40 Years of Free Minds and Free Markets

An oral history of reason

Brian Doherty from the December 2008 issue

When reason began in 1968, it was just one of many mimeographed zines then pushing a mostly obscure political and philosophical vision known as libertarianism. At the time, aside from rare outliers such as the Newsweek columns of Milton Friedman and the science fiction novels of Robert A. Heinlein, there were few places to encounter such ideas except in do-it-yourself publications.

The debut issue of reason was a few pages of typewritten text, and the topics it covered largely concerned urban violence, then a major political issue. While we don’t know for sure, the print run probably was no more than a couple of hundred. Most of the content was written by the founding editor, Boston University undergrad Lanny Friedlander.

Forty years later, long after such titles as Living Free, Bull$heet, The New Radical, The Abolitionist, and The Individualist have fallen by the wayside, reason endures. The champion of “Free Minds and Free Markets” exists as both a paper magazine (now slick and colorful) and a vibrant presence in a medium that was still science fiction in 1968: the Internet, where the reason website is visited about 2.7 million more times per month than the first paper issue had readers.

During the intervening decades, the broader civilization has, in fits and starts, heeded much of the message that reason has been pushing since that first mimeographed edition. From the deregulation of airlines to the decriminalization of sodomy, from the fall of communism to the rise of dot-coms, the world is in many ways much freer than it was in 1968. It’s easy to get caught up in those many restrictions on liberty that remain—including new ones that have arrived since 9/11—but the big picture reveals a happier story. The culture is wider and wilder, and more people than ever recognize that top-down planning by force isn’t the best way to run the world.

reason has grown from one student’s wild dream to a bicoastal foundation that advances liberty through public policy research and journalism available across a rich variety of platforms. The magazine is routinely chosen as one of the nation’s 50 best by the Chicago Tribune; its staffers appear daily on television, radio, and newsprint; and, most important, the viewpoint favoring free minds and free markets is harder and harder to ignore.

Scores of staffers have contributed to the magazine’s remarkable evolution during the last four decades. Below some of them tell the story of how reason went from a collegiate curiosity to a respected American journal of policy and culture while remaining pretty curious all the while.

The Beginnings

Robert W. Poole Jr. was one of the founders of Reason Enterprises, which began publishing reason with its January 1971 issue. He launched the Reason Foundation in 1978 and has held many titles with the magazine, including editor, managing editor, executive editor, editor-in-chief, and publisher.

Robert W. Poole Jr.: I got a job, in order to avoid the draft, with a defense contractor, Sikorsky Aircraft in Connecticut, and started working as an engineer. I hardly knew anybody who had similar ideas, so I was desperate to read things of a libertarian or Objectivist flavor.

In 1968, in some newsletter or other, I saw a classified ad for reason, which was at about its third issue. I sent in a buck or two bucks and subscribed, and found that despite it being mimeographed and amateurish, the writing was pretty good.

Obviously somebody with an Objectivist orientation had started this thing, and he was in Boston. It must have been fall of ’68, that first year of publication, I drove up and met Lanny [Friedlander]. Every year [Ayn] Rand gave a speech at Ford Hall. We went to that event, and I had the idea of trying to get involved in the publication, but I wasn’t that impressed with him personally. He lived at home while going to Boston University, his house was a chaotic disaster, his mother was a shrill fishwife who yelled and screamed even with visitors in the house. It just didn’t seem like a good situation to try to get involved in, in a business sense.

I’d never written anything for publication, but because I was interested in aviation, he got me to write a piece about airlines and aviation policy, which was “Fly the Frenzied Skies.”

I did a hell of a lot of research, which was fun, but even more fun was seeing it in print, having it be the cover story of what became the first offset printed issue. A couple of months after it was out, The Freeman asked to reprint it. That got me letters from people all over the country, and that was the moment of truth: This journalism stuff really can make an impact!

In ’71, airlines were tightly regulated by an agency that’s gone, the Civil Aeronautics Board. It was a cartelized industry. To fly between point A and B [you were] limited to between one and three airlines, usually two. Prices were approved at rate hearings like telephone and electricity prices used to be. If an airline wanted to serve a new route, it would take years. So I challenged that and argued for deregulation.

I also argued for airport and air traffic privatization, got it all together in one article. My dad was saying, “Ha, ha, comes the revolution! You and I will never live to see any of this come to pass.”

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Lefiti|11.17.08 @ 12:21PM|#

But this marginal right-wing shit doesn't sell very well. Donate now!

Lefiti|11.17.08 @ 12:22PM|#

My breath smells like cat food! Donate now!

Lefiti|11.17.08 @ 12:33PM|#

I have not posted on this thread yet, you circle-jerkers!

