This late June marks the 30th anniversary of the first issue of Liberty magazine, the libertarian fanzine I helped found in 1987. (I worked on the project for twelve years.)
My boss, Bill Bradford, and I were very new to the desktop publishing revolution that summer. We had just purchased our Mac Plus computers, and Bradford had invested in the application Ready,Set,Go!, then the leading page layout application. On the first day we produced a newsletter, his hard-money investment four-pager Analysis & Outlook. That must have been in early June. I am pretty sure we finalized the first issue of Liberty in late June, but it may have in July.
The issue itself was dated August 1987, and it sure was ugly.
But the content was interesting.
It featured a fascinating article on Ayn Rand’s film work by Stephen Cox, a Ron Paul for President endorsement and salvo by Murray N. Rothbard, a terrific essay by Butler Shaffer, and a fascinating memoir of a 1960s libertarian survivalist and eccentric, by Ben Best. My written contributions were two: a review of Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions, and a think piece on the Russell Means’ run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination — the latter published under a pseudonym. I remember senior editor Stephen Cox not thinking much of my piece, but Bradford was enthusiastic. He himself had written about the LP contest between Means and Paul under his own pseudonym, “Chester Alan Arthur.”
Years later, Bradford told me that I had cooked up the name for our final-page feature, “Terra Incognita,” which was designed to carry on in the tradition of H. L. Mencken’s “Americana” series from The American Mercury. Bradford loved the basic idea, and had fun producing it for years. I was initially less than impressed, and quickly forgot I had a hand in any creative aspect of its development. But later I came to enjoy it, somewhat. Now I tend to think it the best part of the magazine!
I will no doubt continue to reminisce about the ongoing 30th anniversaries of Liberty as the months go by.
Wirkman Comment 