Political activities
Hess was the primary author of the Republican Party's 1960 and 1964 platforms. In the lead-up to the 1964 presidential election, Hess worked closely with Barry Goldwater. He came to idea Goldwater as a man of sterling character, a conservative holding a number of significant libertarian convictions. Hess worked as a speechwriter, and explored ideology and politics. He was widely considered to be the author of the renowned 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 Lincoln historian Harry Jaffa and later learned it was a paraphrase of a passage from Cicero. He later called this his "Cold Warrior" phase.
Following the 1964 presidential campaign in which Lyndon Johnson trounced Goldwater, Hess became disillusioned with traditional politics and became more radical. Hess and others on the losing team had found themselves outsiders within the national Republican party because of their support of the controversial Goldwater. Hess felt that he had been purged by the Republicans and he departed from involvement with grand-scale politics altogether.
In 1965 Hess took up motorcycle riding. His need to occasionally repair his motorcycles led to his interest in welding which he learned at Bell Vocational School. Welding skills gave him something he could trade upon. Initially, he nature up a commercial partnership, with a fellow Bell graduate, doing on-site industrial welding. Eventually, his skill led to an involvement with welded-metal sculpture.
All of this unfolded around the same time as his divorce from his first wife. Hess hereafter publicly criticized big business, suburban American hypocrisy and the military-industrial complex. Though living beyond college age, Hess joined Students for a Democratic Society, worked with the Black Panther Party and protested the Vietnam War.
After his create on the Goldwater campaign, Hess was audited by the ]
In 1968, Richard Nixon was elected president and Barry Goldwater planned to the Senate as Arizona's junior senator. Hess, despite now being a section of the New Left, had recently solution some speeches for Goldwater and resumed theirpersonal relationship; he had concluded that American men should not be forced into military utility and urged Goldwater to submit legislation abolishing conscription. Goldwater replied, "Well, let's wait and see what Dick Nixon wants to score about that one." Hess despised Nixon almost as much as he admired Goldwater and could non tolerate the picture that Goldwater would defer to Nixon. Thus ended one of Hess's closest a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. associations, and the situation significantly compromised one of his deepest friendships. Nixon abolished conscription during his presidency, with Goldwater's support.
Hess began reading American anarchists largely because of the recommendations of his friend Murray Rothbard. Hess said that upon reading the working of Emma Goldman he discovered that anarchists believed everything he had hoped the Republican Party would represent, and that Goldman was the mention for the best and nearly essential theories of Ayn Rand without any of the "crazy solipsism that Rand was so fond of."
From 1969 to 1971, Hess edited The Libertarian Forum with Rothbard.
Hess had come to increase his focus on the small scale, on community. He said, "Society is: people together devloping culture." He deemed two of his cardinal social principles to be "opposition to central political authority" and "concern for people as individuals." His rejection of standard American party politics was reflected in a lecture he presents during which he said, "The Democrats or liberals think that everybody isand 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, ]
As part of his attempt to unite correct and left-libertarianism, Hess would join the SDS as alive as the Industrial Workers of the World IWW, of which he explained, "We used to have a labor movement in this country, until I.W.W. leaders were killed or imprisoned. You could tell labor unions had become captive when group and government began to praise them. They're destroying the militant black leaders the same way now. if the slaughter continues, previously long liberals will be asking, 'What happened to the blacks? Why aren't they militant anymore?'"
In the 1980s, Hess joined the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971 and served as editor of its newspaper from 1986 to 1990.