Franklin Harris|11.17.08 @ 12:40PM|#

Oliver: An example I recall of how reason was breaking into a more mainstream thing: I was watching Cinemax, one of those late-night films with Shannon Tweed. She played a psychiatrist. In a scene to demonstrate how brainy she was, she was carrying a couple of magazines, and the one on top was reason. That was the early '90s.

"Indecent Behavior" (1993), I think. Or possibly one of the sequels.

|11.17.08 @ 12:42PM|#

40 years. Wow. And to think that in all that time you've achieved nothing. Time for plan B.

|11.17.08 @ 12:44PM|#

The Spreading Circle of Campus Terror

Now THAT's what I'm talking about. Get an editor with some Rick James in him.

Leftitti|11.17.08 @ 12:54PM|#

I'm a Unitard!

|11.17.08 @ 1:00PM|#

My breath smells like cat food! Donate now!

Whoever is spoofing Lefiti, you aren't very good at it. Everyone knows Lefiti's breath smells like Sterno and Milk Bones.

TallDave|11.17.08 @ 1:02PM|#

I like to think that fist is punching a socialist.

the innominate one|11.17.08 @ 1:21PM|#

Everyone knows Lefiti's breath smells like Sterno and Milk Bones.

no, no, no. Everyone knows lefiti's breath smells like santorum. I saw it written on the men's room wall, and that's confirmation enough for me.

the innominate one|11.17.08 @ 1:23PM|#

hmmm, for some reason the server squirrels are inserting their own html into my hyperlink to www.spreadingsantorum.com

|11.17.08 @ 1:24PM|#

Ok, on a serious note.

I enjoyed this article. As someone who discoved Reason when I went to college in the early 80s (and soon subscribed starting in the mid-80s), I'll been trying to build up a collection of them. Back in the 80s they used to sell back issues (either originals or xerox copies), but I was too poor to get them. I've been getting a few off ebay (including a dozen or so from the first 5 years or so).

I really wish Reason would do something I've seen a few other mags have done: make available a CD or DVD of ALL their back issues scanned into PDF. If such was made available for a reasonable cost, I'd get it.

(on a related note, I've been trying to get back issues of Inquiry, and recently put together a complete set of Liberty, thanks to their recent back issue blowout. I was also lucky to score off eBay the hardcopy of Liberatarian Forum in 2 volumes put out by the Ludwig von Mises Institue.)

NoStar|11.17.08 @ 1:32PM|#

As a sometimes subscriber going back to the early to mid seventies, this article brought back many fond memories.

|11.17.08 @ 2:44PM|#

... more people than ever recognize that top-down planning by force isn't the best way to run the world.

If by that you mean, "people keep turning out in droves to vote for politicians who take away our freedom", then sure.

Not That Michael|11.17.08 @ 2:45PM|#

I would be absolutely thrilled if reason brought back whatever designers were responsible for those incredible early covers from the mag's inception up until around '77. At least make the images in the website's cover archive able to be enlarged. Wow.

Andy|11.17.08 @ 4:44PM|#

You guys did help in my conversion. Unfortunately, the comments threads tend to help my deconversion lol. Also, I have no power whatsoever. I shudder to think how many Democrats in my age group have been created from the combination of Bush's incompetence and Obama's charisma. You've got your work cut out for you.

stay classy reason.

File under \"S\" for Subject-h|11.17.08 @ 4:48PM|#

"able to be enlarged. Wow."

|11.17.08 @ 9:47PM|#

Libertarianism minus Ayn Rand equals kooky lightweights.

|11.17.08 @ 9:58PM|#

I have subscribed, on and off, to reason for most of its history. One of the best reasons to subscribe to the print edition now is so that you'll have something to read when you're forced to step away from the computer and go to the bathroom.

SIV|11.17.08 @ 11:32PM|#

"Lefiti" at 12:21 FTW

An excellent article but you should have included some thoughts from former intern Taranto

the innominate one|11.18.08 @ 12:49AM|#

An excellent article but you should have included some thoughts from former intern Taranto

AKA SIV?

leviramsey|11.18.08 @ 1:22AM|#

Now I know where Howard Stern got his fist logo from...

Death to tyrants|11.27.08 @ 11:15AM|#

End the fed!

Trackback| 12.16.09 @ 11:12PM

ct credit repair, on ct credit repair, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

This website is great

nfl jerseys|11.5.10 @ 9:00PM|#

vsrb

sevo|3.26.11 @ 1:36PM|#

"I was excommunicated back in 1963 from the Rand thing."

In Soviet Union, excommunication comes to you!
L. Trotsky.

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