From the Archives

15 YEARS AGO March 2003

March 1993 Reason cover

"The openness, freedom, and plenitude that lead radical Islamists to hate America are precisely what draw so many people from around the world to live here. Among them, do not forget, were the hundreds of foreign nationals who were among those killed in the World Trade Center."
CATHY YOUNG
"Guilt by Association"

"Michael Greene, then president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences…was not referring to international terrorism. 'The most insidious virus in our midst,' he said sternly, 'is the illegal downloading of music on the Net.'"
DOUGLAS CLEMENT
"Creation Myths"

"What [Woodrow] Wilson's election meant to the South was 'home rule'—that is, license to pursue its racial practices without concern about federal interference. That is exactly what the 1948 Dixiecrats wanted."
CHARLES PAUL FREUND
"Dixiecrat Triumphant"

20 YEARS AGO March 1998

"Even on economics, a lot of pretending went on in Kyoto. It was common to hear that the United States can cut carbon-dioxide emissions without hurting economic growth, that the benefits might even outweigh the costs. The rest of the story was omitted: Those rosy projections assume a carbon tax to deter emissions offset by a huge reduction in taxes on capital.…In other words, cutting greenhouse gases is in fact expensive."
VIRGINIA POSTREL
"Let's Pretend"

"Rife with exceptions, exemptions, exceptions to exemptions, and myriad time and income-level thresholds, this law is a case study in why Washington politicians, even when trying to provide taxpayers with some relief, are incapable of doing so."
MICHAEL W. LYNCH
"Tax Time"

"Had [the parent] sought out and hired a teacher for his child, that teacher might well say: 'Having chosen me for this work, you will either have to trust that I know better than you how to accomplish it, or go and find some other teacher for your child.' But an agent of government cannot afford to commend the competition."
RICHARD MITCHELL
"All the Books They Have"

"The libertarian policy on fixing the family is far less convoluted: Get the government out of the way and let families fix themselves. It's true that the courts should enforce private commitments duly entered into, which may require some rewriting of current family law. But otherwise it's mostly a matter of repeal, lighten up, undistort: If we're so uneasy about the effects of day care on kids, why on earth do we keep having the IRS encourage it artificially through the child-care tax credit?"
WALTER OLSON
"Family Planning"

30 YEARS AGO March 1988

"Why do so many people maintain an utterly unexamined double standard when it comes to drug use and almost all other potentially dangerous yet potentially rewarding activities like drinking, rock climbing, and falling in love?"
MARK BUECHLER
"Why Not Ban Falling in Love?"

"Sell the Postal Service and the air traffic control system? Those ideas would not sound bizarre in Margaret Thatcher's Britain, but they're still pretty radical stuff in Washington, D.C."
LUCY BRAUN
"Privatization Gets a Commission"

"Yet we don't hear Nancy Reagan telling us that 'toy balloons kill' (more than marijuana!) or 'swimming pools kill' (more than cocaine!). Where is our sense of perspective?"
ROY CHILDS JR.
"Battling the Drug War"

45 YEARS AGO March 1973

"A libertarian world, then, even if anarchic, would still not suffer the brutal wars, the mass devastation, that our State-ridden world has suffered for centuries. Even if local police clash continually, there would be no more Dresdens, no more Hiroshimas."
MURRAY ROTHBARD
"Free Market Police, Courts and Law"

"And not all dreams have turned out to be worth having in reality. The utopian dreamers, from Plato and More to Bellamy and Wells, had much to do with the rise of collectivism—whether in the form of Communism or the welfare state or the military-industrial complex. Utopia turned out to be a bright cloud with anything but a silver lining."
JOHN J. PIERCE
"Science Fiction in Perspective"

"Civil disagreement, in which neither party is trying or willing to abridge the rights of the other, provides a simple and symmetrical context in which to derive libertarian institutions."
ADAM V. REED
"Resolving Disputes in a Free Society"