Karl Hess (born Carl Hess III; May 25, 1923 – April 22, 1994) was an American speechwriter and author. He was also a political philosopher, editor, welder, motorcycle racer, tax resister, and libertarian activist. His career included stints on the Republican right and the New Left before embracing a mix of left-libertarianism and laissez-faire anarcho-capitalism. Later in life, he summed up his role in the economy by remarking "I am by occupation a free marketer (crafts and ideas, woodworking, welding, and writing)." Early life Hess was born Carl Hess III in Washington, D.C. and moved to the Philippines as a child. His parents were of German and Spanish ancestry. When his mother discovered his father's marital infidelity, she divorced her wealthy husband and returned (with Karl) to Washington. She refused alimony or child support and took a job as a telephone operator, raising her son in very modest circumstances. Karl's mother encouraged curiosity and direct learning. She often insisted that Karl figure things out for himself, or increase his knowledge through reading. Karl, believing (as his mother did) that public education was a waste of time, rarely attended school; to evade truancy officers, he registered at every elementary school in town and gradually withdrew from each one, making it impossible for the authorities to know exactly where he was supposed to be. He had developed great reverence for libraries; this became very basic to his personal philosophy, and in his autobiography he wrote: "Literacy is the basic tool in the workshop of the entire world." As a young person, Karl played tennis, learned marksmanship, and pursued fencing. Later on he learned gunsmithing. He officially dropped out at 15 and went to work for the Mutual Broadcasting System as a newswriter at the invitation of Walter Compton, a Mutual news commentator who resided in the building where Mrs. Hess operated the switchboard. Hess continued to work in the news media, and by age 18 was assistant city editor of The Washington Daily News Early during the Second World War, Hess enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942, but was discharged when they discovered he had contracted malaria in the Philippines. He was later an editor for Newsweek and The Fisherman. He worked as a staff writer, and sometimes as a freelancer, for a number of anti-Communist periodicals. In the 1950s he worked for the Champion Papers and Fibre Company. He was