When it comes to Nariah’s education, I don’t have time to waste.

I want her to get the education she needs to grow, learn and thrive.
When the teachers’ union filed a lawsuit against
school choice in my home state of North Carolina,
I teamed up with IJ to fight back.

I am IJ.

Janet Nunn
Charlotte, North Carolina www.IJ.org Institute for Justice
National Law Firm for Liberty
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16 28
HOW TO TAKE SHROOMS A PRACTICAL WISH LIST
A concise guide to experimenting with psilocybin FOR JOE BIDEN
MIKE RIGGS Some doable libertarian ideas for the
new president
C.J. CIARAMELLA, BRIAN DOHERTY,
20 PETER SUDERMAN, LIZ WOLFE, JACOB SULLUM,
KATHERINE MANGU-WARD, ERIC BOEHM
THE MUSHROOM MOMENT
MANIFESTO
NICK GILLESPIE 34
IS THERE A FUTURE FOR
24 FUSIONISM?
In the years since the Cold War, conservatives
FROM MAGIC MUSHROOM TO have lost sight of the relationship between
FORBIDDEN FUNGUS (AND BACK) liberty and personal responsibility.
Half a century ago, Congress declared that STEPHANIE SLADE
there is no legitimate use for psilocybin.
State and local governments are finally
challenging that judgment. 40
JACOB SULLUM
INTERVIEW: EMILY OSTER
The Brown University economist who says
schools are safer than you think.
KATHERINE MANGU-WARD

48
IN 2020, TEACHERS UNIONS
AND POLICE UNIONS SHOWED
THEIR TRUE COLORS
It’s time for the left and the right to take a hard
look at their favorite public-sector unions.
PETER SUDERMAN
T OPIC S

CONTENTS 4 10
P O LITI C S
FUTU R E

MARCH 2021 The Not-So-Peaceful Transfer

of Power
Will New York Lead the Way in
Screwing Up School Reopening?

MATT WELCH
VOLUME 52, NO. 10 KATHERINE MANGU-WARD

5 12
SCIENCE
P H OTO
Will Biden ‘Listen to the
Little Green Men Caught in
Science’ on GMOs?
Red Tape
RONALD BAILEY

6
WO R LD
Should Biden’s Choice for Secretary
of State Discourage Libertarians?

CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI

8
C I V I L LI B E R TI E S
No Facial Recognition Tech
for Cops 12
DRUGS
C.J. CIARAMELLA
Legal Pot Doesn’t Seem To Increase
Teen Use or Addiction
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FUTURE everyone knows that they get to try again
in two years or four years or six years is

THE NOT-SO- crucial. The fact that no policy is ever

settled can be frustrating. But it keeps the
PEACEFUL stakes of politics low in an important way.
We don’t require our politicians to win or
TRANSFER OF die trying. And we don’t do violence to the

POWER losers. There are limits to the will of the

people, and this is one of them.
KATHERINE MANGU-WARD
SO HOW TO account for what happened at
the Capitol on January 6? It was a violent,
inept attempt to disrupt one of the civil rit-
uals that mark—and celebrate—peaceful
transition. That effort was greeted by vio-
lent, inept attempts by law enforcement to
WHEN I STEPPED out of the house on the electoral votes, marking a milestone in protect the transition process.
afternoon of January 6 to pick up my kids the transition of power, exactly peace- The rituals themselves have purpose.
from their neighborhood pandemic learn- ful, either. It is useful to routinely remind ourselves
ing pod in Washington, D.C., it was very that we are proud of the ways we typically
quiet. A planned playdate with their pod- WHAT DOES IT mean to execute a peaceful handle switches of partisan control. But
mates—a rare luxury in COVID times— transfer of power? I’m not alone in having on a practical level, this was probably a
had been canceled in anticipation of the brandished that phrase as something of a case against pomp and circumstance.
citywide curfew just announced by the talisman in the past. America is a young There is no reason on God’s COVID-
mayor. Perhaps because my block was so country, relatively speaking, and chaotic infested Earth that Congress couldn’t
devoid of its usual bustle, I could hear yell- at times. But one thing you can say for us have met via Zoom and certified the
ing in the distance. Not normal city noise; is that our record of peaceful transitions of Electoral College results via DocuSign.
a kind of sustained, angry ranting. power is really quite impressive. It’s one of Congressmen love the trappings of their
I was too far from the U.S. Capitol to our best attributes as a nation, and predict- offices and always have, but if you build
hear the conflict there, as supporters ably pulling off such handoffs is central to something up as a symbol, it will also
of President Donald Trump smashed the rule of law in a democratic society. attract those who wish to symbolically
their way into the building and forced an People talk a lot of smack about John destroy. (Recall the fate of many a bronze
evacuation. Though I’d been doomscroll- Adams. Doubly so, now that he has been effigy this summer.)
ing all afternoon, I didn’t know that at immortalized in not one but two Broad- Still, the day of the certification of
that moment a rioter was being shot by a way musicals as a buffoon. But his choice electoral ballots isn’t a natural flashpoint.
Capitol Police officer. I didn’t know that at to quietly slink out of town in a stagecoach Election Day itself and Inauguration Day
least four others would eventually die as a in the wee hours of Thomas Jefferson’s are more obvious targets. Protesters con-
result of the melee. Inauguration Day set a precedent that the verged on the Capitol in this case because
But looking south, I could see a trickle nation’s leaders have managed to honor the president called them there. “Big pro-
of people with placards coming up my in the years since. Andrew Johnson was test in D.C. on January 6th,” he tweeted
street. Tired protesters are not a terribly petty enough to hold a Cabinet meeting on December 19, the first of several such
unusual sight in D.C. of late, where there during Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration. summons. “Be there, will be wild!”
has been plenty to protest. But these folks But then he departed as well. At the end of that wild day, about 16
appeared to be hustling away from some- There is space in our system for many hours after rioters stormed the Capitol,
thing at a sharp clip. Somewhere in the challenges to election outcomes, from Trump issued a statement through a sur-
distance, the yelling continued. It seemed county-level recounts all the way to the rogate saying, “Even though I totally dis-
to be getting closer. Supreme Court. Virtually all of those agree with the outcome of the election, and
I picked up my kids and walked them options were exercised this year, with the facts bear me out, nevertheless there
home. They ate yogurt and apples and varying levels of competency, honesty, will be an orderly transition on January
chattered about Minecraft. I wasn’t in and legitimacy. They all failed. When that 20th.” That is slightly below the bare mini-
danger. My city wasn’t consumed with happens, you don’t have to be happy about mum, and the fact that it was tweeted out
violence. The federal government contin- it, but you do have to go, and go without at nearly 4 a.m. hardly inspires confidence.
ued to function. But I wouldn’t call D.C. violence. And our presidents always have. Trump has also already promised and
on the day Congress was set to certify the The fact that, after an election is over, reversed himself several times on the

4 MARCH 2021 Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty

PHOTO

LITTLE GREEN
MEN CAUGHT IN
RED TAPE
CHIRSTIAN BRITSCHGI

A METAL MONOLITH discovered this year in the

Utah desert looks like something straight out of
Star Trek’s neutral zone, but all federal officials
could see was a zoning violation.
In November, members of the Utah Depart-
ment of Public Safety’s Aero Bureau came
across the alien-looking structure in a remote
southeast portion of the state while performing
a count of bighorn sheep. Who, or what, might
have placed the 12-foot structure in the desert
is a mystery. What’s not up for debate is the
monolith’s legal status.
“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
would like to remind public land visitors that
using, occupying, or developing the public lands
or their resources without a required authoriza-
tion is illegal, no matter what planet you are
from,” the Utah branch of BLM declared in a
press release.
Within days of the public announcement of
its discovery, the monolith had disappeared. Do
aliens fear federal fines and sanctions? Or were
terrestrial parties frightened into compliance?
Let’s hope it’s the latter. Short of annihilat-
ing ourselves, nothing poses a graver threat to
Earth’s reputation in the galaxy than exposing
off-planet visitors to the onerous restrictions
and red tape we place on the development of
federal lands.

matter. In September, when asked about peaceful transfer of power. But encourag- ending up with a burning Capitol. It’s still
the “peaceful transferral of power” at a ingly, the same study found that when not likely, but it’s more likely than it was
press conference, he declined to directly countries do manage peaceful transitions, four years ago.
answer the question. “Well, we’re going to the habit tends to stick. Each nonviolent What happened on January 6 wasn’t
have to see what happens,” he said. We’ve handoff of power to an opposing party a coup. But it ended in multiple violent
seen what happened. It left at least five dramatically increases the chances that deaths in the halls of Congress, a citywide
people dead, dozens hospitalized, and the next one will be chill as well. curfew in the nation’s capital, and a trou-
a significant amount of property dam- We have a lot of political and cultural bling uncertainty over whether our legis-
aged. But it did not stop the certification capital built up. Although this issue is lature would be able to meet a crucial elec-
of the electoral ballots. Indeed, debate going to print a week before inauguration, toral deadline. At the very least, our long
resumed later that evening, complete with our good civil habits, paired with robust record of peaceful transfers of power now
its usual absurd grandstanding for the institutions, will almost certainly carry us has an asterisk on it, and there’s reason to
C-SPAN cameras. through this transition. We will go back to fear worse in the future. As a not-so-great
A 2014 study in the journal Compara- the adult equivalents of yogurt and Mine- man once said: We’re going to have to see
tive Political Studies found by examining craft. (Shrooms and cable news, perhaps?) what happens.
thousands of transitions going back to We are, however, burning that capital at
1788 that 68 countries had never had a a dangerous rate. So much so that we risk KATHERINE MANGU-WARD is editor in chief of
Reason.
Photo: Patrickamackie2/Creative Commons REASON 5
WORLD for the Quincy Institute publication U.S. foreign policy, is not sufficient, but it
Responsible Statecraft. is necessary. We have to have those.”

SHOULD BIDEN’S Blinken has expressed some regret

over his support for Saudi Arabia’s war
At the same time, Gomez cautions, a
more efficiently run State Department
CHOICE FOR in Yemen, and he has criticized the wars means Biden could enact a foreign policy
in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet he also has vision that has little to do with restraint
SECRETARY faulted the Obama administration for or rolling back America’s role as global

OF STATE doing “too little” in Syria. “Without bring-

ing appropriate power to bear, no peace
policeman. If there’s cause for optimism
about Biden’s foreign policy, he argues,
DISCOURAGE could be negotiated, much less imposed” it’s that more pressing domestic concerns
there, Blinken and Robert Kagan wrote will prevent the incoming president from
LIBERTARIANS? in a 2019 essay published by the Brook- doing anything very dramatic.
ings Institution. “Today we see the con- “Any coming Biden administration for-
CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI sequences, in hundreds of thousands of eign policy will be restrained by circum-
civilians dead, in millions of refugees stance, but not design,” wrote Gomez and
IF HIS SELECTION of Antony Blinken as who have destabilized Europe and in the Cato senior fellow Brandon Valeriano in a
secretary of state is any indication, growing influence of Russia, Iran, and November American Conservative essay.
President Joe Biden’s promised Hezbollah.” “The domestic, political, and economic
return to normality will extend to his Vlahos suspects Blinken has not environment in the United States will sig-
administration’s foreign policy. absorbed the lessons of America’s foreign nificantly constrain the Biden adminis-
A veteran of the U.S. State Department policy adventures during the last couple tration’s ability to adopt ambitious foreign
and Democratic Party foreign policy of decades. For “a lot of people who have policy goals.”
establishment, Blinken, 58, will bring offered some regrets [about] specific for-
competence and professionalism to the job eign policy mistakes, whether it be Libya CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI is an associate
editor at Reason.
of America’s top diplomat. But he offers or Vietnam or Iraq,” she says, it is “because
little hope for “a new and fresh foreign they cannot deny the consequences. The
policy that doesn’t involve global military consequences are so awful, and public
primacy, continued intervention overseas, opinion has already decided.”
and [a] massive military footprint,” says A few progressive intervention skep-
Kelley Vlahos, a senior adviser at the tics have offered a rosier assessment of
Quincy Institute, a noninterventionist Blinken. Matt Duss, who advises Sen.
foreign policy think tank. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) on foreign policy,
As then–Vice President Biden’s described Blinken as “a good choice,”
national security adviser, Blinken saying on Twitter he has “the knowledge
supported the Obama administration’s and experience for the important work of
disastrous Libya campaign, despite rebuilding U.S. diplomacy.” Mainstream
Biden’s opposition to that intervention. In press coverage of Blinken’s nomination
2015, Blinken, then assistant secretary of likewise emphasized his diplomatic expe-
state, favored the Obama administration’s rience, contrasting it with Trump’s own
policy of shipping arms to and sharing “ricocheting strategies and nationalist
intelligence with Saudi Arabia to support swaggering,” as The New York Times put it.
its war in Yemen, which has proven to Eric Gomez, director of defense policy
be a humanitarian catastrophe. Blinken studies at the Cato Institute, thinks sup-
also served as Biden’s chief policy adviser porters of a less militarized foreign policy
in 2002, when Biden, then a senator can find a silver lining in Biden’s pick
representing Delaware, voted in favor of for secretary of state. “A lot of what
using military force in Iraq. Trump did while in office,” Gomez
“In short, Blinken has agreed with says, “hurt all the parts of the tool kit
some of the biggest foreign policy that weren’t the military or weren’t
mistakes that Biden and Obama made, sanctions. He was heavily depen-
and he has tended to be more of an dent on U.S. threats of force. Having
interventionist than both of them,” Daniel a more effective and resourced and
Larison, a senior editor at The American utilized diplomatic corps, and using
Conservative, noted in a November article those peaceful, nonmilitary parts of

Illustration: Joanna Andreasson

6 MARCH 2021 Source images: Public domain, iStock
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facial recognition technologies, pairs that Studies by researchers at the
CIVIL LIBERTIES database with machine learning software to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
teach an algorithm how to match a face to the National Institute of Standards and
NO FACIAL the photos the company has collected.
Clearview is just one player in an expand-
Technology have found that many of these
algorithms have especially high error rates
RECOGNITION ing market. The Minneapolis Star Tribune
reported in December that the Hennepin
when trying to match nonwhite faces. A
December 2019 study of 189 software
TECH FOR COPS County Sheriff’s Office had coordinated 1,000 algorithms by the latter group found that
searches through its Cognitec facial recogni- they falsely identified African-American and
C.J. CIARAMELLA tion software since 2018. Asian faces 10–100 times more often than
Concerns about such technologies white faces.
have led several legislative bodies to delay, Michigan resident Robert Julian-Borchak
restrict, or halt their use by law enforcement Williams, who is black, is the first American
agencies. In December, the Massachusetts known to have been wrongly arrested and
legislature approved the first state ban on charged with a crime because of a faulty
police use of facial recognition tech. During face match. In January, Williams spent 30
nationwide protests over police abuse last hours in police custody and had to pay a
THE LOS ANGELES Police Department
summer, the New York City Council passed $1,000 bond after an algorithm incorrectly
(LAPD) banned the use of commercial
the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technol- matched him to a shoplifting suspect.
facial recognition apps in November after
ogy Act, which requires the New York Police While the potential benefits of reliable
BuzzFeed News reported that more than
Department to disclose all of the surveillance facial recognition technology shouldn’t be
25 LAPD employees had performed nearly
technology it uses on the public. dismissed out of hand, a sloppy panopticon
475 searches using controversial technology
This technology is often deployed without is almost as dangerous as an effective one.
developed by the company Clearview AI.
public knowledge or debate, sometimes Privacy and accuracy concerns demand
That’s one of several recent developments
before the kinks have been worked out. An intense scrutiny from the public and
related to growing public concern about
independent audit found that London’s A.I. transparency from the government regarding
police surveillance using facial recognition.
technology for scanning surveillance footage how this emerging technology is used.
Clearview AI’s app relies on billions of
labeled suspects accurately only 19 percent
photos scraped from Facebook and other
of the time. C.J. CIARAMELLA is a reporter at Reason.
social media platforms. The app, like other

California v. Hodari D., qualifies as a seizure “Roxanne Torres was not seized,” Mark
for Fourth Amendment purposes. Standridge, a lawyer representing the police,
In October, the Supreme Court heard oral told the justices during oral argument. “At
L AW arguments in Torres v. Madrid, which chal- no time did the officers acquire possession,
lenges that ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals custody, or control over her. Indeed, [Torres]
SOTOMAYOR for the 10th Circuit held that no seizure
occurred when New Mexico state police shot
never stopped in response to the police
action. As the officers did not seize [Torres],
INVOKES SCALIA Roxanne Torres, because their bullets did
not actually stop her from getting away. “An
they cannot be held liable to her for excessive
force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
ON FOURTH officer’s intentional shooting of a suspect does
not effect a seizure,” the appeals court said in
Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not buy it.
“Counsel, there is an element to the Fourth
AMENDMENT 2019, unless the gunshot terminates the sus- Amendment that all of our cases, including
Hodari, recognized,” she said, “that has to
pect’s movement “or otherwise cause[s] the
PROTECTIONS government to have physical control over him.” do with the Fourth Amendment’s protection
Torres was sitting inside her car in her of bodily integrity.” That element includes
DAMON ROOT apartment building’s parking lot. The officers, “the seizure of the person with respect to
who were wearing dark tactical vests with the touching of that person, because even a
police markings, were parked nearby in an touch stops you. It may be for a split second,
unmarked car. They were there to arrest but it impedes your...movement and offends
somebody else. The officers claimed they your integrity.” What you are asking the
DOES THE FOURTH Amendment right to Court to do, Sotomayor told Standridge, is
approached Torres because she was acting
be free from unreasonable seizures include “reject the clear line drawn by Hodari and say
suspiciously. Torres, who said she thought she
the right to be free from an unreasonable that Justice Scalia was wrong about what the
was about to be carjacked, testified that the
attempted seizure? The late Supreme Court common law showed.”
officers never identified themselves as they
Justice Antonin Scalia thought it did. “The
crowded her vehicle. Fearing for her safety,
mere grasping or application of physical
she drove away. The officers shot her twice Senior Editor DAMON ROOT is the author of A
force with lawful authority, whether or not it Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight
as she fled. She learned it was the police who
succeeded in subduing the arrestee,” Scalia for an Antislavery Constitution (Potomac Books).
pulled the trigger only when she was arrested
wrote for a unanimous Court in the 1991 case
a day later at the hospital.

Illustraton, top: KrisCole/iStock

8 MARCH 2021 Illustration, bottom: fotomeidic
LIFEST YLE who believe they must supercharge every adults. Saturdays, too, are for profes-
story time, and all the rest of the time they sionalized activities. Most disturbingly,
spend with their kids as well. the new conventional wisdom holds that
PARENTS: These parents seem to believe that the parent-child relationship itself can be
DON’T BE home must be just like school. And I’m not
talking about homeschooling or COVID-
“optimized” if only the parent acts more
like a teacher.
BORING, 19 remote learning. I’m talking about That’s why Parents could publish
the way parents have started to think of a two-page piece on how to read to
RELENTLESS themselves as actual teachers and their your kid—something most of us could

TEACHERS kids as students.

Haven’t parents always taught their
probably have muddled through without
instructions. “I’m a mom and a literacy
LENORE SKENAZY kids? Yes, of course, says anthropologist specialist,” the subtitle says, “and I’m
David Lancy, author of Raising Children: here to share my secrets.” That’s the part
IT’S SNUGGLY TIME with your little one, who Surprising Insights From Other Cultures parents don’t know: how to read to their
is not even in kindergarten yet. His little (Cambridge University Press). What’s kids like a teacher. Thanks to articles
head rests against your shoulder as you different today is that interactions at like this one, and a million educational
open up a picture book. “See?” you say, home are modeled on what goes on in the toys, and a mound of homework that
pointing not to the furry bunny or dia- classroom, where an adult instructs and a parents are supposed to oversee from
bolical cat or tree that keeps amputating student sits and (with any luck) soaks it up. kindergarten through college, adults are
herself. “These are the words on the page. That is actually a pretty new teach- getting the message that it’s not enough to
This sentence has seven words. This dot is ing method, historically speaking. Until be a plain old parent.
called a period, and it shows the end of a public schools became popular in the 19th “There’s a cultural idea that that is how
sentence.” century and then ubiquitous in the 20th, you should treat kids, and it’s reinforced
At least, that’s what you’d do if you fol- kids mostly learned what they needed everywhere,” says Dorsa Amir, a postdoc
lowed the stultifying advice in a recent to know by watching and imitating oth- in evolutionary anthropology at Boston
Parents magazine piece on how to “Super- ers. Their teachers were everywhere and College. “It is really hard to make changes
charge Every Storytime.” And that’s what everyone, including their friends and at the household level when there’s an
we’re here to talk about today: parents siblings. But once school-based education entire cultural apparatus suggesting
became the norm, we for- something else.”
got that kids learn from Peter Gray, author of 2013’s Free to
other kids, from helping Learn, calls this “a schoolish view of
out, and from playing. child development”: the notion that
Even in the 1950s, children learn and develop best when
when Lancy was grow- they are carefully taught by adults, and
ing up, school didn’t that whatever children do on their own—
play such a huge role in playing, watching, thinking, dreaming—
childrens’ lives. Once the is a waste of time because there’s no one
bell rang at 3 p.m., pupils there to guide and perfect it.
could go off and not think Lancy, who has traveled the world
about school until the studying how kids learn on their own, is
next day. There wasn’t now a granddad. His daughter, like every-
much homework. And one else, is buying brain-boosting toys for
unless a kid was failing, her toddler. She sits on the floor with the
parents weren’t involved girl, says Lancy, “and she’s telling her what
with it. the shapes are and demonstrating how
But in the last gen- they go in...”
eration or two, Lancy This is not evil or cruel. It is simply
observes, school has what today’s parents believe they must do:
started seeping into make every second into school. What’s lost
the rest of kids’ experi- is the faith that our kids’ innate curiosity
ences. Instead of playing is the greatest education engine ever.
pickup games, they enroll
in organized leagues LENORE SKENAZY is president of the nonprofit
Let Grow and founder of Free-Range Kids.
coached—“taught”—by

Photo: Volodymyr Tverdokhlib/Alamy REASON 9

POLITICS

WILL NEW YORK

LEAD THE WAY
IN SCREWING
UP SCHOOL
REOPENING?
MATT WELCH

FOR THOSE OF us subject to his misrule,

the second week of December did not
seem a particularly auspicious week for
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to start
touting his experience with reopening
public schools as a model for the rest of
the country.
After all, my 12-year-old still hadn’t American Federation of Teachers Presi- domly tested students, teachers, and staff
set foot on her campus for weeks, hav- dent Randi Weingarten wrote in The Hill was a miniscule 0.18 percent. The back-
ing attended class just seven times this in late November. This sentiment was lash was immediate.
academic year. My 5-year-old was back in rather belated. Then–President Donald That shutdown was based on a 3 per-
kindergarten (after an arbitrary, de Bla- Trump and then–Education Secretary cent positive-test threshold for the entire
sio–imposed break), but only half time, Betsy DeVos had been banging the school- city, a “community spread” figure much
because her school didn’t have enough reopening drum since July, when the sci- lower than the standards used by the state
personnel to process kids in groups larger ence and global track record had already of New York and virtually any other coun-
than eight or nine. That half time quickly shown that kids in group settings were try you could name.
turned to no time when two staffers in a not catching, spreading, or suffering from On the Friday before the shutdown,
1,000-student school tested positive for the novel coronavirus in any statistically local union honcho Michael Mulgrew,
COVID-19. meaningful way. Weingarten’s conversion whose summer negotiations with de Blasio
Remote learning—the borderline reflected three new political realities. produced both the unusually low thresh-
oxymoronic term to describe classroom- First, initial public school enrollment old and the two school-year delays, told
less education attempted via computer figures from this fall were brutal: 3–5 The New York Times, “When the mayor told
screen by tens of millions of K-12 students percent lower than the previous year, as us about the 3 percent, we went to our doc-
nationwide—continues to be the norm for parents opted for homeschooling or the tors, and they said it was an appropriate
more than three out of four New York City more reliably open private sector. Fewer number.” Within days, the outpouring of
public school students, including a dis- students mean less government funding, bile, evident daily in the Times and on the
proportionate share who are economically and eventually fewer teachers able to pay local NPR affiliate, had Mulgrew furiously
(and now academically) disadvantaged. union dues. backpedaling, pinning the one-size-fits-
Yet de Blasio may have been onto some- Second, after eight months of wide- all standard on de Blasio and saying he
thing when he puffed out his chest to Polit- spread school closures concentrated in favored a more targeted approach. Less
ico and said, “Just do it! We have proven heavily Democratic jurisdictions, and than three weeks after the shutdown, the
you can keep school safe if you are willing with the electoral removal of a convenient mayor abruptly announced that the 3
to adopt enough rigorous measures.” White House scapegoat, unions found percent figure had been scrapped and that
And with the election of a teachers themselves on the receiving end of wither- schools would be reopening for five days a
union–friendly Democratic president, ing parental anger. week when possible.
Gotham’s policy of prioritizing guild wish De Blasio delayed the beginning of Which brings us to the third main rea-
lists over student and parental concerns the school year twice in September (both son that unions and the politicians they
may indeed become the national norm. times at the last minute), then shut down bankroll had started singing a different
God help us all. all of the city’s schools in mid-November tune by December: With the absence of
“Reopening schools is vital for the (once again at the last minute), even Trump and the prospect of trillions in new
health and education of our children,” though the positive-test rate among ran- coronavirus relief money coming from

10 MARCH 2021 Photo: WoodysPhotos/Shutterstock

least in-person instruction. And parents
even in the bluest of cities, I can tell you,
are noticing.
The hypocrisy is in some ways even
more grating than that of politicians who
impose COVID-related bans on activi-
ties they are immediately seen enjoying.
In Chicago, for instance, so many public
school teachers (between a quarter and
a half) are demanding to teach remotely
that even when in-person classes are
scheduled to resume, many will be “super-
vised” by non-teachers in classrooms as
the kids communicate via computer with
remote teachers receiving the same com-
pensation as last year. No wonder they
need a Marshall Plan!
New York City kids, in the name of
safety, have been herded into “Learning
Development Centers,” which have less
Congress, the public education indus- stringent COVID-19 protocols than the
try sensed a golden opportunity to keep schools that were shuttered in the name of
teachers whole, on terms written by them, “science.” There, supervisors spend their
even if most students remain in remote- days wrangling competing Zoom meet-
learning hell. ings with faraway teachers.
“Our leaders must use every tool at The damage that can be done to
their disposal to reduce the spread of the elementary school–age children by
coronavirus and pass a relief package monthslong separation from their peers
that includes funding for states, schools, can be heartbreaking, bordering on hor-
businesses, and the Americans who now rifying. My nieces and nephews in France
struggle with rents, nutrition insecurity, and Switzerland, like my friend’s kids in
and student loans,” Weingarten wrote. “It is England, all go to school without wearing
why we need a national blueprint that has masks, without having their class sizes
these objectives to safely reopen schools.” lopped by one-half to two-thirds, and I give to
In case the rattling of the cup wasn’t without teachers unions calling the shots
loud enough, the leaders of the country’s and fighting for stay-at-home pedagogy protect and
three largest school districts—New York, while crying out for more money.
Los Angeles, and Chicago, the latter two On a December 16 conference call, to preserve.
of which have been and likely will remain President-elect Joe Biden told the major-
shuttered for many months—penned a ity of the country’s governors, “I know
joint op-ed piece in The Washington Post it’s going to be controversial for some of
with the unsubtle headline: “We need you—but I’m going to ask that we’re going
a Marshall Plan for our schools. And we to be able to open schools at the end of a
need it now.” hundred days.” I am glad for the sake of
Do you know who has not required a a mangled generation of kids that Biden
Marshall Plan to open up K-12 instruction caught up to where his predecessor was
facilities throughout the country during five months earlier. But if New York City is
this pandemic? Catholic schools. Charter indeed the model, the most “open” thing
Donor-Advised Funds | Philanthropic Guidance | Legacy Protection
schools. Ad hoc “pods” of parents pooling will be the government’s checkbook—that
resources and time (as we have with our and parents’ web browsers as they explore
5-year-old) to make up for what the local every option for their kids that doesn’t
public system has failed to deliver despite include a teachers union.
its guaranteed tax revenue. Where teach-
ers unions hold most sway, kids get the MATT WELCH is editor at large at Reason.

