Karl Hess was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
national-level
speechwriterA speechwriter is a person who is hired to prepare and write speeches that will be delivered by another person. Speechwriters are used by many senior-level elected officials and executives in the government and private sectors.-Skills and training:...
and author. He was also a political philosopher,
editorEditing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
,
welderA welder is a tradesman who specializes in welding materials together. The materials to be joined can be metals or varieties of plastic or polymer...
, motorcycle racer, tax resister, atheist, and
libertarianLibertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
activist. His career included stints on the
RepublicanThe Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
rightIn politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
and the
New LeftThe New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
, the latter coincident with his embrace of
market anarchismFree-market anarchism refers to an individualist anarchist philosophy in which monopoly of force held by government would be replaced by a competitive market of non-monopolistic organizations providing security, justice, and other defense services...
.
Early life
Hess was born in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and moved to the
PhilippinesThe Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
as a child. When his mother discovered his father's marital infidelity, she divorced her wealthy husband and returned (with Karl) to Washington. She refused
alimonyAlimony is a U.S. term denoting a legal obligation to provide financial support to one's spouse from the other spouse after marital separation or from the ex-spouse upon divorce...
or child support and took a job as a telephone operator, raising her son in very modest circumstances. Karl, believing (as his mother did) that
public educationState schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
was a waste of time, rarely attended school; to evade
truancyTruancy is any intentional unauthorized absence from compulsory schooling. The term typically describes absences caused by students of their own free will, and usually does not refer to legitimate "excused" absences, such as ones related to medical conditions...
officers, he registered at every elementary school in town and gradually withdrew from each one, making it impossible for the authorities to know exactly where he was supposed to be. He officially dropped out at 15 and went to work for the
Mutual Broadcasting SystemThe Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...
as a newswriter at the invitation of Walter Compton, a Mutual news commentator who resided in the building where Mrs. Hess operated the switchboard. Hess continued to work in the news media, and by age 18 was assistant city editor of the
Washington Daily News. He was later an editor for
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
(from which he was fired for refusing to write
PresidentThe President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
's
obituaryAn obituary is a news article that reports the recent death of a person, typically along with an account of the person's life and information about the upcoming funeral. In large cities and larger newspapers, obituaries are written only for people considered significant...
) and
The Fisherman. After that, he worked for the Champion Papers and Fibre Company, where his bosses encouraged him to get involved in conservative politics for the company's benefit. In doing so he met
ArizonaArizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
SenatorThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Barry GoldwaterBarry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
and many other prominent Republicans, thus beginning the GOP epoch of his life.
Hess enlisted in the
U.S. ArmyThe United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
in 1942, but was discharged when they discovered he had contracted
malariaMalaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
in the Philippines.
In his book
Dear America, Hess wrote that he became an atheist because his temporary job as a coroner's assistant when he was 15 left him convinced that people were simply flesh-and-blood beings with no afterlife. Consequently, he stopped attending church (he had been a devout Roman Catholic). Years later, while on leave from Champion and working for the
American Enterprise InstituteThe American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
(AEI), he resumed attending church because virtually all of his AEI colleagues did so. His return merely reinforced his atheism; on one Sunday morning, while enduring a service as his young son sat on his lap, Hess became disgusted with himself for exposing his child to an institution he himself had rejected.
Political activities
As a speechwriter for
Barry GoldwaterBarry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
, Hess explored
ideologyAn ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
and
politicsPolitics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and attracted some public interest. He was widely considered to be the author of the infamous Goldwater line, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue," but revealed that he had encountered it in a letter from
LincolnAbraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
historian Harry Jaffa and later learned it was a paraphrase of a passage from
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
. Hess was also the primary author of the Republican Party's 1960 and 1964
platformsA party platform, or platform sometimes also referred to as a manifesto, is a list of the actions which a political party, individual candidate, or other organization supports in order to appeal to the general public for the purpose of having said peoples' candidates voted into political office or...
. He later called this his "
Cold WarriorCold warrior is a phrase used to describe the men and women involved in the shaping and executing of American and Soviet policy during the Cold War....
" phase.
