Playboy Interview: Karl Hess

Soon after winning the 1964 Republican Presidential nomination, in a characteristic moment of breath-takingly inappropriate candor, Barry Goldwater frankly told a group of startled reporters how unhappy he was with his own campaign. He complained bitterly about the tacky practices of local Republican advance men, about offensive TV commercials aired despite his disapproval, about the seemingly endless parade of shadowy hangers-on who spend the money and refract the energies of a national campaign.

When asked how he'd prefer to run for President, Goldwater answered without pausing. "I'd rent one of those little executive jets," he said, somewhat wistfully. "And Shakespeare and I would just do it."

The man he was referring to as Shakespeare was Karl Hess.

Between 1948 and 1964, Hess was the quintessential conservative: advisor on Congressional politics to the Eisenhower Administration; an early contributor to William Buckley's National Review; gun- and napalm runner for a pre-Castro revolutionary leader; principal writer of the 1960 and 1964 Republican national platforms; speech- and ghostwriter for most major conservative politicians, including Nixon and Ford; guru and close personal friend of Goldwater.

But last year, with the publication of "Dear America," a combination memoir and anarchist manifesto, Hess firmly established himself as one of the most important political theoreticians on the New Left. Within one decade, he had successfully navigated virtually the entire perimeter of American political thought without once crossing the mainstream.

Karl Hess was born in Washington, D.C., in 1923. His father was wealthy and influential, his mother intelligent and attractive. It was an auspicious beginning. But things went downhill from there.

The Hesses separated quickly--Karl's mother taking Karl and little else. She didn't believe in alimony and paid for her convictions by spending ten years behind the switchboard of a Washington apartment house.

At 16, Hess joined the Socialist Party (after the Communists refused to have him). At 18, he volunteered for combat duty in World War Two but flunked the physical and, instead, spent the war years becoming one of America's fastest-rising young journalists. He worked for The Alexandria Gazette, the Washington Times-Herald and The New York Daily News. At 21, he married Yvonne Cahoon, beauty queen and rotogravure editor of The Washington Star. At 22, he became assistant city editor of the News but was fired later that year for refusing to write President Roosevelt's obituary.

A number of magazine jobs followed, culminating with a five-year stint as press editor of Newsweek. But by then, Hess's politics and lifestyle had changed considerably. He'd become a staunch conservative, the vitriolic author of numerous anti-Communist "exposés" and a member of what he now calls "the boozy, lecherous, carnivorously ambitious, suburban middle class."

Eventually, Hess left Newsweek to become "a free-lance conservative," an occupation that included, among many other assignments, writing for H. L. Hunt.

In 1960, the year he wrote Nixon's Presidential platform, Hess met Gold-water and the two immediately struck up a working friendship. A speech Hess wrote for the Arizona Senator condemning U. S. participation in a nuclear-test-ban treaty became the first conservative address ever printed in its entirety by The New York Times. In one stroke, Goldwater had become America's foremost conservative spokesman and Hess had become the Shakespeare of the right.

But soon after the 1964 election, Hess retreated into a cocoon and began going through a series of strange metamorphoses. At first, the changes were only superficial: He grew a beard, dressed in work clothes, began racing high-powered motorcycles. Friends like Buckley and Goldwater were amused at his antics. Then matters got more serious: Hess abandoned his lucrative political career to become a blue-collar worker--a non-union welder of heavy equipment. And a tax resister. That's when his wife packed it in.

With his property confiscated and a 100 percent Government lien on all future earnings, Hess gamely embarked upon a life of barter, welding in exchange for food and services. And when there was no welding to do, he began constructing metal sculptures that at least one critic has compared to the work of David Smith. Yet Hess sternly refuses to call his pieces art. "I'm a redneck," he explains, "and rednecks are craftsmen, not artists. If you don't believe me, ask a liberal."

In his early days on the New Left, Hess described himself as a libertarian. Recently, however, he has opted for the term anarchist, an appellation that usually conjures the image of murderous packs of food gatherers roaming the smoking streets of some postcatastrophe landscape. But, in fact, Hess is an orderly man whose unique recipe for utopia consists of equal pinches of right-wing self-reliance and rugged individualism, left-wing ecology and conservation and liberal (although he shudders visibly at the word) concern for the welfare of the disadvantaged. But the key is scale. For Hess, the basic unit of a humane civilization must be the neighborhood--not the state or the nation. Hence the term anarchy, an absence of rule.

With his migration leftward, Hess met a new group of friends and lovers, and in 1970 he married Therese Machotka, a free-lance writer and editor. In 1974 and 1975, Karl and Therese lived in Washington's Adams-Morgan ghetto, where they and about a dozen other hard-core believers tried to make a totally self-sufficient community-technology project work in the inner city. They heated water with the sun, had a plan to generate electricity with a windmill, raised trout in superhigh density on a warehouse floor, grew vegetables in a hydroponic garden. The project excited some interest in the neighborhood, but, eventually, idealism was ground down by the gritty hardships of ghetto life. Tools were routinely stolen and finally, in the fall of 1975, the Hesses' apartment was brutally savaged by vandals. Karl and Therese had had enough. They moved to West Virginia, where Karl is now building an underground house--a cave, really--of his own design.

Hess, perhaps better than anyone, has seen America's political reflection from both sides of the looking glass. So in this election and Bicentennial year, we thought it appropriate to discuss politics, politicians, love, money, God, taxes and welding with the man whose brilliant, if somewhat bizarre, reckonings have variously enraged, enthralled and amused political observers for a full generation. Sam Merrill (whose "Playboy Interview" with Joseph Heller appeared in our June 1975 issue) ventured into the West Virginia wilderness to interview Hess. He returned with the following impressions:

"Karl and Therese Hess live temporarily in an unpainted but not-too-ramshackle farmhouse. Meanwhile, Karl is building his dream: an experiment in ecological symbiosis scooped out of a south-sloping creek bank. When he's finished, Karl expects earth, air and sun to heat and cool his underground Xanadu with very little outside help. Some experts who've studied his plans agree. Others are not so sure. During one of my visits to West Virginia, a prominent young architect offered the opinion that since the earth is an infinite heat sink, Karl's house would never get above 55 degrees in January. Hess responded by dismissing the architect as 'a rather negative fellow.' He refused to alter his plans and the incident was never mentioned again in my presence.

"Like most utopians, Hess receives information the way a snob receives dinner guests--warmly but with careful selection.

"The first time I visited him, we didn't get a single word on tape. As soon as I arrived, he and Therese ushered me into a crab-apple-red pickup with a decal on the rear window that said, 'National Rifle Association--Lifetime Member.'

"'The house needs beams,' Karl informed me. 'You're just in time to help us find some.'

"So Karl, Therese and I spent the entire day scrambling up and down the mountains of West Virginia, occasionally stopping to turn some huge, half-rotten timbers worm side up. Therese complained constantly about Karl's driving-- which was awful. The pickup remained airborne much of the time as Karl flogged it over narrow, undulating roads. When he told me he had no driver's license, my knuckles, already milk-white, began turning the color and consistency of grape jelly.

"Then, mercifully, we found ourselves behind a school bus and had to slow down. When the bus stopped to discharge children, a large red sign flashed over the rear door: Stop--State law.

"Karl laughed. 'Stop state law. Now, that's about the most sensible statement I've heard today.'

"Hess is an antic and humane revolutionary, a witty and self-effacing raconteur--irresistible personal qualities that form a strange collage when laid across his quirky, sometimes highly resistible political beliefs. Physically, too, he is a pastiche: a great shambling bear of a man with the raggedy beard and gentle eyes of a dockside philosopher, the sadly drooping nose of a Lebanese Bedouin and the leafy, unstarched ears of a club fighter. But his appearance grows on you.

"Eventually--very eventually--Hess and I managed to put three interview sessions on tape at his temporary farmhouse. It was difficult to believe that this bearded, semikempt, wisecracking West Virginia welder had spent the past quarter century at the vortex of American political power. It is especially hard to think of him as a key Presidential speech-writer as he extols the joys of anarchy. We began on the topic of his speech-writing days."

[Q] Playboy: Since we're in the middle of a Presidential campaign, let's start by asking you what it was like to be Goldwater's closest advisor during the 1964 campaign.

[A] Hess:Running for President feels exactly like being President. The ordinary experiences of life melt away, are replaced by a constant swirl of limousines and money, jet planes and prepared statements, Secret Service men and gorgeous political groupies. There is an almost infinite sense of power and prestige. It feels wonderful, which is why it's so terrible.