REASON 11
streamlined some of its outdated and genes that achieve the same biochemical
SCIENCE result (e.g., insect resistance) that has already
scientifically unwarranted regulations of
modern biotech crops. Will President Joe been deemed safe.
WILL BIDEN Biden stay the course? Under the new rules, plant breeders are
no longer required to submit their products
This is not a niche issue. Since the 1980s,
‘LISTEN TO THE biotech crop varieties have been engineered to the USDA to determine whether they
qualify for an exemption. As the preamble
with new genetic traits that enable them to
SCIENCE’ ON resist diseases, insect pests, and herbicides. to the rule notes, this change reduces “the
regulatory burden for developers of organ-
GMOS? Today, 94 percent of all soybeans, 83 percent
of corn, and 95 percent of sugar beets grown isms that are unlikely to pose plant pest
in the U.S. are biotech varieties. risks” and “provides a clear, predictable, and
RONALD BAILEY At the dawn of genetic engineering, the efficient regulatory pathway for innovators”
USDA contorted its regulations to assert a to develop improved biotech plants. Should
“LISTEN TO THE science” was an oft-heard right to review new biotech crops before they developers have a question about whether
riposte in political debates about how could be offered to farmers. For 30 years, their crop varieties are exempt from the regu-
the government should respond to the the department individually evaluated each lation, they can still contact the department
COVID-19 pandemic. While Donald Trump’s new bioengineered (B.E.) crop variety, even for a consultation.
administration failed on that front, it did though the department had determined
“listen to the science” last May, when the numerous times that the same genetic traits ANTI-BIOTECH GROUPS IM MEDIATELY decried
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in previously approved varieties were safe for the modernized rules. “Under the newly
consumers and the environment. released regulations, the overwhelming
In May 2020, the USDA issued its final majority of genetically engineered (GE) plant
Sustainable, Ecological, Consistent, Uniform, trials would not have to be reported to USDA,
Responsible, Efficient (SECURE) rule. Under or have their risks analyzed before being
SECURE, an engineered crop variety is allowed to go to market,” declared a press
exempt from regulation if it contains only release from the Center for Food Safety. “The
minor genetic changes of the sort that would USDA’s shameful decision to gut essential
endow a plant with a trait that could have safety regulations for genetically engineered
been achieved through traditional breeding. organisms puts more power in the hands
Previously, plant breeders had to ask USDA of corporate agribusiness and removes all
regulators to evaluate the risk of every new transparency,” asserted Friends of the Earth
biotech crop they sought to commercialize. spokesperson Dana Perls.
Now the department exempts new varieties What particularly upsets the activists is
to which plant breeders have simply added that many newly exempt varieties will not

OPPONENTS OF MARIJUANA legalization month, the frequency of use declined by 16%.”

frequently warn that it will lead to rampant That finding suggests shifting the supply
cannabis consumption by teenagers. But of marijuana from black-market dealers to
two studies published in November found state-licensed retailers who enforce a mini-
that legalization has not been associated mum purchase age helps curtail adolescent
with increases in adolescent marijuana use or access, even if legalization also increases pur-
addiction. In fact, there is some evidence that chases by adult relatives and acquaintances.
both decline when pot prohibition is repealed Legalization may also reduce marijuana’s
for adults. “forbidden fruit” appeal to teenagers.
Boston College psychologist Rebekah Coley et al.’s finding that legalization is
Levine Coley and four other researchers associated with less-frequent use among
DRUGS
looked at trends in marijuana use among adolescent cannabis consumers is consistent
teenagers in 47 states, as measured by the with the results of a study that looked at
LEGAL POT Youth Risk Behavior Survey, from 1999 to
2017. During that period, eight states and
trends in addiction treatment admissions.
Between 2008 and 2017, Temple University
DOESN’T SEEM the District of Columbia legalized recreational health geographer Jeremy Mennis found, the
marijuana use by adults 21 or older. number of “adolescent treatment admissions
TO INCREASE “We found no evidence that [recreational for marijuana” per 10,000 teenagers fell by
legalization] was associated with increased nearly half nationwide, and the downward
TEEN USE OR likelihood or level of marijuana use among trend was especially sharp in states that
adolescents,” Coley and her colleagues legalized recreational use for adults.
ADDICTION reported in the Journal of Adolescent Seven of those eight states “fall into the
Health. “Rather, among adolescents who class with the steepest level of admissions
JACOB SULLUM reported any use of marijuana in the past decline,” Mennis reported in a study

Photo, top: Creative life, looking for special pictures/iStock

12 MARCH 2021 Photo, bottom: Wikimedia
be subject to National Bioengineered Food
IMMIGR ATION policy changes, according to a November
Disclosure Standards (NBFDS) requirements.
report from the Migration Policy Institute.
As the USDA noted in 2018, when it issued
He slashed refugee pathways, forced asylum
the labeling regulations, “the NBFDS is not
expected to have any benefits to human
BIDEN SAYS HIS seekers to “remain in Mexico” while their
cases were processed, and allowed the Justice
health or the environment....Nothing in the
disclosure requirements set out in this final
IMMIGRATION Department to prosecute good Samaritans as
rule conveys information about the health,
safety, or environmental attributes of B.E.
POLICY WILL BE criminals for providing food, water, and shelter
to immigrants crossing the most dangerous
food as compared to non-B.E. counterparts.” BETTER THAN section of the U.S.-Mexico border.
What can President Joe Biden do to
But the activists know that some consumers
mistakenly view those labels as warnings OBAMA’S improve this mess? He has said he will
reinstate DACA, deprioritize deportations
and thus tend to avoid foods made using
of immigrants without criminal records, and
ingredients from modern biotech crops. BILLY BINION
allow asylum applicants to enter the U.S.
Will the Biden administration listen to the
“WE MADE A mistake,” Joe Biden said of his while they await hearings. He says much of
science regarding biotech crops? One possi-
former boss’s immigration policies during the that will happen in his first six months. But
bly good omen is the nomination of biotech-
final presidential debate in October 2020. “It immigration policy experts are skeptical that
friendly Obama administration Agriculture
took too long to get it right. I’ll be president Biden can quickly or easily undo Trump’s
Secretary Tom Vilsack to his former post.
of the United States, not vice president of the handiwork, let alone fix the larger system.
“While public skepticism around the
United States.” “The majority of the Trump administra-
safety of GMOs is significant,” Vilsack
While Donald Trump may have imple- tion immigration reforms will be difficult to
noted in a 2017 op-ed for The Hill, “the
mented the most cruel and aggressively anti- address immediately,” Leon Fresco, an immi-
overwhelming evidence demonstrates
immigration policy of any modern president, gration attorney who worked in the Obama
that these crops have not been linked to
his predecessor’s record was nothing to administration, told Politico in December,
a single health risk in the more than two
brag about either. President Barack Obama’s “either because of legal rule-making barriers,
decades they’ve been in our marketplace.”
government deported more people than practical realities on the ground, or a lack
He added that “embracing innovative
any other administration in history, enlisted of bandwidth given how many priorities the
farming technologies and practices like seed
local police departments to assist the feds Biden administration has in contrast to the
improvement through genetic modification
in carrying out immigration raids, and built singular focus on immigration” that the Trump
puts us on the path toward a more food-
the chain-link holding pens that became the administration had.
secure and environmentally stable future.”
defining image of Trump’s inhumane “zero Another obstacle is the COVID-19 pan-
tolerance” family separation policy. Restoring demic, which the Trump administration cited
Science Correspondent RONALD BAILEY is
the author of The End of Doom: Environmental some semblance of mercy to U.S. immigra- to justify further restricting immigration.
Renewal in the 21st Century (St. Martin’s). tion policy won’t be easy. While the ongoing crisis has bought Biden
Obama used an executive order, rather a bit of time to calculate how he will handle
than working with a divided Congress, to a post-pandemic influx of immigrants, it’s
published by the Centers for Disease Control create the Deferred Action for Childhood unclear whether he will continue to prosecute
and Prevention. “This research suggests that Arrivals (DACA) program, which shielded border crossings as criminal offenses, as both
a precipitous national decline in adolescent residents who came to the U.S. as children Obama and Trump did.
treatment admissions, particularly in states from deportation. Trump rescinded that order
legalizing recreational marijuana use, is while using the same unilateral approach to BILLY BINION is an assistant editor at Reason.
occurring simultaneously with a period implement more than 400 other immigration
of increasing permissiveness, decreasing
perception of harm, and increasing adult use,
regarding marijuana.”
Since most teenagers admitted to treat-
ment for marijuana use end up there after
getting into legal trouble, this decline may
be partly due to changes in law enforcement
practices. But a 2019 study in the journal
Drug and Alcohol Dependence suggests the
admissions trend also reflects real changes
in adolescent behavior. Between 2002 and
2016, according to survey data, the preva-
lence of “cannabis use disorder” fell by 27
percent among teenagers who used mari-
juana frequently.

Senior Editor JACOB SULLUM is the author of

Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use (Tarcher/
Penguin).

Photo: Photo Beto/iStock REASON 13

strikes. If there’s a snow alert, diners will not
REGUL ATION be allowed to sit in outdoor areas, not even TECHNOLOGY
fully covered ones. If 12 or more inches of
NEW YORK CITY’S snow are in the forecast, restaurateurs must
remove the roadway barriers they made hun-
TIKTOK AFTER
OUTDOOR DINING dreds of pounds heavier at the city’s behest.
That’s not all. Propane-fueled patio heat-
TRUMP
DOOM ers, which use 20-pound propane tanks, are ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN
temporarily allowed on sidewalks but not
LIZ WOLFE blocked-off roadways. Storing a propane tank
requires a permit from the fire department,
TIKTOK HAS SUCCEEDED wildly where simi-
NEW YORK CITY restaurants have been hit but the propane tank must be stored in an lar short-form video platforms—including
hard during the last year by COVID-19 and above-ground enclosure that’s at least 10 feet Vine and the Facebook-backed Lasso—did
bad government policy. Although outdoor away from buildings or adjoining lots, which not. As of August 2020, the app had 100
dining has been permitted since June, the is a tough feat in most of the city. million active U.S. users, up from about
city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) All of these requirements are in addition 11.3 million at the start of 2018 and 39.9
keeps changing the rules, forcing already bur- to a mandatory 10 p.m. closing time and
million in October 2019. While becoming
dened restaurants to spend heaps of money regulations dictating that bars serve food
to stay compliant. a vehicle for teen influencers, viral dance
with all booze purchases, leading to lots of $1
New regulations that went into effect on popcorn offerings to satisfy the requirement sensations, and sketch comedy, however,
December 15 purport to help restaurants should the authorities come knocking. It’s TikTok also became a target of the Trump
prepare for winter road conditions that could now standard practice for bartenders to let administration’s animosity toward both
jeopardize customers’ safety if cars skid drinkers know which of their food options is China and social media.
into dining areas, which are often set up in the cheapest. China’s version of TikTok, Douyin,
blocked-off parking spots and on sidewalks. Of course it’s fair for city officials to be was launched in 2016 by ByteDance, a
Restaurants now must fill their roadway concerned with safety, but had they offered
company incorporated in the Cayman
barriers with sand or soil. For many, this rule relevant guidance earlier, restaurants might
requires adding interior walls and bottoms to Islands and headquartered in Beijing. In
have had the opportunity to build appropri-
the structures, or ripping out the plants that ate barriers the first time around instead of 2017, ByteDance bought the karaoke app
restaurateurs added earlier in the year. Most being forced to make expensive modifica- Musical.ly and relaunched it as Douyin’s
restaurants also will be forced to add “a plas- tions later. global cousin, TikTok. The app’s U.S. arm,
tic water-filled barrier in front of the roadway The need for roadway barricades that which employs more than 1,500 people,
barrier facing oncoming traffic,” per the DOT, are both sturdy enough to withstand cars stores user data in the United States and
which says a street’s crash rates and traffic and light enough to move when it snows is Singapore.
volumes will determine which restaurants are emblematic of the jam in which restaurants
In August 2020, then–President Donald
exempt. Reflective tape must be added too. find themselves. Preserving the country’s
The tape and plastic barriers will be provided Trump issued an executive order declaring
greatest restaurant scene in the midst of a
by the city. pandemic feels like an afterthought. that TikTok and the China-based messag-
It’s nice to make these “streeteries” ing platform WeChat were national secu-
sturdier, but the city says they must also LIZ WOLFE is a staff editor at Reason. rity threats. He banned Americans from
be easy to move when inclement weather transacting with ByteDance, allowing 45
days for the order to take effect.
Trump’s order fretted about the pos-
sibility that TikTok videos could spread
coronavirus misinformation and warned
that the app could be manipulated to aid
the Chinese government. But the order did
not allege that ByteDance had broken U.S.
laws or suggest a plausible mechanism by
which the Chinese state might use TikTok
nefariously.
“We are shocked by the recent Execu-
tive Order, which was issued without any
due process,” TikTok said in an August
statement. “For nearly a year, we have
sought to engage with the U.S. govern-
ment in good faith to provide a construc-
tive solution to the concerns that have
been expressed. What we encountered

14 MARCH 2021 Photo, left: Alamy

instead was that the Administration paid in the United States.” Microsoft, Oracle,
no attention to facts, dictated terms of an and Walmart were all lined up as potential TikTok will
agreement without going through stan- buyers. But no deal materialized, even as
outlast the Trump
dard legal processes, and tried to insert the CFIUS twice extended the deadline
itself into negotiations between private for a sale, first to November 27 and then to administration.
businesses.” December 4.
Whether it will find
TikTok had been working with the Meanwhile, TikTok has seen some
Committee on Foreign Investment in the early wins in court. In late September, a another enemy in
United States (CFIUS), a federal body that federal judge granted TikTok’s request for
reviews certain types of foreign invest- a preliminary injunction against enforce-
President Joe Biden
ment in the U.S. for potential national ment of the app store ban. The Commerce is unclear.
security concerns. In a lawsuit challeng- Department said it would not start enforc-
ing Trump’s order, the company says it has ing the ban while the case was pending. In
“taken extraordinary measures to protect late October, another federal court—this
the privacy and security of TikTok’s U.S. one considering a lawsuit by TikTok
user data” and that the CFIUS had seemed users—also put a hold on enforcement of a matter of genuine concern that TikTok,
satisfied until the last minute: “At 11:55 the ban. Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the a Chinese operation, has access to over
p.m. on July 30, 2020—the final day of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania noted that 100 million young people, particularly in
statutory CFIUS review period—the Com- letting the ban stand would “have the effect the United States of America,” Biden told
mittee issued a letter stating that ‘CFIUS of shutting down, within the United States, reporters at a Minnesota campaign stop.
has identified national security risks aris- a platform for expressive activity used by For now, it looks like TikTok’s fate rests
ing from the Transaction and...has not about 700 million individuals globally,” with the courts.
identified mitigation measures that would including “at least 50 million” Americans
address those risks.’” TikTok says the let- who “use the app on a daily basis.” ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN is a senior editor at
Reason.
ter was “principally based on outdated TikTok may outlast the Trump admin-
news articles” rather than the “volumi- istration, but whether it will
nous documentation” it had provided. find another enemy in Presi-
“We believe the Administration’s deci- dent Joe Biden is unclear.
sions were heavily politicized,” TikTok Although Biden’s grandkids
said in an August 24 statement explaining and Vice President Kamala
its decision to challenge the order. “We Harris’ stepdaughter are
do not take suing the government lightly, apparently TikTok users,
however we feel we have no choice.” Biden suggested in Septem-
A TikTok employee also challenged the ber that the platform is
order in a suit filed by lawyer (and Reason dangerous, regardless
contributing editor) Mike Godwin and the of any alleged data
Blackstone Law Group. There’s no rational handling issues.
“threat model” for TikTok, Godwin says. “I think that it’s
“I know what moral panics look like; they
look kind of like this.”

LAST FALL, THE Commerce Department

began issuing rules to implement Trump’s
order, including a ban on providing access
to TikTok through U.S. app stores. But
enforcement of the rules was delayed, first
by a potential deal with the Trump admin-
istration and then by the courts.
Not long after issuing his order, Trump
suggested TikTok would be OK if Byte-
Dance “divest[ed] any tangible or intan-
gible assets or property, wherever located,
used to enable or support ByteDance’s
operation of the TikTok application

Illustration: Joanna Andreasson

Source images: Solen Feyissa/Unsplash; Wikimedia REASON 15
16 MARCH 2021
A CONCISE GUIDE TO EXPERIMENTING
WITH PSILOCYBIN

MIKE RIGGS

O LET’S SAY psilocybin mush-

rooms are newly decriminal-
ized where you live, and you are
now open to having your first
psychedelic experience. Allow
me to share some of the prac-
tical knowledge I have gleaned
from talking to experts and old
heads, reading books and arti-
cles, and consuming various amplify the effects.
amounts of magic mushrooms Once you have conducted a clear-eyed risk assessment, it’s
in various settings. time to find some fungi. I recommend dried mushrooms (the
Begin by trying very hard to standard method of preservation), because they are easy to
find a reason why you should measure and they keep for a while. You can grow a personal
not consume shrooms. What exactly are the laws where you stash and dry them discreetly at home (turn again to that inter-
live? Are you on parole or probation? Do you take any prescrip- net browser and search for “PF Tek” for instructions), or you
tion drugs? Google your medication’s name and “shrooms.” Do can buy one-eighth of an ounce, likely for $25–$40. If you have
you have epilepsy? Search drug forums to find out how other adventurous adult children, ask them to help you find a trust-
epilepsy sufferers have fared on psilocybin. Do you need to worthy source. The marijuana user in your life probably knows
monitor your glucose throughout the day? Search drug forums someone who knows someone, and he will not think you are
for the experiences of diabetics. weird for asking him. It is unwise to purchase shrooms from
Avoid rehab websites and focus instead on forums where Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or from a stranger without
people talk about their own use, such as shroomery.org and an introduction. Foraging for wild shrooms is also an option,
erowid.org, both of which contain countless “trip reports.” You but please seek help from someone who’s done it before. It can
will find more anecdotes than hard research, but you can still take hours to feel the effects of eating the wrong kind of wild
learn a lot. If a self-assessment does not put you at ease, you can mushroom, by which point it will likely have damaged your
also tell your doctor or therapist that you are considering taking kidneys and liver.
shrooms and ask for his or her informed opinion. Be honest and Shrooms in hand, pull up your calendar and pick out a Sat-
fair with yourself. Not all drugs are for everyone, and there are urday. You only need one day for your experience, but you’ll
other ways to open the doors of perception. While psilocybin want to set aside all of it. If you take a dose at 10 a.m., you will
is not poisonous to your organs, it does leave you vulnerable to begin to feel the effects by 10:45. The “peak” will arrive between
external dangers. Anyone taking a prescription drug for depres- 11:30 and noon and last for two or three hours. By 4 p.m. you
sion or anxiety should do extra research, as some drugs mute will feel close enough to normal to know that your trip is com-
the effects of the tryptamines in psilocybin, while other drugs pleted. But again, it’s a good idea to give yourself an entire day

Illustration: Joanna Andreasson

Photo: Michal Moravcik/Alamy REASON 17
in case you want to take the shrooms earlier or later, or in case might spend your trip looking at cool art, marveling at nature,
your own experience does not quite match up with the time or listening to music. Just remember that shrooms increase
windows above. Once you have taken the shrooms, I strongly activity in your amygdala, which is the part of your brain that
advise you not to operate a vehicle again until you’ve had a good tells you when it’s time to haul ass. Be kind to yourself and avoid
night’s sleep. media content that’s meant to frighten, anger, or otherwise
This brings us to the “setting” component of the famous evoke strong negative emotions.
psychedelic shorthand “set and setting.” Choose a space you How you consume the shrooms is a matter of personal pref-
can occupy for the day and where you feel comfortable, safe, erence. Maya priests of the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave, in
and secure. Depending on how much you take your first time, what is now Belize, used deer bladders attached to hollowed-
you could experience profound emotions that make you laugh out bones to deliver psilocybin rectally. I prefer pouring a cup
and cry. Some folks prefer the privacy and comfort of their own of boiling water over ground shrooms, letting the tea cool to
homes. Others like a secluded spot in nature. Know how you’ll room temperature, and then drinking it down—pulp and all—
get to and from that place and who will be with you. I recom- as quickly as I can. Some folks put dried shrooms on a piece of
mend first-timers have someone around whom they trust. This peanut butter toast. They taste terrible, but you’re not eating
“trip sitter” doesn’t need to be an experienced psychedelic user; them for the flavor.
he just needs to be kind, level-headed, positive, and empathetic. If you are very nervous about using shrooms, I recommend
(To learn more about supporting someone else who is tripping, you start with 1 gram dried. Ingesting this amount will feel
you can freely read Mark Haden’s Psychedelic Guide Manual on mostly like a new kind of buzz that simply lasts a long time. Up
the website of the Zendo Project, a nonprofit that provides lay- to around 1.5 grams will feel like an even stronger buzz, but
friendly psychedelics education.) with no perceptible change in your vision or hearing or in how
“Set,” which is short for “mindset,” is also important. Some- well you speak and follow normal conversation. Exceeding
times I approach a mushroom trip with a sense of mission. If I 1.5 grams will likely cause you to think and speak differently.
feel like I’m in a rut or need an attitude adjustment, then I go in People who take between 2.5 and 3.5 grams report perceptible
knowing that I will think about those problems. Many people visual effects (seeing faint geometric patterns where there are
describe such trips as work. You can also approach shrooms with none, for instance) and a very active, stream-of-consciousness
a sense of adventure, curiosity, and excitement. In that case, you mental state. The “heroic dose” popularized by psychonaut
Terence McKenna is 5 grams. People who have taken this
amount say the trip is very psychologically taxing but also
provides the longest-lasting increase in emotional well-being.
(Clinical trials do not use dried mushrooms, but the largest
doses of psilocybin they administer are roughly in this range.)
For more on the experience of the “heroic dose,” read “The
Mushroom Moment Manifesto,” page 20.
But don’t feel the need to be a hero. Start with the smallest
dose that makes you comfortable. If the resulting experience is
insufficiently trippy, get out your calendar, find another Satur-
day, and take a larger dose. Keep in mind that weighing out dried
plant material is not the most exact way to take any drug, which
is why cardiologists administer the cardiac drug digitalis, not
dried foxglove flower, for congestive heart failure. And since you
can’t untake shrooms, err on the side of underdoing it.
A little nausea is normal in the first 45 minutes. Try to ride
it out! Shrooms are not ayahuasca, and puking is not necessary.
Stay hydrated even if you don’t feel thirsty.
Once you are under the influence, what then? Shrooms can
be a useful tool for testing connections between ideas. Many of
us believe things about ourselves and the world that make our
lives harder than they have to be. Shrooms can evaporate those
beliefs and render superior ideas stickier and more influential.
If you have ever wanted to believe what seemingly happy people

18 MARCH 2021 Photo: Michal Moravcik/Alamy

believe but found their worldview both irritatingly saccharine
and maddeningly out of reach, shrooms can help their Hallmark
truisms wedge themselves in your brain and illuminate your
outlook for months afterward.
I believe shrooms have increased my baseline sense of grati-
tude and helped tame my desire to control things I cannot and
should not (such as the behavior of others). They have also made
me reluctant to escalate interpersonal conflicts. I like these Begin by trying
changes, although I don’t know how replicable they are for any-
one else. The faultiest mental connections can elude even the
very hard to
most dogged psychic excavator, and it is too much to ask of any
drug that it undo decades of neurological wiring.
find a reason
What if your exploration of the inside of your head, or just why you should
some random external stimulus, leads to the proverbial “bad
trip”? Then you have a bad trip. Remind yourself that you are on not consume
a drug and that it will eventually wear off. If you plan to take a
larger dose, consider obtaining a benzodiazepine and entrust- shrooms.
ing it to your trip sitter. If you have a panic attack or feel over-
whelmed in a way that does not subside as your trip progresses,
a single Valium or Xanax will level you out for the remainder of
your psilocybin experience.
Despite the pitfalls, it’s worth trying to push through what-
ever negative emotions overwhelm you, especially if you have
a trip sitter present. Everyone’s got something eating at them,
and shrooms are a good tool for facing those things with a new
and conciliatory attitude. It doesn’t always feel that way when
it’s happening, but that’s part of the shrooms paradox: Even a
“bad” trip can produce great results.

