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Gillespie on Real Time with Bill Maher's "Overtime" Segment
Earlier tonight, Reason's Nick Gillespie appeared on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, along with political consultant Donna Brazile, actor John Turturro, and Braddock, Pennsylvania Mayor John Fetterman.
After each episode, there's a web-only "Overtime" segment. Watch it by clicking above.
For more on the show, go here.
Recent and Upcoming Declaration of Independents Events and Appearances!
Yesterday, Matt Welch and I
talked for an hour on Philadelphia's WHYY about the themes and
issues in our new book, The Declaration of Independents: How
Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With
America.
Tonight, I'll be on John Stossel's Fox Business show at 10pm ET, talking about dirty political campaigns through the years. As a bonus, Reason's Damon Root will also appear, talking about FDR and the many myths surrounding America's only four-times-elected president. Go here for more.
Tomorrow night, I'll be on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, which airs at 11pm ET. Other guests include political consultant Donna Brazile, actor John Turturro, and Mayor John Fetterman of Braddock, Pennsylvania (alas, Ben Affleck dropped out).
On Sunday, Matt Welch and I
will host a reception in San Francisco. Details:
Sunday, July 24: Coffee and Chocolate at TCHO
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Pier 17 on the Embarcadero at Green Street
San Francisco, CA
RSVP by Friday, July 22 to Mary Toledo at mary.toledo@reason.org or 310-391-2245
TCHO is the award-winning artisanal chocolate created by Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rossetto, the co-founders of Wired magazine. Check out the company's site.
And on Monday, Matt and I will appear at the City by the Bay's legendary Commonwealth Club. Details:
"WWLD: What Would Libertarians Do?"
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, Reason Magazine and Reason.tv; co-authors, The Declaration of Independents
In conversation with Joe Garofoli, Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle; Author, Politics Blog, SFgate.comWhat do health care, same-sex marriage, marijuana law, the budget and social service policies look like on a Libertarian ticket? Authors of a new Libertarian manifesto, Gillespie and Welch offer up principles of “free minds and free markets” as their fix to what’s wrong with America. Come hear how Libertarian solutions for modern America match up against the other platforms.
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 8 p.m. networking reception
Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)
And on Friday, July 29, Matt
and I will appear in Los Angeles's famed Book Soup. Details:
Friday, July 29
7PM PT
Book Soup
8818 Sunset Blvd.
W. Hollywood CA 90069
Email: info@booksoup.com
telephone: 310.659.3110 or
fax: 310 659-3410Free parking behind the store via Nellas St.
More events to come in Portland, Oregon; Chicago, IL, and more!
Richard Sincere Interview: Why'dya Write the Book?
Writing in the Charlottesville Examiner Libertarian, Richard Sincere interviews Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch about the making of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America. Excerpt:
"It was a combination of looking at how good things were getting in certain aspects of our lives and how awful they were getting in others," Gillespie said, "and then trying to figure out how could [non-political] things be getting better and better and how could politics be getting worse and worse."
Welch added that "unraveling this paradox," as he put it, "dovetailed" with a project to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Reason magazine.
"As that happened, the financial crisis hit, and TARP, and the freak-out" that followed, he said.
In that anniversary issue, scheduled for December 2008, Welch continued, "we were going to herald the 'libertarian moment' [when], suddenly, we have to say, 'OK, so it's a libertarian moment when all indicators are the opposite?' In fact, that forced us to go back and reread our history. This informed the book and actually set up some of the timelines of it."
'Darkest of all dark nights'
Welch suggested that "you could make an argument that in 1971 it was the darkest of all dark nights of the American soul -- with wage and price controls and a crook in the White House and" the Vietnam War still raging.
Gillespie interjected: "And the Silent Majority taking over, George Wallace being a serious player."
Continuing, Welch explained:
"And yet, at the time, if you looked around or you knew where to look, there were actual green shoots happening, like the seeds of revolution, the seeds of great beneficial change were happening in real time right at that moment. So we thought, let's double down on our bet, that despite this moment, which seems so awful, there's going to be evidence of a flowering."
More, including some discussion of the notorious Koch brothers, here. Read the 2008 "Libertarian Moment" piece here, then wash it down with the magazine excerpt from The Declaration of Independents.
SF Reasonoids: Gillespie & Welch in Town on Sunday July 24, Monday July 25
If you're in the Bay Area, here are two chances to meet Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie and Reason magazine's Matt Welch, authors of the new book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America (to buy the book online, go here for links to major sites).
Sunday, July 24: Coffee and Chocolate at TCHO
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Pier 17 on the Embarcadero at Green Street
San Francisco, CA
RSVP by July 20 to Mary Toledo at mary.toledo@reason.org or 310-391-2245
TCHO is the award-winning artisanal chocolate created by Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rossetto, the co-founders of Wired magazine. Check out the company's site.