Following the
1964 presidential campaignThe United States presidential election of 1964 was held on November 3, 1964. Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had come to office less than a year earlier following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Johnson, who had successfully associated himself with Kennedy's...
in which Lyndon Johnson trounced Goldwater, Hess became disillusioned with traditional politics and became more radical. He parted with the Republicans altogether after being rejected for employment with the party, beginning work as a heavy-duty welder. He publicly criticized big business, suburban American hypocrisy and the
military-industrial complexMilitary–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
. Though well beyond college age, Hess joined
Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
, worked with the
Black Panther PartyThe Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
and protested the
Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
During that time, newly elected President Johnson, a Democrat who was apparently displeased with Hess for having been a Republican, ordered the
Internal Revenue ServiceThe Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
to
auditThe general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...
him. When Hess asked if a certain deduction he had claimed was right, his auditor reportedly replied, "It doesn't matter if it's right; what matters is the law." Incensed that the auditor would see a difference between what was "right" and "law," Hess sent the IRS a copy of the
Declaration of IndependenceThe Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
with a letter saying that he would never again pay taxes. The IRS charged him with
tax resistanceTax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax or to government policy.Tax resistance is a form of civil disobedience and direct action...
, confiscated most of his property and put a 100% lien on his future earnings. When implementing the penalty, the IRS told Hess that he no longer would be permitted to possess money; he reminded them that without money he could not buy food and would soon die. The IRS said that was
his problem, not theirs. Remarkably, Hess was never incarcerated on this matter, probably due to astute,
pro bonoPro bono publico is a Latin phrase generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and strategy consulting firms...
legal representation and his status as a
folk heroA folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...
. He was supported financially thereafter by his wife and used
barterBarter is a method of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral, and usually exists parallel to monetary systems in most developed countries, though to a...
to keep himself busy. Later, however, he expressed ambivalence about becoming America's most notorious tax resister and wrote that his act of
civil disobedienceCivil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
could have effected dramatic reforms in tax law had 10 million or more of his fellow Americans joined him in defying the IRS.
In 1968,
Richard NixonRichard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
was elected president and Barry Goldwater went to Washington as
ArizonaArizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
's junior senator. Hess, despite now being a member of the New Left, had recently written some speeches for Goldwater and resumed their close personal relationship; he had concluded that American men should not be forced into military service and urged Goldwater to submit legislation abolishing
conscriptionConscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
. Goldwater replied, "Well, let's wait and see what Dick Nixon wants to do about that one." Hess despised Nixon almost as much as he admired Goldwater and could not tolerate the notion that Goldwater would defer to Nixon. Thus ended one of Hess's closest professional associations and significantly compromised one of his deepest friendships.
Hess began reading American anarchists largely due to the recommendations of his friend
Murray RothbardMurray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
. Hess said that upon reading the works of
Emma GoldmanEmma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
he discovered that anarchists believed everything he had hoped the Republican Party would represent, and that Goldman was the source for the best and most essential theories of
Ayn RandAyn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
without any of the "crazy
solipsismSolipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus and ipse . Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not...
that Rand was so fond of."
From 1969 to 1971 Hess edited
The Libertarian Forum with Rothbard.
Hess eventually put his focus on the small scale, on community. He said, “Society is: people together making culture.” He deemed two of his cardinal social principles as being “opposition to central political authority” and “concern for people as individuals.” His rejection of standard American party politics was reflected in a lecture he gave during which he said "The Democrats or liberals think that everybody is stupid and therefore they need somebody... to tell them how to behave themselves. The Republicans think everybody is lazy..."
In 1969 and 1970, Hess joined with others, including Murray Rothbard,
Robert LeFevreRobert LeFevre was an American libertarian businessman, radio personality, and primary theorist of autarchism.-Early life:...
,
Dana RohrabacherDana Tyron Rohrabacher is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the 45th and 42nd, serving since 1989. He is a member of the Republican Party...
,
Samuel Edward Konkin IIISamuel Edward Konkin III was the author of the New Libertarian Manifesto and a proponent of the political philosophy which he called agorism. Agorism is a leftward evolution of anarcho-capitalism, and subset of market anarchism...
