Reason Magazine is a publication discussed repeatedly on The Bob Zadek Show, where host Bob Zadek describes it as his favorite magazine and where several guests have worked as editors or authors. Across the excerpts, the magazine appears both as an object of the host’s enthusiasm and as the institutional affiliation of guests who advance libertarian arguments about constitutional limits, the courts and education.
Bob Zadek’s praise for the magazine
Bob Zadek opens his October 2010 interview with Matt Welch by telling him he has been a fan of the magazine forever, saying that Boy’s Life had once been his favorite magazine but that Reason Magazine had elbowed it out as his favorite publication of all time. He calls it the most readable, most fun to read, most informative, cutting-edge publication one could ever imagine, and tells Welch, “Thanks so much, you’re doing God’s work.” A Libertarian Plan (2010)
Later in the same episode, Zadek describes himself as a Reason Magazine sycophant and recounts the day he fell in love with the magazine. He says he had been a subscriber for many years and recalls an issue, probably four or five years earlier, whose topic was something like the disappearance of the right to privacy. On the cover, he says, was the text “Mr. Zadek, we know where you are,” with an arrow pointing to a circle containing a satellite photo of the street where he lived with his house circled. He states that the magazine had a print circulation of about 75,000 readers at the time and that each of them received their own version of the cover. He says the creativity of that issue earned the magazine his lifetime subscription. A Libertarian Plan (2010)
Zadek returns to the theme in September 2021, introducing Matt Welch as editor at large at Reason magazine and calling it his super, super favorite, with no second choice magazine that he reads as soon as it comes out. He says he reads the paper edition, that it is a cover-to-cover read, and that he has never found a story in Reason magazine he wanted to skip, even on topics he was not generally interested in. Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021)
Matt Welch and the libertarian plan
In the October 2010 episode, Welch is identified by Zadek as editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine. Welch responds to Zadek’s praise by saying the magazine is trying to have fun in an era with too many examples that would make a person pessimistic, and that he still thinks there is a case for optimism “if you look everywhere except politics.” A Libertarian Plan (2010)
Welch tells Zadek that the country has developed a feeling, going crazy especially over the last 100 years, of looking to the federal government to solve any and all perceived problems, a tendency he traces to Teddy Roosevelt and says has escalated since. He cites the President discussing steroids in professional baseball in a State of the Union address and notes that the Department of Agriculture has 100,000 employees. He says there is a sense that no transaction between Americans should happen without someone making sure everything is on the up and up, and he mentions stories the magazine tracks constantly of seven-year-old kids in Portland, Oregon getting fined for selling lemonade. He describes this as an overweening mindset that came when the country broke through what he calls the constitutional membrane. A Libertarian Plan (2010)
Welch says there is much work to do to roll back the mindset, let alone the legality of things like the expansion of the commerce clause, and he cites the Supreme Court ruling that it is interstate commerce if someone in Oakland grows a marijuana plant in their backyard for personal consumption. He says the country is at a crisis in which every level of American life is out of money, especially the federal level, and that this tends to clarify people’s minds. He describes the magazine’s current cover, featuring a Norman Rockwell-style horrifying hand with a blade coming out in 3D and the message of how to slash government before it slashes you, and says the issue contains page after page of specific, concrete steps to unwind what he calls the incredible overhang. A Libertarian Plan (2010)
When Zadek asks whether Welch can believe a quoted statement from Pete Stark that there are very few constitutional limits preventing the federal government from rules affecting private life, Welch says he can believe it because Stark is giving an accurate reflection of the legal-political climate. He says that since the caller is Republican and he is not, he feels duty-bound to point out that this is a bipartisan thing, and he calls campaign finance reform the biggest assault on the First Amendment in the country over the last 10 years, saying it restricted political speech. He says both parties, especially when they hold power, find whatever excuse they can concoct in elastic phrases to justify unjustifiable expansions of government. A Libertarian Plan (2010)
Damon Root and the war for the court
In a November 2014 episode, Zadek interviews Damon Root, identified as a senior editor of Reason Magazine and author of Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court. Zadek frames the discussion around the role of the unelected nine members of the Supreme Court in affecting everyday life and the degree of liberty Americans enjoy, and asks what the rules ought to be by which the Court reaches decisions. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root describes the combatants in the war for control of the Supreme Court as liberals and progressives on one side and conservatives and libertarians on the other, with conservatives also fighting libertarians within the ranks of the right. He says they are fighting over a vision of the Court and its role in society. On one side, he says, are advocates of judicial deference or judicial restraint, who argue that the courts are the least democratic branch and should therefore defer to the elected branches and the will of the people as expressed through lawmakers. On the other side, he says, is a vision of courts that should be active and aggressive in policing the other branches, acting as a check and as undemocratic by design, stopping the will of the people when the Constitution requires it. He describes this as a vision of the Constitution as a document that protects individual rights and restricts government power, and says libertarians today want the courts to interpret the Constitution that way. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Sean McElwee and the turn from Reason