MIKE RIGGS is deputy managing editor at Reason.

Photo: RMX/Alamy REASON 19

NICK GILLESPIE

20 MARCH 2021
HE SATURDAY AFTER voters in The mushroom votes—not to mention the passage of pro-
Washington, D.C., and Oregon marijuana initiatives in states as traditionally straight-laced
voted to loosen legal restric- as Arizona, Mississippi, and South Dakota—are undeniable
tions on magic mushrooms, my confirmation that we’re in the middle of a pharmacological
girlfriend and I celebrated in the revolution whose implicitly libertarian goal is nothing less
most appropriate way possible. than giving us all more and better control over our very moods
We each ate almost 5 grams of the and minds. As a popular meme puts it, the drug war is over and
stuff, ground up and stuffed into the drugs won.
capsules. This was a Venti-sized, There are signs everywhere that, more than 50 years after
mind-blowing “heroic dose” in drug pioneer Timothy Leary exhorted us all to “turn on, tune
the parlance of the late Terence in, and drop out” (at an event preposterously, wonderfully titled
McKenna, the Johnny Appleseed of hallucinogenic fungi, and “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In”), we’re finally
we tripped for a good chunk of the afternoon and early evening. ready to receive the message that powerful drugs not currently
Journeying to the center of our minds via vision-induc- stocked by your local pharmacist can help you better under-
ing drugs (variously called hallucinogens, psychedelics, and stand the world and thrive in it. Wherever you look, the culture
entheogens) is perfectly suited to a world that is hyper-polar- is saturated like a Merry Prankster’s sugar cube with books,
ized, literally and figuratively locked down, and increasingly a movies, and events featuring psychedelics such as LSD, psilo-
little too close to an Edvard Munch painting for comfort. Mush- cybin, mescaline, ketamine, and ayahuasca, as well as friendly
rooms and similar substances are known to produce quasi- cousins such as GHB and MDMA.
religious feelings of universal love, connection, empathy, and Knowing asides about “ayahuasca bros” and Burning Man,
hope. They work on an intensely individual level but help you an annual festival that is practically synonymous with drug use,
get along better with your family, neighbors, and coworkers. have reached a level of ubiquity at which they require no expla-
Far from an escape from reality, they can provide an entry nation. “Micro-dosing”—taking small amounts of LSD or psi-
point to deeper engagement with your limitations, your fears, locybin to boost mood and motivation—has been an accepted
and your aspirations. practice among Silicon Valley programmers, Wall Street trad-
What’s not to celebrate? ers, and even long-haul truckers for a decade or more. The 2020

Illustration: Joanna Andreasson REASON 21

documentary Have a Good Trip features celebrities such as recognized as a “breakthrough therapy” for depression. Other
Sting, Nick Offerman, Sarah Silverman, and Ben Stiller talking researchers are using psychedelics to treat addiction and sub-
openly about their use of hallucinogens. (The film adds nuance stance abuse—one of the most promising clinical uses of LSD
and gravity to the subject by including interviews with the late before it was banned in the late ’60s. (The founder of Alcohol-
Anthony Bourdain and Carrie Fisher, both of whom struggled ics Anonymous, “Bill W.,” praised the drug’s effects until his
with substance abuse.) 12-step colleagues told him to cool it.)
“The psychedelic drug industry is ‘the new cannabis’ for
OSCAR-WINNING FILMMAKER ERROL Morris has just released My investors,” reads a recent, and increasingly typical, headline
Psychedelic Love Story, which tells the story of Joanna Har- at Yahoo! Finance. The story discusses the rising valuation of
court-Smith, Timothy Leary’s muse and partner in crime while MindMed, a publicly traded Canadian company that is seek-
he was a fugitive on the run from the U.S. government following ing FDA approval of various psychedelics, and the emergence
a daring prison escape in 1970. In 2017, Morris released Worm- of Compass Pathways, “the first psychedelic drug company to
wood, a Netflix series investigating the 1953 death of Frank reach a billion dollar market cap when it went public on the
Olson, a government scientist involved with MKULTRA, the Nasdaq.” Business meetings with titles such as “The Psychedelic
secretive Cold War mind-control program that dosed hundreds Opportunity” and “The Economics of Psychedelic Investing”
of unwitting subjects with LSD and other substances. Sidney are popping up like so many magic mushrooms in the mud.
Gottlieb, the head of MKULTRA, is himself the subject of a “Better living through chemistry” started out as an earnest
recent biography by Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief (Henry advertising slogan for the DuPont conglomerate before the
Holt and Co.), which revels in the irony that it was the CIA that phrase became a countercultural in-joke in the 1960s. These
effectively introduced LSD to the United States in a misguided days, as the number and kind of what the government defines
search for a truth serum to use on spies. The psychedelic renais- as either “licit” or “illicit” substances have proliferated, it aptly
sance even has its own glossy magazine, DoubleBlind, a pub- describes the American way of life. The question isn’t between
lication that’s as sumptuously illustrated as any of the trips drugs and abstinence; it’s between smart, intentional use and
its articles describe (think National Geographic meets Wired). unexamined, mindless ingestion. Two-thirds of us use legal
“We’re not speaking to the veteran tripper nor evangelizing to prescription drugs, according to researchers at Georgetown
the anti-drug square,” write the editors, “We are speaking to University. Almost as many—60.1 percent, according to the
everyone who is curious about psychedelics.” latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health—used alcohol,
In 2018, journalist Michael Pollan topped the New York Times tobacco, kratom, marijuana, or another drug in the past month.
bestseller list with How to Change Your Mind: What the New Just under 2 million used a hallucinogen, the category that
Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, includes the mushrooms approved by Oregon and D.C. voters.
Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (Penguin Press).
The same year saw the release of Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, WHICH BRINGS ME back to my trip.
and Change (Vintage), a memoir-cum-manifesto by the literary I was in my living room when the drugs kicked in, wearing a
novelist Tao Lin that took a deep dive into the life and thought sleep mask and listening to spacey, ethereal, electronic music.
of McKenna, co-author of the seminal reference work on how Suddenly, I was like Billy Pilgrim, the time-and-space-traveling
to cultivate and use magic mushrooms. The new memoir Lis- G.I. hero of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
tening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA (Park Every trip is different, and for the next several hours I roamed
Street Press), by psychotherapist Charles Wininger, is the lat- the known and unknown universe and commingled with the
est attempt by a mental-health practitioner to come out of “the living and the dead, with an emphasis on the latter.
chemical closet” and forthrightly discuss both his personal use I spent time with an old friend who committed suicide by
of psychedelics and how they might help patients. The world is, gun years ago. (His apartment had been surrounded by the
at long last, ready for “serious fun,” he writes. police due to overdue rent and antisocial behavior brought on by
unchecked alcoholism.) I revisited dark, booze-sloppy periods
ON THE MEDICAL and legal fronts, MDMA, which was banned during which I was distant and inattentive to my sons when they
in 1985, is in stage 3 clinical trials for use in treating post- profoundly needed me. I shared a brief-but-welcome hug with
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If all goes well, the Food and my own long-dead father, who, like Vonnegut, served in Europe
Drug Administration (FDA) will approve its use by prescription during World War II and participated in suffering and carnage
in therapeutic settings within a few years. Researchers and that I thankfully will never personally know.
therapists are similarly experimenting with ways to legalize Never for a second did I lose touch with basic reality, but
the medical use of LSD and psilocybin, which the FDA has past sounds, sights, smells, and especially emotions were all

22 MARCH 2021
around me. For the first time in more than a quarter-century,
I experienced my father’s scent, an idiosyncratic blend of Brut
deodorant, Barbasol shaving cream (the “beard buster”), Pall
Mall Red cigarettes, and denture powder. I knew it wasn’t real,
but it unlocked memories and moments I hadn’t thought about
in forever. Later, my girlfriend and I lay down together and
shared what we were seeing and what we were feeling, which
produced a sense of closeness that was intense and even a little
scary in its power. Even at their best, trips are always a workout, The significance
in the sense that a long hike up a mountain is a workout. You feel
good and tired afterward.
of any particular
I could go on, but let’s be honest: Descriptions of drug trips,
even more than conventional travel stories, are boring as hell
trip is far less
to read because they are so ultra-personalized, so filled with
barely coherent symbolism, and so indeterminate in their
than the sum
meaning. (As with life itself, you may not know whether some- of all of them.
thing really important happened for days, months, or even
years.) The significance of any particular trip is far less than Fortunately, we
the sum of all of them. Fortunately, we will be taking more and
more as support for the war on drugs declines and cities and will be taking
states (and, eventually, the federal government) move toward
legalization. If you’re interested in giving shrooms a try, read
more and more
Mike Riggs’ “How to Take Shrooms,” (page 16) first.
You will not be taking Tim Leary’s trip or anyone else’s.
as governments
Today’s psychedelic revolution will integrate the break- move toward
throughs and, if we’re lucky, learn from the follies of past flir-
tations with iconoclasm and behavior as outlandish as it was legalization.
necessary to rejuvenate a country governed by what Leary
called a “menopausal mentality” and run by 50-year-old men
who looked twice their age. The Human Be-In took place in
1967 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and featured a chant-
ing Allen Ginsberg, hippies dressed like Robin Hood and Maid
Marian, and rock bands, one of them (Blue Cheer) named for a
variety of LSD. The revolution today is taking place at corporate
retreats in Napa (of all places), research labs at Johns Hopkins
and New York University, 7-Eleven parking lots, and every-
where in between. Contemporary psychonauts are looking for people with problems to seek and receive help.
insight, relief, fun, escape, and a million other things to make “People should have the fundamental human right to
their lives more interesting and bearable. change their consciousness,” Rick Doblin, head of the Multi-
What’s different this time is that we’ve all grown up with disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, told me in
(mostly legal) drugs. We have a more mature understanding of February 2020, just as the coronavirus was starting to trigger
their potential for use and abuse, whether legal or not. The drug lockdowns that would make psychic travel easier than its meat-
war has been revealed not simply as expensive and destructive of space alternative. Doblin’s group is sponsoring the MDMA tri-
civil liberties but as ineffective at keeping pharmacological sub- als that will soon lead to its use in psychotherapy to treat PTSD.
stances from the people who want them. Our overwhelmingly “Psychedelics are tools,” he emphasized. What we will build
positive experiences with first medical and then recreational pot with them isn’t yet clear, and maybe it never will be. But this
have taught us that there is such a thing as responsible drug use. fall’s mushroom moment at the polls is just the beginning of a
Obversely, we see that skyrocketing rates of opioid addiction trip that will be taking us as far as we dare to dream.
don’t indict the substances; they indict the legal frameworks
that surround drugs, especially rules that make it harder for NICK GILLESPIE is editor at large of Reason.

REASON 23
HALF A CENTURY AGO, CONGRESS DECLARED THAT THERE IS NO
LEGITIMATE USE FOR PSILOCYBIN. STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
ARE FINALLY CHALLENGING THAT JUDGMENT.

JACOB SULLUM

24 MARCH 2021
N 1968, JUST 11 years after the international
banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Was-
son introduced Americans to “magic mush-
rooms” in a landmark Life magazine story, the
federal government banned them. That was how
long it took for this object of anthropological
fascination, source of visions, and tool of self-
discovery to become an intolerable threat to the
nation’s youth.
Two years later, when Congress passed the Controlled Sub-
stances Act of 1970, it listed psilocybin and psilocin, the psycho-
active components of the “divine” fungi that Wasson ate, under
Schedule I, a category supposedly reserved for exceptionally
dangerous drugs with no accepted medical use. Half a century
would pass before any jurisdiction in the United States recon-
sidered that classification.
When Oregon voters approved Measure 109, a.k.a. the Psi-
locybin Services Act, by a 12-point margin in November, they
repudiated decades of anti-drug propaganda that depicted psy-
chedelics as a ticket to the mental hospital. To the contrary, the
initiative said, “studies conducted by nationally and interna-
tionally recognized medical institutions indicate that psilocy-
bin has shown efficacy, tolerability, and safety in the treatment
of a variety of mental health conditions, including but not lim-
ited to addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, and end-of-life
psychological distress.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2018 recog-
nized psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy” for “treatment-
resistant depression.” That designation, which meant “prelimi-
nary clinical evidence indicates that the drug may demonstrate a pediatrician. When those journeys took them to Mexico,
substantial improvement over existing therapies,” signaled the their “facilitator” was Maria Sabina, a Mazatec curandera (folk
agency’s intent to “expedite” development and review of psilo- healer) who let them in on a secret they could have discovered
cybin, suggesting it might eventually be approved as a prescrip- back home in New York, where several species of psilocybin
tion medicine. mushrooms grow, although that would have required poten-
Oregonians are not waiting. Measure 109 gives the Oregon tially dangerous experimentation.
Health Authority (OHA) two years to write rules for licensing “On the night of June 29–30, 1955,” Wasson’s 1957 account
and regulating “psilocybin service centers” where adults 21 in Life began, “in a Mexican Indian village so remote from the
or older can legally take the drug under the supervision of a world that most of the people still speak no Spanish, my friend
“facilitator” after completing a “preparation session.” And in an Allan Richardson and I shared with a family of Indian friends
important departure from the FDA’s approach, which charges a celebration of ‘holy communion’ where ‘divine’ mushrooms
doctors with guarding the doors of perception, the initiative says were first adored and then consumed.” Those mushrooms, he
the OHA “may not require a client to be diagnosed with or have” explained, “were of a species with hallucinogenic powers; that
any particular medical or psychiatric condition to participate is, they cause the eater to see visions.”
in the program. By turns respectful and condescending, Wasson bragged that
“Richardson and I were the first white men in recorded history
to eat the divine mushrooms, which for centuries have been a
SHOCK AND AWE secret of certain Indian peoples living far from the great world in
WASSON LIKEWISE HAD no prescription when he tripped on psi- southern Mexico.” Gloating a bit more, he added that “no anthro-
locybin, although his wife, Valentina, who accompanied him pologists had ever described the scene that we witnessed.”
on his international hunts for mind-altering mushrooms, was The two men were blown away by the mushrooms’ “aston-

Photo, left: Nick Veasey/Science Photo Library/Getty

Photo, right: R. Gordon Wasson; Arnold Newman/Getty REASON 25
‘A SERIOUS HAZARD’
SOME PEOPLE WILL recoil in horror from that description, wonder-
ing why anyone in his right mind would put himself through
such an ordeal. Others will think, “That sounds pretty fucking
cool. Where can I get some of those mushrooms?” The latter
sort of people, disproportionately young and curious, tend to
congregate on college campuses, which proved to be a problem
as far as the legal status of psilocybin was concerned.
By the early 1960s, university administrators were beginning
to freak out about psilocybin. In December 1962, Harvard Col-
lege Dean John Monro warned students away from “mind-dis-
torting drugs,” saying there was “unanimity among our doctors
that these drugs are dangerous.” Worrying that a “determined
and convinced promotion of these drugs seems to be taking hold
at the universities,” he blamed Aldous Huxley—who published
his mescaline memoir, The Doors of Perception, the year before
Wasson’s Mexican adventure—and likeminded enthusiasts.
Monro and other Harvard officials cautioned that psychedelics
posed “a serious hazard to the mental health and stability even
of apparently normal people.” The New York Times noted that
“the most prominent among the drugs referred to is psilocybin.”
Psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, who were
running a psilocybin research project at Harvard, rebutted such
“rumor and hysteria” in a letter to The Harvard Crimson. They
emphasized the importance of “set and setting”—including
expectations, emotions, social context, and the physical envi-
ishing effects” and “emerged from the experience awestruck.” ronment—in shaping the psychedelic experience. They noted
Wasson, who said he ultimately participated in nine mushroom the rarity of serious negative reactions even in “psychiatric situ-
ceremonies, described vividly colored, “always harmonious” ations where set and setting were purposely psychotogenetic,”
visions featuring “art motifs,” “resplendent palaces all laid over as researchers tested the hypothesis that drugs like LSD and
with semiprecious stones,” “a mythological beast drawing a psilocybin trigger psychotic symptoms. The two psychologists
regal chariot,” camel caravans, and aerial views of mountains highlighted the profoundly positive experiences commonly
and rivers. reported even by “persons who were not in formal therapy but,
“It was as though the walls of our house had dissolved, and for the most part, experimental subjects.”
my spirit had flown forth,” Wasson wrote. “It seemed as though Leary and Alpert also posed some provocative questions.
I was viewing a world of which I was not a part and with which “Who controls your cortex?” they asked. “Who decides on the
I could not hope to establish contact. There I was, poised in range and limits of your awareness? If you want to research
space, a disembodied eye, invisible, incorporeal, seeing but not your own nervous system, expand your consciousness, who is
seen....I felt that I was now seeing plain, whereas ordinary vision to decide that you can’t and why?”
gives us an imperfect view; I was seeing the archetypes, the Pla- Five months later, Alpert was out of a job, fired for violating
tonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life.” university rules by giving psilocybin to an undergraduate. Leary,
Wasson wondered if the mushrooms could be the key to who would soon become notorious as a psychedelic guru, got the
the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece or the explanation boot around the same time, ostensibly for skipping classes he
for the flying witches of European folklore. He pondered such was supposed to teach.
questions while continuing to see strange and wonderful things. Three years after that, official alarm about psychedelics
“The effect of the mushrooms is to bring about a fission of the prompted a “stern letter” from FDA Commissioner James God-
spirit, a split in the person, a kind of schizophrenia, with the dard to “more than 2,000 colleges and universities,” demanding
rational side continuing to reason and to observe the sensa- “concerted action” against “consciousness-expanding” chemi-
tions that the other side is enjoying,” he reported. “The mind is cals, the Times reported. Without an aggressive crackdown,
attached as by an elastic cord to the vagrant senses.” Goddard warned, “an untold number of our students may suffer

26 MARCH 2021 Photo: A. Jones/Getty

permanent mental or physical injury.” As Leary observed, “psy-
chedelic drugs cause panic and temporary insanity in people
who have not taken them.”
Evidently unsatisfied by the response to Goddard’s admo-
nition, Congress soon gave a definitive answer to the question
posed by Leary and Alpert. Who controls your cortex? The gov-
ernment does. In 2018, the
FDA recognized
MUSHROOM EATERS ARE NOT CRIMINALS
THE OREGONIANS WHO approved the Psilocybin Services Act last
psilocybin as a
fall are not alone in challenging that premise. In 2019, Denver
voters approved a groundbreaking initiative that made adult
“breakthrough
possession of psilocybin the city’s lowest law enforcement pri- therapy” for
ority and prohibited the use of public money to pursue such
cases. The following year, the city councils of Ann Arbor, Michi- “treatment-
gan; Oakland, California; and Santa Cruz, California, enacted
similar measures. And on the same day that Oregon’s initiative resistant
passed, voters in Washington, D.C., overwhelmingly approved
quasi-decriminalization of “entheogenic plants and fungi,”
depression.”
including psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, iboga root, and
plants that contain dimethyltryptamine.
The D.C. initiative, which urges police and prosecutors to
leave consumers of those substances alone, does not include
a ban on spending money to bust them. But in some respects
it goes further than the other local measures, since it covers a
wider range of psychedelics and applies to noncommercial pro-
duction and distribution as well as possession.
In other parts of the United States, the legal consequences
of being caught with psilocybin mushrooms can be severe. In
Texas, where I live, possessing less than a gram of the wrong
fungus is punishable by up to two years in jail; one to four grams
can get you up to 20 years.
Eliminating criminal penalties for psychedelic users, so that
arresting them is no longer a legal option, would be preferable to
deprioritizing those cases. And if the idea that psychedelic use
should not be treated as a crime catches on, perhaps Americans
eventually will recognize that merely aiding and abetting that
noncrime does not justify locking people in cages either.
That breakthrough is finally happening with marijuana,
although it took decades. While states began to decriminalize
marijuana use in the 1970s, licensed pot shops did not start
serving recreational consumers until 2014. Unlike the epipha-
nies that Wasson achieved with a little help from his fungus
friends, reclaiming control of our cortexes is apt to be a long
and gradual process.

Senior Editor JACOB SULLUM is the author of Saying Yes: In Defense

of Drug Use (Tarcher/Penguin).

Photo: Michael Ciaglo/Getty REASON 27

28 MARCH 2021
A
PRACTICAL
WISH LIST
FOR IN HIS VICTORY speech, Joe Biden promised to be
“a healer, a uniter, a tested and steady hand.”

JOE
If the new president wants to make good on
his word, Reason staffers have some ideas for
a few items to add to his policy agenda. These
are suggestions that Biden might plausibly
heed. We’re still gunning for the legalization of
heroin, but we’d settle for descheduling mari-
juana. We’d love to see an end to all foreign

BIDEN
adventurism, but just getting out of Afghani-
stan would be a good start. A robust private
market in health insurance would be ideal, but
the new administration could at least allow a
larger variety of plans. No one expects Biden
to be a libertarian president, but here are a
few things he could do to make the nation a
little bit more hospitable to free minds and
free markets.

—KATHERINE MANGU-WARD

SOME DOABLE LIBERTARIAN IDEAS FOR

THE NEW PRESIDENT

Photo: Patrick Semansky/A.P. REASON 29

REFORM THE Ideally there could be a smoothly operating pardon office,
independent of the Justice Department, that handled clemency

CLEMENCY PROCESS
petitions at volume, with an eye toward the sort of excessive
drug sentences that both Obama and Trump decried but never
had the stomach to fully address. This wouldn’t require an act
C. J. CIAR A MELLA of Congress—just the will of a president able to admit the size
and scope of the problem.
IF THE BIDEN administration wants to make substantive gains in
criminal justice reform without having to deal with Congress, C.J. CIARAMELLA is a reporter at Reason.
it should turn to one of the least limited tools of the presidency:
the pardon power.