And then on Monday, July 25, at San Francisco's legendary Commonwealth Club at 6.30PM get set for "WWLD: What Would Libertarians Do?":
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, Reason Magazine and Reason.tv; co-authors, The Declaration of Independents
In conversation with Joe Garofoli, Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle; Author, Politics Blog, SFgate.comWhat do health care, same-sex marriage, marijuana law, the budget and social service policies look like on a Libertarian ticket? Authors of a new Libertarian manifesto, Gillespie and Welch offer up principles of “free minds and free markets” as their fix to what’s wrong with America. Come hear how Libertarian solutions for modern America match up against the other platforms.
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 8 p.m. networking reception
Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)
Nick Gillespie on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher This Friday, 10PM ET
I'll be on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher this
Friday at 10PM ET, talking about Reason, The Declaration of
Independents, and more with guests Ben Affleck, Donna
Brazile, and John Turturro. The episode will be re-broadcast at
11PM ET and several more times during the rest of the week.
For more info about the show, go here.
Way, way back in 1997, I interviewed Maher, who was then hosting Comedy Central's Politically Incorrect, for what I believe was the very first Soundbite interview in Reason's Citings section (which replaced Trends). Here's that brief exchange:
Soundbite: Politics Makes Strange Guest Star Combinations
Nick Gillespie from the January 1997 issue
Since its debut in 1993, Politically Incorrect has consistently been the top-rated show on the Comedy Central cable channel. This January, the unconventional talk show that pairs celebrities and policy wonks moves to ABC, where it will air after Nightline. Senior Editor Nick Gillespie and Assistant Editor Brian Doherty talked with PI's host and creator, Bill Maher.
Q: How do you define political incorrectness?
A: Basically, just honesty. It is like saying your kid is ugly, if he's ugly. It doesn't mean conservative or liberal. It means saying things that are true, that people are thinking but no one is saying.
Q: What's your most politically incorrect belief?
A: I'm for drug legalization. To me, there is no greater contradiction to the traditional doctrine about liberty than that. How can you be for personal liberty and then tell me what mood I can be in? There certainly shouldn't be any restrictions on what people do as long as they are not hurting somebody else--especially what they do with their own mind.
Q: What is your one belief people least want to hear?
A: My favorite cause is animals. When Christopher Reeve had his accident, we did a show that was respectful and tasteful. I certainly in no way tried to suggest that I was glad it happened. But I took it as animal abuse, you know. Most people go, "Are you kidding? Horseback riding is horseback riding." Well, you know, at one point, people said the same thing about slavery: "What do you mean, it's slavery? Of course we own them." If you try to make a horse jump over something that it doesn't want to jump over, I think it really should throw you off its back. You wouldn't want to go around with a monkey or something on your back all the time.
Foreign Policy Talk With the Daily Caller
The Daily Caller's Jamie Weinstein recently interviewed Matt Welch and me about our new book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America (buy it now!).
In this segment, Weinstein asks us what a libertarian foreign policy would look like. Here's part of how Matt Welch responds:
"What Obama did with Libya was incredible. He said I am going to go to war because there might be a massacre in this city. It wasn’t even because there is a genocide happening now, there might be a massacre in this one city. He didn’t go to Congress with it. That lowers the bar even from [George W.] Bush, whose bar was helpfully lowered by Bill Clinton in Kosovo.”
Watch the vid by clicking above or going here.
Events
- New York: Thursday, June 23, Barnes & Noble (details to come)
- Philadelphia, Thursday, July 14, Campus Freedom Network Conference
- Las Vegas: July 15-17, Freedom Fest
- Washington, D.C.: Tuesday, July 19, Politics & Prose
- Los Angeles: Friday, July 29, Book Soup (details to come)
- Portland: Monday, August 1, Powell's Books (details to come)
- Chicago: Tuesday, August 16, The Heartland Institute (details to come)
- More appearances and events coming soon...
Reviews
- "This is the up-to-date statement of libertarianism" - Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
- "An enthusiastic, entertaining libertarian critique of American politics" - Kirkus Reviews
- "Think of it as a political alarm clock" - Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess
- More reviews coming soon...
Media
- May 10: Nick Gillespie talks with Robert Ringer
- May 25: Nick Gillespie on SE Cupp's "Insider Extreme"
- June 23: Special episode of Stossel about Declaration
- More coverage coming soon...
THE AUTHORS
Nick Gillespie is editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com and almost certainly the only journalist who has interviewed bat-eating rock star Ozzy Osbourne and Nobel prize-winning economists Milton Friedman and Vernon Smith.
Matt Welch is editor in chief of Reason magazine. From 2006 to 2007, he served as assistant editorial pages editor at the Los Angeles Times, shaping and writing editorials, and overseeing the section's web operations.
From 2002 to 2006, Welch worked at Reason as an associate editor and media columnist. From 2002 to 2004, he also wrote a regular.