[Q] Playboy: It doesn't sound terrible.

[A] Hess: Oh, but it is. The entire Presidential afflatus reinforces the notion that a few people are different and superior, capable of solving the problems of the faceless mob. That notion was horseshit in monarchical times and is horseshit today--not that the medieval monarchs were much different from our Presidents now. The point is that people have always been capable of solving their own problems, of living creative, joyous and peaceful lives, when left alone.

[Q] Playboy: Surely, even as an anarchist you must be willing to admit that there are some differences between Presidents and kings.

[A] Hess: Presidents achieve power by hoaxes and handshakes, while kings take the far less tiring route of being born. That is the only difference I can discern.

[Q] Playboy: But the Constitution says----

[A] Hess: I know, that the President is merely the head of the Executive branch--the one totally unnecessary branch of government, even in our own system. England, Sweden, Israel and other parliamentary democracies do quite well with only two branches of government: legislative and judicial. Nevertheless, the American President is a king, a fact that most of us fully understand. After all, didn't Senator Hugh Scott call Nixon's near impeachment "regicide"?

[Q] Playboy: Were there any incidents during Goldwater's campaign when you personally felt yourself being corrupted by power and prestige?

[A] Hess: Yes. I particularly remember the feeling of riding alone in a limousine with a motorcycle escort. Everyone was peering in at me. To them, I was a blur; power in motion. To me, they were a frozen tableau of still, dumb, gawking faces--as if captured by a strobe light. During those moments, I knew the glory that the President himself knows, and it was an impressive experience. Had it continued, I have no doubt that I would have succumbed to it absolutely.

[Q] Playboy: Succumbed to what?

[A] Hess: To the atrocious assumption that I was more important than other people. And I would not have been evil to do so--just human. If your repeated experience is that you're in motion and everyone else is frozen on the side of the road, it is only reasonable to conclude that you are a more important person than they, that they expect you to run the universe for them. You don't feel as though you are being corrupted by power. You feel as though you are intelligently responding to empirical evidence. And that is power's greatest corruption: the tragic and universal misconception by the wielder of power that it isn't corrupting him.

[Q] Playboy: Along with limousines, you mentioned something about "gorgeous political groupies----"

[A] Hess: I was waiting for you to pick that up.

[Q] Playboy: Is sex on the campaign trail another aspect of the Presidential experience?

[A] Hess: Well, yes.

[Q] Playboy: Go ahead, you started this.

[A] Hess: It's so sad. Women are used as trade goods in a political campaign. The rich and powerful require a lot of solace and don't have much time, so their approach to getting their rocks off is the same as their approach to getting a haircut. The barber comes to them, the tailor comes to them and sex comes to them, too. Women are assigned, like jets and limousines.

[Q] Playboy: Was Goldwater much of a womanizer during the campaign?

[A] Hess: He wasn't a womanizer in the sense of being promiscuous. I think he's had a romance or two, but even as the Presidential candidate, when he had the pick of the litter, Goldwater was never a tomcat like, say, Jack Kennedy. Goldwater is not a cheap guy. Unlike most of official Washington, he isn't the afternoon "quick bang" type.

[Q] Playboy: But most of official Washington is the quick-bang type?

[A] Hess: Oh, Lord, yes. The first thing that strikes any visitor to Capitol Hill is the consistent beauty of the women. In almost every office, there's one Rose Mary Woods type. She ain't much to look at, but she sure churns out the work: answering the phone with one hand, typing with the other and erasing tapes with her feet. Then there are about six really gorgeous women called "political researchers" who never seem to be doing anything at all. You'd be surprised at how much high-level scheduling is done around whether or not some bigwig can get in his "nooner." And in a Presidential campaign, it's worse. I'd love to name names, but I won't.

[Q] Playboy: Oh, go ahead.

[A] Hess: Let's just call the practice--and the performance--"widespread."

[Q] Playboy: How did the Nixon White House stack up in that regard?

[A] Hess: Not as well as previous administrations. You can't do that sort of thing with a suit and tie on.

[Q] Playboy: But the Goldwater campaign was a bit better?

[A] Hess: I guess. After the election, I had a very funny conversation with a guy from the phone company who told me his biggest job wasn't dismantling the switchboard but disconnecting the tie lines to girls' apartments all over town. He said dozens and dozens of our campaign people had extensions, so the receptionist at national headquarters could just flip a switch and they could take their calls in bed.

[Q] Playboy: How did you and Goldwater happen to team up?

[A] Hess: While I was writing the Republican platform in 1960, the people at the American Enterprise Institute-- which is to conservatives what Brookings is to liberals--asked me to be their director of special projects and I said sure. And when the Senator called A.E.I. for some help on his nuclear-test-ban opposition, I was his man. I liked him from the moment we met. You can't help it. He's such a fine man. Incidentally, when I broke with the conservatives, I honestly thought Goldwater would also amend the error of his ways and join me on the New Left.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still think there's a chance he might?

[A] Hess: With Goldwater, anything's possible. Which is more than you can say for Humphrey, Ford, Jackson, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Reagan or any of the other state socialists of the American right.

Anyway, I suppose Goldwater must have taken a liking to me, too, but we didn't get really close until The New York Times printed a speech I'd written for him against the banning of nuclear tests in the atmosphere. As far as I know, mine was the first conservative speech that august publication deemed fit to print.

[Q] Playboy: You mean the Times liked your speech?

[A] Hess: No, but it said even though it was incorrect, inhumane, indecent and a threat to motherhood and world sanity, it had nevertheless raised the literary content of the debate. Well, we were all thrilled, because if The New York Times says something, it must be official. So Goldwater started calling me Shakespeare.

[Q] Playboy: Did you and Goldwater spend much time discussing political theory-- as opposed to political strategy?

[A] Hess: Yes, we did, and I'm glad you made that distinction. We frequently used to ask ourselves what the differences really were between us and the Soviets. Even then I was aware, as was Goldwater, that the differences were marginal, so we wanted to spell them out. But the more we discussed it, the harder it became. I mean, they have a secret police, we have a secret police. They can vote for only one candidate, here we have two--which makes us twice as good but not absolutely better, especially since our candidates are selected in such a peculiar fashion. We kept pressing each other for differences and when we got right down to it, for Goldwater, the difference was religion: "We are the children of light and they are the children of darkness."

[Q] Playboy: That was the principal difference Goldwater found between us and the Russians?

[A] Hess: Yes, and since I'm an atheist, I didn't consider his position wholly satisfying. But I think it turns out that the entire Cold War didn't make sense without religion. Nelson Rockefeller doesn't make sense without religion--not that Nelson Rockefeller makes much sense with religion. But what other differences are there? As James Burnham pointed out in 1941, in The Managerial Revolution, the similarity between the Soviet state and the American corporation is striking. So to find a difference worth dying for in opposing the Soviet Union while supporting General Motors requires a theological position.

[Q] Playboy: It's surprising that Goldwater agreed with you on the similarities between the U. S. and Russia.

[A] Hess: Not only did Goldwater agree with me but he had a theory of convergence that even I found somewhat radical. Goldwater believed--and probably still believes--that the Soviet Union, through the pressure of its people, would move steadily toward a free society, while the U. S., through the pressure of the liberals and the momentum of the Federal bureaucracy, would become more and more oligarchic. But, unlike many convergence theorists, Goldwater did not believe we would meet and stabilize. He felt we would cross, that they would keep moving toward freedom and we would keep moving toward dictatorship. I believed then, and still believe now, that he is wrong--at least about Russia. They seem to be able to slow down the libertarian movement any time they want.

[Q] Playboy: As one of the authors of Gold-water's acceptance speech at the 1964 convention, are you aware that many people believe two of your sentences defeated him before he'd even started his campaign?

[A] Hess: I assume you're referring to "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of freedom is no virtue."

[Q] Playboy: You guessed it.

[A] Hess: Then the answer is yes and no. Yes, I'm aware people have blamed Gold-water's defeat on those lines, and no, I didn't write them. They're reminiscent of words used by Abraham Lincoln in his "house divided" speech and the actual phrase was given to me by Harry Jaffa, the Lincoln scholar, and although we all thought it was provocative, nobody suspected it would induce spontaneous hemorrhaging in the body politic. When Rockefeller heard it, he dropped his womb.