GET OUT OF
The last two presidents have handled the pardon power dif-
ferently. Barack Obama launched an unprecedented large-scale
clemency initiative aimed at nonviolent drug offenders. As a

AFGHANISTAN
result, 1,715 federal inmates had their sentences commuted or
reduced. But the process was dogged by foot-dragging and resis-
tance from the Justice Department, and thousands of inmates
were left behind. BRIAN DOHERT Y
Pardon and clemency petitions are typically routed through
the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. This IN BOTH 2011 and 2013, the Obama administration announced
office solicits feedback on petitions from the very federal pros- its intention to get all our conventional forces out of Afghani-
ecutors who secured those sentences, which creates a conflict stan, where they did little but prop up corruption, provide targets
of interest. “This is something we realized was not working for insurgents, and waste taxpayers’ money. As vice president,
under Obama,” says Jessica Jackson, chief advocacy officer at Biden tweeted that we would be out of Afghanistan in 2014. He
the Reform Alliance, a criminal justice advocacy organization. failed to come through then, but he can make up for it now.
“That bottlenecked the process. It had to go through so many Washington currently finds itself, by realpolitik necessity,
hands. There were deserving people who didn’t get it because negotiating with the same force—the Taliban—that it sent
of the pardon office being in the Justice Department.” troops to Afghanistan to overthrow. We stayed long enough,
That included Alice Johnson, a grandmother serving a life caused enough death and chaos, and funded enough bad gov-
sentence for a nonviolent drug crime. President Donald Trump ernance for the wheels of history to transform a war that looked
commuted Johnson’s sentence after a personal appeal from like a U.S. victory into an occupation that looks sadly pointless.
megacelebrity Kim Kardashian West. The best thing we can take away from the experience is the
The Trump administration sidelined the Office of the Pardon wisdom not to pretend we can pacify or transform a troubled
Attorney, instead relying on a small group of informal advisers nation half a world away and the prudence not to stay in a war
who vetted and brought lists of potential recipients to the White long after its futility has become clear.
House. These included federal inmates who’d been passed over Waiting until the Taliban stop misbehaving, or the contend-
by the Obama administration, such as Crystal Munoz, who was ing sides in their internal conflicts have settled their differ-
serving 20 years in federal prison for a marijuana offense. ences, guarantees Afghanistan will be a forever war—one that
While this allowed commutations and pardons that other- Biden declared last year that “it is past time to end.” Ending it
wise would have been torpedoed by the Justice Department, requires presidential resolve, not leaving foreign policy deci-
the downside was that the number of beneficiaries slowed to a sions in the hands of Afghanistan’s feuding factions or wait-
trickle. By the end of Trump’s term, more than 13,000 clemency ing for fantastical “security conditions” that we never had the
applications were pending. He was on track to issue the few- power to create.
est pardons and commutations of any president since William The Trump administration claimed in November to be on
McKinley, until a spree in December bumped him up to 90 total, track for an end to our presence there by May. Biden should
ahead of George H.W. Bush’s 77. The process also meant that meet that deadline, or even exceed it—not for the sake of hon-
to secure a commutation, you needed to have well-connected oring his predecessor, but to honor policy sense and the health
advocates and to capture the president’s fleeting attention. and welfare of our armed forces.
(Imagine how this could be abused if, hypothetically, a presi- In the Obama administration, Biden was a voice for a rela-
dent was vain and easily impressed by celebrity status.) tively narrow mission of counterterror rather than a broad one

30 MARCH 2021
of counterinsurgency. The latter has proven hopelessly ineffec- Barack Obama’s presidency.
tive and wasteful, and the former does not require thousands of The Trump administration saw this as an opportunity: Why
troops permanently stationed. We should cease any role in the not use executive authority to deregulate cheaper plans with
aerial bombing of Afghanistan (which increased under Trump), fewer benefits? So in 2018, it loosened restrictions on the sale
and we should stop financing that government’s incompetence. of what are known as “short-term, limited duration” insurance
American authorities never understood the country’s culture, plans. The Obama administration had restricted the duration
and after toppling the Taliban they never really understood the of those plans to three-month stretches. Under Trump, the
mission. It was past time to leave when Biden was vice presi- plans became available for up to 36 months.
dent; now, as president, he can finally fulfill that promise. Those less expensive, less comprehensive plans have since
become quite popular, with more than 188,000 people enrolled
BRIAN DOHERTY is a senior editor at Reason. at the end of 2019—possibly many more, as the plans are not
tracked in the same way as more comprehensive policies. The
insurance that was derided as junk is, to many Americans, a

DON’T CALL IT ‘JUNK’

demonstrable value.
One result has been to keep insurance premiums down: In
states relying on the federal health care exchange, premiums for

INSURANCE—AND
typical plans fell from 2018 through 2020. Meanwhile, Obama-
care’s subsidized, regulated plans are still there for Americans

DON’T RESTRICT
who want them.
Biden and his health care team will no doubt be tempted to
reverse this, but that would be a mistake. Americans should

ITS SALE have the choice of cheaper, less regulated, less comprehensive
plans, even if it’s not precisely the coverage that Obamacare’s
authors had in mind.
PETER SUDER M AN
PETER SUDERMAN is features editor at Reason.
DONALD TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY began with a fruitless quest to
repeal and replace Obamacare. The effort, which chewed up

LET HONGKONGERS
much of Washington’s attention during 2017, failed in part
because neither Trump nor congressional Republicans man-
aged to unify around a single plan. Trump, in particular,

COME TO AMERICA
seemed unable to even explain the basics of what the various
replacement plans were attempting to do; at best he promised
health care that was “better” and “cheaper.”
Yet out of the ashes of policy failure, the Trump administra- LIZ WOLFE
tion did deliver an under-the-radar improvement to the health
insurance marketplace, by loosening some of Obamacare’s IMPROVING ON DONALD Trump’s immigration record won’t be a
insurance rules. tall order. While America’s 45th president worked hard to scrap
Obamacare was designed on the premise that health the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which
insurance should be comprehensive. One of the law’s major allowed roughly 640,000 immigrants who came to the country
components was a list of “essential health benefits” that every illegally as children to work and study here legally, Joe Biden
plan sold through the law’s insurance exchanges were required says he’ll push for giving them a path to citizenship.
to include. Anything less was derided as “junk insurance” But Biden should add a proposal with less precedent in the
because it didn’t cover every possible health care eventuality. U.S. His administration should grant visas to Hongkongers look-
This had predictable consequences. The highly regulated ing to flee Chinese rule and start anew in the United States.
insurance sold under Obamacare offered a greater array of In 1997, China’s “one country, two systems” policy extended
benefits. It was also substantially more expensive, which autonomy to the island as a condition of Britain handing the ter-
proved particularly troublesome for families whose household ritory over to China. (The arrangement was supposed to expire
incomes were just high enough not to qualify for the law’s in 2047.) For the ensuing two decades, residents of Hong Kong
subsidies. Health insurance premiums rose throughout enjoyed due process in courts of law, the freedom to criticize

REASON 31
their government as much as they wanted, and the prosperity the Justice Department rarely prosecutes low-level posses-
brought by thriving commerce. sion cases. Moving marijuana from Schedule I of the Con-
But over the last few years, the mainland has attempted trolled Substances Act (CSA), a category supposedly reserved
to take control of Hong Kong ahead of schedule. Residents for exceptionally dangerous drugs with no accepted medical
responded by protesting Beijing’s cruel and duplicitous actions. use, to Schedule II, which indicates that a drug has a high
Hundreds of thousands (by some counts millions) of people abuse potential but can be used as a medicine, might facili-
took to the streets and occupied thoroughfares for months on tate research. But it would not address the untenable conflict
end. The authorities then enacted a vague national security between the CSA and the laws of the 36 states that allow medi-
law that gives the government broad latitude to squash dissent. cal or recreational use of marijuana.
Since then, politically outspoken university faculty mem- That conflict casts a dark shadow over the burgeoning can-
bers have been stripped of their positions. Organizers have nabis industry, making basic business functions such as bank-
been arrested and jailed—including 53 pro-democracy leaders ing and paying taxes needlessly difficult, costly, complicated,
in a massive early January sweep. Twelve protesters attempted and legally perilous. Descheduling marijuana completely,
to flee by speedboat to Taiwan, getting only a quarter of the way as a groundbreaking bill that the House of Representatives
before they were apprehended. Their families begged for their approved in December would do, is the most straightforward
release with their faces obscured, fearing retribution. way to address that problem. But even if Biden could be per-
Though Hong Kong’s freedoms are largely gone, Hong- suaded to support that solution, which Vice President Kamala
kongers now have a more profound appreciation for the value Harris favored as a senator, Republican opposition probably
of free expression. They’d be wonderful new Americans for that would make it politically impossible. Just five Republicans
reason alone. On a more practical level, many Hongkongers are voted for the House bill, and Senate passage would require GOP
highly educated and entrepreneurial; they could breathe fresh support or Democratic unanimity.
air into U.S. regions and towns that need to be reinvigorated. A less radical approach, embodied in a 2017 bill that
And letting them in would have bipartisan support: High-pro- attracted bipartisan support in the House, is to revise the CSA’s
file Republicans such as former Senate Majority Leader Mitch marijuana ban so that it does not apply to state-legal conduct.
McConnell of Kentucky have explicitly (and rightly!) called for Such an amendment would jibe with Biden’s promise to “leave
providing a “beacon of light” to people fleeing communism. For decisions regarding legalization for recreational use up to the
all these reasons, President Biden should give refuge to Hong- states,” and it should appeal to the federalist instincts of at least
kongers yearning to breathe free. some Republican legislators.
If that option is also off the table, Biden might be persuaded
LIZ WOLFE is staff editor at Reason. to support piecemeal reforms with a better chance of passing
both chambers. The Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking
Act, for instance, would protect banks that serve state-licensed
marijuana businesses from the threat of criminal penalties and

EXPAND YOUR potentially ruinous regulatory sanctions. The Small Business

Tax Equity Act would amend Section 280E of the Internal

MARIJUANA
Revenue Code, which prohibits state-licensed marijuana
suppliers from deducting business expenses on their federal
returns, a disability that raises their effective tax rates to as

REFORM AMBITIONS much as 75 percent.

The Veterans Equal Access Act would allow doctors in the
V.A. health care system to recommend medical marijuana in
JACOB SULLUM states where it is legal. It’s a modest reform that should appeal
to legislators who want to be seen as standing up for veterans,
UNLIKE MOST OF the candidates for the 2020 Democratic presi- especially now that more than 70 percent of the states allow
dential nomination (including his eventual running mate), Joe medical use of cannabis.
Biden opposes federal legalization of marijuana. Instead, he Biden may never come around on marijuana legalization.
says he wants to “decriminalize cannabis use,” expunge the But he could still support steps like these, which would signifi-
records related to such cases, and move marijuana to a less cantly reduce the harm caused by federal prohibition.
restrictive legal category.
Those first two steps would not have much impact, since Senior Editor JACOB SULLUM is a nationally syndicated columnist.

32 MARCH 2021
KEEP PLAYING END TRUMP’S
NICE WITH PRIVATE TRADE WARS
SPACE COMPANIES ERIC BOEHM
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN should lift the myriad tariffs that Donald
K ATHERINE M ANGU-WARD Trump placed on foreign steel, aluminum, solar panels, and
washing machines, along with a wide range of Chinese-made
JOE BIDEN DOESN’T seem to be much of a space geek. Like virtually goods. Those tariffs have burdened American consumers and
all American politicians, he says nice, bland stuff about “a bold businesses—ironically harming manufacturers more than
space program that will continue to send astronaut heroes to most—without accomplishing much else. Unilaterally repeal-
expand our exploration and scientific frontiers.” That’s fine. If ing them would not be a surrender; it would be a refusal to keep
he simply sticks to Obama-era space policies, that will be more firing a gun at America’s foot.
than enough to protect the incredible progress we have made Trump was right that the United States has a key role to play
returning Americans to orbit on privately built and launched in standing up to China’s authoritarian tendencies. But our eco-
vehicles in collaboration with NASA. nomic interests are too interwoven with China’s for Trump’s
In a somewhat unexpected twist, President Barack Obama zero-sum approach to be successful. The goal should be not to
supported privatization in the space sector, diverting funding defeat China but to encourage it to change—and to reward it for
to contract with commercJal firms for resupply missions and moving in a pro-freedom direction.
more. That program bore fruit during the Trump administra- Rather than spurning allies, Biden should take a multi-
tion with the stirring, successful manned missions that sent lateral approach. Japan, Vietnam, and other major Ameri-
astronauts aboard SpaceX vehicles to the International Space can trading partners share many of our concerns about the
Station (ISS). economic influence China exerts. It makes sense to pursue a
Battles about the new Space Force and climate science fund- regional trade deal that would lower tariffs for imports from
ing will likely be highly politicized. But what we know about non-China countries. That would give American businesses
Biden’s transition team suggests a heartening possibility that he clear alternatives for overseas investment and force China to
will break with bipartisan tradition and try to terminate fund- change if it wants to keep competing.
ing for the wasteful and porky Space Launch System (SLS), the That was the basic idea behind the Trans-Pacific Partner-
super heavy–lift rocket built primarily by Boeing and famed for ship (TPP), the Obama-era trade agreement that Trump tore
its development delays and cost overruns. SLS is projected to up during his first week in office. The other nations involved in
cost as much as $2 billion per mission when it’s done—if it’s ever that deal went ahead without the United States, but America’s
done. Compare that with $90 million per launch for SpaceX’s participation would probably be welcomed, though some diplo-
Falcon Heavy, which is admittedly a less powerful rocket but is macy might be necessary. Biden has said he would not rejoin
reusable and has a track record of success. the TPP as it was previously written but that he would leverage
That said, there’s a good chance inertia will again triumph in America’s allies to hold China accountable for breaking inter-
the space-industrial complex; many powerful legislators have national norms on trade. That’s a good place to start.
incentives to keep Boeing happy and the people who work at Trump’s trade wars were deeply unpopular, and polls show
SLS facilities in their districts employed. Trump planned to end that free trade is now more popular with Americans than ever
public funding for the ISS, putting the floating lab and habitat in before. Biden, who has a long history of supporting trade deals
private hands in 2025. Biden will likely reverse or dramatically that lowered tariffs and boosted American prosperity, should
slow this decision. not shy away from arguing that more trade is good both for
On the brighter side, he will also probably push back the America and for the rest of the world.
Trump administration’s wildly unrealistic plan to return to the
moon in 2024. That will give private companies more time to ERIC BOEHM is a reporter at Reason.
prepare for the challenge, and competitors such as Blue Origin
more time to get established in commercial launch.

KATHERINE MANGU-WARD is editor in chief of Reason.

REASON 33
34 MARCH 2021
Is There a
What the 21st century demands, they say, is a different, more
“muscular” style of politics, practiced by a Republican Party
that finally stops worrying and learns to love the state. By
passing stronger laws, these “post-liberal” conservatives

Future for
believe they can restore America’s lost Judeo-Christian
character and save their country from itself.
This is quite a change from the Reagan Republicanism

Fusionism?
of a few decades ago. Back then, most folks on the right
insisted that limited government and personal responsibility
were the watchwords of conservatism. That consensus has
now broken down.

IN THE YEARS SINCE THE COLD WAR, From literature to philosophy to religion, it’s hard to think
CONSERVATIVES HAVE LOST SIGHT OF THE of a theme less original than the seductiveness of power. That,
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LIBERTY AND after all, is the story of Frodo and the ring; of Lord Acton and
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. “absolute power corrupts absolutely”; of Satan and the third
temptation of Christ. One of history’s great recurrent lessons
STEPHANIE SLADE is about the importance of keeping that desire in check, in
our hearts and our governments alike. Which is why it’s
exasperating to watch so many conservatives—self-proclaimed
THERE’S A WELL-WORN tale about modern American conserva- heirs to the axiom that “example is the school of mankind,” in
tism: It says that the movement as we know it came into being Edmund Burke’s phrase—succumb in real time to the fantasy
during the mid–20th century as a “fusionist” coalition of that they are the exception to this time-tested rule.
economic libertarians and religious traditionalists. These
groups, whose goals and priorities differed from the start,
were held together mainly by two things: the sheer charisma II.
of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., and the AS FAR AS the post-liberal conservatives are concerned, liber-
shared enemy of global communism. tarianism’s preoccupation with protecting liberty has blinded
As long as the Cold War endured, the story goes, each wing it to the importance of promoting virtue (and a constellation of
was willing to cede some ground to the other. In light of the related values, including faith, family, community, and patrio-
threat posed by a rampaging Soviet Union—as militantly tism). The most moderate version of this argument suggests
atheistic as it was militantly anti-capitalist—the differences that libertarians have come to exercise too much influence
between the libertarians and the traditionalists did not seem over the right-of-center policy agenda and proposes a so-called
so great. Their interests, at least, were aligned. rebalancing toward traditionalist concerns. A more radical
But the fall of the USSR meant the collapse of the common version excoriates libertarianism as philosophically bankrupt
foe that had sustained the fusionist partnership. It was able and calls upon the keepers of the conservative flame to take a
to trundle on for a while, powered by a reservoir of goodwill, sledgehammer to the fusionist coalition once and for all.
but it has long been running on fumes. In the last few years, Hillsdale College’s David Azerrad put the latter position
the alliance’s inherent tensions have come to a head. It’s starkly in a July 2020 essay for The American Conservative.
increasingly common to hear that, whatever value there may “The common enemy that justified an alliance with the free
have been in cooperation during the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, market fundamentalists is long gone,” he wrote. “Today,
the era of good conservative feelings is over. libertarians actively side with our enemies: they promote
For many libertarians, the Trump years revealed their open borders and empty prisons, and strengthen China’s hand
traditionalist allies to be hypocrites and opportunists, all through their consumer-focused economic policies. Ours is
too willing to sell out the ideals of fusionism in service of an primarily a conservatism of countries and borders, citizens and
aspiring dictator. Conservatives have commenced a not-so- families, none of which can take root in the barren libertarian
slow descent toward authoritarianism, some in this group soil of atomized individuals and global markets.”
suggest; if the philosophy of liberty is to have a future, it must The post-liberal agenda is typified by a desire for more
involve building bridges to the left, not the right. government involvement in people’s lives. As The New York
A number of traditionalists, meanwhile, have been tripping Times’ Ross Douthat wrote in 2019, this group seeks “stronger
over each other in their rush to celebrate the end of fusionism. state interventions in the economy on behalf of socially

Illustration: Joanna Andreasson

Source image: Bachrach/Getty REASON 35
conservative ends.” Or, as Azerrad put it in his essay, “the right Rubio’s fervor for a conservatism that has made its peace
must be comfortable wielding the levers of state power.” with a bigger, more powerful central government has been
Economically, post-liberalism rejects the doctrine of matched and exceeded by some of his colleagues. First-term
“unfettered” free markets in favor of tariffs, an “industrial Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for example—until recently the
policy” intended to prop up American manufacturers in the Republican Party’s brightest young thing—seems not to have
face of competition from overseas, wage subsidies, and the found a meddlesome technology regulation or “pro-family”
like. On social issues, it supports everything from vice laws to a policy he does not like. “We must put aside the tired orthodoxies
rollback of no-fault divorce to more robust speech restrictions of years past,” he said in a May 2019 Senate speech. “We need
on public morality grounds to (among a lively cohort of radi- not just a bigger economy but a better society.”
cal Catholics especially) the imposition of a confessional state In spring 2020, a new think tank called American
and perhaps even a Christian monarch. Compass came online—“an organization dedicated to
There’s little evidence that the post-liberals are speaking for helping American conservatism recover from its chronic
the average Republican, let alone the average American. But the case of market fundamentalism,” as founder Oren Cass put it
elite wind does seem to be at their backs. in an announcement published by National Review. Among
Fox News host Tucker Carlson was once an avatar of fusion- the group’s favored policies are subsidies for American
ism who supported Ron Paul for president in both 1988 and 2008 manufacturers, reducing “toward zero” the number of visas
and told Reason in 2010, “I despise laws that tell people that they granted to Chinese college students, and legally requiring
can’t do things for their own good.” By January 2019, he was corporations to put the common good ahead of profit seeking—
delivering a 15-minute on-air monologue decrying the failures perhaps by ordering them to include labor representatives on
of capitalism. “Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones their boards of directors, thus “short-circuiting the default
or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are assumptions of shareholder primacy by including workers
going to make us happy?” Carlson asked. “Libertarians tell us among those to whom management is accountable.”
that’s how markets work: consenting adults making voluntary That last suggestion is striking in its similarity to a 2018 bill
decisions about how to live their lives,” he continued, referring introduced by progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.),
specifically to payday lenders. “OK. But it’s also disgusting.” which would require U.S. companies “to consider the interests
Two months later, the Christian journal First Things of all corporate stakeholders,” including by giving workers the
published a manifesto, signed by 15 conservative intellectuals, right to fill 40 percent of board seats. Warren has been a public
inveighing against a “dead consensus” that favors “individual enemy of the political right for nigh on a decade. Yet the conser-
autonomy” at the expense of “permanent truths, family stability, vative media have heaped acclaim on Cass’ efforts and held him
communal solidarity, and much else.” Four months after that, out as the future of the movement.
the political theorist Yoram Hazony organized an impressively This sentiment culminated last August in a lengthy essay by
attended conference promoting conservative nationalism. He New York Times columnist David Brooks that contained glowing
took the opportunity on behalf of those present to “declare mini-profiles of Hawley and Rubio and that extensively quoted
independence” from neoliberalism, classical liberalism, and Cass. “Over the long term,” Brooks concluded, “some version of
libertarianism. Working-Class Republicanism will redefine the G.O.P.”
In November 2019, Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) raised more In 2018, Samuel Hammond, a researcher at the centrist Nis-
than a few eyebrows when he gave an address at Washing- kanen Center, persuasively argued that Warren’s proposal rep-
ton, D.C.’s Catholic University rejecting “the notion that, left resented a “corporate catastrophe” in the making. Today, he is a
unguided, the market will solve our problems.” He called instead contributor to the American Compass blog, where not long ago
for a system of “common-good capitalism” capable of restoring he urged readers to stand up and insist: “Conservatives believe
the “balance between the obligations and rights of the private in supporting families directly. And if that involves a pinch of
sector and working Americans.” redistribution, so be it!”
This, Rubio argued, can be accomplished only through some Is there a contradiction there? Hammond doesn’t think so.
measure of state direction. “Promoting the common good will “I really urge you to separate Warren’s specific proposal,” he
require public policies that drive investments in key industries,” says, “from the broader investigation” that Cass is leading into
he said, “because pure market principles and our national inter- how to help the working class. In the end, “the right will have
est are not aligned.” Fortunately for us all, the senior senator to take on an orientation that’s more skeptical of trade, more
from the Sunshine State came equipped with plans for, among skeptical of big business, and more curious about pro-labor,
other things, “a national co-operative that guarantees invest- pro-family policies.”
ment” in the rare-earth mineral sector.

36 MARCH 2021
III.
THE POST-LIBERAL CONSERVATIVE movement is a twisted artifact
of the now-conventional view of fusionism as a partnership
of convenience between two groups that have divergent and
even contradictory belief systems: libertarians, who prioritize
Within the
individual freedom above all else, and traditionalists, who governmental sphere,
know better.
This understanding is subtly—but crucially—mistaken.
liberty is the ultimate
Fusionism, properly understood, is not a marriage of two groups. end. But within the
It’s a marriage of two value sets. A fusionist is someone who sees
both liberty (in the classical sense of freedom from aggression,
infinitely broader
coercion, and fraud) and virtue (in the Judeo-Christian sense sphere outside of
of submission to God’s commands) as important. Fusionism is
therefore a distinct philosophical orientation unto itself. What’s
government, it’s just
more, it has historically been the dominant orientation on the the beginning.
American right.
Conservatives going back at least to the country’s founding
have believed that virtue and liberty were mutually reinforcing—
and that neither could survive long without the other. A free
society depends on a virtuous populace. (“Our Constitution was wrong. Anyone who holds to the Judeo-Christian tradition—
made only for a moral and religious people,” wrote John Adams. as fusionists by definition do—accepts that we have manifold
“It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”) But duties to one another. The disagreement is about whether it’s
the reverse is also true: Virtue, to be virtuous, must be freely the state’s job to enforce those moral obligations.
chosen. As the late National Review literary editor Frank Meyer, For a fusionist, the answer to that question must be no, for
usually identified as the godfather of fusionism, eloquently pragmatic as well as deeply moral reasons.
put it: “Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous The weight of evidence through history is that concentrated
the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed government power in the best case leads to incompetence
by moral value rots at its core and soon surrenders to tyranny.” and waste, while in the worst case it degenerates quickly into
Post-liberals tend to see liberty and virtue as fatally at odds. tyranny. Whether your main concern is material enrichment
To be a good person necessarily requires accepting some limits or the protection of human rights, limited government has
on one’s choices, after all. Mustn’t one of the two fusionist been shown on the proving grounds of experience to be the
pillars ultimately trump the other? best available means to that end.
There’s no denying that the demands of morality, Arguably even more important is the Judeo-Christian
traditionally understood, pull against a theoretical ideal of doctrine of human beings’ equal inherent dignity. As the
freedom from all constraint. Fusionism reconciles this tension Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “God created man a
by insisting that the state protect people’s fundamental rights rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who
to be secure in person and property—thus leaving individuals, can initiate and control his own actions.” And later: “Every
and the various associations they come together to form, human person, created in the image of God, has the natural
with as much space as possible in which to pursue the higher right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. All owe
things. Within the governmental sphere, liberty is indeed the to each other this duty of respect.” That is why state power is
ultimate end. But within the infinitely broader sphere outside such a grave matter, fraught with danger not just to society
of government, it’s just the beginning: A life well-lived consists but to the souls of those who wield it. Only when absolutely
in using one’s freedom to do what’s right. The clear recognition necessary—say, to stop one person from initiating violence
that these are separate spheres, with separate roles to play for against another—is it morally justifiable to overrule someone’s
the common good, is the genius of the fusionist project. right to live his life as he chooses.
Today’s post-liberal conservatives appear to think they’re Understanding what fusionism is—and what it is not—is
distinguished by the belief that virtue matters. They behave more important than it may seem. An arrangement in which
as if their core disagreement with fusionists is about whether traditionalists and libertarians are merely allies can easily
human beings have moral obligations that go beyond leaving become a game of tug of war in which each side jockeys to
others alone to do as they please. This could hardly be more ensure that, on balance, its own priorities predominate. If one

