The American Spectator

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BC: Is it your opinion that the American universities are now in the stranglehold of the left? I have yet to meet a Marxist over the course of the last ten years who was not in some way affiliated with a university. Is it the death grip that the left has over hiring and firing that has relegated many of the nation's finest minds to positions at conservative think-tanks?

GN: The universities are certainly tidal pools filled with Marxist nonsense long after the tide went out. I wonder if it matters. Policy is more shaped by think tanks -- and here conservatives have better and stronger ones. Students work hard not to learn anything at these universities so I wonder if bad ideas are picked up or remembered. It would be nice to have serious universities, but we can survive as a nation -- we have survived for 50 years--without them.

BC: How do you convince people that taxes are not charity? To me this is the biggest obstacle to tax reform. I know so many people who say ridiculous things like "I can afford to pay taxes, no big deal." What angle would you take with a person like this to bring them over to the side of the good?

GN: Taxation is not charity. It is not voluntary. As we shrink the state and make government smaller we will find that more and more people are able to take care of themselves. The welfare state creates its own victim/client constituency. By making individuals free and independent, we reduce the need for "charity" to those truly needy citizens what we can certainly afford to help through real charity.

BC: Here's a freebie. David Brock had some unflattering things to say about you in his Chatty Kathy memoir. Do you have a response? Personally, when I read that book I was convinced that guy was never on the right to begin with as he seems to have no knowledge of basic conservative positions.

GN: I have not had a chance to read David Brock's book. I befriended him when he was at The American Spectator but he was not a part of the conservative movement. He wasn't at the meetings or part of our collective efforts, so he never knew much of the movement other than what he could glimpse from afar.

topics:
Taxes, Foreign Policy, Business, Social Security, Law, Russia, NATO, Conservatism, Unions