Karl Hess, née Karl Hess III, is an American speechwriter and writer, based on whose works a number of documentaries have been filmed. Over the years, he has tried many professions: he was a political philosopher, editor, welder, motorcyclist, tax agent and libertarian activist. He advocated restricting right-wing forces, strengthening and renewing left-wing forces, and free market anarchism.
Biography
Karl Hess III was born on May 25, 1923 in Washington, DC. As a child, he moved with his parents to the Philippines. Karl's father and mother were of German and Spanish descent. When her mother discovered her father's infidelity, she divorced her rich husband and returned with Karl to Washington. Having refused alimony, she herself got a job as a telephone operator and raised her son on an extremely modest budget.
Karl's mother encouraged curiosity and direct learning. She made Karl think of something to do or read. As a result, Karl and his mother began to believe that public education was a waste of time. The boy rarely attended school, and in order to evade supervision, he registered in every elementary school in the city, subsequently gradually abandoning each. Thanks to this, it was impossible for the authorities to know exactly which school Karl was supposed to attend. At the same time, Karl was a frequenter of libraries and everything he read was easily the basis of his personal philosophy.
In his younger years, Karl was fond of shooting, fencing and playing tennis, later to these hobbies was added to the arms business.
At the outbreak of World War II, Karl Hess enlisted in the US Armed Forces, but was fired in 1942 after he contracted malaria in the Philippines.
He died on April 22, 1994.
Career
Karl Hess officially dropped out at 15 when he joined a news commentator and worked as a news editor for the mutual broadcast system. By the age of 18, Karl had grown up in the service and took up the post of assistant city editor of The Washington Daily News.
He later became editor of Newsweek and The Fisheman. He has worked as a staff writer and sometimes as a freelancer for a number of anti-communist periodicals. In the 1950s, he worked for Chamion Papers and Fiber. It was during this time that he began to show concern that people in the managerial part of the corporate world were becoming more interested in personal careers than in doing good jobs. At Chamion, management encouraged employees to engage in conservative policies in the best interests of the firm. Karl met with Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater and other prominent Republicans and quietly became a convinced Republican himself.
As a child, Hess was a devout Catholic, but when at the age of 15 he had to temporarily work as a coroner, he became convinced that people are simply made of flesh and blood, and there is no afterlife. After that, he stopped attending church and became an atheist. Many years later, he returned to church, but only because many of his colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute, where he worked at the time, also attended church. However, attending church meetings only reinforced Charles' atheism. And when he brought his little son to the service, he suddenly felt disgusted with the fact that he was bringing the child to an institution that he himself rejected.
Political career
Hess was a program writer for the Republican Party in the 1960 and 1964 elections and worked closely with Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was a Conservative with significant libertarian beliefs. Hess worked under him as a speechwriter, studied politics and ideology. It was Hess who became the author of Goldwater's slogan: “Extremism in defense of freedom is not a vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is not a virtue. Later, however, it turned out that it was just a paraphrased passage from Cicero.
After the 1964 presidential campaign, when Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater, Hess became disenchanted with politics and became a radical. Like many other losing Republicans, Hess felt like an outsider and refused to participate in big politics.
In 1965 Karl became a biker. The need to periodically repair the motorcycle led him to graduate from Bell Vocational School as a welder. This profession gave him the opportunity to sell his skills, and a commercial partnership with fellow student Hessa Bell led to the creation of a firm to produce metal sculptures.
At the same time, Hess divorces his first wife, publicly criticizes big business, American hypocrisy and the ambitions of the military-industrial complex. He joins Students for a Democratic Society, works with the Black Panther Party, protests against the Vietnam War.
In retaliation for supporting the losing candidate, Hess was audited by the Internal Revenue Service. In response to this check, Karl promised in writing that he would never pay taxes again. In response, the Service seized all of Hess's property and 100% of his earnings. Karl was forced to subsist on his wife's money and trade his welding skills for barter goods and services.
In 1968, Richard Nixon became president of the United States, and Barry Goldwater was named junior senator of Arizona. Hess continued to work for Goldwater as a personal speechwriter and communicate with him in person. He convinced Goldwater of the need to abolish military service in the United States, but Goldwater did not oppose Nixon, and Hess, who strongly hated Nixon, could not come to terms with this idea. Despite the fact that Nixon still canceled the draft into the army, Hess fell out with Goldwater forever.
On the advice of his friend Murray Rothbard, Hess became interested in the work of American anarchists. And in the works of Emma Goldman found everything that he hoped for and that he loved so much.
From 1969 to 1971 he worked as editor of the Libertarian Forum with his friend Rothbard. At the same time, Hess joins other anarchists: Robert Lefebvre, Dana Rohrabacher, Samuel Edward Konkin III, and Karl Oglesby, the former leader of Students for a Democratic Society. Speaking at numerous conferences, Hess was involved in the birth of the libertarian movement.
In an effort to unite the right and left libertarians, he joins the Industrial Workers of the World party, and also returns to the organization Students for a Democratic Society.
In 1971, the US Libertarian Party was created, and in 1980 Hess joined it. From 1986 to 1990 he was the editor of her party newspaper.
Film about Karl Hess
Karl Hess: Towards Freedom is a 1980 US-made short documentary. The film was filmed in the corridors of Boston University and the School of Film Programming and Broadcasting by directors Roland Hale and Peter Ladu. Several students and teachers acted as actors. Carl Hess himself starred.
In 1981, the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. The film also received the Maya Dern Award from Boston University, the Focus Award at the Student Film Festival, the AMPAS Student Film Award, the Golden Eagle Award and the Massachusetts Governor's Award.
