15 Questions With Grover Norquist

1. Fifteen Minutes: What were the inspirations for your early political views?

Grover G. Norquist: I was an anti-communist before I was political in other ways. I read a great deal about the Soviet Union—my public library decided to get rid of all its ‘annoying’ books, which meant all of the right-of-center books, and sold them all off for a nickel or a dime or a quarter. I picked up “I Led Three Lives,” by Herb Philbrick, the guy who was a spy inside the communist party. So I was an anti-communist first, and then over time became active in the Republican Party, and then broadened my interest set into market economics and, in college, I knew I was a free market person.