can never solve domestic problems by throwing money at them, like Reagan, are eager to tell you that you can solve international problems by throwing money at them. At any rate, what they're doing is expanding the power of the federal government, which I think is the whole idea anyway - to expand power because they want an orderly society."