[Q] Playboy: With some of the labels you've used through the years--anarchist, right-wing socialists, and so on--this might be a good time to ask you to define your unique views of the American political spectrum. For instance, you've said that the conservative movement is to the left of liberalism. What do you mean by that?

[A] Hess: Most analysts see the political spectrum as a great circle, with authoritarian governments of the right and the left intersecting at a point directly opposite representational democracy. But my notion of politics is that it follows a straight line, with all authoritarian societies on the right and all libertarian societies on the left. So for me, the extreme right is an absolute monarchy or dictatorship. On the right, law and order means the law of the ruler and the order that serves the interests of that ruler: orderly workers, submissive students, cowed or indoctrinated elders. Hitler, Stalin and Huey Long were all right-wingers because their regimes concentrated power in the fewest possible hands. The far left favors the distribution of money and power into the maximum number of hands.

[Q] Playboy: So when you call yourself an anarchist, you've really moved as far left as you can go.

[A] Hess: That's correct. I am in total opposition to any institutional power. I favor a world of neighborhoods in which all social organization is voluntary and the ways of life are established in small, consenting groups. These groups could cooperate with other groups as they saw fit. But all cooperation would be on a voluntary basis. As the French anarchist Proudhon said, "Liberty [is] not the daughter but the Mother of Order."

[Q] Playboy: That sounds like so much pie in the sky. Have any such societies ever existed?

[A] Hess: The precedents I look to were the participatory democracies of the Greek city-states, many Irish cities up until the British occupation, some Indian villages under Mahatma Gandhi and the town meetings right here in America. Each of those anarchist societies produced great and honorable cultures. There is no way to achieve a free society that is national. The concept of a nation requires the subordination of the citizen because you must let someone else represent you. So your freedom is being exercised by another person. In a truly free society, there is no subordination of any citizen. Every citizen represents himself.

[Q] Playboy: But a society without any subordination would be chaotic.

[A] Hess: The way to achieve freedom without chaos is to function at a scale of relationships that permits you to discuss matters of citizenship with everyone affected. In other words, at the neighborhood level.

[Q] Playboy: What about matters that spill over to other neighborhoods, such as the maintenance of roads and rivers? Or air pollution?

[A] Hess: There would be ad hoc meetings, voluntary federations, and so forth.

[Q] Playboy: There seems to be no avoiding the conclusion that at the core of your anarchist beliefs there is an assumption, taken on faith, of the essential goodness of man.

[A] Hess: Yes, the anarchist does believe that although human beings are of a mixed nature, on slight balance we are probably good.

[Q] Playboy: But what if the Christians are right and humans are basically evil, unready to go it alone socially or metaphysically?

[A] Hess: In that sad case, it would be even more imperative to avoid the nation-state, because then a basically flawed individual would be invested with the greatest possible power. The anarchist-- although he believes man is good--says that whether man is, in fact, good or evil, the nation-state is an abomination.

[Q] Playboy: You frequently characterize American liberalism as elitist. How would you characterize American conservatism?

[A] Hess: The American right today seems characterized by a smallness of spirit and by vast insecurities. This tragic fearfulness causes the right to abandon its traditional standards of self-reliance at the mere mention of the term national security. So while conservatives still speak out against the increasing centralized power of the Federal Government generally, they support the increasingly centralized power of the military and the police. Conservatives give lip service to neighborhood control of this or that. But they mean their neighborhood, not yours. Beverly Hills, not Harlem.

[Q] Playboy: But you still feel that liberals are more dangerous than conservatives?

[A] Hess: Conservatives strive to concentrate local power in conservative hands, while liberals strive to concentrate national power in liberal hands. Hence, although both are profoundly right-wing movements, liberalism lies slightly farther along the road to dictatorship.

[Q] Playboy: You obviously didn't hold these views while you were Goldwater's speech-writer. What happened to you after he lost the 1964 election?

[A] Hess: Oh, I took up motorcycle racing, went into business welding heavy equipment, was divorced by my wife, became a tax resister, began living on barter, remarried, joined SDS ... the usual.

[Q] Playboy: Right, the usual. Your first leftward step was to become a tax resister. How did that happen?

[A] Hess: A lot of people believe Nixon was the first President to use the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon of political revenge. But, as in so many other areas, the only thing Nixon did first was get caught. As soon as Johnson was elected in 1964, I was slapped with my first and only IRS audit.

[Q] Playboy: What a coincidence.

[A] Hess: It was an experience I'll never forget. Before I was through with IRS-- what am I saying? I'll never be through with IRS--I'd met a lot of "revenooers," and I'll tell you, they are a special case. Every war is full of stories in which ordinary decency breaks through, even in the most barbarous situations, turning a paid killer into a compassionate human being--if only for a moment. But I've never seen that happen to a tax collector. They are the most casually vicious, abjectly humorless and routinely amoral people I've ever met. If you want to find a fascist constituency in America, just poll the bureaucrats at IRS.

[Q] Playboy: What made you decide to become a resister?

[A] Hess: It was a single phrase. I'd asked the auditor/robber who was handling my case/theft if he didn't think a certain perfectly legitimate deduction was right. He replied to the effect that it didn't matter if it was right. All that mattered was the law. I remember saying to myself, "Oh, Lord, here's a guy who thinks there's a difference between right and law. A perfect Nazi soldier." I had never met an American who felt that way before.

[Q] Playboy: So what did you do?

[A] Hess: I notified them that I wasn't going to pay taxes anymore--ever. And by way of explanation, I enclosed a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

[Q] Playboy: What did they do?

[A] Hess: Confiscated all my property except tools and clothing and slapped a 100 percent Government lien on whatever future earnings I might have. Our Government isn't interested in conscience when it comes to money.

[Q] Playboy: That's a rather broad statement.

[A] Hess: It is curious to note that when, for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.

[Q] Playboy: How has IRS treated you over the past ten years?

[A] Hess: Very shabbily. Since I'm not permitted to handle money, I've been forced to live on barter even while my case is being appealed. You see, the revenooers assume you are guilty until proven innocent. Fortunately, my lawyer, who was also David Smith's lawyer, has agreed to take my metal sculpture in lieu of a fee, and he's kept me out of prison thus far. But my prospects aren't bright.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you say that?

[A] Hess: Because the revenooers consider tax resisters the worst of all criminals. They'll wheel and deal with gangsters and millionaires. Crooked politicians-- even Presidents--and businessmen who chisel can hire hot-shot attorneys and almost without exception end up settling for so much on the dollar. They can even have the laws rewritten or, as in Nixon's case, suspended entirely. But the revenooers descend on working people like a cloud of locusts.

[Q] Playboy: You realize, of course, that you're not doing your case any good by talking like this.

[A] Hess: I know, but I can't resist the opportunity to haunt those people. Something has to haunt them. Certainly their consciences never do.

[Q] Playboy: After your battles with the IRS began, you joined Students for a Democratic Society. Did you find more commitment on the left than you'd encountered on the right?

[A] Hess: Yes, and the difference is illustrated vividly by a comparison of student groups. I've worked closely with both the Young Americans for Freedom and the SDS, and I'll tell you, when Y.A.F. decided to take an action, first it beat the billionaire bushes for heavy money. It opened offices, hired secretaries, demanded expense accounts and salaries before getting its crusade off the ground. But when SDS decided to take action, it simply took it. The difference was the level of commitment.

[Q] Playboy: Were you shocked or disturbed by the casualness toward sex and drugs you observed on the New Left?

[A] Hess: The drugs of the left are grass, hash, acid, coke, opium and an amazing substance called amyl nitrite, which, if you survive the coronary, produces quite a rush. Although I've tried them all and don't particularly like any, they beat the hell out of whiskey, the drug of the right. But practically everything on earth is better than whiskey, including rusty nails.

[Q] Playboy: So you're not into drugs.

[A] Hess: Many of the experiences I've had with drugs have been pleasurable, but they don't expand your mind. They make you useless. I doubt very seriously whether even Carlos Castaneda wrote his books while he was high. He probably wrote them after the businessman's lunch at Schrafft's.

[Q] Playboy: Do you, or did you ever consider Timothy Leary a member of the New Left?

[A] Hess: Absolutely not. He was a clown when he started and now he is a little worse than a clown--a police informant, by some accounts. But getting on to more pleasant subjects, you mentioned sex....

[Q] Playboy: So we did.

