Is Rob Lowe a Libertarian? "I Want the Government Out of Almost Everything."
Well, we know that circa 1988, he was a Democrat. He not only campaigned for Michael Dukakis but helped usher in the modern celebrity sex scandal after being caught with two women (one of whom was just 16 years old) in an Atlanta hotel the night before the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Shortly after that, a sex tape of Lowe in a Paris hotel surfaced (NSFW).
But as Lowe pointed out in his excellent and well-received 2011 memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, he's changed a lot over the past 20-plus years. As a result of those scandals, he cleaned up his act and got his personal and professional lives together (he's the married father of two sons and has starred in a string of successful shows including The West Wing, Californication, and Parks & Recreation).
Now he's back with a new book, Love Life. And he tells The New York Times that he's a lot more together when it comes to politics, too:
You've compared loyalty to a political party to recreational drug use. You've been sober for several years now, so what did you mean by that?
I find them both highly overrated. Each day another state makes it O.K. for my 18-year-old — any 18-year-old — to go and buy pot like he's buying a Pepsi-Cola, and so let's face it: In the United States, recreational drug use is sort of acceptable. Belonging to one party is acceptable. But my days of just ticking the party box are long over. I judge the candidates for who they are.
So what do you believe?
My thing is personal freedoms, freedoms for the individual to love whom they want, do with what they want. In fact, I want the government out of almost everything.