In a February 2015 episode, Zadek introduces Sean McElwee by noting that McElwee had earlier in his life been libertarian and worked at Reason, which Zadek describes as a leading libertarian think tank and the publisher of Reason magazine. Zadek says McElwee made a conversion from a purely libertarian point of view to one that is at least far more nuanced if not purely progressive. Inclusive Capitalism: Economic Savior or Socialism in Disguise? (2015)
McElwee confirms that he began at Reason and also did work at Stossel on Fox Business News. He describes the libertarian community as very interesting with a lot of different thinkers, a movement with about 6% to 10% support among the American population, and says there is so much debate about what it means to be libertarian that it is a very good intellectual climate. He names Will Wilkinson at the Economist and Julian Sanchez at Cato as people with very libertarian views who have a lot of influence. Inclusive Capitalism: Economic Savior or Socialism in Disguise? (2015)
McElwee says what led him to Demos was the opportunity question. He describes friends who lived in public housing and struggled to help their brothers and sisters, with little opportunity and perhaps a chance to go to community college but with debt and minimum wage jobs. He contrasts this with his own privilege of not having to work during college, which allowed him to dedicate his time to internships and reading, and to travel around the country doing academic debate. He says his goal is to make it so that more people have the type of opportunities he had. Inclusive Capitalism: Economic Savior or Socialism in Disguise? (2015)
On the question of whether everyone has the same opportunity, McElwee says there is relatively good data, pointing to a report from Pew and a recent report from Raj Chetty at Harvard, who he says just received the John Bates Clark Medal. He says these find that where a person is born in the income distribution does not determine where they will end up but strongly predicts it, that many people born at the bottom make it to the top, and that many born at the bottom stay there for their entire lives. He says he would like more absolute upward mobility, pulling everyone up, and that the way to get it is a very strong education system, an accessible healthcare system and accessible housing policy, giving everyone the basic skills to participate in capitalism as it currently exists. He says this is why he likes the baby bond idea. Inclusive Capitalism: Economic Savior or Socialism in Disguise? (2015)
Education and families leaving government-run schools
In the September 2021 episode, Zadek introduces Welch as editor at large at Reason magazine and notes that Welch has written with Nick Gillespie The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America. He says Welch has most recently written in Reason magazine an article whose headline says it all: “Families are fleeing government-run schools.” Zadek notes that Welch is a customer of government-run schools living under the control of the New York City school system. Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021)
Zadek frames the episode around education as a structural element of society that has been stress-tested by the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting questions about who gets to decide, how they get to decide, where the money goes, and what the roles of parents, unions, government and the CDC are. He says these are questions people never asked themselves very much during a non-pandemic environment. Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021)
Welch responds to Zadek’s description of the magazine by saying it is a wonderful employer where he has been happy to work for most of the last 20 years, and that “we write it for you.” Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021)
Across episodes: the magazine as a recurring reference
Reason Magazine appears in four episodes across roughly eleven years, and the excerpts show no development in how the magazine itself is treated: Zadek’s praise is consistent from 2010 to 2021, and the magazine serves throughout as the affiliation of guests — Matt Welch in 2010 and 2021, Damon Root in 2014, and Sean McElwee’s former employer in 2015 — rather than as a subject with its own history. What changes is the guest and the topic: Welch on constitutional limits and the administrative state, Root on the war for control of the Supreme Court, McElwee on economic mobility after leaving the libertarian movement, and Welch again on families leaving government-run schools.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when Reason Magazine was founded, where it is published, who owns it, or what its editorial positions are beyond the libertarian orientation attributed to it by Zadek and his guests. They do not describe the magazine’s internal operations, its circulation beyond the figure Zadek recalls for one issue, or its relationship to any organization. No excerpt states the outcome of the cases discussed, the text of any statute, or the amendment on which any ruling turned. The excerpts also do not cover any episode in which a Reason editor appears without Zadek’s praise or without the magazine being mentioned.