40 Years After

Forty years ago was a tragic and seminal time in America, a presidential election year in which Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, the Democratic National Convention disintegrated into chaos and Richard M. Nixon completed his remarkable political comeback. Something else happened on the political scene in 1968, a low-key event launching a movement that remains under the radar for many Americans. It was the debut of reason (its handlers prefer no capitalization on that word) magazine, “just one of many mimeographed zines then pushing a mostly obscure political and philosophical vision known as libertarianism,” according to a retrospective in the December 2008 edition of reason. Founding editor Lanny Friedlander cranked out the first copy on a typewriter. The magazine and the movement behind it was inspired in part by the objectivist sentiment popularized by Ayn Rand. Today, its best-known proponent is game show host Drew Carey. While we find much to like and some not to like about libertarianism, the movement and reason do a wonderful job presenting ideas outside the typical liberal-conservative construct. We congratulate reason in marking “40 years of free minds and free markets.”