Q&A: Rand Paul Q&A: Ron Paul reason Foreign Aid Is a Failure Free Minds and Free Markets DOES THIS January 2015 MEAN WAR? Libertarian foreign policy gets real(ist) U.S. & Canada $3.95 MINIMIZE YOUR TAXES. MAXIMIZE YOUR CHARITABLE IMPACT. hen you work with DonorsTrust, you immediately Wreceive the highest charitable tax deduction allowed by law. You can further maximize your tax savings by donating appreciated stock, before you sell it, and avoiding the capital gains tax. Freed from tax deadlines, you can thoughtfully choose charitable organizations that best fit Smart giving. your philanthropic goals and realize your dream of making Convenient giving. a lasting impact. Principled giving. DonorsTrust was created to support only those public charities that promote liberty through limited government, personal For more details, visit our Web site responsibility, and free enterprise. If that reflects your intent or call us for a free informational brochure. and wishes as a donor, you won’t find a more reliable ally. Ask us about our wide variety of accounts and foundation- style services. They’re all designed to give you convenient, Donors Trust flexible options for reducing your taxes while increasing BUILDING A LEGACY OF LIBERTY your charitable impact. 703.535.3563 | www.donorstrust.org DT Philanthropic Services, Inc. January 2015 reason Volume 46, No. 8 Free Minds and Free Markets Departments 16 ‘Enough, For All, Forever’ Culture & Reviews A report from New York’s mixed 2 The Reality and Propaganda up, anti-capitalist People’s 58 When Judicial Activists Switched of War Climate March. Ronald Bailey Sides An honest conversation about Deference to elected majorities foreign policy requires us to 78 Stop Complaining About That was a Progressive ideal long confront the brutality and imagery Flying Car. You Have Amazon. before modern conservatives of violence. Matt Welch Getting stuff gets more awesome picked up the baton. Damon Root every day. Greg Beato 4 Contributors Briefly Noted 60 Jesse Walker on S.R. Staley’s 5 Letters and Reaction Features St. Nic, Inc. A lethal injection of reality; Putin’s 62 Matt Welch on the TV show Russia… 18 The Crony Capitalism Litmus Test Manhattan The Ex-Im Bank won’t survive 64 Zenon Evans on the filmThe 6 Citings 2015—if the GOP is serious about Internet’s Own Boy Obamacare costs; patent trolling free market principles. 66 Peter Suderman on the TV show in court; encrypted iPhones; Timothy P. Carney The Knick Uber under siege; the Clinton 68 Robby Soave on the TV show comeback; getting high vs. 26 In Search of Libertarian Shark Tank benefits; we are all mutants Realism now… How should anti-interventionism 68 How Liberals Put Black America apply in the real world? Behind Bars 56 Reason TV: Sex, Spice, and Will Ruger, Sheldon Richman, A surprising new history about Small-Town Texas Justice Fernando R. Tesón, and Christopher race and prison. Thaddeus Russell A rogue prosecutor makes the Preble The First Civil Right: How Liberals war on drugs personal. Built Prison America, by Naomi Anthony L. Fisher 39 Americans Want Action Against Murakawa ISIS…But Do Not Expect Quick, Easy Success 72 Alt-Constitution Columns A Reason-Rupe poll Rewriting the Constitution without Washington’s permission. 12 Ebola, Smoking, and Mission 42 Dr. Never Brian Doherty Creep at the CDC Former Rep. Ron Paul on how America’s Forgotten Constitutions: Controlling contagious diseases ‘military interventions by the Defiant Visions of Power and is just one of many items on the United States after World War II Community, by Robert L. Tsai agency’s to-do list. Jacob Sullum were all unjustified.’ Interview by Matt Welch 76 Our Fairy Godfather 14 Foreign Aid Is a Failure Crockett Johnson’s brilliant Throwing good money at bad 48 The Conservative Realist? Barnaby is back in print. governments makes poor Sen. Rand Paul on ISIS, the Middle Jesse Walker countries worse off. East, and when America should go Veronique de Rugy to war. Interview by Matt Welch 80 Artifact: Meet the ‘Reason’ A new 3-D printed metal gun with a 50 The Case for Conservative familiar name. Brian Doherty Realism Rand Paul Cover Photo: youtube.com reason (ISSN 0048-6906) is published monthly except combined August/September issue by the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, 5737 Mesmer Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90230-6316. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA, and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 2014 by Reason Foundation. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use, without permission, of editorial or graphic content is prohibited. reason and Free Minds and Free Markets are registered trademarks owned by the Reason Foundation. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $38.50 per year. Outside U.S. add $10/year surface, $55/year airmail. Address subscription correspondence to reason, P.O. 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The threatening-looking man on the out campaigns of murder, including against cover of this magazine is an Islamic State (ISIS) Americans, from the murky corners of failed terrorist with a British accent who took the lead states. Neoconservatives on the right and liberal role in propaganda videos showing the behead- internationalists on the left have been treating ing of American journalists James Foley and national sovereignty as an archaic obstacle to Steven Sotloff, acts of horrifying brutality that overcome for most of the post–Cold War era, helped propel the United States into war. with a mixed track record at best. But even Considerably more graphic versions of that someone as committed to nonintervention as image, including a visibly terrified Foley, were Ron Paul (see “Dr. Never,” page 42) will admit run the day after his murder under the headline that having the Taliban help plot the 9/11 “SAVAGES” by both of New York’s major tab- attacks from the safe haven of a dysfunctional loids—the Post and the Daily News. The papers Afghanistan necessitated American military received a smattering of criticism in the press action. So any plausible foreign policy, let alone and across social media for sensationalism, for a libertarian one, needs to grapple with the insensitivity to Foley’s parents, and for amplify- reality of non-state actors. ing the terrorists’ publicity. So why did we put this image on the cover ISIS is also the latest excrescence of a militant of reason? and expansionist wing of Islam that seeks to impose a retrograde Shariah law upon unwill- This special issue of the magazine is dedicated ing human beings, by murderous force if need to the project of applying the clean philosophi- be. And it is an organization that sprang from cal and theoretical underpinnings of libertari- the chaos left behind after misguided American anism to the messy world we live in. That real military interventions in Iraq and Libya. Too world includes several complicating factors many foreign policy commentators—includ- that are best illustrated by the cover image. ing not a few self-identified libertarians—will The first isISIS itself and what it repre- acknowledge only one of the previous two sen- sents. Since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, the tences. As Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says (see “The inviolability of the nation-state has been the Conservative Realist?,” page 48), “Will they bedrock of international relations theory and hate us less if we are less present? Perhaps. But action. No matter how awful the government of hatred for those outside the circle of ‘accepted’ said state might be to its own residents, other Islam exists above and beyond our history of countries maintained a default setting of not intervention overseas.” interfering with its internal affairs unless and The younger Paul, amid much contro- until they spilled over the border in the form of versy, is attempting to apply the principles of state-on-state aggression. The bulk of interna- intervention-skepticism to the also messy world tional conflict, therefore, was government-to- of national politics. The senator is almost cer- government. tainly seeking the presidential nomination of a ISIS—like Al Qaeda, from which it sprang— political party that is considerably more hawk- has complicated that narrative by being a ish than he, and he has been calibrating his transnational aggressor organization carrying message and positioning—including support 2 | reason | January 2015 for bombing ISIS—against that back- noninterventionism,” but that mes- cartoon caricatures of the Prophet drop. Which brings us to the next sage can fall flat on the ears of a pub- Muhammad. key foreign policy concept our cover lic in mid-panic. Engaging people image represents: politics, and the emotionally—even only to acknowl- You can interpret the image on the underlying public opinion behind it. edge their emotion in the course of cover as a scary harbinger of an ISIS’ beheading videos were dosing it with reason—is a necessary open-ended transnational war in carefully composed to maximize step if libertarian foreign policy is the Middle East peppered by spo- Western attention and dread, with going to escape the margins to which radic moments of gruesome anti- their native English narrator and it is too often confined.