[A] Hess: Sex is much better on the left than it was on the right. On the right, the sharing of a political way of life by two people living together isn't necessary. In fact, it's rather unusual. On the left, it is unusual for a couple not to share their entire lives.

[Q] Playboy: You next became an enthusiastic friend of the Black Panthers. Not many American whites--no matter how far left--rallied to the black and green. Why did you favor them so strongly?

[A] Hess: Perhaps it was my conservative background. In fact, I'm surprised many conservatives didn't, if not support, at least admire the Panther movement. I remember that famous photograph of an armed black man standing proudly--or arrogantly, depending upon your racial bias--in the California Statehouse. What right-winger has not dreamed of the day he, too, would say no to the bureaucrats and take up arms like our revolutionary forefathers? Here was a group of Americans actually saying that extremism in defense of their own freedom was no vice. How could I, of all people, oppose them?

[Q] Playboy: Did you feel similarly about the S.L.A. later on?

[A] Hess: Of course not. In fact, I believe the S.L.A. is an FBI plot to publicly discredit the left-wing movement in America.

[Q] Playboy: You're kidding.

[A] Hess: Just look at the thing. It operates the way the FBI wishes a radical group would behave. There's nothing political about the S.L.A. It's just a criminal operation, like the Clyde Barrow gang. They rob banks, kill people and hide out. To discuss the S.L.A. in terms of politics or revolution is shockingly misleading. It doesn't resemble any political group, right or left, with the possible exception of the CIA. I believe the purpose of the S.L.A. is to offer the American people an apparently left-wing organization that the state is better than.

[Q] Playboy: Do you endorse the pro-Arab position taken by many New Left groups today?

[A] Hess: I neither endorse nor understand it, except to note that it seems to be the tragic fate of the Jews to be hated by everybody in sequence. I've never seen anything like it.

[Q] Playboy: American leftists would argue that they are not anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel.

[A] Hess: That makes no sense, either. Sure Israel is a client of America, but so is everybody else, including China and the Soviet Union. And although Israel has driven her borders out some, I think you can make a fairly good case for its having happened in self-defense. But the thing I really don't understand is why the New Left has suddenly developed this vast enthusiasm for Arabs.

[Q] Playboy: Presumably because some regimes are Communist backed.

[A] Hess: I could understand an American New Left position that favored socialism in the Arab states, but most of the Arab nations are feudal. They're actually pre-capitalist! I think what you've hit on here is perhaps the gravest weakness of the American left today: a reflexive hatred of anything American. If an American doctor cured cancer tomorrow, there would be people on the left who would call it a plot by the drug companies.

[Q] Playboy: What remedy would you prescribe for the Mideast problem?

[A] Hess: I think the Jewish state should be placed elsewhere, like Texas or Orange County. Those areas aren't being used for much now. It's been my observation that when something happens anywhere in the world that civilized people generally regard as good, if there are seven people involved in it, three and a half of them turn out to be Jewish. That happens with such fantastic regularity that I conclude the Jewish culture must be pretty hot stuff. So a Jewish state, located in a politically hospitable region, would almost certainly become a great benefit to all mankind. But a Jewish state in the Mideast is likely to remain a roadblock to world peace for generations to come. As a realistic compromise, however, recognition of both Israel and a Palestinian state would seem reasonable.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to your checkered career, you joined Goldwater again in 1968 and wrote speeches for his Senate campaign. The mind boggles at the thought that much of Goldwater's platform was written by a member of SDS.

[A] Hess: Why? I was against the Vietnam war and Goldwater was for it; but, otherwise, we had a lot in common. He has a strong libertarian tendency. It's sad. Goldwater is such a good, good man. I can't figure out why, at this late date, he still insists on being a flack for the Presidency, the police and the military.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to retain an enduring affection for Goldwater, yet the two of you haven't spoken since that campaign.

[A] Hess: The break came soon after the 1968 election. It was sudden, unexpected and, as we both immediately understood, final--unless, of course, he decides to come over to the New Left. I'm still hoping.

[Q] Playboy: What caused the break?

[A] Hess: Goldwater had campaigned heavily against the draft. But after he was returned to the Senate, when I suggested that his first legislative action should be a proposal to end the draft, he replied with the only answer that could have severed our relationship. He said, "Let's wait and see what Dick Nixon wants to do on that one." Those were the last words he ever said to me as a friend.

[Q] Playboy: Let's see if we can keep track: Before hooking up with Goldwater, you'd been, among other things, a Socialist and a gunrunner; now you're an anarchist and a tax resister. Were you ever normal?

[A] Hess: I think I was normal for a brief period around the mid-Fifties. It was a harrowing experience.

[Q] Playboy: Can you describe it for us?

[A] Hess: I was working for Newsweek and living in Westchester; an unholy alliance of corporate and suburban hells. Corporate life is like a pool of sharks. The object is survival and the food is whatever or whoever gets in the way. The competition is self-perpetuating: for new cars, for the kid's batting average in some joyless little league and, perhaps most important, for your wife's success as a hostess. Suburban women are the geishas of America. My first marriage, to a remarkably fine woman, was a victim of the corporate-suburban life.

[Q] Playboy: You must have found some pleasures in suburbia.

[A] Hess: I found two: oblivion drinking and conquest fucking.

[Q] Playboy: You said your first marriage was a victim of the corporate-suburban life. What does that mean?

[A] Hess: Yvonne is a bright, creative, attractive woman. When I met her, she was rotogravure editor of The Washington Star and a finalist in the American Newspaper Guild Beauty Contest. But as soon as I reached a certain point in my career, she had to abandon hers and become a hostess. When I realized what I'd done to her, I felt like having myself horsewhipped. I think the feminists are absolutely correct about the American woman's tragic, insulting position in an upwardly mobile marriage.

[Q] Playboy: So except for that one gratefully brief sojourn into "normalcy," your life has been ... what?

[A] Hess: Blessed madness.

[Q] Playboy: How, where and when did the madness begin?

[A] Hess: It began in Washington on May 25, 1923, but the scene quickly shifted to the Philippines. My father was surpassingly rich.

[Q] Playboy: What did he do for a living?

[A] Hess: He was smart for a living. He had the good sense to be the son of a wealthy man.

[Q] Playboy: What was life like for you in the Philippines?

[A] Hess: Madness. We moved in with my grandmother, old Amelia, a gentle soul who was always getting into trouble with the police for having her servants beaten. Grandmother Amelia had never seen the kitchen of her own house. But as soon as my mother arrived, being American, she went directly to the kitchen. When it was discovered that my mother had been to the kitchen, there was a family crisis. Such things simply weren't done. My mother finally split. And she didn't ask for a dime. She raised me by operating a switchboard at a Washington, D.C., hotel.

[Q] Playboy: You dropped out of school at 15. Before that, you were an irredeemable truant. Didn't you like education?

[A] Hess: I loved education, which is why I spent as little time as possible in school. Even in my day, education had begun decreasing in importance in the school system. Today, education has no place at all in the American classroom.

[Q] Playboy: Then what is the function of the school system?

[A] Hess: Administration.

[Q] Playboy: How about some of the private schools employing "innovative" educational modes?

[A] Hess: Our schools tend to treat children either as prisoners or as wild animals. Public schools prefer the prisoner technique, with rules and regimentation being the education offered, while the supposedly innovative private schools usually opt for the wild-animal position. There, children are reared as in a jungle: totally without the intervention of elders of the species and with as little contact as possible with sequential thinking involving a history or duration of more than six seconds. Both techniques offer the ideal preparation for life in a totalitarian society. They no longer teach you to read and they teach you not to think. What they do teach is a process of reducing the world, screening our options until we are, at adulthood, fully acclimated to a one-and-only-one-way-to-do-things sort of clockwork mechanism-- a mechanism that is inevitably wound by the key of some single authority.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of educational system would you prefer?

[A] Hess: I like medieval schools.

[Q] Playboy: What was so great about the medieval schools?

[A] Hess: The medieval schools taught logic, dialectics, rhetoric and grammar. Their assumption was, once you'd learned reading and thinking, you could do anything. In those days, it was not unusual for a man to be a great author, astronomer, theologian, soldier, farmer, artisan, cocksman--everything. Already, people were doing what Marx talked about: fishing in the morning, tilling the soil in the afternoon and writing poetry at night.

[Q] Playboy: So you believe education should consist of learning to think and read.

