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

Reason, Dec, 1998

October 1994

From "Life, Liberty, & the ACLU," an interview with Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union

Reason: What do you make of the argument, for example, that hate-speech codes represent an attempt to balance guarantees of free speech with guarantees of equal protection?

Nadine Strossen: That is the same argument that's made by folks who seek to restrict what they define as "pornography" - that word is always in quotation marks. It's common to say that we have to choose between freedom of speech or equality, that if you really care about equality you can't possibly be devoted to the First Amendment. I absolutely reject that as a philosophical matter and as a practical matter in the hate-speech context.... I think it's insulting to women, racial minorities - to anybody - to say that we have to choose between freedom of speech and equal opportunity.

December 1994

From "All I Think Is That It's Stupid," an interview with humorist Dave Barry

"I don't have any insight or understanding on anything about the government. All I think is that it's stupid - which is the one perspective that's almost completely lacking in Washington."

"I felt ashamed at the time to say I didn't want to go [to Vietnam]. I didn't have any stake in that war. I didn't want to get killed; I didn't know anybody over there that I wanted to go over and kill on behalf of.... I was really against that war, but to be a [conscientious objector], you had to believe that there was no circumstance under which you would ever kill anybody. And I can't say I honestly felt like that. I would definitely kill people. I would have liked to have killed my draft board at the time."

February 1995

From "No Easy Answers," an interview with political scientist James Q. Wilson

Reason: Is the answer [for increasing government efficiency] to devolve federal government activity to the state and local levels?

James Q. Wilson: I don't think there is much hope for the idea of devolving authority. Once we have sold the idea (which we didn't succeed in selling until 1965) that the federal government is responsible for everything, the idea of state and local control doesn't make political sense.... If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before.

"Once you emancipate people from strings, once you give them the freedom to prosper, you're going to empower them to do all sorts of things, ranging from the spectacularly good to the heinously bad."

June 1995

From "Best of Both Worlds," an interview with Milton Friedman

"My philosophy is clearly libertarian. However, libertarian is not a self-defining term. There are many varieties of libertarians. There's a zero-government libertarian, an anarchist. There's a limited-government libertarianism. They share a lot in terms of their fundamental values. If you trace them to their ultimate roots, they are different. It doesn't matter in practice, because we both want to work in the same direction."

"As I look around me I'm impressed by the fact that there's increasing attention paid to libertarian ideas. If you look at the picture now, compared with 30 years ago, there's no comparison."