Karl Hess, center, at the Future of Freedom conference in 1981. Timothy Leary is on the left; I don't know who the person is on the right. Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia, information here. UPDATE: The other guy is Manny Klausner, a former Reason editor who died this year, see this obit.]
A followup to my recent post on Jesse Walker's article about Karl Hess and John McClaughry: Jesse sent me a link to a PDF of a libertarian newsletter, the Summer 1981 issue of the Libertas Review, and it has a passage I thought some of you might be interested in, from an article about a speech by Karl Hess:
After the complimenting the audience many times for their good grasp of libertarian principles, he stressed that they be put into action to form a libertarian community. "Everybody can tell you about liberty," he exclaimed, "now we need a place where we can see the damn thing." In this context, he points out, "A statement of principle should simply be an explanation of the way you live your life."
When asked afterward during the question and answer period if there were any authors that influenced or described his position, he mentioned Robert Anton Wilson. Since he had quoted novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand, saying that reason is the best tool an individual can have, many in the audience were surprised when he quoted Wilson saying, "There is no truth and everything is permissible!" He went on to say that, "Even though there is no truth and everything is permissible, you still must, yourself, say things that you feel to be true, and you must not do things that you feel to be impermissable, and there is no power on earth except the power of your own volition that will lead you in these directions."
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The person on the right is former Reason editor Manny Klausner, who passed away earlier this year.
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