Garry Reed
[Continued from page 2]
SUNNI: Is your wife pro-freedom as well?
GARRY: Mary is apolitical -- wait, she's saying that she agrees with the libertarian viewpoint. Probably a consequence of my years of government bashing.
SUNNI: You told me recently that you've been happily married for about 20 years -- and just to make it clear so you don't get in trouble with her, you remember how long it's been; it's I who can't remember exactly what you said! [laughs] -- Anyway, your happiness was clear in what you wrote to me. Libertarians aren't renowned for their good interpersonal skills, and often we end up in what I call "mixed" relationships -- with someone who isn't as freedom-minded as we are -- which doesn't make the going easier. How do you account for your success with your wife?
GARRY: [laughs] Yes, twenty going on twenty-one now. Actually, I would call ours a mixed marriage, since we probably have far more in uncommon than we have in common. The important thing is that the few common things we have are the really important stuff that trumps all the differences, like mutual love, trust, respect, passion, commitment, moral values, little things like that. For example, shortly after we were married I introduced her to one of my oldest Objectivist/libertarian -- and sexist -- friends who, she later told me, asked if I had converted her to my way of thinking. She angrily told him no and offered as an illustration the fact that she was a "good little Christian girl" -- her words -- while I'm an atheist and we both accept that and have utterly no desire to convert one another. And why would we? If you love whom you marry, why would you take the chance of changing that person into someone you might not love? I also believe that there is no such thing as a commitment, in love or politics or values or anything else, until that commitment is tested. Otherwise you're just a slummer soldier or moonshine patriot, or however that goes. So we've had our tests and we're still together and still in love with each other and that means the love and the commitment are real.
SUNNI: That's a terrific insight, Garry -- well, several, actually, but I mean the one about mixed relationships. All relationships are by definition mixed, because no two individuals' views on any subject will align 100%.
GARRY: Right. And I believe the determining factors are always the intangibles -- why seemingly compatible relationships often fail while seemingly impossible ones last a lifetime.
SUNNI: I didn't mean to get too personal, so let's take this conversation to more general ground. It seems to me that one element that is pretty widely lacking in the freedom movement is positive emotions. I mean, we mostly respond to the state's diktats negatively -- "Oh no, here comes more trouble!" -- and a lot of the activism we pursue isn't exactly fun. That's not to say that we shouldn't point out the encroachments on liberty when they come, and clearly identify them as bad things; but it seems we tend to see the glass as half empty. That kind of negativity doesn't exactly inspire others to want to learn more about the freedom philosophy -- people already have enough negativity in their lives. But, when all's said and done, there are a lot of ways a person can slip through the cracks or just ignore a lot of rules, and live a rewarding life. A person doing that and being happy, and sharing his or her story with others who want to hear it, could probably be much more effective as an advocate of freedom than a dozen Chicken Littles. Uh, can you find a question in there, or something to respond to? [laughs]
GARRY: Sorry, you've just used up all of the words allotted for this interview.
SUNNI: Aaaaaaah!! [laughs]
GARRY: No, wait, here are a few I had stored away in my backup file. [laughs] First, knowing you, I'm sure you didn't mean to give the impression that you're equating negative state-bashing with Chicken Littles, since we both know the difference between crying, "The sky is falling" and guffawing, "The emperor has no clothes!".
SUNNI: Yes, you're right. Thanks for making that distinction more clear.
GARRY: Actually, I've been concerned from time to time about the fact that almost all of my articles are negative, since that's the very nature of satire. How do you lampoon a good thing? Every once in awhile I'll try to write an article with a good positive spin, how different libertarian people and groups like Downsize DC or the Fully Informed Jury people or Ron Paul and the Liberty Committee or the Institute for Justice fighting eminent domain or just ordinary people confronting leviathan and winning. But then, the most positive libertarian people on the planet are the folks at the Advocates for Self-Government. So I'll keep bashing the bureaubrains and happily not interfere with the Advocates' monopoly on the positivity.
