Publisher's Notes

• NEW REASON STAFFER: We welcome to REASON's staff our new Libertarian Party correspondent, Edward H. Crane, III, whose regular column on national and state LP activities was inaugurated last month. Crane served as Tonie Nathan's campaign manager in her race for Vice President last November against Spiro Agnew and Sargent Shriver, and he is presently State Vice-Chairman for Southern California of the Libertarian Party of California. Crane is a successful investment counselor and has recently moved his offices to one of the 52-story towers in ARCO Plaza—which appears to house more libertarians than any other office complex in the United States.

• FACULTY REGISTRY PROJECT: More than two hundred faculty members are contained on REASON's tentative listing of college faculty who offer courses of interest to students interested in libertarianism. We have received many enthusiastic responses concerning the project from faculty members throughout the world. Unfortunately, high costs of printing and mailing have made it difficult for REASON to proceed with the project. We welcome readers' contributions to help us carry on with the faculty registry project. Assuming sufficient financial support, we shall contact all those on the tentative list before publication of the registry. We feel this to be a worthy project, and we hope to receive enough funds to complete it in the near future.

• THE YEAR OF REASON: As noted in our editorial last month, "On Beginning REASON's 5th Year," we would like our readers to help us make 1973 the year of REASON. To help REASON grow, we are offering a free three-month subscription extension for each reader who gives a gift subscription during 1973 (commencing with Volume 5 in May). Give two gifts and get a six-month extension, four gifts for a 12-month extension. Gift subscriptions to your local college or public library provide an excellent way to help spread the influence of libertarian ideas, not to mention your teachers, friends, family or business associates. How many new REASON gift subscriptions can you send us in the next thirty days?

• KLAUSNER ON AMNESTY: REASON editor Manuel S. Klausner delivered a three-part editorial response on the subject of amnesty on KNX radio in Los Angeles. Speaking in March on behalf of the Libertarian Alternative, Klausner urged that "the only policy consistent with reason and justice is unconditional amnesty for all draft resistors." Klausner stated that the military draft was a gross abuse of the government's power over its citizens in a free society, and cited the recommendations of President Nixon's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force which called for an end to the draft. Klausner observed that President Nixon's Commission recognized that the draft is actually a tax—under which the minority of the population who are drafted are compelled to render service at low wages to the government, and quoted the Commission's conclusion: "It is hard to imagine a means of imposing the cost of defense…more in conflict with accepted standards of justice, equality and freedom in the United States."

• LIBERTARIAN MUCKRAKERS: Libertarian activists at Harvard announced just before press time that financial backing has been pledged for a major muckraking of HEW and HUD this summer. The project is the first step in the creation of a permanent libertarian "Nader's Raiders" group in Washington—and it is essential to determine soon whether enough libertarians can spend this summer in Washington to make the effort worthwhile.

If you are a young libertarian who would like to help research scandals and stupidities in the social welfare bureaucracies, you should respond promptly. Funding for the group should be no problem, but at this stage, volunteers should expect only to be compensated for living expenses.

A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a libertarian who was fired as a cost analyst for the Pentagon after he discovered a $2.5 billion overrun in the C-5a program, has agreed to take a leading post in the task force. Assuming that over half a dozen qualified libertarians agree to participate as investigators and staff, the project will be launched, and will produce a major report for release in the early fall. Mail a description of your background and interests—if interested in the group—to the following address as soon as possible: Libertarian Task Force, Lowell House D-51, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 02138, or call Larry Siskind, 617/498-2927.

• MACHAN'S NEW BOOK: Associate Editor Tibor Machan is editing a book, to be published this fall by Nelson-Hall Publishing in Chicago. Titled ESSAYS IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: THE LIBERTARIAN ALTERNATIVE, the anthology will include writings by such persons as John Hospers, Murray Rothbard, Yale Brozen, Hans Sennholz, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, D.T. Armentano, Alan Reynolds, and many others. Several of the included essays have appeared previously in REASON, including Tibor Machan's "The Schools Ain't What They Used to Be…", Robert Poole's "Fly the Frenzied Skies," Lynn Kinsky's "The FDA and Drug Research," and R.A. Childs, Jr.'s "Big Business and the Rise of American Statism."

• JOIN REASON ASSOCIATES: Memberships are still being sought for Reason Associates. Full details of membership benefits were set forth in our January and March issues. Regular membership costs only $25 (for individuals or couples) and entitles members to receive an autographed paperback edition of LIBERTARIANISM by John Hospers, a free one-year REASON gift subscription, plus a membership card and handsome membership certificate. Supporting memberships cost $50 and sustaining memberships are $100 per year, each of which includes even greater benefits. Funds from Reason Associates help finance REASON's promotional campaign aimed at nonlibertarians. We invite all of our readers to join!