[A] Hess: That's right. And eight or nine years should be enough. Then cut the strings. Repeal those goddamn child-labor laws and let people begin a series of apprenticeships by the age of 13.

[Q] Playboy: Surely you're not seriously against the child-labor laws.

[A] Hess: You bet I am. They're just a typical example of snobby liberal elitism--thinking everybody wants to be a professor of Chaucerian literature. Most professors of Chaucerian literature really want to be firemen.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know what people want to do?

[A] Hess: You can tell what a person really wants to do by his hobbies. Most people want to be gardeners or musicians. Nobody's hobby is insurance.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever had any personal experience as a teacher?

[A] Hess: I taught logic to eight-year-olds at a local public school recently. The kids ate it up and spat it out. Nobody'd taught them how to be dumb yet.

[Q] Playboy: How did that opportunity come about?

[A] Hess: Believe it or not, there's a grade school principal in Washington who actually likes kids and questions the school system. Every other principal I've met likes the school system and hates kids. But this guy is a principal who actually believes in education. Lord knows what he's doing in the school system, but that's his problem. Anyway, he instituted a program where people from the neighborhood come in and lecture. The most popular guy was a surgeon who dissected a chicken. That was a pretty tough act to follow, but I taught logic and the kids loved it. Nobody'd given them a license to think before.

[Q] Playboy: What, exactly, did you teach?

[A] Hess: I went through syllogisms and fallacies. That took about three minutes. Then we began playing word games: analyzing sentences, including some TV commercials. One kid said his favorite commercial was the one in which the late Euell Gibbons eats a pine tree. Well, we analyzed it, and before long every kid in the class was asking, "If pine needles are nutritious and if Grape Nuts taste like pine needles, does that mean Grape Nuts are nutritious?"

[Q] Playboy: There are probably a lot of adults who never caught that fallacy.

[A] Hess: Adults have already been taught to look at things only one way--the accepted way. Eight-year-olds are too uneducated to be that dumb. The best moment came when one of the kids asked me, "Why don't you take off your hat?" I said, "Why should I?" And they began thinking. Of course, they started out the way most adults would, by telling me it was good manners, but I rejected that and they became uneasy. Finally, a little girl jumped up and said, "Wait a minute. Why do you wear a hat?" And I said, "To keep my head warm." And she said, "Isn't it warm in here?" I said, "Yes, it is." So she said, "Then why don't you take off your hat?" It was marvelous. She had pushed beyond accepted custom into a region few adults enter: serious analysis of a situation. Suddenly, she had become a little human being--not a parrot anymore. And it is my notion that we'd have a whole country full of human beings if the schools would only liberate, rather than enslave children; teach them how to read and think. I myself grew up in the last era of successful dropouts. I went directly from my very occasional visits to the tenth grade to writing radio newscasts.

[Q] Playboy: Then you became a Socialist. How did that happen?

[A] Hess: I wanted to be a radical and the Communists wouldn't have me. No teenager got to be a Communist. So I joined the Socialists. They weren't so particular. And, of course, at that time I didn't associate communism and socialism with the Soviet Union.

[Q] Playboy: What did you associate them with?

[A] Hess: The people who didn't want war or who, if there was a war, were always on the right side.

[Q] Playboy: You mean Norman Thomas?

[A] Hess: The Norman Thomas people were really standing up against authority. I liked that. But Norman Thomas' programs were later co-opted by Roosevelt, except that Roosevelt wanted to do good for the common folk without permitting the common folk to do good for themselves.

[Q] Playboy: In other words, Norman Thomas' Socialist programs became F.D.R.'s liberal programs.

[A] Hess: Correct. And a lot of American working people accepted that. Apparently, they didn't see anything basically wrong with the ownership/acquisition system but only thought it needed better rules. The Roosevelt Administration promised those rules, thus pacifying the working class and preserving capitalism for the rich.

[Q] Playboy: But you're not entirely against capitalism, are you?

[A] Hess: Theoretical, laissez-faire capitalism doesn't strike me as immoral--just unnecessary. I'd prefer it to many other ways of running things, but it's wasteful and causes people to be overly concerned with numbers: quantity rather than quality, profits rather than products.

[Q] Playboy: Eventually, you left the Socialists. Why?

[A] Hess: They were so boring. Also, they clung to the preposterous notion that if everyone in the world was exactly like them, there would be no problems. And that was no different from Roosevelt.

[Q] Playboy: What have you got against Roosevelt?

[A] Hess: What makes you think I have anything against Roosevelt? Roosevelt was wonderful--if you like fascists. And, apparently, many people do.

[Q] Playboy: What made Roosevelt a fascist?

[A] Hess: He believed it was better for people to be alike than for them to be different and it was better for people to be led than for them to be self-reliant. The term fascist seems appropriate because the most essential tenet of fascism views the state as the people, rather than the other way around. Both Hitler and Roosevelt began by nationalizing the people.

[Q] Playboy: Do you note any differences between Hitler and Roosevelt?

[A] Hess: The two regimes weren't altogether identical. Hitler's was mad and murderous. Roosevelt's wasn't cruel, certainly wasn't crazy, was kind and helpful to many people. Roosevelt sought the perpetuation of existing power, privilege and order. Hitler sought new power and a new order. But one crucial similarity between those two fascists is that both successfully destroyed the trade unions. Roosevelt did it by passing exactly the reforms that would ensure the creation of a trade-union bureaucracy. Since F.D.R., the unions have become the protectors of contracts rather than the spearhead of worker demands. And the Roosevelt era brought the "no strike" clause, the notion that your rights are limited by the needs of the state.

[Q] Playboy: Many historians have said that without Roosevelt, the poor would have starved.

[A] Hess: What a terrible thing to say about poor people. The alternative view is that without Roosevelt, the poor would have organized.

[Q] Playboy: What happened after you abandoned the Socialists?

[A] Hess: I attempted to join the Army. But that didn't work out too well.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Hess: I was so anxious for combat duty that I falsified my medical records. I believe I told them I was the healthiest person in the history of civilization.

[Q] Playboy: And you weren't?

[A] Hess: Not quite. Immediately after passing my exams for O.C.S., I came down with a crashing attack of hay fever. They didn't believe me when I told them that was the first time in my life I'd ever sneezed, so they contacted my family doctor and found out I'd had malaria.

[Q] Playboy: Malaria?

[A] Hess: I'd picked it up in the Philippines as a kid, along with dengue fever and blackwater fever. I'd also had several cases of pneumonia, hay fever, sinusitis, asthma and a deviated septum.

[Q] Playboy: So characterizing yourself as the healthiest person in history was a bit of an exaggeration.

[A] Hess: That's true. But even though I was only hanging together tentatively, I offered to sign a waiver that if I died of pneumonia, the Army wouldn't be responsible.

[Q] Playboy: But they didn't buy that?

[A] Hess: No; in fact, they seriously contemplated throwing me in jail for perjuring my medical records. Which only shows that you can't win with those people. They can arrest you for trying to get into one of their lousy wars and arrest you for trying to get out. If I had a kid today, I'd make sure the state never found out that child existed. And if it did find out, I'd rig up a phony death certificate.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do after being pitched out of the Army?

[A] Hess: I went back to Washington and went to work for the Times-Herald, an old Hearst-type newspaper. Press cards in our hats, digging up bodies for independent autopsy--the whole trip. Oh, and speaking of autopsies, I worked one summer while I was still a teenager as an autopsy assistant.

[Q] Playboy: How did you get that job?

[A] Hess: The coroner was hot to trot with my friend's sister; but in order to get her alone during the day, he had to do something with all us brats. So he hired us to prepare bodies and make preliminary incisions. It was great experience, but can you imagine letting a bunch of 14-and 15-year-olds slice up corpses today? Everybody would jump on you. Hubert Humphrey would accuse you of exploiting child labor and Ronald Reagan would accuse you of profaning the sacred dead. Conservatives like people only when they're dead.

[Q] Playboy: Why was doing autopsies such a great experience?

[A] Hess: Because it made me an atheist. I don't see how you can fail to be an atheist after dissecting all those people. I mean, nothing flies out of them. They don't sing or laugh or dance anymore. They're just a bunch of junk lying around.

[Q] Playboy: Yet you say that conservatives like death.

[A] Hess: The reason conservatives think death is such a neat thing is that they don't get to see much of it. They're well fed and don't fight in very many wars. They make the poor fight for them. Of course, there are a few notable exceptions. George Patton was rich and really enjoyed shooting people. But ordinary folks, the ones who fight the wars and catch malaria and don't always have enough to eat, end up with a passionate feeling for life.

