Fifth columnist.

• Author: Sanchez, Julian
• Position: John Tierney - Interview

Earlier this year, libertarians greeted with enthusiasm the news that The New York Times' John Tierney had been tapped to succeed the Times' William Satire on the country's most influential liberal op-ed page. A libertarian himself, Tierney once ushered an unprecedented amount of hate mail into the office of the The New York Times Magazine with a piece called "Recycling is Garbage," infuriated fellow train lovers with a feature titled "Amtrak Must Die," and rifled on Robert Nozick and the immorality of rent control in his eclectic Metro column, "The Big City," which ran from 1994 to 2000. Assistant Editor Julian Sanchez spoke with Tierney in July.

Q. How did you come to have a libertarian worldview?

A: I evolved into it, really through working as a journalist and meeting libertarians that way. The real influence on me was the late Julian Simon. I was assigned to do a story in 1985 for Science about the population crisis in Kenya, and I had heard about this kind of iconoclastic economist, so I called him up and said: "You know, the average woman in Kenya is having eight children, the population is doubling every ten years," and started rattling off all these disasters. And Julian interrupted me, he said: "Yes, isn't it wonderful that so many people can be alive in that country today?" It was just a whole different way to look at it. After the trip, Julian became a kind of mentor to me; I really miss him.

Q: What has...