Don't get Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CEO T.J. Rodgers started about Washington, DC. "Washington's a black hole," he says. "You send money into it. It burns half your money." On Capitol Hill's profligate spending, he says, "The budget deficit has to stop. It is the root of all evil." And on government subsidies to business, he says, "They throw mostly useless money at mostly bad projects."

That's tough talk, even from a high-tech executive -- until you realize that Rodgers is a libertarian who carries a copy of the Bill of Rights in his briefcase and fervently believes that the free market can do almost everything better and cheaper than government.

In fact, Rodgers is one of Silicon Valley's highest-profile libertarians -- and often uses that word to describe himself. Sometimes he uses it twice. "I'm a libertarian-libertarian," he said in a May 2001 interview on San Jose Public Television station KTEH, after the host suggested that Rodgers was a "conservative-libertarian." Rodgers continued, "There's some parts of what conservatives like that I like. For example, their like of a small government and no taxes. And with regard to liberals, I share some common ground with them. You know, be who you want to be, do what you want to do -- and I believe in that." Rodgers returned to that theme in the Dartmouth Review (June 11, 2004) when he explained, "I deal with issues of freedom that transcend Left-Right politics."

Politically, Rodgers is a registered Republican, and told The American Enterprise (July-August 1997), "I call myself a libertarian Republican." But Rodgers is no GOP shill. He's happy to criticize Republicans when they stray from his free-market ideals. He told CNET News.com (May 18, 2004), "The Republicans are supposed to be a party of free trade and economic freedom. [But President George W.] Bush has been one of the worst free-trade presidents we've had in a long time. He is a big spender who makes Bill Clinton look like a penny pincher."

Here are some of Rodgers' opinions on the issues:

• On public schools: "They're badly run and that's why they don't produce a good result. Because they're not accountable. Because they're monopolized by the government." -- American Public Television's Uncommon Knowledge (August 17, 2000)

• On deficit spending: "The budget deficit has to stop. It is the root of all evil. I heard a great quote the other day: 'We always hire Democratic congressmen who promise to give us from the government all the things we want. And we always hire Republican presidents to make sure we don't have to pay for it.' It's a great quote. It's exactly right." -- Reason (July 1990)

• On the morality of freedom: "The collectivism that big government espouses undermines capitalism and therefore the fundamental wealth-producing process of Silicon Valley. We must remember that free minds and free markets are the moral foundation that has made our success possible."-- Cato Institute Policy Report (May/June 2000)

• On pork-barrel politics: "Washington's a black hole. You send money into it. It burns half your money. And then, after burning half your money, the other half comes back in the form of political pork-barrel. The loser's game is to send your squealers to Washington to see if they can get a bigger piece of the pork than the other guys' squealers. I refuse to participate in it." -- The American Enterprise (July-August 1997)

Rodgers' pro-capitalism, pro-freedom views have not gone unnoticed. In 2001, he won the Silicon Valley Capitalism Award for "exemplifying the virtues of capitalism and defending capitalism with ethical principles in the media."

In his day job, Rodgers is the president and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation, which he founded in 1982. Cypress is now a billion-dollar company with more than 4,000 employees. The company manufactures 400 types of integrated circuits, including USB chips, static RAM modules, and microprocessor clocks. Rodgers is also a past chair of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), and in May 2004 was elected to the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.

In 2001, Upside Magazine named Rodgers one of the "100 People Who Changed Our World." In 2002, he was cited by Chief Executive magazine as one of America's "Top 100 Chief Executives," and in 2005 he was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame.

On a personal level, Rodgers has shown himself eager to translate his libertarian belief in private charity into action. He has contributed computer facilities to economically disadvantaged student groups in Northern California; funded a student technology team from Broadway High School in San Jose; and spearheaded a corporate food drive for Santa Clara County's homeless (in 2004, Cypress employees donated 835,286 pounds of food to the Second Harvest Food Bank Corporate Food Bowl Challenge).

-- Bill Winter