[Q] Playboy: But in spite of that, you willingly converted from socialism to conservatism by your early 20s. Did you suddenly decide death wasn't so bad, after all?

[A] Hess: I must confess, the conservative rhetoric is so spellbinding it actually makes you forget the value of life. Better dead than Red. Better dead than damn near anything. Dead, dead, dead. Kill, kill, kill. Go to war. The highest honor is to give your life for country A. All those death-centered things. To this day, I find it difficult to understand how I could have been in the grip of a spell so powerful it actually made me forget the lessons I'd learned at the autopsy table when I was 15.

[Q] Playboy: There aren't many conservative atheists.

[A] Hess: I was the only one I knew. All the other conservatives either were or thought they were deeply religious. I should have realized I'd end up on the left eventually.

[Q] Playboy: You frequently return to the link between God and conservatism. You've also said Nelson Rockefeller doesn't make sense without religion. Perhaps you'd better explain.

[A] Hess: Conservatives believe that some people are born in a state of such grace as to be rich. That is a religious statement. Also, you hear conservatives say time after time that if all the wealth in the world were redistributed today, the same people who own it now would have it again in a few years. That, too, is a religious statement.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Hess: Because it isn't based on empirical evidence. You've simply got to believe it, take it on faith. Now, look at Nelson Rockefeller. What's his I.Q.?

[Q] Playboy: Probably average.

[A] Hess: Perhaps average or slightly below, but certainly within the normal range. I know for a fact that he can read, although it's not known that he can write. Take away his money and do you really think he'd end up with another billion dollars? If we all had to start over, I know a lot of welders who'd end up with more money than Rockefeller. And the ones who'd come out with the really big money would be the street hustlers and people like Robert Vesco. Certainly not the people who have it now. I think many conservatives believe old man Rockefeller invented petroleum. They don't know petroleum gets drilled. They think it comes out of a board room. A bunch of executives get together and say, "Let's have a million gallons of oil." And the board votes on it and then there's a million gallons of oil. Conservatives don't think food comes out of the ground, either. They think it comes out of Safeway. Conservatives are totally detached from the natural world.

[Q] Playboy: More so than liberals?

[A] Hess: Liberals are even more elitist but in a different way. The only reason I'm knocking conservatives is because they're worth knocking. Liberals scarcely are. Conservatives make a number of grievous errors, but they also make a number of correct analyses. It is not known to me that liberals make any correct analyses. And when liberals attempt a move to the left, they usually become Stalinists, because they believe in a strong central authority. When conservatives move left, they become libertarians or anarchists in a single jump. The first Weatherperson I ever met had been a Youth for Gold-water member in '64.

[Q] Playboy: As one who helped start the National Review, how did you like working for William F. Buckley, Jr.?

[A] Hess: He was good to work for, because he is talented. That alone places him a cut above most owners and managers. And socially, I never spent a boring evening with Bill Buckley. He's as charming, witty and mercurial in private as he is in public. I have no regrets about my conservative years because of the many fine people, like Buckley and Goldwater, I met and worked with. Conservatives in this country are just head and shoulders above liberals in every way. Can you imagine working for David Susskind? Susskind is always weeping crocodile tears for the common man, but I wonder if he's ever met one, aside from his servants. Buckley, on the other hand, would be the first to admit that he's a superior person.

[Q] Playboy: An analysis you seem to share.

[A] Hess: Bill is superior, but why shouldn't he be? He was brought up on a high-protein diet. He didn't have to go to public school. The wonder isn't that there is a Bill Buckley but that everyone else isn't that witty and well educated. After all, there's no real shortage of protein in the world and the only thing you have to do to get kids educated is abolish the school system.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that the rich are smarter than the poor?

[A] Hess: Unfortunately, yes. Rich children are frequently brought up with a lot of attention and a diet rich in food chemicals without which the brain, however Hopeful, turns into an unfortunate mush.

[Q] Playboy: So the rich are superior, but not because of any natural talents.

[A] Hess: The rich have only one natural talent: an ability to insult the poor. But even that may be an acquired skill.

[Q] Playboy: Although you admire Buckley, you no longer agree with him. From your point of view, where did he go wrong?

[A] Hess: He went wrong because, in the end, he actually believed he was preserving God's will. I remember a dinner party Bill had at his place in Connecticut soon after the first issue of National Review was published. This fellow kept staring at him and finally said, "You know, Bill, you have the profile of a young Caesar." Well, instead of being embarrassed by that preposterous remark, Bill reveled in it. And in retrospect, I conclude that people who do not blush when they are compared to Caesar end up being Caesar.

[Q] Playboy: After writing for the National Review, you became, among other things, the most sought-after conservative speech-writer in America. What was the secret of your success?

[A] Hess: You may not have been expecting a direct answer to that question, but, in fact, I did have a secret, a secret I will reveal now, because nobody will pay any attention to it, anyway. My secret was--flourish of trumpets--the declarative sentence.

[Q] Playboy: That's it?

[A] Hess: Well, there was a little more, but that was the core of my secret. With--if you'll excuse the expression--liberal use of simple, declarative sentences, Anglo-Saxon words and active verbs, anybody can be a great speechwriter. Compared with the convoluted structure, passive verbs and Latin roots of most political speeches, my stuff stood out like pure crystal.

[Q] Playboy: As a speechwriter, you are most closely identified with Goldwater, but you also wrote for Nixon and Ford. What were they like?

[A] Hess: The funny thing about being with Nixon is that you never know when he has left the room. Nixon is like a lot of other-directed people: shadowy figures identified more by the impressions others have of them than by the impressions they have of themselves. Whereas Goldwater has a vivid perception of himself, sees and knows himself through his own eyes, Nixon can only know himself through other people's eyes. I seriously believe that Richard Nixon does not exist when no one is looking at him.

[Q] Playboy: And Ford?

[A] Hess: Jerry used to be a perfectly ordinary fellow and, oddly enough, he still thinks of himself that way. Unlike Nixon and Johnson, Ford can't refer to himself in the third person without cracking up.

[Q] Playboy: Did you know him well?

[A] Hess: We played tennis together and socialized a bit. He was a good neighbor. Honest. I don't think there's any evil there.

[Q] Playboy: How about his intellectual abilities? Johnson is quoted as having said, "Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't walk and chew gum at the same time."

[A] Hess: Johnson is quoted as having said that. But what he really said was, "Jerry can't fart and chew gum at the same time."

[Q] Playboy: Can he?

[A] Hess: I assume so, although I must confess that I've never actually seen him do it. Although Ford is not a terribly bright man, his intellectual ability is sufficient for a relatively unimportant job like President. However, I don't think he has the brains to be a truck driver.

[Q] Playboy: You also wrote speeches for billionaires like H. L. Hunt. What kind of person was he?

[A] Hess: Hunt was a Stalinist and he----

[Q] Playboy: Wait a minute. H. L. Hunt, the H. L. Hunt, was a Stalinist?

[A] Hess: Sure. He once told me Americans should be given numbers of votes commensurate with their money worth. As one of the world's richest men, that would have given him exactly the sort of special advantage a commissar enjoys in the Soviet Union.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of speech does one write for a billionaire?

[A] Hess: Mostly, I wrote speeches praising "the great system that produces all our material well-being." It was easy. I simply leaped from the fact of the productivity to a generalized justification of everything associated with it. Of course, I never bothered to explain how the "system" works or the price it exacts from the people and the planet.

[Q] Playboy: While still a conservative, you expressed admiration for Lenny Bruce. Most conservatives hated Lenny Bruce.

[A] Hess: They hated him because he talked dirty. Liberals liked him because he talked dirty. But conservatives knew he was telling the truth about the erosion of liberty in American society. Liberals weren't so sure about that. They thought, "Well, he might be right, but he couldn't be referring to me. After all, I don't mind when he says shit." They never understood that Lenny Bruce was a libertarian, not a liberal.

[Q] Playboy: As an anti-Communist writer and editor, you must have had many dealings with the FBI.

[A] Hess: Oh, Lord, yes. The FBI provides a lot of "research" material to conservative writers.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever rely entirely on the FBI for one of your "exposés"?

[A] Hess: Are you kidding? What other source was there? You don't think anybody on the right did any research, do you?

