I blog about Reason magazine here. Some good, some bad, and much to be perplexed over. Keith Halderman has his own opinion on this thing over at the History News Network blog.
When I first became a libertarian back in the late 1980s I used to love Reason Magazine. On the day an issue appeared in my mailbox it got read cover to cover and the information presented was invaluable to a budding activist trying to convince others that freedom was the correct path. Now, I would not let my dog take a dump on it because it is just not good enough for him.
In spite of my 'sometimes good, sometimes bad, often terrible' opinion of Reason and my partial praise of the magazine/website in general, I do agree that Reason is lowering itself to the point of becoming a persistent platform for gossip, trash, and Soviet-style guilt by association. The attempt at trash journalism is so bad that people have taken to using sources such as no-name bloggers with empty profiles and "open secrets" (whatever that means) of certain sects of the libertarian movement. The magazine's attitude of "political correctness or else" jives with the appointment of Matt Welch as the magazine's mouthpiece-in-chief. The Postrel years were awful, but under Welch Reason has become worse than awful - it is a launching pad for loose cannons that claim the glorious high mantle of anti-bigotry as they endlessly launch hyper-emotional, crazed rants at those who have dared to "just say no" to The Kochtopus. The loose cannons scrambled from one venue to another - including The Economist - in order to launch their attacks from various platforms in order to make it appear as if those few people engaged by The KochtopuSS were actually many people who all shared the same sweet goal: take Lew Rockwell and his one-man "empire" down because he, and all associated with him, are guilty of not living up to the various moral codes of the state that will be enforced by Beltway "libertarians" and Kochtopus. Well, the offensive lacked any heavy artillery, and in fact it launched wet noodles and promptly fell off the radar map of the blogosphere. The loose cannons keep trying to revive interest in their pc garbage journalism, but the comments underneath the blog threads tell us that, in general, people are sick of the constant pc policing and phony do-goodism.
Prior to the Welch era, I don't believe this would have happened. But hey, I could be wrong. And lastly, thank goodness for Justin Raimondo, whose pen is mightier than any rubber sword offered up by the agents of the Beltway at Reason or elsewhere.
