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Reason

11 min read

Reason is a libertarian publication and media outlet discussed across multiple episodes of The Bob Zadek Show. In the excerpts, it appears both as an institution — a magazine, a foundation, and a website — and as a stable reference point for the show’s libertarian framing. Bob Zadek describes Reason magazine as “the flagship publication of the Reason Foundation” and “the voice of reason,” with the tagline “Free Minds and Free Markets” The Capitol Riot in Context (2021). Nick Gillespie is identified as editor of Reason.com and Reason TV and as a former editor-in-chief of Reason magazine Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason (2011). Robbie Soave, another Reason figure, appears as a guest promoting a book and directing listeners to Reason.com On Crowds and Tribalism (2019).

Nick Gillespie and the case against subsidized art

In a 2011 episode, Bob Zadek introduces Nick Gillespie as editor of Reason.com and Reason TV and a former editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, and frames the episode around a Reason TV piece by Gillespie on government funding of the arts Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason (2011). Zadek opens by proposing, as a reductio, a federal agency to fund “really bad lawyers” so they can produce “really bad law,” then turns the analogy to artists. He states that in 1965 the federal government formed the National Endowment for the Arts, which he characterizes as funneling money to artists who could not otherwise earn a living.

Gillespie agrees that public arts funding is “just not necessary” and argues that “publicly financed art—art that is publicly financed by the taxpayers—is easily censored art.” He says he is a strong supporter of the arts and spent about a decade pursuing a PhD in literature, and he distinguishes two questions: whether to support art, and whether the government should compel support. He compares art to religion, arguing that just as freedom of religion implies freedom from religion, there should be freedom of art and freedom from art. He cites roughly $13 billion a year in philanthropic donations to arts and cultural organizations, which he says dwarfs the hundreds of millions going to the National Endowment for the Arts and its state and local analogs. Zadek presses the point that he should not be compelled to pay for art he dislikes, and Gillespie calls the arrangement “morally wrong and aesthetically suspect” as well as “totally unnecessary from a financial point of view.”

The episode’s excerpt ends mid-sentence in a later section, with Zadek beginning a segment titled “Censorship and the Political Process” and no further text.

Robbie Soave and the closing of an episode

A 2019 episode closes with Bob Zadek asking Robbie Soave how listeners can follow his writing and work at Reason On Crowds and Tribalism (2019). Soave directs listeners to his Twitter handle, @RobbieSoave, and to Reason.com, and mentions a book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, available for pre-order and due out in June. Zadek wishes him luck and asks him to say hello to “all my good friends at Reason,” saying he will see them in a couple of weeks. The excerpt contains no discussion of Reason’s internal structure or editorial positions beyond this sign-off.

The Capitol riot and the erosion of institutional trust

In a January 2021 episode recorded after the Capitol riot, Zadek introduces Gillespie as editor-at-large for Reason magazine and describes the publication as the flagship of the Reason Foundation The Capitol Riot in Context (2021). Zadek calls the riot “an organized riot” planned in advance and says President Trump “incited” the rioters, using the word in both its technical and everyday senses. He criticizes the Capitol Police as having done “a miserable job,” and places the riot in the context of the Black Lives Matter rioting the previous spring following “bad actions by police in Minneapolis.”

Gillespie agrees on the importance of context while explicitly declining to suggest “any moral or political or cultural equivalency” between Black Lives Matter and the pro-Trump rioters, whom he holds responsible for five deaths in DC. He describes a “long-lived, continuous erosion of trust and confidence in all aspects of government,” naming the presidency, the Supreme Court, and Congress, and noting that Congress had been in the single digits in approval at various points. He argues that absent the coronavirus lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter riots, the Capitol riot would not have occurred, and that the underlying dynamic will not disappear with a change of administration. He compares the moment to the 1960s, which he says were violent on both sides of the political spectrum, and says governments of all ideologies have lied to the American people and failed to deliver.

Zadek argues that Martin Luther King’s statement that “a riot is the language of the unheard” has been taken out of context and misused as a justification, and that the failure of public officials to renounce rioting made rioting an acceptable tool across the political spectrum. The excerpt breaks off as Zadek begins a section titled “The Power Void and the Rise of Strongmen.”

Qualified immunity and the role of juries

A 2022 episode with Clark Neily discusses qualified immunity, though the excerpt does not identify Neily’s affiliation with Reason Judicial Round-Up with Clark Neily (2022). Zadek frames the discussion by noting that the Supreme Court has in effect reversed the Enforcement Act of 1871, which he calls “a sound statute for a sound reason,” and that the bar for overcoming qualified immunity is “very, very high.” He asks Neily for examples of how qualified immunity has harmed citizens.

Neily describes a case the Supreme Court allowed to stand from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, covering the mountain states including Colorado. A young man recorded police conducting a violent arrest — officers punching a suspect in the face to extract drugs from his mouth — and the officers surrounded him and demanded he turn over the recording device so they could delete the video. He sued on the theory that he had a constitutional right to record police in public. Neily notes that the officers had been trained by their own department that citizens have that right, that about half of the federal circuits have said there is such a right, and that the Justice Department has sent letters to police departments saying so. But because the Tenth Circuit had not yet weighed in, the court granted qualified immunity, which Neily calls “qualified immunity in a nutshell.”

Zadek asks whether there is merit in not holding officers civilly liable for conduct they could not have known was wrong. Neily responds that the Fourth Amendment already contains a reasonableness standard and that the Constitution assigns the determination of reasonableness to citizens, not to judges — whom he notes are disproportionately former prosecutors. He cites a law review article by Joanna Schwartz finding that police do not in fact stay up at night reading judicial opinions. Zadek raises the exclusionary rule as the traditional remedy for unreasonable searches and seizures, and Neily pushes back, describing civil liability and exclusion as “belt and suspenders.” The excerpt ends as Zadek begins a section titled “Absolute Immunity and the Prosecutor Problem.”

Across episodes

Reason appears in three episodes across a decade, and the treatment changes with the show’s news context rather than with any development in Reason itself. In 2011, Gillespie is introduced as editor of Reason.com and Reason TV and speaks as the author of a Reason TV piece on arts funding Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason (2011). In 2019, Soave closes an episode by directing listeners to Reason.com and to his book On Crowds and Tribalism (2019). In 2021, Zadek introduces Gillespie as editor-at-large for Reason magazine and describes the publication’s tagline and its relationship to the Reason Foundation The Capitol Riot in Context (2021). The 2022 episode with Clark Neily discusses qualified immunity but the excerpt does not link Neily to Reason Judicial Round-Up with Clark Neily (2022). The excerpts show no argument about Reason’s role or doctrine that develops between episodes; the publication is a constant reference point while the topics change.

What the sources do not cover

The excerpts do not state when Reason was founded, who founded it, where it is based, or how it is funded. They do not describe its editorial structure, its relationship to the Reason Foundation beyond Zadek’s description of the magazine as the foundation’s flagship, or any internal debates. They do not state Clark Neily’s affiliation, if any, with Reason, nor do they give the outcome of the qualified immunity case beyond the Tenth Circuit’s ruling. The excerpts also do not state the name of any bill, the holding of any case beyond what the speakers describe, or the amendment on which any case turned, except where the Fourth Amendment is named.

Guests and episodes

25 appearances by 19 guests, 2009–2023.

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