[Q] Playboy: Well, we did kind of assume----

[A] Hess: No way. Ralph DeToledano, James Kilpatrick, Bill Buckley--all of us got material from the Government. We didn't have to do any investigative reporting if we didn't want to. All you had to do to be an anti-Communist writer was sign up. Then they'd send you people's names and Communist Party membership-card numbers in the mail. Some of us won journalism prizes just for going down to the post office.

[Q] Playboy: What about the CIA? Did it provide you with any research?

[A] Hess: Some.

[Q] Playboy: Based on what we now know about CIA operations, would you favor disbanding that organization?

[A] Hess: No, I'd put the CIA on trial first. Although I don't believe in laws, I do believe in criminality. And when you have a bunch of muggers, thieves and murderers, rather than just letting them dissolve into the woodwork, you ought to make a very serious evaluation of whether or not they should be permitted to live in your neighborhood. If it's decided that there's no way to rehabilitate those people, which I suspect, because lying, stealing and murdering are terrible habits to get into, I think we should consider exiling them to a country more compatible with that sort of behavior.

[Q] Playboy: What country do you suggest?

[A] Hess: The Soviet Union might be a good place for them. In Russia, the biggest mugger is likely to become head of state.

[Q] Playboy: But many Americans argue that we need an espionage network.

[A] Hess: Pericles, to cite a general who once had a lucid moment, made a wonderful speech about secrecy in a free society. He said Athenians could invite their enemies to see all their secrets, because the real secret of that city's greatness was its courage and loyalty.

[Q] Playboy: But some time after Pericles said that, Athens was defeated by Sparta.

[A] Hess: Perhaps they should have kept just one secret.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the U. S. should keep one secret?

[A] Hess: I don't think we need anything beyond a few Polaris submarines to counterbalance the Soviet nuclear force. And in the unlikely event of a Russian invasion, the American people could easily defend themselves. We're resourceful, patriotic and very well armed. We'd be like the Vietnamese. As the British found out 200 years ago, you can't beat farmers. So I don't think we need 100 billion dollars a year to defend this country. And we certainly don't need a bunch of cheap, gangland assassins.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of Americans' being well armed, in a society with as few laws as possible, would gun control be one of them?

[A] Hess: No, I don't think so, but I doubt if the manufacture of guns would be a very serious occupation in an anarchist society.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Hess: Because we don't hunt for food much anymore and the freer a society gets, the less need there is to shoot people.

[Q] Playboy: You still own guns, although you no longer hunt. Why?

[A] Hess: Because I might have to fight somebody one of these days.

[Q] Playboy: Who?

[A] Hess: A tax collector. A Government agent. Who knows?

[Q] Playboy: Would you shoot a burglar?

[A] Hess: If somebody breaks into your house at night, before you can discuss why he's there, you've got to get his attention and a gun isn't a bad way to do that--unless you happen to be seven feet tall and bulletproof. There are some terribly violent people in this imperfect world, and I can't quite see giving my life to one of them because of a theoretical position on guns.

[Q] Playboy: So your theoretical position on life outweighs your theoretical position on guns.

[A] Hess: Your life is the only real property you own. Every other form of property, I feel, is debatable. But you are the only one who can own your life. Murder, then, is the ultimate theft, and I think it's perfectly responsible to say, "No, you will not have my life."

[Q] Playboy: When your home in Washington was vandalized, were any of your guns stolen?

[A] Hess: Yes, a target pistol.

[Q] Playboy: So your gun, presumably, entered the criminal pool. And, indirectly, you made it that much easier for Sara Jane Moore to pick up her pistol at a moment's notice.

[A] Hess: Fortunately, my gun was recovered. But even if it weren't, you are begging the question, which is, "Who should own guns?"

[Q] Playboy: Who should own guns?

[A] Hess: If the answer were nobody, if everybody's guns--including mine--disappeared at the same time, no one would be happier than I. But pending that golden moment, do I really want the CIA, the FBI, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Secret Service, etc., to be the only armed Americans? No. As long as they've got guns, I think the people generally should have them, too.

[Q] Playboy: But as long as the general public is armed, the street criminals will also be armed.

[A] Hess: Street criminals do not kill people in great numbers. Most killing is emotional, and even without guns, emotional killing would proceed with rocks, baseball bats and ice picks. Most killing in this country is Federal, with war and the highway system heading the list. The 300-horsepower engine kills more Americans than any handgun.

[Q] Playboy: Now who's begging the question?

[A] Hess: You're right, I am. But to return to my original point, I would argue in favor of Americans' continuing ownership of weapons by adjusting a National Rifle Association slogan to fit my anarchist view: "If guns were outlawed, only the Government would have guns."

[Q] Playboy: You said earlier that even if we dismantled most of our military apparatus, a Russian invasion would still be unlikely. Why?

[A] Hess: Because there aren't enough ships in the world to launch an invasion against the U. S. and, anyway, most of Russia's ships are full of American grain. So they'd have to walk. Now, maybe you could walk across Alaska, but that's a long way. And by the time the Red Army got here, it would be totally corrupted.

[Q] Playboy: Corrupted by what?

[A] Hess: Everything. They'd be deserting to open McDonald's franchises. This country is irresistible. It corrupts Americans, who are, by and large, the greatest people on earth. Would it do less to Russians? I doubt it.

[Q] Playboy: You don't seem to be a fan of Kissinger's détente policy. Have you ever met Kissinger?

[A] Hess: You mean the foreign-policy President?

[Q] Playboy: Yes.

[A] Hess: No, but I have the sick feeling that I helped introduce him to Republican politics. Bill Baroody and I edited a book for Mel Laird called The Conservative Papers and we decided to include in it some of Kissinger's work. That book established his credentials in the party. What a mistake! There is something essentially dangerous to a free society about a man who feels that the affairs of state--affairs that directly result in wars and other cataclysmic events-- should be conducted without reference to the people affected.

[Q] Playboy: How about Ted Kennedy? Do you know him?

[A] Hess: Recently, while at a friend's house for dinner, he dropped in and was the neatest guy there. Warm, amiable, just plain nice. We had a long talk about the possibility of a decentralized technology and he really seemed to take my position seriously. Then, within a month, he made a speech to the World Future Society describing the role of technology in the same old liberal terms: a small, elitist group solving all the problems for everybody. So I guess it doesn't pay to meet people you are going to take an abstract (continued on page 158)Playboy Interview(continued from page 72) position against. You're liable to end up liking them.

[Q] Playboy: Jerry Brown of California seems to embody many of the virtues you find missing in most American politicians. He prefers his apartment to the governor's mansion, an ordinary car to limousines. Do you think he represents a step in the right--or left--direction?

[A] Hess: It's too early to tell. One of these days, he's going to be late for an appointment; then we'll see if he waits for a cab or commandeers a police car.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any political heroes?

[A] Hess: Gandhi is one. He was the first great spokesman for the neighborhood. His notion was that the world is composed of neighborhoods--a breath-taking perception.

[Q] Playboy: But Gandhi was a national leader. And you're against leaders--and nations.

[A] Hess: That's true. And ordinarily, I'd say if you've got a leader, even a great leader, the thing to do is run for the nearest exit and start collecting canned goods. But Gandhi was a leader whose own program prevented him from achieving anything but inspirational power.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Chairman Mao?

[A] Hess: Mao is an elitist, a bureaucrat. For that reason, China is schizophrenic: far left out in the countryside and still right-wing in Peking.

[Q] Playboy: In general, what is your view of the Chinese experiment?

[A] Hess: American mothers can no longer force-feed their babies with the admonition, "Eat, children in China are starving." In fact, we now know that there are more people starving in Appalachia than in China. We also know that people in China now leave their doors unlocked. So, clearly, communism there has had its blessings.

[Q] Playboy: Would you, then, call yourself pro-Communist?

[A] Hess: I may have lost my faith in capitalism, but I haven't lost my mind. I have no more desire to serve the commissars than the cashiers.

[Q] Playboy: Since it's the season, let's go back to talking about the Presidency.

[A] Hess: Arggh.

[Q] Playboy: What does it mean to you?

