Witness

"I read both of them in the same summer at my public library, in Weston Public Library. Twelve, 13. Weston is 12 miles due west of Boston. Yes. So they were selling them off for a nickel or quarter a piece because the library was getting rid of all its silly right-wing books that nobody wanted. So I picked up all my anti-Communist stuff for a buck. I also got Masters of Deceit and the other J Edgar Hoover books and so on. I was an anti-Communist first, and a broader conservative/free marketeer later. I knew the other team for the bad guys, but I remember, as a teenager, not being completely opposed to certain government regulations. I hadn’t thought about it particularly, but then later I became more free market in my thinking. There was also the Vietnam War, which was a big thing. The Communists were pushing us, and the hard left was opposed to our opposing them, not as libertarians saying, ‘Excuse me but what are we doing in their war?’ but as, ‘They are the good guys, why are we fighting against the good guys?’"