REASON 37
side finds itself too often on the losing end of that jockeying, it within the liberty movement I’m not alone. And on the wider
might reasonably move to dissolve the alliance altogether. political right, such fears are omnipresent.
But if fusionism is a discrete philosophical worldview—and Faced with problems like these, the allure of desperate mea-
a pervasive one at that, with a pedigree that runs through the sures is perhaps understandable. One common justification
American founding and with roots in the Hebrew Bible—then for the post-liberal turn is that culture and institutions, once
post-liberalism looks infinitely more radical. Remember: The broken, cannot be expected to repair themselves. External help
new conservatives don’t just call for a collective recommitment is needed. The state can provide it, through laws that constrain
to the pursuit of virtue in the private sphere; they explicitly behavior but also teach the populace to value the correct things:
insist that power be exercised in the government sphere, with faith and family, community and country.
a goal of forcibly reorienting society to the common good. Alas, the lessons of history do not cease to be true just
Such a shift amounts to a rejection of one of the two pillars because they’re inconvenient. You cannot impose virtue on
of fusionism—which is to say it’s a rejection of fusionism people by force, and a coercive legal regime is no more likely in
itself. How supremely ironic that the people who flatter practice to instill good values than it is to make the underly ing
themselves defenders of tradition have abandoned the hard- problems worse.
won philosophical inheritance of the American political right. For one thing, there’s no guarantee that the people actually
in power—now or in the future—will agree with you about what
the correct values are (or about how much power is required to
IV. enforce them). But beyond that, public policies always come
ALL THIS LEAVES unanswered a serious question: If a free society with unintended consequences. Even assuming a legal code
requires a moral populace, what is a committed fusionist in an that perfectly aligns with the true demands of virtue, we can’t
unvirtuous age to do? know in advance what the effects will be. Perhaps citizens will
Traditionalists have plenty of evidence that we’re living in absorb a better sense of right and wrong. Or perhaps, freed from
such an age. American religiosity is in decline, with significantly the need to make weighty decisions for themselves, their moral
fewer people attending weekly services (even before the muscles will atrophy, rendering them less capable of pursuing
coronavirus pandemic) than at any time in the last century. the higher things in life.
Addiction and suicide are through the roof, likely driven by a Before you guess which result is more likely, consider the
sense of alienation. Traditional teachings about sexual morality impact that decades of well-intentioned welfare policy have
seem laughably antiquated against the backdrop of modernity. had on poor communities. As the financial incentives for
The divorce rate is down, but so is the marriage rate, and entrepreneurship and family formation evaporated, recipients
hundreds of thousands of abortions are performed each year. of aid learned to see themselves as lacking agency. Neighborly
Some libertarians are less bothered by these concerns. ingenuity, manifested through private charitable efforts and
Many prefer to focus on the ways market-driven technologi- mutual aid societies, was crowded out by top-down government
cal advances have vastly improved our quality of life. Others “solutions” that solve very little. Despite ever-increasing state
go further, arguing that widespread acceptance of a greater and federal spending, the official poverty rate has hardly
range of lifestyle choices make this the best time ever to be budged, and small towns and rural counties increasingly join
alive. Virtue is overrated, this cohort might say, or at least mis- impoverished inner cities as economic disaster areas. All of
understood—and if you’re reading this magazine, you may which suggests that our best efforts have failed to address the
be inclined to agree. If people are using more drugs (see, for causes of the problem and may have exacerbated them.
instance, the cover of this month’s issue) while having fewer The central insight of fusionism is that the common good is
children, that’s fine and dandy so long as it’s their choice. best achieved when the state stays focused on protecting rights
These libertarians are not fusionists, though they can and and liberties, leaving individuals and voluntary associations to
do happily work with their fusionist brethren when it comes to do the rest. To be clear, there is nothing easy about that answer.
protecting rights and liberties in the government sphere. At the The post-liberal temptation is to believe that government
same time, many libertarians are uneasy about secularism and power can be a substitute for the hard labor of institution
community breakdown. As a churchgoing Roman Catholic, I building and cultural change. It isn’t. The solution must begin
certainly fall into this category—grieving the scourge of abor- at home—on the front porch, around the kitchen table, and in
tion, suffering under a culture that feels overly sexualized and the mirror. The law is not a magic wand. There are no magic
excessively consumerist, and fretting that modern man has wands, and there is no shortcut to the good society.
grown unwilling to sacrifice on behalf of something bigger than
himself. I’m not the most stereotypical libertarian, but even STEPHANIE SLADE is managing editor of Reason.

38 MARCH 2021
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The Economist
Who Says Schools
Are Safer Than
You Think
When the feds failed to track
COVID-19, Emily Oster stepped in.
inter view by
K ATHERINE M ANGU-WARD

40 MARCH 2021
Photo: Rachel Hulin REASON 41
that research suggests it’s OK to have the occasional wine
and sushi, you will be welcomed as a liberator. When you
explain that sleep training and formula don’t show serious
long-term negative effects, you will be worshipped. You will
also be vilified by the keepers of the conventional wisdom, of
course, and Oster has gotten her share of hate mail.
Enter COVID-19. As the pandemic shuttered schools for
months, especially in coastal cities, Oster wondered whether
that decision was justified. Unsurprisingly, given how new the
disease was, not much definitive scholarship was available.
More surprisingly, there wasn’t much good raw data either.
No one seemed to be keeping track of what schools were doing
and whether there seemed to be any impact on postivity rates.
That’s how Oster found herself serving as a COVID-
in-schools data miner and later as a cautious advocate
for reopening schools, a case she made in such outlets as
The Atlantic, The New York Times, and her own Substack
newsletter. Messages like “Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders”
and “Parents Can’t Wait Around Forever” have earned her the
same mix of grateful relief and furious suspicion as did her
previous work.
Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward spoke with Emily Oster in
December via Zoom, while Oster’s kids were home from their
school in Rhode Island for a snow day (“yes, you can watch
TV”) and new lockdowns were kicking in as COVID spiked
around the country.

Reason: You collected a bunch of data and set up a data

dashboard to track COVID in K-12 schools. I’m sure you’re
doing a good job, but why wasn’t this being done by, say,
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?
MILY OSTER IS a Harvard-educated economist at Brown Oster: I don’t totally know. There were a lot of failures in
University—not the usual launching pad for gurudom. But federal leadership in this pandemic and this was one of them.
she is nonetheless the sage at the center of a low-key cult. There was this opportunity to set up a more centralized,
She popped onto the scene when her dissertation findings government-run data collection effort, and it just didn’t
on “missing girls” in China were picked up by Freakonomics happen. States were very slow to get started and [had] little
authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner but ascended to consistency across the space. So what prompted us was
a higher plane when she applied her background in health the realization that there’s a ton of discussion with school
economics and statistical methods to pregnancy and reopening in the Northeast and on the West Coast, and we are
childbirth in her 2013 book Expecting Better. She did the seeing schools reopen in Georgia, Indiana—places with really
same for toddlers and infants in 2019’s Cribsheet; a third book high positivity rates. It felt like there was an opportunity to
in the series, The Family Firm, will be out this summer. learn, but nobody was getting the information we would need
In a certain parental set, Oster’s books are passed around to learn from that.
slightly furtively, with the air of letting someone in on a There are so many federal failures, I don’t know whether
secret. Her goal is to help parents translate academic litera- this one is worse than some of the other ones; it’s hard to pick
ture into actionable items, but she often ends up serving as a which is the worst one.
counterpoint to the anxious, overcautious parenting advice
doled out in glossy mags and on playgrounds. There’s the old saw about states being laboratories of
When you are an economist who tells pregnant women democracy. States really leaned into that with COVID,

42 MARCH 2021 Photo: Rachel Hulin

“We’re not seeing schools as the locus
of large amounts of spread. The rates
are actually quite low.”

didn’t they? We got a strangely robust set of experiments shifted a lot, but in the summer there was this idea that we’re
on different variables. What data did you collect and what going to open schools and that’s going to be the thing that
data do you wish you could have collected? destroys everything.
The core underlying pieces of the dashboard are information That does not seem to be true. We’re not seeing schools as
on cases, information on enrollments, and in-person counts— the locus of large amounts of spread. The rates are actually
we want a rate, and for a rate, you need a numerator and quite low—even though the way we measure rates, just to be
denominator. So those are the two most key pieces. clear, is not spread in schools, but just people affiliated with
The second most important [thing] is mitigation strategies: schools who have COVID. So it doesn’t mean they got it at the
Are places masking? Are they distancing? What can we learn school. But even there, we’re seeing rates that are pretty much
about what works to keep places safe? We have all of those in line with what we’re seeing in the community. Maybe a lit-
pieces from districts that have decided to be in our study. We tle bit lower for students, maybe a little bit higher for staff.
have some of those pieces from the couple of states that have We’re seeing fairly optimistic information about the idea
been consistent with this kind of reporting. The best reporting that you could have schools operate safely, even in areas
comes out of New York, where they actually have, for every where there’s some reasonable amount of community spread.
school, counts of cases and information on enrollments, and Masking probably does matter. That’s probably the most
they require schools to put that in. Texas has a similar—not robust correlate in the data, that those places that are masking
quite as good, but almost as good—infrastructure. So we seem to have much lower rates than places that are not. But
pulled that down also. I think the thing that we got the most attention for—rightly,
The thing that would have been great is to have somebody because it moved people’s priors a lot—was just this idea that
tell states: These are the pieces of data you should be not everyone at the school got COVID the day it opened.
collecting. And in particular, actually knowing, at a minimum, We are seeing some of these differences across age groups.
the reopening plan for a state or for a district: Are you open or To the extent that there are places with larger numbers of
not? That would be great. cases, they seem to be high schools.
I’ve talked to a lot of states and almost none of them have
said, “Well, we don’t want to tell you that.” But many of them But not nearly as large as colleges, right?
said, “Well, we don’t know that. We don’t know how many I think that’s been a really interesting aspect of this, which is
COVID cases. We don’t know how many kids are in school. And that we have seen the thing that people feared at the college
we don’t know the reopening models of our districts.” level. Not at all colleges, but a lot. When Penn State opened,
you could see on a COVID map where Penn State is, because it
What are your (preliminary) conclusions so far about was just totally overwhelmed. In some ways I find it actually
school reopening and safety? surprising that we have not seen more high schools that looked
I want to step back and say what we were thinking when we like that. And I’m not sure why that’s so different.
started. There was a really open question: Are schools going
to be the locus of tremendous spread? That conversation has Over the summer, there really wasn’t a consensus about

REASON 43
“It’s not really fair to say to parents:
‘Can’t you take care of your own kid?’
You told me I have to put my kid in
school eight hours a day! That is
literally a law!”

what reopening K-12 schools would mean. It is now how some people interpreted your work as giving them
broadly accepted that opening, particularly elementary permission to do stuff they wanted to do anyway that felt
schools, is almost certainly not going to trigger a massive like common sense to them—drink an occasional glass of
uptick in cases or fatalities. But policy making seems to lag wine, eat sushi, use baby formula. With those books, you
that shift in conventional wisdom. Why? got some pushback from obstetricians and pediatricians.
I think you’re right that the conventional wisdom shifted. There are some parallels with your COVID work, including
Many people moved to: “Oh, actually, the science is not what pushback from teachers, unions, and school districts on
I thought it would be.” And there are a lot of places that are the idea that it might be OK to open schools. How has your
open. A lot of this discussion is happening on the sides of the experience with the medical establishment shaped the
country—we forget that there are a lot of kids who have been in way that you’re dealing with the education establishment?
person in school. I live in Rhode Island, where the schools are It’s a fair comparison. In both cases, a lot of the pushback was
open. That’s not unrelated to this observation. I think that the “You’re not an expert.” I spend a lot of time with people telling
governor listened and this was something that was important me that I’m not an expert in things, probably because I spend
to her. Chicago is going to try. New York is trying, in a sense. a lot of time talking about things which I’m not much of an
There are some movements in that direction, but there has expert in. One of the things that the pushback misses is that
been a lot of resistance. there are some pieces of this in which I am an expert: data
There’s been a lot of resistance from the unions. Some and statistics and thinking about decision making. I find that
of that they’ve walked back a little bit. [President of the pushback frustrating, but also very familiar.
American Federation of Teachers] Randi Weingarten has The main way in which I have thought about this
walked back to saying we should have K-5. That’s something. differently is that I actually tried to listen a little bit more.
Other unions have walked less back. The politics of this got In the case of the school stuff, at some point I realized that
really complicated and it’s been hard to ramp them back. I we had made the point about data and people had accepted
think that the Biden administration will be able to do that the data, but as you say, that’s not the whole thing. And
more easily because the fact that he is saying schools should sometimes there’s value if you actually want to get things
be open is really different than [President Donald] Trump changed. This is a little different than the pregnancy thing,
saying it. I think that’s been good, but it’s uphill. We haven’t because I wasn’t trying to get any particular policy change
moved as much as I would’ve liked. there. I don’t particularly think [policy makers] should say
it’s fine to drink during pregnancy.
When we last talked, for a Reason podcast about your Here, it feels like there really is a policy point. There was
work on pregnancy and early childhood, we discussed a point where I said: OK, the data is not going to be enough. I

44 MARCH 2021
need to make it clear that there are other things going on and actually, remote learning is also not good for the learning
incorporate that into some of my thinking. That insight was piece of school. Once people realized that [kids] can’t learn in
probably informed by having dealt before with people who are that environment, it became a little bit less compelling to say,
never totally going to back down. “Well, I’m not your child care.”

Talk a little bit about the culture of academic inquiry Because of the focus on physical safety, schools ended up
around COVID-related questions. Are people asking the asking teachers to pivot to online or hybrid or, if the kids
right questions now? Is there work that will have to be are in the classroom, changing curricula to accommodate
done after it’s over, to be useful for the next pandemic? safety requirements. Teachers unions are saying, “We
How is the research community dealing with COVID- are advocating for teachers,” but they’re definitely also
related questions, especially in the social sciences? making the teachers’ lives substantially harder and more
I think from the social science standpoint, we will have a lot unpleasant in a lot of ways. A lot of your work is about how
of value to add later. A lot of the value we can eventually add to think about tradeoffs. What went wrong in the unions’
to that analysis is going to be around: What are the impacts of thinking about tradeoffs here?
learning loss on kids? How can we think about fixing that? Are I was on a webinar with the CEO of Chicago Public Schools the
there things that work better or worse? That’s not something other day, and she was saying basically that because they’ve
we can answer this week. I think academics in general have gotten so wrapped up in these safety things, they have not
struggled a little bit with the fact that there’s a lot of need for really been able to address what she thinks is a much bigger
information right now. And that’s not really our thing. issue, which is that this is a very, very hard teaching environ-
Even for me, I’ve tried to be very clear that the stuff I’m ment. There are ways that you could improve it.
doing about schools, this isn’t research. It’s not research in If we were redesigning now, we would do it totally
the way that I would typically approach research; it’s a public differently. This hybrid thing where people are [teaching]
service project. I am using the research tools I have to try to both kinds of kids at the same time, that is not good. There
make the data as good as possible, but I’m not trying to write a was this district in North Dakota that explained to me that
paper with these crowdsourced data from districts. I’m trying what they did was basically, at the beginning of the year,
to help people figure out if schools should be open or not. there’s a six-week block and you opt in to being a regular kid
who comes five days a week, or you can be a virtual kid. The
One question that surfaced last spring and reemerged in virtual kids are taught in a totally different stream, by virtual
the fall much more urgently is: What school is for? We’ve teachers in a virtual academy. And the in-person kids are in
been papering over disagreements about the answer person in a regular school environment. And then every six
to that question for a long time, and then suddenly we weeks, the kids could change what environment they were
couldn’t anymore. So what is school for? in. I think that was a much better structure and much more
School is serving two roles. It is a child care solution and it is sustainable than what they’re apparently going to ask people
teaching people to learn. At the beginning, it was like: “What to do in the Chicago public schools, where the kids in the
do you mean? School is not child care! I’m not a babysitter!” classroom are on computers with their headphones, because
First of all, I found that a little disrespectful to people. everyone has to have exactly the same learning environment.
What’s wrong with having part of your job be child care? That’s just not good.
That’s a totally reasonable job.
But the other thing is it’s not really fair to say to parents: Thinking about tradeoffs can actually be more difficult
“Can’t you take care of your own kid?” You told me I have to when you’re talking about it as a public policy choice
put my kid in school eight hours a day! That is literally a law; rather than as an individual choice.
it is a law that my kid has to be in school. And now you’re The problems with that were more significant in places where
telling me that the expectation should also be that I am free the labor relations were worse. In places with more functional
for all of that time, even though I’m legally required to not labor relations, we have a little bit of an easier time encourag-
have my kid here. So it’s odd that we’ve set up this whole ing people to come together.
system in which people are required to go to school and then
we’re going to be, like, “Well, school’s not your child care.” Your forthcoming book is called The Family Firm, and
You told me it has to be! it focuses on helping families with older kids do better
Part of what tamped that whole discussion down is that, management and strategic decision making. With so many

REASON 45
families making relatively high-stakes decisions under
COVID, is there anything you can preview from that book
about how to be better at making those decisions?
In many ways, COVID only amplified a lot of the issues I
grapple with in The Family Firm. Early in the pandemic, I
wrote in my newsletter on a five-step process for making
decisions during COVID. The processes I outline in The Family
Firm draw a lot from this but turn them to more general
questions. It’s not just COVID risks and benefits to think about
but a broader set of evidence to evaluate. In both settings,
I keep coming back to the key bookends: Start by thinking
about framing the question you’re asking and end by making a
decision. This may seem facile, but whether in COVID or not,
my sense is that people do not often stop to think about what
they really see as the choice they are making, and they allow
decisions to fester far too long.

A lot of family decision making is around education. How

do you think the disruption of COVID might change the
way families think about their choices?
I’m not sure! Some families have already pulled their children
from public schools and put them in private or Catholic
options which are doing in-person learning. I wonder if this
will generate a long-term move in that direction. A lot of trust
has been lost here. I think the other central issue for me is that
this has really reinforced school-level inequalities. I think
we’ll see a further reckoning about how we serve kids with
fewer means.

In your newsletter this morning, you wrote: “As salient as

it is, COVID-19 is not the only thing going on in people’s
lives.” It was part of a plea for compassion as we look at
other people’s choices. You have become a target for peo-
ple’s ire about the fact that all the choices are bad. Where
does that crop up the most?
People feel like our data have been used to make people go
teach in their schools and they don’t like that. That was the
context for this [angry] email this morning—somebody who
wrote, “My family is going to die and our blood is going to be
on your hands.”
But the other piece is thinking about how we can
realistically message but also recognize that there are other
things going on in people’s lives. There’s a danger of just going
too far and stating this risk as if it is a totally different thing
than all other risks anyone would ever face. That’s not right.
But then people push back on that. It does feel to many
people like this is a totally different risk and it is the only
thing anyone should ever be thinking about.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

46 MARCH 2021 Photo: Rachel Hulin

Photo: Leo Correa/A.P. REASON 47
IN 2020,
TEACHERS
UNIONS AND
POLICE UNIONS
SHOWED
THEIR
TRUE
COLORS
IT’S TIME FOR THE LEFT AND THE
RIGHT TO TAKE A HARD LOOK AT THEIR
FAVORITE PUBLIC-SECTOR UNIONS.

PETER SUDER M AN

48 MARCH 2021
F
ROM THE SPREAD of COVID-19 and the wave of state- preferring hastily cobbled-together forms of virtual education.
imposed closures that followed to the police killings According to one tracker, 62 percent of public schools began
of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the unrest the fall semester online only. The dire effects were plain to
that ensued, 2020 was a year in which American see. Young children of all demographics fared badly in vir-
institutions flailed and failed. And few failures tual school, unable to focus effectively on screen-based educa-
were bigger or more apparent than those of public- tion from home. The negative effects were most pronounced
sector unions. among poor and minority students, who often lacked
By pushing to keep schools closed even as evidence mounted consistent access to computers or internet con-
that in-person classes were relatively low-risk and remote nections and whose chaotic home lives often
learning was ineffective, teachers unions failed students and made learning even more difficult.
parents. By pushing to protect bad cops in the wake of mul- A November report from the NWEA, a
tiple scandals, police unions failed the public they were sworn nonprofit education research organiza-
to protect. And in the process, America got a glimpse of what tion, examined test scores from more than
public-sector unions, regardless of the profession they repre- 4.4 million students and found that kids
sent, really do. in third to eighth grade performed 5–10
Unions that represent government employees seek to main- points worse, on average, than a year
tain an image of themselves as protectors of common institu- prior. Black and Hispanic students, as
tions that can be relied upon to serve the public interest. But the well as those who attended schools
upheavals of 2020 made clear that the priority for public-sector in low-income areas, saw significant
unions is the opposite: to protect the interests of taxpayer- declines in reading test scores. The
funded employees, especially when those interests diverge analysis concluded that “the impacts
from those of the public they nominally serve. of COVID-19 on achievement for the
Yet the politics of public-sector unions have left reforms in most vulnerable students may be
limbo. Culturally and politically, police have long been linked underestimated.”
with the American right. Teachers, in contrast, are a core con- The decision to close schools
stituency of the Democratic Party and some of its loudest sup- also hurt the careers of working
porters and biggest donors. mothers. By September 2020,
Public-sector union reform should be a bipartisan issue. about 1.1 million adults had
Instead, it has stalled or inched along, with each side protect- dropped out of the U.S.
ing its own. workforce; 865,000 were
women, according to
the National Wom-
TEACHERS VS. CHILDREN AND PARENTS en’s Law Center.
OF ALL THE missteps and public policy failures of 2020, few were
more egregious than the failure to reopen public schools for
young children. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,
schools were shuttered across the nation out of fear that they
would become vectors of viral spread. But by mid-summer,
evidence from other countries that had reopened their schools,
combined with data on how often and how severely children
contract the disease, pointed to a clear conclusion: Schools—
especially for younger students—were relatively safe.
“School districts should prioritize reopening schools
full time, especially for grades K-5 and students with
special needs,” declared a press release describing
a July report from the National Academies of Sci-
ences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Some states, many with Republican gover-
nors, chose to bring children back to class-
rooms in some fashion. But others did not,

Photo, left: selimaksan/iStock

Photo, right: avid_creative/iStock REASON 49
There was little good-faith dispute about the merits of in- Yet in November, as COVID-19 cases once again began to
person instruction, the consequences of closure, and the safety spike in New York, the never-justified standard resulted in the
of reopening. Although many prominent public health experts abrupt closure of city schools (a decision that de Blasio later
initially were cautious, by fall even they had come around. “The partially reversed). That result made no scientific sense. “If you
default position should be to try as best as possible, within rea- look at the data, the spread among children and from children
son, to keep the children in school, to get them back to school,” is not very big at all,” Fauci noted in November.
said Anthony Fauci, a White House health adviser and the long- Teachers unions were “absolutely central players” in the
time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious battle over New York’s schools, says DiSalvo. “The coronavirus
Diseases, in November. has shown a spotlight on the ways in which teachers unions’
The decision to keep so many schools closed was egregious interests and kids’ and parents’ interests are not aligned.” A
because it was avoidable. It was egregious because its conse- similar misalignment is clear from the behavior of police unions.
quences were easy to predict. And it was egregious because
it was largely the product of an organized fear campaign by a
self-righteous, self-interested political faction that has for years POLICE JOBS VS. LIVES
been pursuing its own interests in direct opposition to the bet- ON MAY 25, Minneapolis police arrested George Floyd, a 46-year-
terment of the families and children it is supposed to serve. old black man, following a 911 call reporting that he had used
Across the country, teachers unions did everything they a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Less than 20 minutes
could to stop reopening. In July, American Federation of after police arrived on the scene in response to that call, Floyd
Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten threatened was dead.
“protests,” “grievances or lawsuits,” and even “safety strikes.” An officer named Derek Chauvin had kneeled on Floyd’s
The following month in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot reversed neck for well over seven minutes, disregarding his repeated
a plan to partially reopen schools two days after the Chicago complaints that he could not breathe and keeping him pinned
Teachers Union—which went on strike in 2019—marched for minutes after he fell silent and lost consciousness. Two
against resuming in-person instruction. other officers helped restrain Floyd, while a fourth stood by as
The unions’ rhetoric emphasized the question of whether Floyd died under Chauvin’s knee. The incident was captured in
reopening schools was safe. Teachers in Washington, D.C., a shocking cellphone video.
lined up body bags outside school system offices. Weingarten’s The following day, all four officers were fired. Chauvin
opposition was premised on teacher and student safety. During was charged with second-degree murder and second-degree
the summer, the Florida Education Association filed a lawsuit manslaughter; his colleagues were charged with aiding and
seeking to block the state’s reopening plan on the grounds that abetting those crimes. Their trial is set to begin in March 2021. In
it “arbitrarily disregards safety.” the weeks after Floyd’s death, cities across America saw massive
But there was little sound reason to believe that schools protests against the police brutality that had cost his life.
were particularly unsafe. Children represented a tiny fraction The four officers’ conduct drew criticism from nearly all
of recorded COVID-19 cases, even in areas with significant quarters. Politicians, pundits, and protesters held up the cops’
outbreaks, and an even tinier share of deaths from the disease. brutal indifference as a symbol of bad policing. Chauvin and his
Research in other countries found that virus transmission fellow officers nonetheless enjoyed a vociferous defense from
among schoolchildren, or between them and staff, was rare. the local police union.
In New York City, where reopening was especially chaotic, Bob Kroll, president of the Police Officers Union of Minne-
labor representatives negotiated an agreement with Mayor Bill apolis, wrote a letter to union members blasting the officers’
de Blasio to close schools if the city’s COVID-19 test positivity dismissal, saying they were “terminated without due process.”
rate reached a seven-day average of more than 3 percent. But There was no mention of whether George Floyd had received
that threshold had no scientific justification. De Blasio defended due process before he was choked to death on the street. Instead,
it as a “social contract,” which sounded suspiciously like a way Kroll complained that the news media were refusing to air
to avoid admitting it was pulled out of thin air. Floyd’s “violent criminal history.” He said he was in contact
There was never any attempt to justify the 3 percent trigger with criminal defense lawyers for the officers and was working
with evidence. “We don’t know what the science was behind “with our labor attorneys to fight for their jobs.”
it,” observes Daniel DiSalvo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Chauvin had unceremoniously killed a man accused of
Institute and a professor of political science in the Colin Powell using a phony $20 bill. In his last moments, Floyd fought for
School at the City College of New York. The basic idea, he says, his life. Kroll and the police union responded by fighting for
was “let’s make it low.” Chauvin’s job.