[A] Hess: The Presidency doesn't mean shit to me. But it means everything to most people, which is sad. Thomas Jefferson once had to go out to eat because the boardinghouse he was staying at stopped serving dinner at a certain time. Sounds like the folks then understood that what they had was an elected officer, not an elected deity. That's why I used to like Jerry Ford. When I worked for him, he was studying ways in which the Executive branch could be reduced in power. For a while there, he was even interested in a system whereby the President could be recalled. You know, this is one of the few democracies on earth where you elect a person and then can't get rid of him for four years, no matter what he does. Even the Soviet Union is better with bureaucrats than we are. Khrushchev once boasted that he'd shot the head of the K.G.B. at a meeting.

[Q] Playboy: You spoke wistfully about Thomas Jefferson. Do we detect a fondness for America's founding fathers?

[A] Hess: They were a mixed group, and Jefferson was a man of mixed nature. But he gave us the Declaration of Independence, a document without parallel in the history of man's struggle for freedom. I understand that the Magna Charta was important, but the difference between a document that claimed some rights for some barons and a document that claimed sovereignty for an entire people is vast. I don't think it is without sensible connection that Ho Chi-Minh used our Declaration of Independence as the founding document for the North Vietnamese Republic. The Declaration is so lucid that we're afraid of it today. It scares the hell out of every modern bureaucrat, because it tells us that there comes a time when we must stop taking orders and start taking our lives back into our own hands. That's why the Constitution is so diligently taught in every schoolroom, while the Declaration is largely ignored.

[Q] Playboy: How about the rest of the founding fathers?

[A] Hess: I like the anti-Federalists, the ones who argued for the Articles of Confederation, the ones who took the position that we didn't go to all that trouble just to be great and rich--we went to all that trouble to be free. I think Hamilton was our Stalin.

[Q] Playboy: We thought F.D.R. was our Stalin.

[A] Hess: No, F.D.R. was our Mussolini. You haven't been studying your lessons.

[Q] Playboy: Sorry. But the way most people read American history, the Articles of Confederation failed.

[A] Hess: The Articles of Confederation were voted down by a narrow margin at the Constitutional Convention. Their only failure was to carry the day against Hamilton's argument.

[Q] Playboy: Which was?

[A] Hess: Greatness founded on scarcity. "If there aren't enough goodies to go around, let's make sure we're big and strong enough to grab more than our share." Hamilton's was an age-old argument and one that has always appealed to kings, priests, industrialists, everyone but the common man. Yet we are told the Articles of Confederation failed. Why? Because the contemporary records of every era are written by the courtiers of the central government, not by the tradesmen and farmers.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the records of our own age are still kept by courtiers?

[A] Hess: What would you call Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a guy who virtually invents the "imperial Presidency" when his classmate is in the White House, then condemns his own creation when a bunch of yahoos take over?

[Q] Playboy: Most people would call him a left-wing historian.

[A] Hess: He is neither left-wing nor a historian. Have you read Schlesinger's classic essay in which he argues that there is no morality in foreign policy--that it is simply win or lose? He encouraged Kennedy to do all the things Nixon got caught for. Then he condemned Nixon for being an imperial President. That's like Dr. Frankenstein's publishing an antimonster tract.

[Q] Playboy: Now we note a touch of softness for Nixon.

[A] Hess: Although I have always disliked Nixon, I think Johnson and Kennedy were more reprehensible. Nixon was reprehensible at the cloddish level, like a cat burglar. But there is no evidence that he was about to saddle us with fascism. I mean, if you were serious about establishing a fascist regime in this country, I doubt very seriously that you'd hire a bunch of advertising executives to run it for you. Nixon used his power to commit vulgar but relatively petty larceny. Kennedy used his power to commit a people to war.

[Q] Playboy: So you wouldn't rate any of our modern Presidents very highly.

[A] Hess: I'd rate the office at zero. I can't imagine anyone doing much with that office unless the access of information were structurally changed. The President is dependent upon special sources for all he knows about the outside world. Ford is a decent enough guy, but he's got a bunch of what the CIA would call case officers running him. Henry Kissinger is his foreign-policy case officer. So, again using CIA jargon, Nelson Rockefeller would say that he has "penetrated" the White House. And so it goes. Even if Thomas Aquinas or Kropotkin were in the Oval Office, nothing would change much.

[Q] Playboy: Then how does one rate the Presidents?

[A] Hess: By trivializing them. Remember the good things. Eisenhower played golf. Kennedy was a snappy dresser. Truman used salty language. Things like that. Forget Vietnam, Korea, Greece, the Cold War, the McCarthy era, the black lists. Remember how good old Harry used to say, "Give 'em hell"? Now, there was a President. Forget the fact that he stomped the shit out of a burgeoning democracy in Greece.

[Q] Playboy: You don't like Presidents or bureaucrats, then.

[A] Hess: It's not so much that I don't like them but that all managerial functions are the most exalted and least important functions in our society. I mean, being a manager requires a fairly low order of skill. A lot of hard-core unemployed who have no useful skills such as carpentry have all the qualifications necessary to manage things. You know, look at the lists and make sure the paper clips arrive on time. I'm not saying managers don't do anything. I'm just saying they don't do anything a chimpanzee couldn't do equally well. Or a pigeon. Pigeons can do simple repetitive tasks, especially if they're color-coded.

[Q] Playboy: But the President of the U. S. does more than simple repetitive tasks.

[A] Hess: Oh, really? What does the President do? Or, more specifically, what does the President do for you? Can the President tell you who or what you should be sleeping with? No, he's got nothing to do with your sex life. Can the President tell you if you're in love or not? No, that's out. He doesn't know anything about your emotional life. Does the President know whether or not your back wall is going to collapse? No, you'd have to discuss that with an engineer. And on and on it goes throughout the day. Would you call the President when you're sick? No, he doesn't know anything about medicine. Can he select your clothes for you? Can he weave them? Would you go to the President if you had a cinder in your eye? What would you go to the President for? I can think of only one instance: If you were strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and suddenly thought, "Goddamn, should we go to war with Denmark?" Then, maybe, you'd want to drop into the White House and talk it over. But in every sensible enterprise of humankind, you don't go to the President. You go to your neighbors.

[Q] Playboy: OK, you've done a lot of criticizing. What positive steps would you take right now to improve this country?

[A] Hess: Of course, I'd prefer anarchism. But given the situation we're in, I'd offer two suggestions that could be implemented at once. First, I'd establish the machinery for the immediate popular recall of elected officials--as you recall an automobile that's defective. If the President steers us into some outrageous war and then his brakes fail, I think we should be able to return him to the shop for repairs. And, second, I'd call for a new Constitutional Convention to decide exactly what kind of government the American people want--if any.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been tempted to lead, rather than merely endorse, a social revolution?

[A] Hess: An anarchist leader is a contradiction in terms.

[Q] Playboy: Would you consider being a leader even for a brief, transitory period?

[A] Hess: No man should be the master of another for any period. I fear people who preach social change as though they were mere messengers of fate. Messengers change to masters as fast as they can. Beneath all the noble rhetoric of history and destiny, there is a human brow itching for a crown.

[Q] Playboy: But no man is without ambition. What's yours?

[A] Hess: I want to be the perfect anarchist.

[Q] Playboy: Which is?

[A] Hess: A good friend, good lover, good neighbor.

[Q] Playboy: That's all there is to being an anarchist?

[A] Hess: What did you expect, a lot of rules?

[Q] Playboy: We expected one rule: "Resist authority at all cost."

[A] Hess: By resistance you seem to be implying armed revolution. But that's not always necessary. For example, the Presidency could be overthrown tomorrow if the American people suddenly began laughing at it, or ignoring it.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that sometimes revolution can be accomplished through ridicule?

[A] Hess: Sure, and why reach for the musket if all you need is a custard pie?

"The notion that a few people are different and superior ... was horseshit in monarchical times and is horseshit today."

"It's so sad. Women are used as trade goods in a political campaign.... They are assigned, like jets and limousines."

"I am in total opposition to any institutional power. I favor a world of neighborhoods in which all social organization is voluntary."

"Tax collectors are the most casually vicious, objectly humorless and routinely amoral people I've ever met."

"If an American doctor cured cancer tomorrow, there would be people on the left who would call it a plot by the drug companies."

"Eight or nine years of education should be enough. Then cut the strings. Repeal those goddamn child-labor laws."

"If I had a kid today, I'd make sure the state never found out that child existed. And if it did find out, I'd rig up a phony death certificate."

"What Lyndon Johnson really said about Ford was, 'Jerry can't fart and chew gum at the same time."

"I would argue in favor of Americans' continuing ownership of weapons.... 'If guns were outlawed, only the Government would have guns.'"