This disdain for the two-party system does not, however, preclude the editorial support at Reason of certain wingnut Republican politicians (chiefly Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and a few Tea Party up-and-comers) who pay lip service to some libertarian principles while violating others. The Mises Institute, however, has never quite forgiven it for its dalliance with neoconservatism long ago, ( never mind that the LvMI was palling around with the paleoconservative movement at the same time), so Reason is frequently a topic of disdain on Lew Rockwell's site.Īfter the election (2008) of Barack Obama as President, Reason's editorial platform returned to its pre-9/11 right-wing perspective, though libertarians insist that they are neither Republicans nor Democrats - eschewing political affiliations and deriding the two-party system as mere "teams" playing games. After 9/11 (2001), Reason underwent a fairly rapid swing back to the left in opposition to Bush's warmongering and clampdown on civil liberties. The magazine's endorsement of the first Gulf War (1990-1991) was particularly unpopular with its traditional readership. The magazine was more hard-core libertarian in its early years, but by the 1980s and 1990s, under the editorial leadership of Virginia Postrel, it had swung to the right and some accused it of embracing neoconservatism and of turning its back on libertarianism. See the main article on this topic: Vulgar libertarianism The magazine was consistently hostile to Donald Trump in 2016, warning that his presidential campaign was about " white identity politics". On science matters, their science editor Ronald Bailey has done some good work opposing intelligent design and creationism (though rather less so on Climategate.) Their brand of libertarianism is much closer to McArdle (minus the armchair general stance) than von Mises. When it comes to environmental issues, they eschew outright denialism and criticize Republican inaction on climate change, instead taking a position of minimization and support for (obviously) free market solutions to environmental problems (their favorite consultant on these issues tends to be Bjørn Lomborg, although they have run articles by noted denialist Patrick Michaels ). More recently they have embraced unscientific positions on COVID-19 pandemic and alt-right-friendly interpretations of astroturfed protests against pandemic measures. When reminded of that chapter in Reason's history, Nick dismisses it all as "mud-slinging", of course. They tried to downplay the fringe-right racism and sexism in recent years, with some success. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Reason hosted Holocaust deniers, "Reconstructionists" like Gary North, and supporters of apartheid South Africa, attacking anti-apartheid protesters and sanctions right up to Mandela’s release (when they finally dropped it). Regardless, the signal-to-corporate astroturf ratio is much stronger than even libertarian think tanks. Reason has a long history, starting in 1968 as a mimeographed newsletter, predating the Kochtopus by several years and was not part of the stable of groups set up by Koch in the late 1970s (though it has received Koch funding since). 1.1 We have always been at war with Eurasia.
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