In 1972, when I was a young political activist working in the antiwar and pro-marijuana movements, I became aware of the Orange County Register<\/i>. I was working at the campaign office for Prop. 19, the first California marijuana initiative. Word came in that the main newspaper in conservative Orange County had become the first daily paper to endorse our measure. We were amazed.<\/p>\n
I found out later that this should have been no surprise. The Register<\/i> was the flagship paper for Freedom Communications, a libertarian-owned newspaper chain. It had been founded in the early 1930s by R.C. Hoiles, who was to become a leader in the modern libertarian movement.<\/p>\n
The Register<\/i>‘s finest hour came in 1942, when most of the established media were calling for internment of innocent Japanese-Americans. Weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoiles wrote clearly against the idea of taking away their liberty and property. The Register<\/i> continued to run editorial after editorial against the internment and against the rollback of civil liberties in the time of war. The paper was the victim of several bomb threats.<\/p>\n
More recently, as the rest of the media piled on to the false claims of the Bush Administration over Iraq, the Register<\/i> ran many editorials against attacking Iraq. They have continued to support withdrawal from both Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Former Register<\/i> editor John Seiler writes today at LewRockwell.com<\/a> on the history of Freedom Communications. It is definitely worth reading.<\/a><\/p>\n Here is a report on the effects of the bankruptcy from Alan Bock<\/b>, longtime writer and editor at the Orange County Register<\/i> and longtime columnist for Antiwar.com.<\/p>\n\n