John Perry Barlow, Prominent Libertarian, turns against Bushco, for Kerry

[dumpster_baby]

Interesting interview in Reason magazine with well-known Libertarian author and founder of the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) John Perry Barlow, a former Cheney campaign manager who is now supporting kerry and very very interested suddenly in beating Bush (join the club); he appears to even be advocating turning away from corporate capitalism.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

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"...we need something -- and I think it’s governmental -- to reregulate the market and make it free, because the multinationals have taken it away.

....

I’ve gone back and forth with politics. I’ve been a Republican county chairman. I was one of Dick Cheney’s campaign managers when he first ran for Congress. But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn’t worth the trouble put in. I thought it was better to focus on changing yourself and people around you, to not question authority so much as bypass it whenever possible.

But by virtue of our abdication, a very authoritarian, assertive form of government has taken over. And oddly enough, it is doing so in the guise of libertarianism to a certain extent. Most of the people in the think tanks behind the Bush administration’s current policies are libertarians, or certainly free marketeers. We’ve got two distinct strains of libertarianism, and the hippie-mystic strain is not engaging in politics, and the Ayn Rand strain is basically dismantling government in a way that is giving complete open field running to multinational corporatism.
...
The other medium, TV, has a much smaller share of viewers than at any time in the past, but those viewers get all their information there. They get turned into a very uniform belief block. TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.

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Here is the interview in its entirety:

http://reason.com/0408/fe.bd.john.shtml

[aquart]

1. My, my, my. Another one wakes up.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

2. oops nt

[Must_B_Free]

3. Oh please

You're telling me that Bob Weir's songwriting partner was EVER a Bush supporter? he's always been against the GOP Borg.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

4. isnt Anne Coulter sort of a Deadhead?

seems I read that somewhere.

And this GOPer was their lyricst. Neat.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. One of these is a duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x67844