Ex-rocker sings praise of freedom, modern culture

By Steve Stephens
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, August 9, 1999

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Traditional left- right politics leave little room for the place where metal-tinged rock 'n' roll meets green-eye-shade policy studies.

But a growing number of activists occupy that no man's land, including Rich Leonardi, former lead singer of Agnes Moorehead Platter and current president of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions.

The nonprofit Buckeye Institute, which is devoted to free markets and limited government, moved to Columbus from Dayton last week for the same reasons a missionary might consider relocating to hell.

"A spy in the house of love,'' said Leonardi, quoting Jim Morrison. (Leonardi's singing voice sounds a lot like the leader of the Doors.)

It's been 10 years since Leonardi helped found Agnes Moorehead Platter at the University of Dayton. ("I watched Bewitched when I was a kid, and I thought Agnes Moorehead was an awesome name, like Alice Cooper.'')

The band toured Midwestern cities and college towns.

"The best show we ever did was in Kalamazoo, Mich.,'' he said. "We were getting some airplay on a college station, and we had people actually coming up and asking for an autograph. I felt like a rock star.''

Leonardi was "quite serious about the music'' but eventually gave up the band -- and a flowing mane of hair -- for law school.

His pro-freedom philosophy crystallized while he was a law student at Capital University, which has quietly become a hotbed of individualist theory, he said.

Two years ago, Leonardi hooked up with the Buckeye Institute, often referred to in the media as a "conservative think tank.'' But a political taxonomy that lumps freedom-lovers like Leonardi, 31, with such pteranodons as Pat Buchanan and Dan Quayle is useless in this day and age.

Leonardi, now a father, outgrew the rock 'n' roll lifestyle but retained a distrust of authority and a passion for individual freedom and modern culture that hardly fits with the conservative label.

The pundits' confusion probably arises from the institute's emphasis on such traditional conservative causes as tax cuts.

However, neither true conservatives nor true liberals understand that civil liberties and economic freedoms are equals. As Madonna (or was it Ayn Rand?) noted, we are living in a material world.

While conservatives pine for the "good old days'' and fret and stew about progress and change, Leonardi and his fellow travelers are optimistic about new technologies and the future.

"Without the Internet, I don't know what the hell we'd accomplish,'' Leonardi said, sorting through boxes of old-fashioned printed policy studies at the institute's new N. High Street headquarters.

"Technology really shakes things up and makes our life easier,'' he said.

The liberal vs. conservative dynamic has been eclipsed by a new order of "stasists'' vs. "dynamists,'' says author and editor Virginia Postrel, a speaker at a Buckeye Institute luncheon at the Statehouse in January.

"Dynamism represents, in the words of . . . the late economist and social philosopher Frederich Hayek, 'the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution,' '' Postrel writes in her new book, The Future and Its Enemies.

"It is a party that has no true political or intellectual home in America today. Its central value is learning, which unlike stability or control is an open-ended process. Dynamists do not expect, demand or desire a world that holds still.''

On one side are pessimists such as Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader, who believe in order and centralized authority, Postrel says.

On the other are such optimists as Leonardi, who rest their hopes on freedom and the potential of individuals.

The split is growing along generational lines, Leonardi said.

"There are a lot of people under 40 who didn't grow up with that 1960s belief that government can solve every problem, who believe that individuals can take control of their own lives and who subscribe to the notion of decentralized power.

"Markets trump politics,'' he said. "When people get together voluntarily, they come up with better solutions than government can.''

While Agnes Moorehead Platter has faded into history, youthful enthusiasm, energy and hope are flourishing with Leonardi and the Buckeye Institute.

Let's hope they rock Columbus.

Steve Stephens is a Dispatch Metro columnist. He can be reached at 614- 461-5201 or at sstephen@dispatch.com

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