Glenn Garvin is that rare libertarian writer who is comfortable writing about almost any topic -- from a revolution in Nicaragua to television to Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign for president.

He also has a sense of humor. In Reason magazine, Garvin gave a lighthearted explanation of how he became a libertarian. "Cursed with two plundering, rapacious younger sisters, I grew up with a highly developed sense of private property (it's my room, get out) and freedom of association (I don't want to have a tea party with you and Mrs. Flopsy)," he wrote in March 2002.

From those philosophical foundations, Garvin went on to become a contributing editor at Reason, and the magazine gave him a forum on which to expound on a multitude of libertarian issues. Some highlights:

* On government spending: "The U.S. government has always thrown money around like a drunken sailor." (November 2003)

* On asset forfeiture: "It's lucrative, a way for agencies to expand their budgets without a lot of whining from spoil-sport taxpayers. Because asset forfeitures are defined as civil, not criminal, penalties, the authorities can brush aside all that troublesome innocent-until-proven-guilty stuff." (October 1995)

* On the War on Drugs: "The drug war has become the new Vietnam, consuming an ever-larger share of resources and lives." (March 2002)

In addition to writing for Reason for more than a decade, Garvin covered the Nicaraguan Contras for The Washington Times for six years. From 1997 to 2002, he was the Miami Herald's bureau chief in Managua, Nicaragua.

He is the author of two books: Everybody Had His Own Gringo: The CIA and the Contras (1992), a history of the Nicaraguan civil war, and Diary of a Survivor: Nineteen Years in a Cuban Women's Prison with Ana Rodriguez (1995), the true story of a young medical student who spent 19 years in Fidel Castro's prisons.

Since 2002, Garvin has been a television critic at the Miami Herald. He took the job after 19 years of covering Central and South America, he said, because "I concluded Latin America was not going to get fixed in my lifetime."

-- Bill Winter

Quotable

"At the very least, [a national ID card] will put every American's right to earn a living at the mercy of the federal government's whimsical computers. And at the very worst, it will be a brutally effective tool for the surveillance, manipulation, and punishment of anyone who runs afoul of Washington's imperious corps of social engineers." -- Glenn Garvin in Reason (October 1995)

Books & Tapes

To purchase books and tapes about or by this Libertarian Celebrity, search the world's best selection of books 
on liberty at Laissez Faire Books. For books or tapes that are not about liberty, search the vast resources at Amazon Books.