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Nick Gillespie

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Nick Gillespie is the editor of Reason.com and Reason TV and a former editor-in-chief of Reason magazine. He appeared on The Bob Zadek Show at least twice: in a 2011 episode on government-subsidized art, and in a 2021 episode on the Capitol riot. In both, Bob Zadek introduces him as a voice of reason and a libertarian, and Gillespie speaks in his own person about arts funding, institutional trust, media and political parties.

Government-subsidized art

Zadek opens the 2011 episode by proposing, as a thought experiment, a federal agency that would give grants to really bad lawyers so they could produce really bad law for clients who would never pay. He then turns the analogy on artists, noting that the federal government formed the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965 to funnel money to artists who otherwise could not earn an honest living Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason (2011). Gillespie agrees that public financing of art is not necessary and says it gets treated as something sacrosanct when it is not.

Gillespie stresses that he is a supporter of the arts, having spent about a decade working toward a PhD in literature, and separates that from the policy question. His central argument is that publicly financed art is easily censored art: public support for the arts brings public outcry over the arts, a tension that is good for nobody, neither the taxpayers forced to pay for what they do not want nor the artists who take the money and then have to pay the piper. Zadek puts the same point in the first person: he does not want to be compelled to support art he happens not to like, and offers the formula that each person supports his own art, or no art.

Gillespie extends the analogy to religion. He observes that nobody argues the government should finance all religion, because religion is recognized as individual and not subject to compulsion through taxes or mandatory donations; if there is freedom of religion, which also means freedom from religion, there should be freedom of art, which means freedom from art. He identifies himself and Zadek as libertarians with a small l, and says the political question of what a majority may decide for everyone else does not reach art or religion.

On the financial side, Gillespie cites Americans’ philanthropic donations to arts and related cultural organizations at about $13 billion a year, separate from admission fees, ticket prices and book sales. That figure, he says, dwarfs the hundreds of millions that go to the National Endowment for the Arts and its state and local analogs. His conclusion is that taxpayer subsidy of art is morally wrong, aesthetically suspect and financially unnecessary Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason (2011).

The Capitol riot in context

In the January 2021 episode, recorded in the week of the Capitol riot, Zadek describes an organized riot in Washington that was planned in advance and out in the open, says President Trump incited the rioters who stormed the Capitol, and criticizes the Capitol Police as unable to rise to the task. He asks Gillespie to put the rioting in context The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).

Gillespie agrees that the larger context matters while refusing any moral or political or cultural equivalency between Black Lives Matter and the pro-Trump people he holds responsible for five deaths in Washington. His frame is a long-lived, continuous erosion of trust and confidence in all aspects of government — the presidency, the Supreme Court and Congress, the last of which he says was at various points in the single digits in approval. He argues that absent the coronavirus lockdowns there probably would not have been the riots after George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis, and that absent the Black Lives Matter riots over the summer there would not have been the Capitol riot. He calls what happened at the Capitol indefensible and says Trump and those involved need to be held to account, but adds that it will not go away when Joe Biden shows up on January 20th or if Trump is impeached or removed before his term is up.

Gillespie compares the moment to the 1960s, noting that Reagan conservatives painted that decade as a prolonged panty raid by left-wing radicals and missed that there were almost as many right-wing radicals and that the decade was violent on both sides. He traces the present unrest to a loss of confidence in government institutions eroded over 40 or 50 years, which he says happened for good reason: governments of all ideologies have lied to the American people, failed to deliver what they promised and acted perniciously, so that people riot against the police and riot against Congress The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).

Zadek supplies a second thread, arguing that a Martin Luther King quotation — that a riot is the language of the unheard — has been taken out of context and misused as a justification. In Zadek’s reading, King was saying that where a segment of the population is unheard, rioting is a logical symptom, not a license; and because public officials, especially on the left, did not renounce the rioting and destruction appropriately, rioting became an acceptable tool, and if it is acceptable for the left it is acceptable for the right.

Media, parties and the libertarian opening

Later in the 2021 episode, Zadek describes a politically active friend who limited his media intake to radio Gunsmoke reruns, and offers his own analogy: just as one can either go to medical school or rely on a doctor chosen by reputation, one can outsource the search for truth to journalists whose wisdom one has judged for oneself, avoiding entertainment media. Gillespie recognizes the impulse to pull back — he calls the ease with which the clown commandos got into the Capitol building stunning — but says turning away is not an option. He says Reason is trying to offer an alternative way to talk about politics, engaging in productive, fair, good-faith arguments about what matters The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).

Gillespie then frames the moment as an opportunity for small-l libertarians who believe in individual autonomy and voluntary communal action. He argues that American politics has become more polarized because the parties are in thrall to activist wings that are unrepresentative and atypical of the average voter and even of the modal Republican or Democrat; what people want, he says, is not mushy moderation but principles that let you predict and control and regulate where things end up. Libertarianism, in his account, can speak to people who want institutions — social, economic, cultural and political — that let individuals become the best version of themselves. He warns that when people shrink back they create a vacuum in politics and commerce, and that the people who fill it will not be good for the future.

Zadek closes the exchange by recommending two Reason products: Gillespie’s weekly long-form podcast, The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie, and The Reason Roundtable, a Monday discussion among Gillespie and fellow Reason editors that Zadek describes as a casual chat among four dear friends and wise people.

Across episodes

The two episodes share a method rather than a developing argument. In 2011 Gillespie reasons from the individual taxpayer’s claim not to be compelled, applying it to the NEA and to philanthropy’s $13 billion; in 2021 he reasons from the individual’s claim to autonomy, applying it to parties, media and the vacuum left by institutional failure. The excerpts show no change in his position between the earlier and later treatment, and no exchange in which either man revises a view advanced in the other episode.

What the sources do not cover

The excerpts do not give Gillespie’s age, birthplace or education beyond his mention of about a decade spent working toward a PhD in literature, and they do not state when he became editor of Reason.com or when he left the editor-in-chief role. They do not describe the contents of The Declaration of Independents beyond the summary that it concerns independent voters who favor fiscal responsibility and social tolerance over traditional partisan politics. The 2011 excerpt breaks off at the start of a section on censorship and the political process, and the 2021 excerpts break off mid-sentence in two places, so the arguments made in those sections are not available here.

Episodes

2 appearances, 2011–2021.

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