• BLOODBATH IN BURUNDI: An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people were systematically killed by the government in Burundi last year. As reported by Stanley Meisler in the LOS ANGELES TIMES on April 4 and April 8, 1973, "the Burundi government, in a chilling and calculated way, tried to kill all members of the majority Hutu tribe…who had some education, wealth or potential for leadership." The Hutus—a short negroid people—had outnumbered the ruling Tutsi tribe almost 6 to 1. The Tutsi tribe—a tall slender Hamitic people—have for centuries acted as lords in the almost feudal Burundi society, and struck against the elite of the majority tribe because of a persistent fear of a Hutu uprising and to guarantee power for at least another decade to the Tutsi government.

Meisler reports that one of the strangest aspects of the slaughter in this impoverished, little-known African country of almost four million was the feeble reaction of the rest of the world. Writes Meisler, "It is not difficult to imagine the outcry in the rest of the world today if the whites who run the government of South Africa had decided to put down a rebellion and guarantee their continued control by killing all black South Africans with some education, wealth or potential for leadership. Yet the events in Burundi, roughly analogous, provoked only a few whimpers of protest."

We would like to remind REASON readers of the ongoing governmental campaign against Asians in Africa, another example of government oppression without much public outcry. Readers interested in assisting Asian victims of government tyranny (see this column in REASON, April 1973) may want to contribute to the Asian African Relief Foundation, a nonprofit charitable foundation organized by a group of libertarians. Send contributions to AARF, P.O. Box 6262, Santa Barbara, California 93111.

• PROMINENT LIBERTARIANS SUPPORT SPEAK OUT! Four prominent libertarians have joined the Advisory Board of SPEAK OUT! INC., a new citizens' organization to confront public apathy on vital issues, and the curtailment of press freedom.

John Hospers, Ph.D., Libertarian Party Presidential candidate; Robert Kephart, publisher, HUMAN EVENTS; Tonie Nathan, 1972 Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate (and the first woman to have received an electoral vote); and Murray Rothbard, Ph.D., professor of economics, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn join cause advertising specialist and SPEAK OUT! executive director, John Zeigler, in seeking to educate people on how to present their views on any public issue in any media form.

According to Mr. Zeigler, SPEAK OUT! hopes to demonstrate that the press and the airwaves are major educational vehicles for constructive social change.

Other prominent individuals associated with SPEAK OUT! include attorney Melvin Belli, Goddard College president Dr. Gerald Witherspoon, author Cleveland Amory, Planned Parenthood president Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, psychotherapist Dr. Albert Ellis, and cartoonist Jules Feiffer. Background on John Zeigler and his views on the use of advertising to advance libertarian ideas can be found in "Advertising and Social Change: An Interview with John Zeigler," in the October 1972 issue of REASON.

• NRC NAME CHANGE: The Boston-based New Right Coalition, a libertarian-oriented political action group, has decided to change its name. To avoid misinterpretation of the terms "right" and "coalition," the group has dropped its old name and will now be known as Individuals for a Rational Society (IRS). REASON hopes IRS's new name will not lead to misinterpretations.

• SENATE FAVORS GOLD: The Senate voted 68 to 23 in April to permit Americans to buy, sell, or own gold, which has been banned from private possession since 1934. Freshman Senator James A. McClure (R-lda.) introduced the measure as an amendment to the devaluation bill. McClure stated that the United States is the only nontotalitarian government which forbids possession of gold. However, the measure must still pass the House, and if successful there, faces a possible presidential veto. The Nixon Administration, sadly, opposed McClure's amendment.

News of the Senate passage of the McClure amendment overshadowed the daring action of the National Committee to Legalize Gold which—illegally—brought a bar of gold bullion to a press conference in Washington, D.C., that was set up to advocate legalization of gold ownership. Senator McClure spoke at the press conference along with Representative Steve Symms (see REASON PROFILE, April 1973). Treasury agents did not make any attempt to arrest those defying the gold ownership ban.

• COMING NEXT MONTH: REASON's July issue will feature "The New Education" by Charles R. Kelley, Director of the Interscience Work Shop, a comprehensive discussion of the educational revolution occurring both in and outside of the classroom. In his article, Kelley covers recent developments such as sensitivity training and encounter groups. Also scheduled for next month is Paul Gross' provocative article, "The Ethics of Polygamy." You can be assured of receiving our July issue by becoming a REASON subscriber—to subscribe, send in your check for $9.00 today to REASON, P.O. Box 6151, Santa Barbara, CA 93111.