, and former
Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
leader
Carl OglesbyCarl Oglesby was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society from 1965 to 1966.-Early years:...
to speak at two "left-right" conferences which brought together activists from both the
Old RightThe Old Right was a conservative faction in the United States that opposed both New Deal domestic programs and U.S. entry into World War II. Many members of this faction were associated with the Republicans of the interwar years led by Robert Taft, but some were Democrats...
and the
New LeftThe New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
in what was emerging as a nascent
libertarianLibertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
movement. Hess later joined the Libertarian Party which was founded in 1971, and served as editor of its newspaper from 1986 to 1990.
Adams-Morgan experiment and back-to-the-land
Hess was an early proponent of the "
back to the landThe back-to-the-land movement calls for occupants of real property to grow food from the land on a small-scale basis for themselves or for others, and to perhaps live on the land while doing so....
" movement, and his focus on self-reliance and small communities happened in part by government mandate. According to a
Libertarian Party News obituary, "When the Internal Revenue Service confiscated all his property and put a 100 percent
lienIn law, a lien is a form of security interest granted over an item of property to secure the payment of a debt or performance of some other obligation...
on all of his future earnings, Hess (who had taught himself welding) existed on bartering his work for food and goods."
With Goldwater’s 1964 defeat, Hess and others on the losing team had found themselves outsiders within the national Republican party due to their support of that controversial politician. Anticipating that making a living as a speechwriter thereafter might prove a challenge, Hess had begun to learn welding. This activity put him in rapport with a very large segment of the American population who are manual laborers. He eventually came to the conviction that virtually no one in national politics identified with these people anymore. When Hess revolted against public giantism – a distrust toward large-corporate business as well as big government – his conviction prompted him to withhold federal income tax payment; legal troubles ensued, but he had welding skills (and the practice of barter) to fall back on. After Hess had made friends within the New Left and related circles, he began to encounter the young, new-breed “appropriate technology” enthusiasts (exemplified, by the late 1960s, in the editors and readerships of the
Whole Earth CatalogThe Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998...
and
Mother Earth NewsMother Earth News is a bi-monthly American magazine that has a circulation of 475,000. It is based in Topeka, Kansas.Approaching environmental problems from a down-to-earth, practical, how-to standpoint, Mother Earth News has, since the magazine’s founding in 1970, been a pioneer in the promotion...
).
In the early 1970s, Hess became involved in an experiment with several friends and colleagues to bring self-built and -managed
technologyTechnology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
into the direct service of the economic and social life of the poor, largely
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
neighborhood of Adams-Morgan in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. It was the neighborhood in which Hess had spent his childhood. Afterward, Hess wrote a book entitled
Community TechnologyCommunity technology is the practice of synergizing the efforts of individuals, community technology centers and national organizations with federal policy initiatives around broadband, information access, education, and economic development....
which told the story of this experiment and its results. According to Hess, the residents had a vigorous go at participatory democracy, and the neighborhood seemed for a time like a fertile ground for the growth of community identity and capability.
Much of the technological experimentation Hess and others engaged in there was successful in technical terms (apparatus was built, food raised, solar energy captured, etc.). For instance, Hess wrote: "In one experiment undertaken by the author and associates, an inner-city basement space, roughly thirty by fifty feet, was sufficient to house plywood tanks in which rainbow trout were produced at a cost of less than a dollar per pound. In a regular production run the total number of fish that can be raised in such a basement area was projected to be five tons per year." He taught courses and lectured on Appropriate Technology and Social Change in this period at the
Institute for Social EcologyThe Institute for Social Ecology is an educational institution in the United States offering courses related to social ecology, an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian strain of ecology that is a form of libertarian socialism. It was founded in 1974 by Murray Bookchin and Daniel Chodorkoff...
in Vermont. Nonetheless, the Adams-Morgan neighborhood, continuing on what he felt was a path of social deterioration and real-estate gentrification, declined to devote itself to expanding on the technology. Hence, in his view, a needy community got little value from the application of viable technology.
