RIP Tibor Machan: remembering a reason editor and co-founder of the Reason Foundation.

• Author: Klausner, Manny
• Position: In memoriam

On March 24, 2016, Tibor Machan, former editor of reason and cofounder of Reason Foundation, died peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by his family, after a short illness. Here, his two co-founders memorialize his life and contributions to reason.

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MANNY KLAUSNER

I first came in contact with Tibor in 1969, after listening to his radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles. He had a 15-minute weekly commentary on this left-wing Pacifica-affiliated station, at a time when the left was somewhat more tolerant of diverse views. He impressed me with his coherent and insightful observations about liberty, delivered in his robust voice. I contacted Tibor, and we quickly became friends.

At the time, I was a litigation lawyer at a mid-sized Los Angeles law firm. I had become a libertarian at New York University (NYU) Law School in the early 1960s, after studying with Sylvester Petro and Ludwig von Mises (who taught at the NYU Graduate School of Business) and becoming acquainted with Murray Rothbard, who was then working on his magnum opus, Man, Economy, and State.

There was an embryonic libertarian movement, barely visible to the general public. During that period, there were several small-circulation libertarian magazines, mostly shortlived. Tibor asked me if I'd like to come to Santa Barbara to meet Bob Poole and talk about taking over a magazine called reason.

We were all young and highly motivated, and we were all libertarians. Tibor and Bob were more influenced by Ayn Rand, while Mises and Rothbard were my mentors.

Tibor gave me excerpts from Atlas Shrugged to read. Although he was a devoted admirer of her work, Tibor had been "excommunicated" by Rand in the 1960s for a letter he sent to her to clarify a question he had. But he kept in contact with Nathaniel Branden, who actively marketed Rand's work and developed an international movement for her philosophy of Objectivism.

Tibor arranged to interview Branden for reason in 1971--a significant journalistic achievement because it was Branden's first public statement after his dramatic split with Rand in 1968. We vigorously promoted the interview, and this led to a major increase in new subscribers for reason.

During that time, no one had any sense of "the libertarian moment." Rather, it wasn't unusual to be referred to as a libertine--and I was once even mistakenly introduced as a librarian.

Tibor, Bob, and I made a unique team. As a philosopher, a systems engineer, and a lawyer, we...