How I Became a Libertarian

by Penn Jillette,

I met Teller when I was 18 and we started putting together our magic show. I guess we were kind of fast-tracked to be Hollywood liberals—I’m in show business, I have this kind of impotent ponytail back here—I probably should be a liberal. I probably should be a Bernie Sanders supporter and I should be “Feeling the Bern”—but I’m not. The way the media tend to present libertarians is that we’re conservatives, or we’re people with money who want to smoke dope. And it’s really not true at all for me. I do not come to libertarianism because I’m a really successful businessperson, or a CEO, or because I have to fight regulations. I really come to it
from a purely hippie point of view. I have always been a peacenik, and in the 80s I met a man named Tim Jenison. I was then just kind of your standard liberal, and Tim was libertarian.

started giving all the arguments for why the government had to be more powerful, and Tim said a really simple sentence to me. He said, “Do you think it’s OK to punish people who’ve done nothing wrong?” And I said “No”—even though I felt somewhere in my heart that it was a trick question. And then he said, “Why is it OK to reward people who’ve done nothing right?” He said, “Can’t you see that you can’t reward without punishing? They’re the same thing.” And that shut me
up for a little while. Then Tim started saying, “You know, you’re so against force. You’ve never hit anybody in your life. You’ve been beat up. You’ve been in carnival situations that have gone badly and people have hit you and you’ve not hit them back because you
didn’t think it was life threatening. You are insanely peacenik in terms of the way you see war, what the country should do. Why do you think it’s so OK for the government to use force to get things done that you think are good ideas?”

will I give my money to help someone build a library? Yeah! Will I ask other people to give their money to help build a library? Yeah! Will I beg other people to give money to build a library? Yeah! Will I lie to people to get them to give money to build a library? A little bit. Will I use a gun to get someone to build a library? No.And that is, in a nutshell, my entire view of politics: that I have to look over what
people want the government to do and say “If I were given all the power, would I use a gun to accomplish what they want to accomplish?

I am a huge fan of art, and I am a huge fan of crazy art. But Teller and I, before we met Tim Jenison, and before we actually called ourselves “libertarians,” we had a lot of run-ins with government art groups.

here was a theater in Philadelphia
called the Walnut Street Theatre—it’s still there—and upstairs at the Walnut Street Theatre was Theatre 5, which was a little tiny room that sat 100 people. And they had local grants, federal grants, just grants, grants, grants to put together little experimental theater shows in this 100-seat theater on the 5th floor of the Before Teller and I actually called ourselves ‘libertarians,’ we had a lot of run-ins with government art groups. Walnut Street Theatre. They had all their money paid by the government, and they had to put up one new show, I think it was every six weeks. Teller and I, at this point, were street performers. We went out to Head House Square in Philadelphia, and I would do a 12-minute juggling show, and I would then pass the hat. I was a very, very successful street performer. We had a dream of doing a full evening show indoors. We needed a place, and Teller had gone to college with one of the guys who had these grants. But we didn’t know they had grants—we thought they were the same as us, that they made money from ticket sales.

They said that they couldn’t get their show together (six weeks with nothingelse to do and they couldn’t do a show?
Shakespeare’s in the public domain!) so they said, “You can have our theater to put your show on—you’d only have to pay us a little bit of money, and you can have the whole space and do the whole show.” We were thrilled to pieces. Just thrilled to pieces! And we worked really hard (I mean, hard for show business.) We went out and did press releases and got reviews. And that 100-seat theater,
when we were in there, was sold out for the whole six weeks. Then the head of the Walnut Street Theatre found out that our show had
been so successful—they’d never been successful in there at all—and came and talked to us. We didn’t know we were blowing the G on the joint—to use carny terms. We didn’t know we were giving up a secret, to use, I guess, regular-people terms. He said, “How much of the grant money did you get?” And we said “Grant money? No, we just happened to have the theater—thank you so much, sir, we really appreciate it. It’s really helpful, you know, that small amount of rent we’re paying.” And he said, “Rent?!” I said, “This has been wonderful! We’re making our living, it’s going great.” Well, anyway, they lost all their grants. And then there were all sorts of articles written on how Penn and Teller were destroying the arts in Philadelphia because we had lost the federal grants because we went and ratted out the people that were doing the real, important, significant work that we weren’t doing because we were “commercial.”

I wanted those artists to be very, very successful—but I did not want anyone that did not like that art to pay for it, and certainly not to be forced.

And that’s how I became a libertarian.

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