Ray of Hope

Bradley J. Birzer, who it says on the linked page is The American Conservative's scholar-at-large, celebrates the late, still-very-much-in-print Ray Bradbury. I agree with most of the piece except where it tries a little too hard to claim him as a Libertarian. You could probably make the case that Bradbury was at times a member of every major political movement except the American Nazi Party and that one that was trying to elect an otter to the House of Representatives.

We talked politics a few times and he rejected labels because they associated him with entire party platforms and he didn't agree with any party's platform in full. If he was a Libertarian, he was a Libertarian who thought taxes should be raised as much as necessary for the government to build monorails and other forms of rapid transit from everywhere to everywhere else. When you look at how much it will cost just California to build just that mythical (so far) bullet train from somewhere near Los Angeles to somewhere near San Francisco, you have a vague idea what he would have had us spend just to get around on this world. Then there were all the other planets he felt should have been easily reachable for a guy like him who didn't drive…