50 MARCH 2021
More than anything else, police unions exist to defend the
employment prerogatives of their members—especially when
they perform badly or abuse the public trust. Police may exist to The upheavals of 2020
protect the people. But police unions exist to protect the police.
Sometimes, as in Chauvin’s case, this imperative manifests
made clear that the
itself in high-profile demonstrations of loyalty to cops whose priority for these unions
actions or inactions have proven dangerous or deadly. After is to protect the interests
Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Miller was fired for
neglect of duty because he hid behind his car while a gunman
of taxpayer-funded
murdered 17 students at a Parkland, Florida, high school in employees, especially when
2018, the local police union backed a two-year arbitration
those interests diverge
process that last summer resulted in Miller’s reinstatement
with full back pay. The students had lost their lives. Miller had from those of the public
lost his job. But with the union’s support, he got it back, along they nominally serve.
with his taxpayer-funded annual salary of $138,000.
Sometimes police unions’ protective efforts are less
visible. A signature demand of police unions is that their
contract negotiations be hidden from public view. In June,
following the national outcry over Floyd’s death, Philadelphia
Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson sponsored
a bill allowing city residents to comment on police contract
proposals before they are submitted to the union. The bill, which
the city council approved in September, maintained a longtime
prohibition of public input on final approval of contracts.
“This legislation seeks to mandate public transparency and
accountability in a process that has been shrouded in secrecy
for too long,” Richardson said.
In October, the local Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)
responded with a lawsuit seeking to block the reform. “We had
to do something in order to put an end to what they’re doing, himself and Taylor against dangerous criminals.
demonizing police officers in the city of Philadelphia,” FOP Three officers responded to the shot fired by Walker with a
President John McNesby argued at a press conference. Letting hail of 32 bullets, killing Taylor. The police found no drugs or
the public see and comment on the contract process was akin to any other evidence that Taylor was involved in criminal activity.
“demonizing police officers.” It had to be stopped. After Taylor’s death, Louisville’s interim police chief, Robert
When those contracts do become public, it’s clear why police Schroeder, concluded that Detective Brett Hankison, one of the
unions want them shrouded in secrecy. They routinely include officers involved in the raid, “displayed an extreme indifference
provisions that single out police for special treatment, giving to the value of human life” when he “wantonly and blindly
them legal protections that no ordinary citizen could expect, fired 10 rounds” into Taylor’s apartment. Noting that some of
much less demand as part of a compensation package. those bullets entered a neighboring apartment, Schroeder said
Those protections became a point of controversy in Hankison’s recklessness posed a “substantial danger of death
Louisville, Kentucky, following the March 13, 2020, police and serious injury” to the public.
shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman. City “I find your conduct a shock to the conscience,” Schroeder
police used a battering ram to knock down Taylor’s door in the wrote in a letter announcing his intent to terminate
middle of the night while serving a search warrant based on Hankinson’s employment. “I am alarmed and stunned you
the unsubstantiated suspicion that she was participating in a used deadly force in this fashion.”
former boyfriend’s drug trafficking operation. But before he could fire Hankison, Schroeder had to go
Taylor and her current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were in through the police union. The termination procedures in the
bed at the time. After hearing the tumult at the door, Walker police contract guaranteed a “pre-termination hearing” with
grabbed a handgun and fired once at the intruders, striking an legal counsel present, a right to make a case for less severe pun-
officer in the leg. Walker later said he believed he was defending ishment, and a right to appeal to the Police Merit Board, which

Photo: Alamy REASON 51

could overturn the chief’s decision if it decided termination In a 2009 story for The New Yorker, journalist Steven Brill
was excessive. explored New York City’s “rubber rooms”—holding pens for
Hankison, who in September was charged with three hundreds of teachers who had been taken off the job pending
counts of wanton endangerment, was fired in June 2020. But in disciplinary action or review but were still receiving their full
stark contrast with the unusually rapid dismissal of the officers salaries. A school principal quoted in the story said AFT’s
involved in Floyd’s killing, it took three months—and a loud Weingarten would “protect a dead body in the classroom.” It
public outcry linking Taylor’s death to Floyd’s—to get Hanki- didn’t matter what the teachers had done. It mattered that they
son off the force. He has filed an appeal to the merit board to be kept their paychecks.
heard following the conclusion of the criminal case. The following year, the teachers union agreed to a deal that
In the months after Taylor’s killing, meanwhile, the city was supposed to eliminate what were euphemistically called
of Louisville began renegotiating its contract with the police “reassignment centers.” But six years later, the New York Post
department. Those negotiations provoked an intense debate found they were still in use, still holding hundreds of teachers,
about reforms intended to mitigate police abuse. The main often for years at a time, who were earning full salaries on the
obstacle? The local police union. public’s dime to nap and play board games. “They’re just letting
In November, the city council approved a new contract me sit here,” one unnamed reassigned teacher told the Post.
that included additional benefits and multiple protections for He had been accused of physically abusing students, which he
police, among them a provision allowing some disciplinary denied. He said he made about $70,000 a year.
records to be destroyed after specified lengths of time. “What The determination to protect the jobs of poor performers can
is largely missing from it are just fundamental accountability even trump the desire to increase compensation. More than
requirements that allow the department to sufficiently a decade ago, when Michelle Rhee first became chancellor of
discipline officers who commit misconduct,” Brandon Coan, the Washington, D.C., school system, she proposed a system
the most outspoken critic of the police union on the council, in which teachers could choose to weaken seniority and
told the Louisville Courier-Journal. tenure protections in exchange for substantially increased
Among the provisions the union defended most aggressively: salaries. Essentially, her plan was to reward high performers
a ban on officer layoffs. while making it easier to part ways with those who didn’t
pass muster. A union-commissioned poll found that teachers
opposed the proposal by a 3–1 ratio. Months later, when Rhee
PUBLIC-SECTOR PRIVILEGE pushed forward with firing teachers found to be ineffective, The
MORE THAN ANYTHING else, what connects police and teachers New York Times reported that the president of the Washington
unions is the determination to guarantee their members’ jobs. Teachers’ Union “responded by promising that the union would
In theory, this emphasis on employment protection repre- help teachers use all procedures available to protect their jobs.”
sents a contractual safeguard against politically motivated fir- If jobs, regardless of performance, are the first thing unions
ings, unfair judgments, personal vendettas, or unexpected bud- seek to protect, benefits are the second. Public-sector unions
get cuts. Public-sector workers, whose salaries are paid with tax repeatedly have fought for hefty benefits packages, including
dollars, face a different kind of scrutiny than many of their pri- retirement and health plans, that add considerably to their
vate peers. These protections ostensibly represent an attempt compensation. And no benefit is more important to public-
to guarantee fairness in the face of unique pressure. sector unions than pensions.
In practice, however, public-sector unions exert a Long before the economic meltdown of 2020, public
disproportionate amount of effort defending their worst pensions were a huge drag on state budgets. At the beginning
members—not just the ones whose performance is subpar but of the year, states already carried $1.2 trillion in pension debt.
the ones who are actively malign. Unions show their unwavering At times, this enormous fiscal obligation overwhelmed
dedication to protecting their members’ jobs by making sure it’s other public priorities—including education and policing. The
very difficult—sometimes nearly impossible—to fire a union share of state education funding devoted to pensions doubled
member, no matter what that person has done. It’s not the between 2001 and 2018, from 7.5 percent to 14.4 percent,
easy cases where the unions demonstrate the strength of their according to an April 2020 report from the nonprofit Equable,
commitment; it’s the hard ones. representing a “hidden cut” to education funding. Those cuts,
For police, that means violent and otherwise abusive the report said, tended to affect poorer school districts the most.
officers, those whose actions have harmed people or cost them Public-sector pensions are often legally protected in ways
their lives. For teachers, it means educators who are worse than that make reforms difficult. The details vary by state, but the
incompetent—those who have been accused of abuse, or worse. police retirement plan in Austin, Texas, offers a useful example.

52 MARCH 2021
In 2018, the Austin Police Retirement System had about
$582 million in liabilities, an increase of more than $175 million
from just a year earlier. As a result of this fiscal burden, Moody’s
Investors Service downgraded the city’s bond rating, which was In practice, public-
apt to increase the city’s borrowing costs. Over the summer, the sector unions exert a
city council responded by approving a cut of more than $150
million from the police budget. But the city didn’t touch the pen-
disproportionate amount
sion fund, because in Texas it’s constitutionally protected. And of effort defending their
even after the budget cuts, pension obligations were projected
worst members.
to continue rising. Effectively, the city chopped spending on
day-to-day policing to help offset the cost of continuing to pay
officers who were long off the job.

UNTHINKABLE AND INTOLERABLE

PUBLIC-SECTOR UNIONS HAVE always been controversial. In 1937,
President Franklin Roosevelt warned that “the process of col-
lective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be trans-
planted into the public service.” Although he was a staunch
supporter of private-sector unionism, Roosevelt believed the
costs were different in public-sector work. A “strike of public
employees,” he said, “manifests nothing less than an intent
on their part to obstruct the operations of government until
their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the the country. Although multiple factors were involved, including
paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it agitation from the pandemic and associated lockdowns, there
is unthinkable and intolerable.” was enough speculation that police had intentionally reduced
At the close of 2020, Roosevelt’s warnings felt especially their presence that The Christian Science Monitor published a
prophetic. While teachers did not technically go on strike, they piece noting the crime spike and wondering if “police, in at least
explicitly threatened to do so, and in many cities and states some cases, [had] partially ceded the streets.”
educators, backed by unions, successfully argued their way Public opinion also seemed to shift, with clear majorities sup-
into remote-teaching arrangements that did deep damage to porting reform of police unions. According to an August 2020
the nation’s youth. In November, teachers in the Washington, Cato Institute/YouGov poll, 84 percent of Americans, including
D.C., school system staged a “sick-out” that caused city officials majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, opposed police
to cancel reopening plans for especially needy elementary union contracts that require officer misconduct records to be
school students. Because of union opposition, Chancellor erased after a specified period of time. The poll also found that
Lewis D. Ferebee said, the system simply wouldn’t have enough 62 percent of respondents believed police unions should be
teachers available to staff the schools. prohibited from collectively bargaining over methods used to
Police did not officially walk off the job either. But following hold officers accountable for misconduct.
the Floyd killing, there were multiple reports of “blue flu,” which The split on the latter question was more partisan, with
amounts to a soft strike in which officers call in sick. Democrats substantially more likely to oppose such contract
In Atlanta, 170 officers called in sick in June after two officers provisions. A Gallup poll conducted during the summer
were charged in a shooting. In July, the Los Angeles Times likewise found that while 89 percent of Democrats said major
reported that an unsigned letter circulating among officers changes were needed to American policing, just 14 percent of
was encouraging them to “send a clear message” by calling in Republicans agreed.
sick in response to nationwide protests against police abuse. Regarding teachers unions, an August poll from Rasmus-
The letter warned that a laundry list of union priorities were sen found that 39 percent of respondents thought it was a good
threatened. “They succeeded in defunding the police; what thing that most teachers belong to unions, down from 45 per-
do you think is next? Our pay? Our benefits? Our pensions?” cent in 2019. An Education Next survey published in August
the letter said. “You’re God Damn right all those things are in found that majorities of both Republicans and Democrats sup-
jeopardy now.” Last summer, murders spiked in cities across ported school choice policies such as giving low-income par-

Photo: MediaProduction/iStock REASON 53

ents tax credits to pay for private school tuition. But even in respect for educators and their unions.” Biden’s preferred choice
the midst of the most visible public education crisis in decades, for health and human services secretary, Rhode Island Gov.
teachers and local schools remained quite popular, with Demo- Gina Raimondo, was initially blocked by unions “because of her
crats substantially more likely to support increased funding for record on pension changes,” according to The New York Times.
public education. Biden later tapped her for Commerce Secretary, but her work
Teachers unions remain closely linked with the Democratic on Rhode Island’s public pension demonstrates the difficulty
Party. “Since 1990, the AFT and the [National Education of even modest reform.
Association] have regularly been among the top 10 contributors As the state’s treasurer in the early 2010s, Raimondo, a
to federal electoral campaigns,” according to another Education Rhodes scholar who studied economics at Harvard, spear-
Next report. It noted that Democrats receive “the vast majority headed a series of changes to the state’s pension program, cut-
of [the two unions’] hard-money campaign contributions as ting cost-of-living adjustments for retirees and moving current
well as in-kind contributions for get-out-the-vote operations.” workers to a hybrid pension/savings plan. “A big part of the
Those partisan differences could help explain why what reason we were not having enough money for public buses and
might have been a moment of bipartisan reflection instead playgrounds and libraries and after-school sports is because
became a moment of retreat to predictable political corners. the pension liability was gobbling up an increasingly large
Yes, President Donald Trump signed an executive order percent of the budget,” she told Roll Call in 2016.
on police reform in June, just before Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.) The state’s finances improved, but in 2016 its public pen-
unveiled a bill that would encourage local departments to ban sions were still underfunded, covering 57 percent of total obli-
chokeholds and modestly increase police accountability by gations for teachers and 59 percent for other public workers
creating a national database of misconduct. (up from 49 percent in 2010). A coalition of public employees
And yes, San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued a nevertheless sued to block Raimondo’s overhaul, eventually
strongly worded statement slamming teachers for dithering settling out of court. By 2019, the share of obligations covered
about renaming schools while most of them remained closed. by the state’s pension funds had shrunk to 55 percent for teach-
“While many private schools are open today, our public schools ers and 53 percent for other employees.
have still not yet made a firm plan to open,” she wrote in The lesson for public-sector reformers is clear: Even rela-
October. “Parents are frustrated and looking for answers. The tively small changes are likely to provoke significant political
achievement gap is widening as our public schools [sic] kids are pushback.
falling further behind every single day….In the midst of this
once in a century challenge, to hear that the District is focusing
energy and resources on renaming schools—schools that they INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE
haven’t even opened—is offensive.” WHAT DO SCHOOLS and police represent? What is their role
But these were half measures at best. Both Trump’s order in society? They are publicly funded programs, and they
and Scott’s bill represented minimal efforts, more symbolic are employers. But they are also institutions that represent
than meaningful. Notably, most Republicans remained firmly broad-based public values: the care and education of children;
opposed to making any changes to qualified immunity, a legal public safety and order. Yet police and teachers unions have
doctrine that shields government employees from civil liability consistently treated these institutions as employment
even for egregious misconduct. Trump spent the summer fiefdoms—as entitlements for a class of privileged workers—
tweeting constantly in support of police. In one case, after a rather than public trusts. They have behaved in ways contrary
Buffalo, New York, police officer was caught on camera pushing to the values those institutions are intended to uphold.
a 75-year-old protester to the ground, Trump speculated in a In the process, they have failed the public they are supposed
tweet that the elderly gentleman might have been an “ANTIFA to serve. In Roosevelt’s words, they have contributed to “the
provocateur” who faked a hard fall as part of a “setup.” paralysis of government.”
The first bullet-pointed item in Joe Biden’s education plan Yet politically, that paralysis turned out to be neither
was not a program to help students or to reopen closed schools. unthinkable nor intolerable. Instead, it was largely business
It was “support our educators by giving them the pay and the as usual, with public-sector unions proceeding as they always
dignity they deserve.” Biden’s plan was to pay and praise teach- have and, without reform, always will. The multiple calamities
ers more. In early December, after he named Connecticut Chief of 2020 did not cause public-sector unions to fail. They showed
of Schools Miguel A. Cardona secretary of education, Weingar- us all the ways they already had.
ten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, pointed
to Cardona’s former AFT membership and praised his “deep PETER SUDERMAN is Reason’s features editor.

54 MARCH 2021
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56 MARCH 2021
The
All-American
Arms Dealer
SAMUEL CUMMINGS BUILT A GLOBAL WEAPONS
EMPIRE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.’S SHADOW.

M ARK HEMINGWAY

T
HERE ARE MORE than a few antique shops in historic years, he tried to open a museum in Alexandria to exhibit his
Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, a short walk from collection of exotic and historic weaponry, though that never
my suburban neighborhood. Antiquing is nor- came to fruition.
mally of interest only if my mother-in-law is visit- As interesting as that sounds, Cummings’ collection is in
ing, but some years back a friend messaged me to some respects less interesting than the manner in which he
let me know one of the shops had something I should see. On acquired it. For nearly 50 years, he was the largest arms dealer
the back wall, shunted behind a variety of well-preserved 19th in the world.
century furniture, were two large Soviet propaganda paintings. In recent years, the waterfront in Old Town Alexandria along
The first was a portrait of three strapping Russian sailors, the Potomac River has been redeveloped. Some of the land was
wearing bandoleers across their chests, in front of the Aurora— seized by eminent domain, the area turned into parks and board-
the infamous ship that fired the first shot on the Winter Palace walks and otherwise made an inviting spot for tourists looking to
in St. Petersburg, launching the Russian Revolution. The sec- schlep around the same streets once haunted by George Wash-
ond painting, of soldiers smoking in a field in Afghanistan, was ington. But when I moved to the area a decade ago, there was
less dramatic but a better and more impressionistic piece of also a small wooden building on the water where you could still
art. Both paintings were done by well-known graduates of the make out a sign that said Interarms—the name of Cummings’
Kharkov Art Institute and were fine examples of Soviet socialist company. The building is now gone, and it’s hard to imagine
realism—insofar as one can take any art movement that began that, through the 1980s, the same waterfront now littered with
under Stalin seriously. I inquired about the paintings, and all restaurants and boutiques was an industrial port where Cum-
the clerk was able to tell me was that they originally came from mings owned a series of converted tobacco warehouses stacked
the estate of a man named Samuel Cummings. to the rafters with guns.
If you know anything about Samuel Cummings, you may sus- “At one point, we had 700,000 rifles, machine guns, pis-
pect the two Soviet paintings were some of his more prosaic pos- tols and submachine guns stored in our warehouses in Alexan-
sessions. When the billionaire died in 1998, he owned, among dria,” Cummings told The Washington Post in 1986. “We could
many other things, the sword Napoleon carried at Waterloo. For have instantly overwhelmed the American armed forces. We

Photo: Cynthia Johnson/Getty REASON 57

But among arms dealers, no one was more intriguing than
the straight-talking former CIA employee Cummings, who was
born in Philadelphia and raised in D.C. but died a British citizen
living in Monte Carlo.

AN EDUCATION IN ARMS
CUMMINGS WAS BORN in Philadelphia in 1927 to parents so
wealthy they had never worked. Soon thereafter they lost
everything in the Great Depression. His father died when Cum-
mings was 8 from the stress of having to do actual labor for the
first time in his life.
When Cummings was 5, he found a World War I German
machine gun abandoned outside an American Legion post. An
adult helped him carry the 40-pound weapon back to his house,
where the boy learned to take it apart and reassemble it, spark-
ing a lifelong fascination with guns.
After Cummings’ father died, his enterprising mother found
a way to make one of her primary skills as a rich woman—good
taste—profitable. She convinced a local bank to let her move
into a repossessed house and renovate it in exchange for a share
of the sale profits. Cummings’ mother proved quite adept at flip-
ping houses this way. It eventually brought the family to D.C.,
where the housing market during the Depression was stronger.
This unusual occupation necessitated moving the family every
six months or so into a new home, but Cummings’ mother was
thrifty enough to put her children through some of D.C.’s bet-
ter private schools.
Cummings enlisted immediately after high school, just as
World War II was ending. As a teenager, he headed off to Fort
Lee for basic training with his burgeoning collection of 50 guns
could have armed 700,000 mercenaries that could have goose- packed into the trunk of his car. Cummings excelled in his cadet
stepped right over the [Arlington] Memorial Bridge….We also program in high school, and when he got to the Army he was so
had 150 pieces of artillery, ranging from 25 mm to 150 mm…. familiar with weapons and drills he was immediately made an
So, if I didn’t like a particular piece of legislation in the Congress, acting corporal. He spent his hitch instructing other recruits on
I could have phoned up the speaker and I could have said, ‘My close-order drills and weapons handling. His 18-month service
armies will be rolling over to the Capitol, if you don’t do some- was uneventful—he never left Virginia—and in 1947 he enrolled
thing about that.’” in George Washington University on the GI Bill, earning a degree
Fortunately, Cummings was clearly joking. Well aware that in political science and economics in just two years. While in
such quotes were catnip to reporters, he was famously candid school, Cummings pursued his hobby and supplemented his
with the press, a remarkable trait for an arms dealer. income by buying and selling guns. He even made a tidy profit
By the 1980s, the intrigue surrounding the Cold War’s many after uncovering a cache of German World War II helmets in a
proxy conflicts had made arms dealers figures of notable inter- Virginia scrapyard.
est even in popular culture: The 1983 Chevy Chase comedy It was his time out of school during this period that proved to
Deal of the Century was a satirical take on the arms trade, be the most fateful, however. Cummings headed off to Oxford
and the band Queen even wrote a song, “Khashoggi’s Ship,” for a term abroad during summer 1948. While in England, he
about partying on the yacht of notorious Saudi Arabian arms and two friends pooled their money to buy the cheapest car they
dealer Adnan Khashoggi. (Washington Post columnist Jamal could find and toured the continent. For a young man obsessed
Khashoggi, notoriously dismembered in a Saudi consulate in with the military, the trip was a revelation.
Turkey in 2018, was Adnan’s nephew.) Even though it had been over for years, the scale of World

58 MARCH 2021 Photo: Terence Spencer/Getty

War II was so enormous that everywhere they went, the young
men were surrounded by abandoned military equipment and
fortifications. Cummings and his friends slept in bunkers,
poked into arms caches, and drove around with a machine In 1955, Nicaragua’s
gun strapped to the roof of their car for fun. Anyone with a can
of gasoline and a new battery could have driven away in one U.S.-backed, right-wing
of the many vehicles abandoned on the side of the road. In the
Falaise Pocket in France, six divisions of German soldiers had Somoza government
abandoned all of their supplies and equipment near the end of
the war, never to return. European governments had resorted to invaded Costa Rica.
gathering up mass quantities of leftover materiel and dumping
it in the sea to get rid of it.
Cummings had armed
In Deadly Business: Sam Cummings, Interarms, and the Arms
Trade, a 1983 biography by journalists Patrick Brogan and
both sides of the
Albert Zarca that’s long been out of print, Cummings recounts conflict.
that the trip made an indelible impression. “The roads of rural
England were lined with open-ended containers filled with
ammunition,” he said. “I couldn’t get over it because they were
standard-caliber small arms as well as artillery, and typical of
law-abiding England, no one ever bothered with the stuff. To meeting with the then–deputy director of the CIA, Allen Dulles.
me it was astonishing.” The legendary spymaster quickly sized up the young Cummings
After getting his undergraduate degree, Cummings’ interest as being more capable than many of his more experienced supe-
in guns was so consuming that he applied for jobs at the FBI, riors, and soon Cummings was off on a clandestine mission for
CIA, and National Rifle Association (NRA), thinking one of the ages: Dulles sent him to Europe with an unlimited budget
them might have use for a small arms expert. They all turned to buy as many surplus World War II arms as he could obtain.
him down, at least initially. Cummings was working his way Along for the ride was another man, Leo Lippe, a director of pho-
through law school when the CIA came calling. By then the tography from Hollywood. Their cover story was that they were
Korean War was underway, and the agency was looking for buying props for the steady stream of war films that American
people who could help identify the provenance of more exotic studios were pumping out. The two men spent months traveling
weapons that were turning up in the conflict. Cummings’ old to Europe’s most exotic locales, doing deals with heads of state
résumé was pulled out of the pile. and top military leaders.
Unsurprisingly, Cummings proved particularly good at the Though the plan to arm Chiang Kai-shek was never put in
work. He spent much of his time utilizing the CIA archives to motion, the trip was a smashing success, with Lippe and Cum-
enhance his already prodigious knowledge of weaponry. mings uncovering and obtaining massive stashes of arms from
Then one day a CIA report came across his desk, prepared in Scandinavia to Italy, some of which were completely unused.
collaboration with U.S. military attachés in Europe, inquiring as Cummings returned to the U.S. in 1952, and the agency soon
to whether large quantities of German weapons still remained dispatched him on another mission. Costa Rica was disposing
on the continent. The report concluded there was nothing of 10,000 guns and in excess of a million rounds of ammuni-
noteworthy left. Cummings possessed considerable firsthand tion. Given the volatile politics of Central America, the agency
knowledge that the report was flat wrong, and he dashed off a didn’t want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands. Cum-
memo saying so. mings arranged for the munitions to be sold to Western Arms, a
What Cummings didn’t know was that the CIA had a specific California-based company.
reason for inquiring about surplus German arms. The agency The CIA offered Cummings a permanent position. He
was contemplating arming Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan to launch declined. His two missions weren’t just successful for the CIA—
a new invasion of mainland China, in the hopes that such an they proved to be excellent on-the-job training in dealing arms.
invasion would distract the Chinese military and alleviate some
of the pressure in the Korean conflict. In order for the plan to
work, however, the CIA needed a supply of arms that couldn’t THE FOUNDING OF INTERARMS
be readily traced back to the U.S. IN FEBRUARY 1953, when he was just 26 years old, Cummings
Cummings soon found himself summoned to a personal founded the International Armament Corporation. Interarms,

