he set up a commercial partnership, with a fellow Bell graduate, doing on-site industrial welding. Eventually, his skill led to an involvement with welded-metal sculpture. All of this unfolded around the same time as his divorce from his first wife. Hess hereafter publicly criticized big business, suburban American hypocrisy and the military-industrial complex. Though well beyond college age, Hess joined Students for a Democratic Society, worked with the Black Panther Party and protested the Vietnam War. After his work on the Goldwater campaign, Hess was audited by the Internal Revenue Service, which he believed was in retaliation for his support of the losing candidate. In response, he sent the IRS a copy of the Declaration of Independence with a letter saying that he would never again pay taxes. Hess claimed that the IRS then threatened to put a lien on all of his property and 100% of his future earnings. He was supported financially thereafter by his wife and used barter to keep himself afloat. In 1968, Richard Nixon was elected president and Barry Goldwater returned to the Senate as Arizona's junior senator. Hess, despite now being a member of the New Left, had recently written some speeches for Goldwater and resumed their close personal relationship; he had concluded that American men should not be forced into military service and urged Goldwater to submit legislation abolishing conscription. Goldwater replied, "Well, let's wait and see what Dick Nixon wants to do about that one." Hess despised Nixon almost as much as he admired Goldwater and could not tolerate the notion that Goldwater would defer to Nixon. Thus ended one of Hess's closest professional associations, and the situation significantly compromised one of his deepest friendships. (Nixon abolished conscription during his presidency, with Goldwater's support.) Hess began reading American anarchists largely because of the recommendations of his friend Murray Rothbard. Hess said that upon reading the works of Emma Goldman he discovered that anarchists believed everything he had hoped the Republican Party would represent, and that Goldman was the source for the best and most essential theories of Ayn Rand without any of the "crazy solipsism that Rand was so fond of." From 1969 to 1971, Hess edited The Libertarian Forum with Rothbard. Hess had come to put his focus on the small scale, on community. He said, "Society is: people together making culture." He deemed two of his cardinal social principles to