Subsequently, Hess and his wife, Therese, moved to rural
Opequon CreekOpequon Creek is a tributary stream of the Potomac River. It flows into the Potomac northeast of Martinsburg in Berkeley County, West Virginia, and its source lies northwest of the community of Opequon at the foot of Great North Mountain in Frederick County, Virginia...
between
MartinsburgMartinsburg is a city in the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia, United States. The city's population was 14,972 at the 2000 census; according to a 2009 Census Bureau estimate, Martinsburg's population was 17,117, making it the largest city in the Eastern Panhandle and the eighth largest...
and
Kearneysville, West VirginiaKearneysville is an unincorporated community in Jefferson County in the U.S. state of West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. According to the 2000 census, Kearneysville and its surrounding community has a population of 6,716...
, where he set up a welding shop to support his household. He became deeply involved with local affairs there. Hess built an affordable house that relied largely on
passive-solar heatingIn passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer...
, and took an interest in wind power and all forms of solar energy. By the late 1970s, he saw solar energy as emblematic of decentralization and nuclear energy as emblematic of central organization.
Hess wrote for and later edited a
survivalistSurvivalism is a movement of individuals or groups who are actively preparing for future possible disruptions in local, regional, national, or international social or political order...
newsletter titled
Personal Survival ("P.S.") Letter, which was published from 1977 to 1982. It was first published and edited by
Mel TappanBorn Melrose H. Tappan III, Mel Tappan was the editor of the newsletter Personal Survival Letter and the books Survival Guns and Tappan on Survival...
. Following Tappan's death in 1980, Hess took over editing and publishing the newsletter, eventually renaming it
Survival Tomorrow. In the same time period, Hess authored the book
A Common Sense Strategy for Survivalists.
Hess ran a symbolic campaign for Governor of West Virginia in 1992. When asked by a reporter what his first act would be if elected, he quipped, "I will demand an immediate recount."
Quotes
"
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
as chancellor of
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
is a horror; Adolf Hitler at a town meeting would be an a——hole.”
Films
Karl Hess: Toward LibertyKarl Hess: Toward Liberty is a 1980 short documentary film about the anarchist Karl Hess, produced by Roland Hallé and Peter W. Ladue. It won an Academy Award in 1981 for Documentary Short Subject. The film was produced at Boston University's College of Communications, School of Broadcasting and...
is a
documentary filmDocumentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
which won the Academy Award for best short documentary in 1981, after having previously won a
Student Academy AwardThe Student Academy Awards is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' annual competition for college and university filmmakers. The awards were originally named the Student Film Awards and were first presented in 1973. Since 1975, the awards have been given annually, usually in June...
. Another documentary prominently featuring Hess was
Anarchism in AmericaAnarchism in America is a 1983 documentary, directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher, and produced by Pacific Street Films. It has been re-released by AK Press to DVD. The film begins by explaining the filmmakers' interest in anarchism based on their involvement in the group Transcendental...
(1983).
See also
- Appropriate technology
Appropriate technology is an ideological movement originally articulated as "intermediate technology" by the economist Dr...
- AppropTech global village construction set
- Back-to-the-land movement
- Survivalism
Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups who are actively preparing for future possible disruptions in local, regional, national, or international social or political order...
- Mel Tappan
Born Melrose H. Tappan III, Mel Tappan was the editor of the newsletter Personal Survival Letter and the books Survival Guns and Tappan on Survival...
External links
- The Karl Hess Club
- LP News Jun94 - Karl Hess 1923-1994
- Karl Hess - Freedom Circle Directory
- The Plowboy Interview Karl Hess
- The Death of Politics: 1969 Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
article by Hess
- Karl Hess and the Death of Politics by Jeff Riggenbach
Jeff Riggenbach is an American libertarian journalist, author, editor, broadcaster, and educator.Riggenbach's first book, In Praise of Decadence , argued that the baby boomers turned out to be far more libertarian in their personal philosophy than had been expected.His second book, Why American...
- The Lawless State: 1969 article by Hess
- From Far Right to Far Left– and Farther– With Karl Hess by James Boyd: 1970 New York Times article about Hess
- "Karl Hess: Toward Liberty"