REASON 59
as it later came to be known, started with no tangible assets. The assault was abruptly stymied, but Trujillo’s men picked
Cummings worked out of his modest house in Georgetown, up AR-10 rifles from the Cuban expeditionary force that were
and the company address was a P.O. box. He did, however, identical to weapons Cummings had sold Trujillo. The dictator
have a valuable list of contacts. Cummings composed a letter was furious. Cummings calmed him down by pointing out that
announcing he was interested in purchasing arms and fired it the Cuban invasion was stopped by strafing the beaches with a
off to dozens of heads of state and military officials. handful of Swedish Vampire jets Cummings had sold Trujillo. (It
The first few months were disconcertingly quiet, until a let- was the only time Cummings, who mostly dealt in small arms,
ter from a colonel in the national guard of Panama arrived. The was involved in the sale of airplanes.)
country had a relatively small weapons surplus it was looking to Despite the hazards of dealing with such unstable leaders,
get rid of. Cummings flew down to inspect the lot—a mix of small Cummings famously told George Thayer, author of the seminal
arms, machine guns, and mortars—and offered $25,000 on the 1969 book on the modern arms trade, The War Business, that he
spot, provided Panama wouldn’t expect payment until the arms liked working with dictators because “they have a sense of order
arrived in the United States. Cummings quickly brokered a deal and pay their bills promptly.”
with Western Arms, whom he’d worked with in Costa Rica, to pur- At the same time, Cummings rigorously observed any
chase the Panamanian shipment from him. He made $20,000 on arms embargo imposed by the U.S. or British governments. He
the deal even after the considerable shipping costs. quickly stopped dealing with Cuba after that first sale to Castro
That provided enough seed capital to cover travel expenses, and shut down an office in Pretoria in the early ’60s when arms
and Cummings was off to the races. Like a lot of wildly success- embargoes were imposed in South Africa.
ful ventures, the growth of Interarms was about 50 percent luck Then there were the questions of his ongoing ties to the CIA.
and 50 percent grit. Cummings traveled so much for the rest of Arms used in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion came from Cum-
the decade that he calculated he’d spent six months’ worth of mings. That same year, a massive quantity of Soviet ammuni-
hours on planes. His constant absence cost him his first mar- tion—22 boxcars’ worth—was unloaded off trains in Browns-
riage. But his hard work, confident salesmanship, and unusual ville, Texas, triggering a Senate investigation into the shell
combination of discretion and blunt honesty ensured that deals companies behind the shipment. It led back to Cummings.
started falling into his lap. Soon he had full warehouses of arms The ammo may have been meant to support CIA operations in
in Brooklyn and Alexandria. Many of his most notable successes Indochina, where the conflicts were just heating up.
involved profiting off the chaos created by energetic U.S. efforts Regarding the CIA’s ill-advised actions abroad during
to destabilize unfriendly governments in Latin America. Cum- the Cold War, Cummings would dryly tell Brogan and Zarca
mings soon became a Cold War Zelig—but where other historical that an agency starting wars without Congress’ involvement
figures got caught in the crossfire, Cummings was the crossfire. wasn’t exactly what he’d learned was in the Constitution dur-
The Panamanians referred Cummings back to Costa Rica, ing law school.
where he did more arms deals. The Costa Ricans, in turn,
referred him to neighboring Nicaragua. In 1955, Nicaragua’s
U.S.-backed, right-wing Somoza government invaded Costa THE AMERICAN MARKET
Rica. Cummings had armed both sides of the conflict. CUMMINGS DIDN’T MAKE a massive fortune just by shuffling arms
Cummings’ success was also a result of his brazen willing- from one conflict zone to another. His real innovation was dis-
ness to put profits over taking sides. When Cuban President covering there was a massive market among Americans for
Fulgencio Batista fled the country in late 1958, a shipment of military surplus guns.
AR-10 rifles the leader had ordered from Cummings was already In the 1960s, American manufacturers such as Winchester
en route to the island. Rather than chalk up a loss, Cummings and Remington made fine rifles—but at $100–$150 new, they
dashed down to Cuba to demonstrate the rifles in person for were comparatively expensive. Interarms started a mail-order
Fidel Castro, the newly installed head of state, and his right- catalog, Hunters Lodge, that sold some military surplus rifles
hand man Che Guevara. Castro gladly paid for the guns meant for as little as $9.95 (about $80 today, adjusting for inflation).
for Batista. This deal went sideways six months later, in 1959, They were literally marketed as “throwaway guns” a hunter
when Cummings was again in the Caribbean visiting with one could abandon in the woods after bagging his deer. It was the
of his biggest customers, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. domestic demand for guns that caused his warehouses in Alex-
Castro chose that moment to launch his first of many foreign andria to reach peak capacity.
escapades by sending a ragtag group of soldiers to invade the Also of interest is how his guns arrived in Alexandria in the
beaches of Hispaniola in an effort, presumably, to foment social- first place. When Cummings started buying up warehouses in
ist revolution. the only non-union port on the East Coast, there was just one

60 MARCH 2021
other major company using the port: The Washington Post. Cum-
mings struck a deal with the same Finnish shipping line that
brought the paper its newsprint to also pick up his arms ship-
ments. For years, the Post subsidized an unholy percentage of
the world’s small arms traffic.
Interarms’ commercial peak ended in 1968, when Congress,
prodded by domestic gun manufacturers upset over their lost
market share, passed a law prohibiting the import of military
surplus guns. (It didn’t help that Lee Harvey Oswald had assas-
sinated JFK with a cheap mail-order Italian rifle.)
Fortunately for Cummings, by then he also had a firm grip on
the international arms trade. He was eagerly sought out for his
ability to seemingly conjure weapons out of thin air. When the
Sudanese ceremonial camel corps needed new lances, he just
happened to have some World War I–era German lances made
of blue steel in an Alexandria warehouse.
Governments the world over owed Cummings favors, big
and small. Oddly, he was trusted by nearly everyone. When the
Falklands War broke out, Argentina, as one of Cummings’ big-
gest customers, approached him for weapons. Cummings—by
then a British citizen—flatly refused to do business with the
country, even as he cheerfully advised its leaders on where they
might obtain what they needed. After the brief conflict ended,
the British Ministry of Defense held a symposium on the war
and wanted to get the Argentine military to participate as well.
The diplomatic niceties could not be resolved in time for the
event, so Cummings represented the Argentine position, to the
satisfaction of everyone involved.
Aside from his regular dealings with the press—he received
major coverage in The New York Times and was the subject of
an Esquire profile in the magazine’s ’70s heyday—Cummings
made his political influence felt in surprising ways. He had sur- edy—but an ironic one, considering how much he both doted on
rendered his U.S. citizenship not for any business or legal reason his children and courted press attention. In 1997, his daughter
but for his family. By the early 1970s, he was remarried with two Susan shot and killed her unfaithful Argentine polo player hus-
daughters and living full-time in Monte Carlo and Geneva. In band on the lavish estate in Virginia’s horse country that her
1971, the Supreme Court ruled that children born to Americans father had given her. She claimed the husband was abusive and
abroad could not become U.S. citizens unless they lived in the had threatened her with a knife. She was convicted of voluntary
United States for three consecutive years before they turned 18. manslaughter and spent 57 days in jail.
Both Monaco and Switzerland had restrictive citizenship laws, The episode was irresistible to the gossip rags. Cummings
so his children were destined to be stateless. Cummings applied died of a series of strokes in April 1998, the same month a
for and received British citizenship, surrendering his status as lurid Vanity Fair story about his daughter’s crime was on news-
an American so his children could get a passport. stands. He was 71.
Still, surrendering his birthright chafed him quite a bit. At the time of Cummings’ death, the industrial Alexandria
Instead of making good on sending soldiers from Alexandria waterfront was already largely redeveloped. He would be unsur-
over the Memorial Bridge to threaten Congress, Cummings prised to see tourists eating ice cream where his lethal empire
hired a lobbyist to change the law like everyone else. In 1980, once stood. But while Interarms’ warehouses may be gone, the
thanks in part to his efforts, Congress passed legislation invali- news that Americans bought 5 million new guns this year would
dating the Supreme Court ruling and allowing his daughters to certainly bring a smile to Cummings’ face.
claim U.S. citizenship.
The final noteworthy episode of Cummings’ life was a trag- MARK HEMINGWAY is a senior writer for RealClearInvestigations.

Photo: Manual Cover/Interarmco REASON 61

BOOKS

Was the Reagan Revolution

Really Reagan’s?
While we’re at it, was it really a revolution?

JESSE WALKER

OW BROAD WAS the California A FAMILIAR METAPHOR—OFTEN attributed to Reagan, though its
tax revolt of the 1970s? Broad origins are cloudy—calls conservatism a three-legged stool. In
enough to stretch from Ronald its idealized form, the three legs are free enterprise, a strong
Reagan to the Black Panthers. national defense, and traditional moral values. In practice,
The Panthers’ position is “free enterprise” is often a cover for protecting or subsidizing
mentioned only briefly in Rick business interests, “national defense” for global intervention,
Perlstein’s Reaganland—just “moral values” for moral panic.
a single sentence meant to get However you define them, each leg grew stronger as the
across how widespread dis- ’70s melted into the ’80s. They gathered this strength not just
satisfaction with the state’s within the organized right but outside it. These weren’t three
property taxes had gotten. But if you start poking around at legs of a stool so much as three sweeping trends that at times
that spot, you’ll find a deep rabbit hole just waiting for you to combined to form the conservative movement but were quite
explore it. With “most tax increases,” proclaimed the Panther capable of operating independently too.
slate in Oakland’s 1973 municipal elections, “the poor always The social conservatives were concentrated in a network
suffer and Black people, in particular, suffer most.” The can- known as the New Right. The New Right’s boundaries are not
didates went on to decry everything from the property tax to easy to define, but three overlapping developments were at
the business license tax, and along the way they complained its core. One was a set of high-profile grassroots right-wing
about how much money was spent on police pensions and rebellions in the early ’70s, notably the anti-busing riots in
downtown businesses. They also grumbled that black Oak- Boston and a dispute over textbooks in West Virginia. Another
landers were being taxed without representation, since the was Christian conservatives’ growing willingness to enter the
levies were imposed “by the all-white Oakland City Council.” political realm—and to work across denominational lines—to
Reaganland is 914 pages long, not including its extensive battle secularism. (The most important causes here were the
endnotes, and nearly every one of those pages could send you fights against legalized abortion and against an effort to strip
down an equally fascinating rabbit hole. This is the fourth and segregated religious schools of their tax-exempt status.) The
probably final volume in Perlstein’s series of books on recent third element was a group of money-savvy activists, many of
American history, and like its predecessors it is both informa- them based in the world of direct mail, who set out to weave
tive and entertaining. Perlstein is an engaging storyteller with those organic backlashes into an organized political force.
a talent for juggling multiple narratives, and he is able—not Perlstein is at his best covering these culture wars. The
always, but usually—to write empathetically about people he lead-up to the National Women’s Conference of 1977, a battle-
fundamentally disagrees with, a useful skill for a liberal histo- ground between feminists and traditionalists, is rendered
rian describing a country’s turn to the right. here as a series of vivid set pieces told from multiple points of
That shift is Perlstein’s big subject, a fact he signals by sub- view. Perlstein’s political sympathies are with the feminists,
titling the book America’s Right Turn, 1976–1980. The combi- but he’s attuned to the reasons many working-class women
nation of title and subtitle might prompt a double take, since felt alienated from the most visible feminist groups. “Femi-
Reagan did not become president until 1981. For the bulk of nist leaders tended to be lawyers, professors, and foundation
Reaganland, the man in the White House is not Reagan but executives. No wonder they viewed working outside the home
Jimmy Carter. as fulfilling,” he writes, summarizing a ’70s study. “The same
Yet the title isn’t an error. One of the book’s chief themes is survey found that most antifeminist activists who worked
that America’s move rightward began well before Ronald Rea- were unmarried, had menial, deadening jobs, and 90 percent
gan entered the Oval Office. Its cover shows Reagan and Carter had no college degree. In the world as these women experi-
seated together in the back of a limo—two rivals riding the enced it, marriage was what rescued you from work.”
same car. Their destination: Reagan’s inauguration. Perlstein is similarly sensitive when describing that con-

62 MARCH 2021
flict over tax exemptions for segregated not mention that the city government
schools. Most modern accounts see constructed housing and subsidized the
this as little more than a batch of rac- harbor ferry on which Friedman was
ists trying to preserve their privileges, filmed praising Hong Kong’s market
but Perlstein notes that the new rules economy. But Friedman was making
really were poorly crafted: The institu- an argument about the absence of trade
tions whose representatives descended barriers and economic controls, not
on Washington to protest the change claiming that the city had no economic
included not just segregation academies interventions at all. (The book version
but schools that made good-faith efforts of Free to Choose, which has more space
to recruit black students. They just for details, does mention both the
couldn’t afford the procedural hurdles public housing and the transportation
the rules would impose. After hearing subsidies.)
many hours of testimony along these Perlstein is better when discuss-
lines, the Internal Revenue Service ing the group he calls the “boardroom
revised the proposal to take some of Jacobins.” Before the ’70s, he notes,
these complaints into account. driven rightward, in part, by their Cold business interests tended to accommo-
That’s not to say the dispute was War commitments—were becoming a date themselves to federal regulation.
a mere misunderstanding, easily bigger presence in elite circles. Their Or at least a certain sort of company
resolved. For many Christians, that favorite politician was Scoop Jackson, did: “blue-chip firms, safe, stable, and
compromise wasn’t enough; there were a senator from Washington who mixed perennially profitable, impervious to
deeper ideological battles, and not just his left-liberal economic opinions economic downturns.” Resistance was
the one over race. To the proposal’s most with militaristic views on foreign more likely to come from businesses
radical opponents, the key question was policy. But with Jackson unable to that were “smaller, family-held, concen-
whether the government could dictate take the Democratic nomination and trated in midsized cities that ordinary
orders to religious institutions in the with Reagan hoisting the anti-détente citizens rarely dealt with, who didn’t
first place. “These men do not have the banner in the GOP, many neocons were care what the New York Times said
rightful authority,” one testified, “to tell willing to cross party lines. They offered about them.” These enterprises “tended
us how to run our schools, our homes, a highbrow counterpart to the lowbrow to operate with less secure profit mar-
and our churches.” jingoism of the New Right, which stoked gins compared to blue-chip firms, and
As the cultural revolutions of the grassroots anger with direct-mail felt far more vulnerable to federal regu-
1960s and ’70s swept through the broadsides against the Panama Canal lation.” And they didn’t have nearly as
country, the backlash was not limited “giveaway.” much pull in Washington.
to the New Right; it wasn’t just Jerry But in the ’60s and ’70s, an anti-
Falwell’s fans who found themselves AND THEN THERE’S the stool’s third business backlash fueled a new wave
uncomfortable with widespread leg—the one that’s either pro-market of restrictive legislation, much of it
marijuana use or the new visibility or just pro-business, depending on how pushed by the crusading attorney-
of gay culture. And the second leg of seriously the speaker takes his small- activist Ralph Nader. Larger businesses
the conservative stool was even more government rhetoric. eager to fend off those rules became
well-represented outside standard I mentioned earlier that Perlstein more willing to criticize the post–New
conservative circles. Liberal hawks usually writes with empathy about Deal state. They also became more
had long been a part of the political positions he doesn’t share. This is the willing to call on voices around the
landscape, and they coexisted uneasily area where he is most likely to let that country—sometimes real grassroots
with the Carter administration’s more slide. Take his discussion of Free to activists, sometimes astroturf fronts—
dovish members. Carter himself grew Choose, a 1980 TV series hosted by the to argue their case. And so Perlstein’s
more hawkish toward the end of his libertarian economist Milton Friedman: Jacobin capitalists were born.
term. And if that wasn’t enough for Here the text sometimes devolves into As always, many politicians of the
antsy Cold War liberals, a new tribe was heckling, as when Perlstein complains era used free market rhetoric as a cover
waiting to welcome them. that the show’s praise for Hong while advancing economic interven-
The neoconservatives—an Kong’s free market successes was a tions on corporate interests’ behalf.
assortment of formerly left-wing figures “thoroughgoing fantasy” because it did In the Republicans’ 1980 presidential
Illustration: Michael Del Priore/Wikimedia REASON 63
BOOKS

primaries, the most pro-business candidate was former Texas libertarians. It’s that the third leg of the conservative stool, like
Gov. John Connally. Connally was happy to invoke the idea those other two legs, was hewn from sentiments that didn’t just
of free enterprise, especially when it came to removing the show up on the right.
regulations that afflicted his beloved energy companies, but In 1980, the socialist weekly In These Times noted that
his platform was filled with not-so-free market ideas about “all three major candidates for chief executive of the world’s
bailouts and subsidies—especially for those aforementioned biggest government are running against big government.”
energy companies. The unsigned editorial did not proceed to defend big
Perlstein regularly highlights moments when Democrats, government. It argued that those candidates—Reagan,
at times including Carter, were less willing to tax, spend, Carter, and independent John Anderson—didn’t really want
and regulate in this period. He is especially attentive to the “to end federal government involvement in the economy,”
ways this strained the president’s relationship with the more since “federal regulation of the economy has been welcomed
conventionally liberal elements of the party—tensions that or sought by American business leaders since the late 19th
culminated in Ted Kennedy’s challenge to Carter in the 1980 century” and most federal regulation “has been a case of big
Democratic primaries. Perlstein arguably overstates Carter’s business regulating itself and others through government.”
fiscal conservatism: The book notes several examples of the Echoing Nader, the editorial went on to distinguish those
president’s reluctance to spend money, but total federal spend- unwelcome rules from legislation “in the spheres of safety,
ing was nonetheless higher when he left office than when he health and the environment,” which it supported. But it
came in. But if anything, Perlstein understates how much this wrapped up by demanding a “socialist federalism that will
rebellion against the liberal state took hold on the left. strengthen the power of state and local governments and
Take the deregulation of trucking and air travel. These are begin dismantling the highly centralized agencies created to
market-friendly policies that were not mere sops to business, insulate corporate power from popular control.”
since they removed the rules that maintained the country’s States’ rights and an assault on the regulatory state, but
transportation cartels. More to the point, they weren’t simply from the left. Is this mirror-universe Reaganism?
signed by President Carter; they were advanced in the Senate The authors of that editorial were not free marketeers, no
by Ted Kennedy, the very man who ran against Carter from more than John Connally was. But they were deeply disil-
the left. Outside the government, they were championed by lusioned with the mid-century liberal consensus. The sheer
the boardroom Jacobins’ bête noire, Ralph Nader. Indeed, ubiquity of this disillusionment suggests that more was afoot
Nader accused Reagan, Connally, and the U.S. Chamber of here than a mere right turn.
Commerce of being weak on trucking deregulation.
Nader was, in fact, a leading voice for loosening large THAT REJECTION OF the consensus had its limits. Most Ameri-
swaths of the regulatory state. In his foreword to the 1973 can voters did not relish the thought of, say, giving up their
book The Monopoly Makers, Nader decried “corporate social- Social Security checks. Periodically in Reaganland, the title
ism,” a system in which “public agencies control much of character claims while campaigning that he had never said
the private economy on behalf of a designated corporate Social Security should be voluntary. Perlstein points out that
clientele,” locking out competition, raising prices, and block- the younger Reagan had, at the very least, called for adding
ing disruptive technologies. Reaganland includes a detailed “voluntary features” to it.
account of Nader’s failed attempt to create a federal agency Once in office, though, Reagan stuck with his revised posi-
of consumer affairs, an entity he hoped would be less suscep- tion. In 1983, facing the possibility that Social Security would
tible to industry capture. It has less to say about his efforts to become insolvent, he raised the payroll tax and forced a host
reduce the powers of those captured agencies. of federal employees to start paying into the system. The
Needless to say, Kennedy and Nader were not opposed to bill that did this, he declared, “demonstrates for all time our
the entire regulatory apparatus. In The Monopoly Makers, nation’s ironclad commitment to Social Security.”
for example, Nader took care to distinguish economic That legislation is discussed in another recent book,
regulation, which he frequently opposed, from health and Marcus Witcher’s thoughtful Getting Right With Reagan. If
safety regulation, “which seeks to complement, not replace, a Reaganland reminds us that America’s right turn began well
market system.” But then, many of those boardroom Jacobins before Reagan became president, Getting Right With Reagan
defended economic interventions when it suited them too. reminds us that it didn’t go nearly as far as the conservatives
(The Carter-era Chamber of Commerce supported several of the 1980s preferred. Witcher, a historian at Huntingdon
subsidies, and it fought to kill a bill that would have loosened College, examines all three legs of the right-wing stool, show-
federal restrictions on peaceful union picketing.) Anyway, ing how economic, social, and defense conservatives each
my point isn’t that the liberal lions of the ’70s were really found disappointment in the Reagan years.

64 MARCH 2021
For angry free marketeers, Reagan conservative band of lobbyists and ideo- three legs are separated, the result is
was a president who promised to keep logues could not. not rubble; it’s a host of alternative
spending under control but instead let The other place where Witcher stools, fashioned from alternative
it explode, who promised free trade but doesn’t grapple as thoroughly as he combinations of legs. Libertarians
imposed new tariffs and quotas, who could with Reagan’s record is the preach open markets without
never deregulated as much as Carter did so-called Reagan Doctrine, a policy of supporting vice laws or the national
and in some spheres regulated more. arming anti-communist forces in the security state. Certain sorts of
For disgruntled social conservatives, Third World. Witcher mentions the most authoritarians do the reverse. And
Reagan was a fair-weather friend who prominent of those rebel groups, the every now and then, there’s a Panther
chased their votes but rarely expended Nicaraguan Contras, noting that several tax revolt.
any political capital on their behalf. The conservatives complained that the
JESSE WALKER is Reason’s books editor.
hawks were particularly prone to curs- White House wasn’t as committed to the
ing the president after he moved toward Contra cause as they were. Fair enough,
negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail but Reagan did keep the aid flowing.
Gorbachev. More importantly, the president’s
Witcher’s argument isn’t that Reagan willingness to intervene in Third World
wasn’t really a conservative; it’s that conflicts, from Nicaragua to Angola
he wasn’t as uncompromising as his to Cambodia, reveals a record more
base would have liked. (If you’re used hawkish than you see if you focus solely
to hearing AIDS activists arguing that on his relations with the Soviet Union.
Reagan barely lifted a finger to stop Even the Reagan Doctrine had
the disease, your head may spin as you roots—or at least one root—in the
read quotes from New Right activists Carter era. One of the anti-communist
unhappy that he barely lifted a finger to groups receiving U.S. assistance was the
crack down on gays in the name of pub- mujahedeen, a Muslim guerrilla force
lic health.) Witcher makes a good case fighting Soviet invaders in Afghanistan.
that the 40th president didn’t prioritize That particular flow of aid began under
the social conservatives’ issues, though Reagan’s predecessor. Once again, a leg
he doesn’t discuss some places where of the conservative stool looks a lot like
Reagan did give them some wins. It was forces that aren’t ordinarily thought of Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976–
1980, by Rick Perlstein, Simon & Schuster,
Reagan’s attorney general, after all, as conservative. 1,120 pages, $40
whose pornography commission called
for a crackdown on obscenity. And the THE PICTURE BECOMES yet more com-
Federal Communications Commission plicated when you compare the U.S.
tightened its restrictions on “indecent” with the rest of the world. Virtually
radio broadcasts during Reagan’s every country has adopted at least some
presidency, though the so-cons surely degree of market reform since the late
considered that a bittersweet victory as 1970s—and how much they liberalized
not just profanity but nudity became doesn’t seem to be correlated with how
standard fare on cable television. attached they are to moral conserva-
In short, Reagan threw social con- tism or to international saber-rattling.
servatives some bones but didn’t really Who enacted the most radical
try to stop the broad cultural shifts market reforms of the late Cold War?
that their movement was dedicated to The nominally socialist New Zealand
reversing. Tellingly, the administra- Labour Party, which freed prices, dereg-
tion’s most notable socially conservative ulated industries, privatized state-
policy was one that drew support from owned enterprises, and eliminated an
across the political spectrum, not just assortment of subsidies. It also decrimi-
from the New Right faithful: the war on nalized gay sex and barred nuclear- Getting Right With Reagan: The Struggle for
drugs. A broad-based moral panic got armed American ships from its ports. True Conservatism, 1980–2016, by Marcus
M. Witcher, University Press of Kansas, 448
political results that a self-consciously When the conservative stool’s pages, $39.95

REASON 65
BOOKS

A Radical History of Tennis?

