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

Reason, Dec, 1998

F.A. Hayek: Yes. A qualified optimism. I think there is an intellectual reversion on the way, and there is a good chance it may come in time before the movement in the opposite direction becomes irreversible. I am more optimistic than I was 20 years ago, when nearly all the leaders of opinion wanted to move in the socialist direction. This has particularly changed in the younger generation. So, if the change comes in time, there still is hope.

February 1994

From "Outlaws and Addresses," an interview with economist Hernando de Soto, author of The Other Path

"If you take a walk through the countryside, from Indonesia to Peru, and you walk by field after field - in each field a different dog is going to bark at you. Even dogs know what private property is all about. The only one who does not know it is the government."

April 1994

From "Voodoo and Violence," an interview with magician Penn Jillette

"My mom, who's never seen a Playboy and doesn't want to...doesn't understand why people should complain about stuff that costs money that they don't want being out there. She says, 'If you break into my house and open Screw magazine and staple it to the wall, I'm going to be angry. Until you do that, I have no problems. I don't want it. I also don't want a microwave. And the only danger I have is that you might buy me one for Christmas. But I tell you I don't want one and we're done. I don't want Playboy. I don't want a microwave. Why are these two issues different?'"

July 1994

From "Mind Alteration," an interview with drug policy critic Ethan Nadelmann

"What I most care about is advancing this notion of individual autonomy. When women talk about having control over their own bodies vis-a-vis abortion, they should realize that's one and the same as talking about control over one's own consciousness vis-a-vis drugs. If people want the power to sell their bodies - the same thing. When gays and others talk about sexual privacy, once again it's the same thing. And all these freedoms are not fundamentally different from the freedoms of speech, press, and religion that most Americans now take for granted - but that were once as contentious as the right to control one's body and one's consciousness is now."

August/September 1994

From "The New, New World," an interview with author Richard Rodriguez

"We've always assumed that America somehow belonged on this land. Well, maybe you can put America in a suitcase and take it to Hong Kong. Maybe you can take it to Shanghai. And maybe what our Scandinavian ancestors of the 19th century would recognize as America, or as an American city, they would see more dearly in Tijuana now than they would in San Diego."

"Education is not about self-esteem. Education is demeaning. It should be about teaching you what you don't know, what you yet need to know, how much there is yet to do. Part of the process of education is teaching you that you are related to people who are not you, not your parents - that you are related to black runaway slaves and that you are related to suffragettes in the 19th century and that you are related to Puritans. That you are related to some continuous flow of ideas, some linkage, of which you are the beneficiary, the most recent link. The argument for bilingual education, or for teaching black children their own lingo, assumes that education is about self-esteem. My argument is that education is about teaching children to use the language of other people."