“Individuals usually do a better job than the government…I want the government out of almost everything,” actor Rob Lowe told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in an April 9th, 2014 interview, repeating a similar comment he made in the New York Times five days earlier.
But Lowe resisted being labeled libertarian, perhaps wisely in the Hollywood environment. When O’Reilly suggested that Lowe’s ideas sounded libertarian, the actor replied “I’m a Hollywood pinhead, Bill. I don’t know about political labels…I spent all this time shedding the dogma of political labels, and now you’re telling me I have to go back to living under a political label?”
Lowe’s libertarian comments have been noted by The Washington Times, Breitbart, Reason, RealClearPolitics, and other news and opinion outlets.
In a tweet defending Ayn Rand, Rob Lowe previously expressed his admiration for Atlas Shrugged: “Can someone explain the vitriol whenever Ayn Rand comes up? ‘Atlas’ is the greatest motivator for the individual that I can imagine.”
Just a month after Lowe’s interview with O’Reilly, Dean Cain, revealed a likewise libertarian streak. Declaring his interest in running for Congress, Cain described his political inclinations as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. “Asked if he’s a conservative, Cain said, ‘Fair read when it comes to things to do with the economy and individual liberties, for sure. But on social issues, I’m very, very far to the left.'”
It’s unclear if Cain’s declaration was in any way related to Lowe’s, but the timing is interesting, particularly as the two attended Santa Monica High School together and were one-time baseball teammates.
Cain is best known for his role as a young Superman, in the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. More recently, he starred in the play FBI Lovebirds, a play that mocked Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two wildly partisan FBI operatives at the center of the failed Russian conspiracy charge against Donald Trump.