35 Years of reason

A history in excerpts

From the December 2003 issue

May 1968

INTRODUCING REASON: We accept the responsibility that others have defaulted on. Others preferred to smear the issues with irrelevancies and falsifications. We don't. Others preferred to be incomprehensible and incoherant [sic.]. We don't. Others preferred to ignore your mind. We won't.

When REASON speaks of poverty, racism, the draft, the war, student power, politics, and other vital issues, it shall be reasons, not slogans, it gives for conclusions. Proof, not belligerent assertion. Logic, not legends, Coherance [sic.], not contradictions. This is our promise; this is the reason for REASON.

— from reason's first issue

September 1969

A private business whose sales volume had increased 15-20% annually for seven years (and showed many signs of continuing to do so) would probably view its future with eager anticipation. In the government-controlled, privately "owned" cartel known as commercial aviation, however, the expected growth in air travel is viewed...in horror.

-- "Fly the Frenzied Skies," Robert Poole Jr.

January 1970

We are trapped in the middle of a street war between two breeds of pigs, the police and the New Left.

- -- "Animal Farm 1970," Lanny Friedlander

April/May 1971

The natural tendency of a bureaucracy is to defend and perpetuate itself, to resist all fundamental change. A business which does this eventually goes bankrupt...unless...it can get the State to protect it from competition through a legally enforced monopoly. This, of course, is precisely what the public school system is all about.

-- "The Case for Education Vouchers," Robert Poole Jr.

October 1971

President Nixon's executive order providing for stabilization of price, rents and wages is an act of supreme defiance against the free market and the freedom of Americans.