35 Years of reason

A history in excerpts

From the December 2003 issue

(Page 9 of 13)

In the past, public health officials could argue that they were protecting people from external threats: carriers of contagious diseases, fumes from the local glue factory, contaminated water, food poisoning, dangerous quack remedies. By contrast, the new enemies of public health come from within; the aim is to protect people from themselves rather than each other....Of all the risk factors for disease and injury, freedom may be the most important.

-- "What the Doctor Orders," Jacob Sullum

August/September 1996

Killing a program is not the same as killing a lobby. After a decent interval and a switch on Capitol Hill from old-style Democrats to new-fangled Republicans, the wool people stuck their head up again, and last April their persistence paid off. Thanks to Sen. Larry Craig -- a Republican from Idaho and supposedly a conservative -- Newt Gingrich's Congress tossed the wool lobby a new National Sheep Industry Improvement Center, empowered with up to $50 million in federal funds to "enhance production and marketing of sheep or goat products in the United States."

-- "Eternal Life," Jonathan Rauch

February 1998

Racial preferences are dead. All that is required now is to give them a decent and honorable burial.

-- "'Racial Preferences Are Dead,'" an interview with Ward Connerly

April 1999

During the past few decades, we have been exper-iencing what can aptly be called a "culture boom": a massive and prolonged increase in art, music, literature, video, and other forms of creative expression....In an increasingly wealthy and educated society where the overwhelming majority of people have concerns about food, clothing, and shelter pretty well covered, culture takes on more and more mean-ing as the medium through which we articulate our identities, dreams, fears, aspirations, and values. Little wonder, then, that stories about the "culture wars"
have been burning up the pages of newspapers, magazines, and intellectual journals for the past few years: There's so much more to fight about these days.

-- "All Culture, All the Time," Nick Gillespie

November 1999

The most potent challenge to markets today, and to liberal ideals more generally, is not about fairness. It is about stability and control -- not as choice in our lives as individuals, but as a policy for society as a whole. It is the argument that markets are disruptive and chaotic, that they make the future unpredictable, and that they serve too many diverse values rather than "one best way." The most important challenge to markets today is not the ideology of socialism but the ideology of stasis, the notion that the good society is one of stability, predictability, and control.

-- "After Socialism," Virginia Postrel

December 1999

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