25 Years Ago in Reason

From the October 2003 issue

"In recent weeks the world has once again witnessed the spectacle of political trials in the Soviet Union....It is for this reason that we urge a boycott of the Moscow Olympics -- not as a mandate from our government but as a spontaneous outpouring of a free people."
-- Robert W. Poole Jr., "Boycott Moscow"

"The village board of Hempstead, New York, has outlawed 'for sale' signs on local lawns. The ostensible reason is to prevent 'white flight.'"
-- Bill Birmingham, Brickbats

"The influential social position of this elite [of anti-technology intellectuals], then, is threatened by the mass prosperity that is bred by technology and free enterprise. What better way to keep the riff-raff in its place than to kill both by abolishing all but feudal energy sources?"
-- Petr Beckman, "Economics As If SOME People Mattered"

"Extreme egalitarianism attracts the guilt-ridden because it promises to relieve their guilt....It is not poverty itself that causes guilt for those who view it from a position of comfort; it is their own complacency, contrasted with the poverty of others?"
-- Allan Epstein, "The Politics of Guilt"