Despite some interesting tidbits, a new history of the game falls short.

CLAYTON TRUTOR

HEN HISTORIANS SPEAK of America (2004). Unfortunately, A People’s History of Tennis

“the people,” I cringe. Do they has a few more helpings of Zinn’s lefist dualism than it does
mean the industrial working Rosenzweig’s celebration of laborers who built a life of their
classes? Do they mean own choosing outside of their daily work.
historically disadvantaged This is, to be clear, an interesting book. Berry catalogs
groups in a broader sense? some of the sport’s most idiosyncratic figures, both well-
Do they mean the kind of known and forgotten, from both the recent and the distant
checklist diversity one sees in past. He makes a strong case that tennis has a history beyond
contemporary advertising? the pomp and privilege with which it is often associated.
Or do they actually mean Berry’s history of the game is filled with figures who worked
everyone? I never know what to think. cracks into the game’s aristocratic foundations, opening the
Regardless of what David Berry intended people to mean sport up to men and women of different races, socioeconomic
in the title of A People’s History of Tennis, I was excited to backgrounds, and sexual orientations.
read the book. I am an avid reader of the history of tennis Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, the delightful crank who
and have long had a scholarly interest in labor history. I held helped popularize lawn tennis in the 1870s, exemplifies the
out hope that this book was less Howard Zinn and more Roy interesting characters who populate Berry’s book. Wingfield
Rosenzweig, whose Eight Hours for What We Will (1985) was a promoted tennis as a civil and healthful game of skill for both
serious study of working-class recreation and workers’ efforts sexes rather than as a Darwinian contest of brawn, helping
to assert autonomy from corporate paternalism in their free establish tennis’ appeal and social acceptability for both men
time. A number of other fantastic culturally oriented studies and women. Other noteworthy gadflies in the book include the
followed in Rosenzweig’s footsteps, including Kathy Peiss’ early tennis champion Lottie Dod, who argued successfully
Cheap Amusements (1986), Robin D.G. Kelley’s Race Rebels against changing the rules of the game for women to make
(1996), and Jackson Lears’ Something for Nothing: Luck in it safer; George Elvin, the tennis star, trade unionist, and

66 MARCH 2021
Labour Party activist who organized Fashion, for example.
a “Worker’s Wimbledon” in the 1930s; Tennis’ tent has proven the largest Berry’s decision
and Leif Rovsing, the Danish tennis star when the sport has gone beyond the to steep his story
who was banned from the sport for his courts, out into the streets, and become
“presumed homosexuality” in 1917. couture. For more than a century, kids in the tropes
But Berry’s book strays too far from of all social classes on both sides of of socialist
these colorful characters too often. He the Atlantic have adopted the fashion
has a tendency to reduce the past to pre- styles popularized by the game’s icons:
realism makes
dictably Manichean morality plays. The Bill Tilden’s V-neck sweaters, Suzanne this otherwise
forces of “the powerful” roam around Lenglen’s revealing tennis skirts,
excellent book
like the shark in Jaws, forever seeking to Maureen Connolly’s cardigans and
wreak havoc on the sterling designs of pleats, the preppy-chic “polo” shirts of weaker.
“the people,” who themselves are pre- René Lacoste and Fred Perry, the sleek
sented as a fairly uniform whole—like Adidas shoes known as Rod Lavers
a collective of scrappy Gavroches sing- and Stan Smiths, the Nike athletic
ing a chorus of “Little People” from Les wear of the Williams sisters, the terry its title, Howard Zinn’s essential but
Miserables. The likes of Major Wingfield cloth headbands that have held back hamfisted A People’s History of the
and Lottie Dod are interesting enough many a flowing lock, most memorably United States. To count as one of “the
in themselves. Berry’s decision to steep Bjorn Borg’s. people” in either people’s history, one
his story in the tropes of socialist real- In the U.K., the sport’s iconography has to be an obvious trailblazer for
ism makes this otherwise excellent has played a particularly profound role some disadvantaged demographic or
book weaker. in shaping youth culture. Fred Perry, part of an organized left-wing political
Moreover, Berry’s assessment of who Fila, Lacoste, and Adidas are standard movement.
counts as part of the establishment is issue for an array of subcultures in the Actual people, rendered in any sort
a bit strange. To be a part of the pow- British Isles. From casuals to chavs to of complexity, bear little resemblance to
ers that be, one need not be wealthy or mods, British kids have appropriated “the people” as invoked in these books’
particularly powerful. One need only the styles of the court to express an titles. However noble the authors’ inten-
hold cultural views that are anything identity apart from the humdrum of the tions, this approach turns the past into a
less than the most progressive at the everyday. floor plan for a coffee-shop manifesto.
time to be considered a part of the David Berry shows some interest
CLAYTON TRUTOR teaches history at Norwich
establishment. in this aspect of tennis history. One University in Northfield, Vermont.
Berry also has a puritanical streak, of his book’s most inspired sections
which comes to the fore when he dis- profiles Lenglen’s 1919 Wimbledon
cusses the sport’s sexuality. Berry is debut, where the English press dubbed
interested in people of different sexual her the “French Hussy” for her risqué
orientations breaking barriers, but he is attire—her mid-calf Jean Patou skirt,
not very interested in people expressing brightly colored cardigans, and silk
their sexuality as either participants chiffon headband. He also touches on
in or spectators of the game. He lauds the British fashion designer Teddy Tin-
the milestones crossed by LGBT players ling and the alluring outfits he created
while avoiding all but the most cursory for the statuesque Gertrude Moran for
mentions of their actual sexuality. her Wimbledon appearances in 1949.
Berry’s most pronounced discussion of But his interest in fashion is scattershot,
sex in the book is an admonishment of depriving his readers of a genuine sense
male spectators for their “gaze” at pro- of the practice of everyday life.
vocatively dressed female tennis play- A People’s History of Tennis is
ers. And this is supposed to be a book of less a people’s history of the game
“the people”! than an odds-and-sods history of
groundbreaking individuals and formal
SOME ELEMENTS OF the game’s cultural political activism. It falls into the same
A People’s History of Tennis, by David Berry,
impact aren’t discussed nearly enough. trap as the work it pays homage to in Pluto Press, 256 pages, $19.95.

Photo: Helen Wills-Moody in the ladies doubles at the 1932 Wimbledon tournament; Iconographic Archive/Alamy REASON 67
REVIEWS

V IDEO GA M E

A HAND WITH MANY

FINGERS
C.J. CIARAMELLA

MOV IE Have you ever wanted to piece

together an international
HILLBILLY ELEGY conspiracy with nothing but
a bunch of newspaper clip-
STEPHANIE SLADE pings, a corkboard, and some
red twine? If you’re reading
It has been much remarked that this, there’s an above-average
Hollywood, whose denizens fall chance you have, in which case
generally to the left of House you should check out A Hand
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, often Yet even as Disney’s mega- With Many Fingers.
produces movies with conser- TV This indie computer game
budget features frustrated

THE MANDALORIAN
vative themes. That is certainly fans, two animated television puts you in the shoes of a
true of Ron Howard’s adapta- shows—The Clone Wars and Star researcher spending a few late-
tion of J.D. Vance’s memoir Wars: Rebels—had been quietly night hours alone (or are you?)
Hillbilly Elegy, the moral of PETER SUDERMAN in a CIA archive. The gameplay
thrilling the franchise faithful.
which is that hard work and Executive produced by Dave is actually just doing archival
self-discipline can overcome After Disney bought the rights Filoni, the shows filled in the research: flipping through card
the snares of poverty.  to Star Wars from LucasFilm gaps of the Lucas prequels while catalogs, retrieving cardboard
In depicting Vance’s true-life in 2012, it promised a revital- expanding the cast of Star Wars boxes from the basement, and
journey from the Appalachian ization of the franchise. Fans regulars. Filoni was interested pinning the clippings you find
hill country to Yale Law School, had mixed feelings about the in governance; the show often onto your corkboard.
the film studiously avoids trio of prequels George Lucas explored the nooks and crannies The incident you investigate
explicit discussion of what released from 1999 to 2005, of the political and economic is the real-life 1980 death of
caused his family’s plight or and there was a sense that order. But he was also interested an Australian banker, whose
what his escape implies. Unlike the brand, once the emperor in people and what motivates associates included former CIA
the book, it is not a political of American pop culture, had them to do right and wrong. agents and U.S. special forces
story. Yet it has been met with fallen into disrepair. In 2019, Filoni’s vision helped soldiers. You uncover a story
all-but-universally negative A sequel trilogy, book- inform The Mandalorian, the first of Cold War dirty laundry as
reviews in the mainstream ended by films directed by J.J. live-action incarnation of Star you use the tidbits you find to
press, and it’s hard not to think Abrams, debuted to big box Wars to hit the small screen. pursue new leads. The game
that has something to do with office numbers. But the rev- Playful, adventuresome, and approximates the feeling and
Vance’s well-known nationalist enues declined as the sequels at times gently profound, the satisfaction of doing actual
conservative politics. went on, and the series was show offered a revived vision investigative work fairly well.
When a movie’s audience plagued by production prob- of Star Wars as a playground It’s short enough that it doesn’t
score on Rotten Tomatoes lems. Fans became increas- for elaborate narrative and wear out its welcome, and it’s
is more than three times its ingly disillusioned. Abrams and worldbuilding rather than a only $5.
critic score, something may Disney, it seemed, had squan- simple family saga. At the end of For those who like to con-
be at work beyond mere dif- dered the Star Wars universe. 2020, a second season explicitly nect dots, A Hand With Many
ferences in artistic preference. Worse, they had narrowed its connected the show to Filoni’s Fingers scratches that very
Hillbilly pulls back the curtain scope, focusing on characters animated series and began particular itch. It even man-
on a slice of America that many and events that sprang from hinting that it might rescue the ages, with impressively minimal
elites would prefer not to think the original series rather than Abrams-era trilogy too—a new effort, to be spooky. You might
about, especially in a post- building out the world they fictional universe built out of the find yourself looking over your
Trump era. inherited. shell of the old one. shoulder as you play.

68 MARCH 2021 Photo: The Mandalorian/Disney+

SOCI A L M EDI A

SUBSTACK
TELEV ISION KATHERINE MANGU-WARD

THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT Andrew Sullivan made

the jump from New York
MIKE RIGGS PODCAST magazine. Matthew Yglesias
bounced from Vox, a web-
HOW TO FIX THE site he helped start. Glenn

INTERNET
The Netflix adaptation of Greenwald noped out of
Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel The The Intercept, which he also
Queen’s Gambit has punched helped found. What has lured
above its weight since it started SCOTT SHACKFORD so many big names away from
streaming in October. The sets traditional media? Substack.
and costume are gorgeous Do you actually own those The company, which
and the acting is good, but songs and books you’ve down- enables paid online newslet-
the stakes are nonexistent: We loaded onto your smartphone? DOCUM EN TA RY ters, was founded in 2017;
know from the first episode Why is the government able to it is backed by Andreessen
that child chess prodigy Beth
Harmon (played by 24-year-old
access your online data without
your permission? Why is broad-
BELLY OF THE BEAST Horowitz, Y Combinator, and
other investors known for
Anya Taylor-Joy) is going to band internet so lackluster in BILLY BINION glomming on to the next big
win a lot of matches, even with parts of the country? And how online thing. Many veterans
a tranquilizer habit clinging to exactly does that secret federal of the early blogosphere are
her back. surveillance court work? When you hear the word attracted to Substack because
But there is more to this How we deal with the many eugenics, you may be more they believe it promises a
story than a phenom making privacy and access problems likely to think of Nazi Germany return to the freewheeling
the most of her gifts. Set in the associated with online com- than California. But the former days of chatty, unedited
1950s and ’60s, The Queen’s munications and data storage studied the latter’s sterilization internet commentary—and an
Gambit has more to say about is the focus of How To Fix the practices to hone its approach. opportunity to keep more of
geopolitics and culture than Internet, a six-part podcast And while Germany’s program the fruits of their labors.
it does about opening moves. organized by the Electronic died with the Nazi regime, Cali- I look forward to the day
Episode by episode, we learn Frontier Foundation. Hosted by fornia’s has lasted much longer. when clusters of Substack
that America’s best players Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien, To see it at work, watch Belly writers with some kind of
were largely anonymous, duk- each episode brings in a guest of the Beast, a documentary shared interest start publish-
ing it out in drabby hotels and for a breezy but detailed dis- exploring forced sterilizations ing together on a regular
high school cafeterias, while in cussion of a particular internet in the state’s women’s prisons. schedule. Maybe they can call
other countries—particularly issue. The film follows Kelli Dillon, it a “magazine.”
Mexico, France, and the Soviet The Cato Institute’s Julian who spent 15 years in the Cen-
Union—chess was a celebrated Sanchez (a Reason contribut- tral California Women’s Facility
and even glamorous sport. ing editor) joins them to dis- for killing her abusive husband.
It’s fascinating to watch cuss the origins and operations While she was behind bars, her
Taylor-Joy as the only woman of the secretive Foreign Intel- uterus was removed against
climbing the American ranks, ligence Surveillance Court—an her will.
but her speedy evolution into institution initially designed In 2006, Dillon sued the
an anti–Cold Warrior is the to protect Americans from government after experiencing
better subplot. Upon qualify- unwarranted domestic snoop- menopause at the ripe age of
ing to play in Moscow against ing, but which under post-9/11 24. Along the way, she and her
the USSR’s top talent, Harmon governance has evolved into legal team received reports
is recruited first by a Christian something else. Jumana Masa from other prisoners who were
nonprofit hellbent on fighting of the Fourth Amendment Cen- forcibly sterilized while giving
the evils of atheism and then ter visits to discuss how and birth or undergoing unrelated
by a State Department appa- why police are often able to surgeries.
ratchik who cares only that demand your private data from Dillon lost her suit. But
Harmon can beat the Soviets tech companies without your years later, in 2014, she testi-
“at their own game.” permission and sometimes fied in support of a California
She rebuffs both parties by without your knowledge. bill to ban sterilizations as a
refusing the former’s funding Each episode explores form of birth control; that time
and the latter’s instructions how to fix laws that entrench she succeeded. It’s up to the
to bash the Soviet Union. privacy-violating practices viewer to decide if she won
For Harmon, chess no more and what to do about big tech the larger war. “As to whether I
“belongs” to any nation or companies that take advantage think it should be illegal,” says
gender than does the moon. of regulations to suppress com- one anonymous prison nurse
When she wins, it’s for her, not petitive upstarts. shrouded in darkness, “not nec-
the jingoists. essarily.”

Photo, bottom: Belly of the Beast/Idle Wild Films/PBS Independent Lens

Photo, top: The Queen’s Gambit/Netflix REASON 69
FROM THE ARCHIVES

20
including some of the most emi-
nent and respectable in the field,
who find, somewhat to their own
surprise as they reflect upon the
matter for the first time, that the
private right to keep and bear
YEARS AGO arms is very much in character
with the Bill of Rights as a whole
March 2001 and with the thinking of the
Framers of the Constitution.”
DANIEL POLSBY
“Whatever one may think of the
“Second Reading”
Florida high court’s handling of
the election cases, there’s no

40
disputing that when it comes to
lack of judicial restraint, it’s the repression and economic hard- but with tomorrow, with youth,
U.S. Supreme Court that takes ship have sought and found with anyone who will listen. Our
the prize.” sanctuary on its welcoming day has not come and gone. But
shores. Until the Immigration it could be coming.”
MIKE GODWIN Acts of 1921 and 1925, few were ROY CHILDS
“Election 2000” turned away, and those who
YEARS AGO “Big Business and the Rise of
were admitted generally found
American Statism, Part Two”
March 1981 a better life than they had left
“Adults who enlist in the anti- behind.”
television crusade always insist
DAVID REES “To decide if the police are effi-
that it is ‘impressionable youths’
“So, while Ronald Reagan is cer- “Who Can Cross Our Borders?” cient, one must question the
whom they wish to protect. In
tainly no libertarian, he has in ethical suppositions which act
the guise of shielding youths,
the past occasionally demon- as the rationale and source of

50
however, adults are trying to
strated healthy attitudes toward wisdom for the present sys-
contain and control them.”
reducing taxation. No doubt this tem. Because efficiency can be
JIB FOWLES has something to do with his defined only with reference to
“The Whipping Boy” almost constant struggle with desired goals, underlying prem-
IRS harassment since the end of ises need to be carefully exam-
World War II, not to mention his ined. Indeed, the greatest por-
“Punditry rests on a foundation experience of having been in the YEARS AGO tion of today’s police problems
of easy stereotypes, clichés 91 percent tax bracket during can be traced to either the fact
that make it easier to fit one’s the late 1940s.” March 1971 that few people really know
ideas into a short op-ed or what they want the police to do
TIMOTHY CONDON
even shorter soundbite. So or to the fact that people have
when social conservatives and “What Will Reagan Do About “Libertarians must stop look- exceedingly hazy or dogmatic
Taxes?” ing to the past for allies in their
liberal social engineers team up reasons for asking police to do
against speech that both find struggle for a rational culture the tasks selected as ‘proper.’”
distasteful—be it pornography, and look toward the future.
“Mr. Reagan should reconsider LANNY FRIEDLANDER
South Park, or video games—the Our hope lies, as difficult as it
the grey areas he has accepted may be for some to accept, not “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot
combination is inevitably labeled
as warranting compromise of with remnants from an illusory Straight”
an ‘unusual alliance,’ even if
the principle of individual liberty. ‘golden age’ of individualism,
those allegedly unusual allies
He should take to heart his very
have been snuggling for years.”
own words that ‘libertarianism
JESSE WALKER and conservatism are traveling
“Intolerant Alliance” the same path,’ and he should
make this into a policy, not just

25
a bland wish. The world and this
country today need far more
human liberty than anything else
conservatives have to offer.”
TIBOR MACHAN
“Some Thoughts for the New
YEARS AGO President”

March 1996
“The United States has acquired
an enviable reputation as a
“In the law journals if not yet in haven for refugees. The adven-
media of mass circulation, the turous and the skilled have grav-
Second Amendment has cap- itated to its opportunities; the
tured the attention of scholars, victims of political or religious

70 MARCH 2021 Photo: Ron Brown. Illustration: Reason, Marc Michelon

Q&A

Walter Williams, RIP A: Not to the California taxpayers. When I finished ripping them off, I
left [the state].

INTERVIEW BY NICK GILLESPIE

Q: How did you help build George Mason’s economics department
WALTER WILLIAMS, THE free market economist and iconoclast, died in into a hotbed of research from a libertarian perspective?
December at the age of 84. The author of 13 books, Williams was A: When James Buchanan won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
best known for 1982’s The State Against Blacks, which documented Sciences in 1986, we had 26 faculty members. When I became depart-
how government interference in the market has been especially ment chairman [in 1995], we had 18. There was considerable hostility
harmful to African Americans. toward our department. I tried to work with the administration to rehire
Born in 1936, Williams grew up in the Richard Allen Homes, one of those people, and I had a lot of difficulty, so I just said, “Well, the only
Philadelphia’s first housing projects. When he was a small child, his way I’m going to improve the department is try to privatize the depart-
father left his family. He was brought up by his mother, a high school ment and go out and raise money to hire people and subsidize hiring
dropout, and the family spent time on welfare. Williams would later people.” A lot of it was from the result of the generosity of supporters
draw a distinction between material poverty and what he called “pov- like the Lilly Endowment and the [John M.] Olin Foundation.
erty of the spirit.”
He worked as a taxi driver in the City of Brotherly Love and was
Q: People in the academy said this was a corporate takeover.
drafted into the peacetime Army. After his military service, Williams
studied economics at California State College and then went to UCLA A: It was not a corporate takeover. The people who gave money
for graduate school, where he was exposed to the ideas of Milton respected me and my ambitions, and I had complete say over how the
Friedman, James Buchanan, and his own department chair, Armen money was spent.
Alchian. In 1977, Williams started writing a weekly column, which
was eventually syndicated in 140 newspapers. He was also a Reason Q: Do you feel that you’re part of the libertarian movement?
contributor and trustee emeritus on the board of Reason Foundation,
the nonprofit that publishes this magazine. A: No, I don’t. I’m not part of a movement. I’ve never been part of a
For all his individual accomplishments, Williams was especially movement. I just do my own thing.
proud of his role in making George Mason University’s economics
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity. For
department a home for free market radicals. “GMU Econ has lost an
an video version, visit reason.com.
iconic and heroic figure,” wrote Peter Boettke, director of the school’s
F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and
Economics. He added that Williams “taught with wit and passion the
logic of economic reasoning.”
Reason’s Nick Gillespie interviewed Williams in 2011. An excerpt
from their conversation follows.

Q: Do you think the roundabout way you got your economics educa-
tion was better for you than if you’d been a childhood whiz kid and
gone straight to college after high school?
A: If I’d gone to college right after high school, it would have been an
unmitigated disaster. I was too immature. I was unprepared to make the
sacrifices necessary. I think that’s true for many people. My daughter
was 17 years old and went right into college. If we had to do it again, I
would have gotten her a job at a McDonald’s or a carwash for a couple
years to let some maturity set in. So maybe take a year or two and then
go to college. But more importantly, pay your own way.

Q: You mention college subsidies quite often. The state univer-

sity system in California was essentially free in the 1960s and 1970s.
Wasn’t that a good thing, even if it was appropriated from taxpayers?
A: No, it’s not a good thing!

Q: Would you have been able to go to college otherwise?

A: I might not have. A lot of the incentive for my wife and I to move from
Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 1961 was that no way in the world could I
afford to go to Temple University. It was the cheapest school in the city,
and it was like $2,000 a year. I went to Cal State Los Angeles, and it was
$125 a year, I believe. So I got a highly subsidized education.
I don’t know whether I would’ve got an education. But still, because
I got an education doesn’t mean it was a good idea to rip off California
taxpayers.

Q: If you take a cost-benefit analysis of the cost to taxpayers of you

attending college, and then what you’ve paid back in taxes—

Photo: Craig Terry/Manhattan Institute REASON 71

BRICKBATS

($1,014). The church had a security guard who had

planned to broadcast the tested positive for the virus.
service by radio while those
attending remained in their
Facebook has agreed to
cars. Under provincial emer-
comply with the Vietnamese
gency orders to combat the
government’s demand that it
coronavirus, only online reli-
censor “anti-state” material.
gious services are permitted.

The government of Quebec

When Joseph Bennett
says it will ban the sale of
noticed some Jeffersonville,
gasoline-powered passenger
Kentucky, police officers near
cars in 2035. The govern-
a McDonald’s, he decided to
ment of British Columbia had
stop and videotape them.
already announced it will ban

The Department of Home- A government spokesman

land Security inspector says it “might have been
general is investigating premature to hold a press
whether U.S. Customs and conference” touting the bust
Border Protection’s purchase before doing full lab tests.
of cellphone location data
without warrants is improper.
The American Civil Liberties
The agency has paid nearly
Union (ACLU) of Indiana
half a million dollars to access
has filed a lawsuit claiming
a database compiled by a
that Manchester High
marketer. In 2018, the U.S.
School violated the First
Supreme Court ruled that the
Amendment rights of Dondre
government must generally
Eades. The junior wore a
obtain a warrant to obtain
shirt to school that read “I He was standing across the the sale of gasoline-powered
such data from cellphone
hope I don’t get killed today parking lot, well away from trucks and cars by 2040.
carriers, but the agency
for being black.” He says the officers, when some of
argues that because it is buy-
administrators told him to them approached him and
ing the information from a Two separate federal lawsuits
remove the shirt. When he demanded ID. When he
third party, the decision does are challenging an Oregon
refused, they removed him refused, Bennett claims, an
not apply. coronavirus relief program
from school for the day. The officer punched him. Bennett
ACLU says the shirt did not that will funnel $62 million
was handcuffed and cited
In November, Thai officials violate the school handbook, solely to black Oregonians,
for menacing and resisting
announced the largest and students have worn saying it unconstitutionally
arrest. A police spokesperson
ketamine bust in the nation’s shirts with other political discriminates against those
says the department is inves-
history, ensnaring some messages on them. of other races. The state
tigating the matter.
11.5 tons of the anesthetic. legislature passed the law
They now say they were despite advice from its own
Police in Sarto, Manitoba, Officials in South Australia lawyers that it was unconsti-
wrong. The white powder
Canada, blocked the locked down the entire state tutional.
was all actually trisodium
entrance to the parking lot after a man told them he got
phosphate, a cleaning agent.
of a local church to prevent the coronavirus from picking
it from having a drive-in —CHARLES OLIVER
up a takeout order at a pizza
service in November. They restaurant. Fearing they
also fined a man who did pull had a superspreader event
into the parking lot CA$1,296 on their hands,
authorities even
banned outdoor
exercise and
dog walking.
But three
days later,
they lifted the
lockdown. It
turned out the
man had lied.
He actually
worked at the
restaurant
alongside

72 MARCH 2021 Illustrations: Peter Bagge

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QUESTIONS ABOUT VOX PERPETUA?

Contact us today for more information.
Britt Paul
Director of Donor Engagement
717-525-3110
[email protected]
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