WEBVTT NOTE How States Fall and Liberty Triumphs 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.200 The great problem that has occupied political philosophers for several millennia and economists 2 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:12.920 for centuries has been finding a rationale for the state and its managers that will assure 3 00:00:12.920 --> 00:00:18.680 the state's longevity and stability. On the face of it, that might seem to be a strange 4 00:00:18.680 --> 00:00:24.600 thing to be concerned about. One might think that curbing despotism would be a greater 5 00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:28.600 Mises laid out the ideal in 1929 when he wrote, 6 00:00:28.600 --> 00:00:32.600 The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities, 7 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:40.600 that if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state. 8 00:00:40.600 --> 00:00:44.600 Sadly, however, there are no governments that are liberal by nature. 9 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:49.600 All have a tendency to grow and become menaces to society. 10 00:00:49.600 --> 00:01:05.600 Also, by definition, the state enjoys a territorial monopoly on the legal use of aggressive force in society, and therefore does not face a problem of compliance most of the time. 11 00:01:05.600 --> 00:01:12.600 Given this, one might think that the last problem that would occupy anyone is how to assure the state's stability and longevity. 12 00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:20.600 It is akin to medical research that is trying to figure out how to make diseases as long-lasting, painful, and deadly as possible. 13 00:01:20.600 --> 00:01:29.600 By comparison, far less energy has been applied to addressing a greater problem, how and when to throw the bums out. 14 00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:41.600 If we look at a sweep of history, especially modern history, we can see that the state as an institution is responsible for the largest and gravest of all social, economic, cultural, and economic. 15 00:01:41.600 --> 00:01:44.600 Cultural and Humanitarian Disasters 16 00:01:44.600 --> 00:01:53.600 The problem isn't so much assuring that states survive, but in limiting the power of states and getting rid of them when they go too far. 17 00:01:53.600 --> 00:02:03.600 The Encyclopedia of Revolutions and Revolutionaries chronicles more than a thousand cases of internally driven regime change from the ancient world to the present. 18 00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:09.600 Some were peaceful, with regimes dissolving without a trace. Others were not peaceful. 19 00:02:09.600 --> 00:02:14.300 Many ended in greater liberty, some ended in terrible tyranny. 20 00:02:14.300 --> 00:02:19.900 The difference in case after case is the intellectual climate that surrounded the great event. 21 00:02:19.900 --> 00:02:23.500 In the sweep of history, however, this much is clear. 22 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:27.100 Far too few states have been overthrown. 23 00:02:27.100 --> 00:02:31.900 Liberty is the exception, tyranny the norm. 24 00:02:31.900 --> 00:02:37.300 Why are states not stopped before they attack private property, wreck economies, 25 00:02:37.300 --> 00:02:41.380 to stabilize families and engage in mass murder. 26 00:02:41.380 --> 00:02:45.900 As Thomas Jefferson wrote, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed 27 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:51.620 to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms 28 00:02:51.620 --> 00:02:54.000 to which they are accustomed. 29 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:56.220 There is an additional factor. 30 00:02:56.220 --> 00:03:01.120 It is rather difficult to stop states and probably impossible to limit the state to 31 00:03:01.120 --> 00:03:03.140 a certain set of functions. 32 00:03:03.140 --> 00:03:08.980 The tendency is always and everywhere for it to grow and become overweening. 33 00:03:08.980 --> 00:03:13.700 Stopping any voluntary institution in society is comparatively easy. 34 00:03:13.700 --> 00:03:18.620 All enterprises in a market economy can be brought to their knees by the simple act of 35 00:03:18.620 --> 00:03:21.460 refraining from buying. 36 00:03:21.460 --> 00:03:25.420 Families too are broken up by the simple act of walking away. 37 00:03:25.420 --> 00:03:28.900 Churches collapse when people lose interest in faith. 38 00:03:28.900 --> 00:03:35.180 Private schools go belly up when the students stop showing up, but states always and everywhere 39 00:03:35.180 --> 00:03:40.900 extract their revenue by force. People have no choice but to comply, or rather they face 40 00:03:40.900 --> 00:03:47.540 the choice of complying or suffering physical punishment. Of course, states prefer to elicit 41 00:03:47.540 --> 00:03:54.140 compliance through other means, by eliciting patriotic fervor or devotion to the prince. 42 00:03:54.140 --> 00:03:59.800 What are the conditions under which a state fails? What are the moral and practical justifications 43 00:03:59.800 --> 00:04:05.440 for giving it a push? What is the best method for assisting in the overthrow of a regime 44 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:09.940 and bringing about new social and political systems? These are questions that have been 45 00:04:09.940 --> 00:04:14.580 addressed by a relatively few thinkers in history. In fact, we can single out the groups 46 00:04:14.580 --> 00:04:19.700 of intellectuals who have addressed the topic in any depth. The moral thinkers of the high 47 00:04:19.700 --> 00:04:42.700 The classical liberal tradition spoke to the issue because it was the first to see that social order and prosperity were not sustained by the state, but rather existed despite the state. 48 00:04:42.700 --> 00:04:48.700 In that tradition, the founding generation of the U.S. that overthrew British rule drew on the writings of John Locke and others. 49 00:04:48.700 --> 00:05:04.700 The Marxists, too, have been variously consumed by this topic. They, like the classical liberals, view the state as something of an artifice masking a deeper structure of political dynamic. To this extent, they are correct. 50 00:05:04.700 --> 00:05:12.700 The issue is directly relevant for our own times. We just witnessed the amazing spectacle of a recall election in California. 51 00:05:12.700 --> 00:05:18.700 The citizenry concluded that the regime in charge had failed to do what it said it would do. 52 00:05:18.700 --> 00:05:30.700 With the legitimacy of the regime lost, the California system, premised on some small measure on the idea that government should reflect the people's will, permits citizens to petition for throwing the bum out. 53 00:05:30.700 --> 00:05:33.700 They elected a new manager in this place. 54 00:05:33.700 --> 00:05:41.700 Now there are many obvious problems with the system. There's no real justice for the bum. He's not punished for his transgressions. 55 00:05:41.700 --> 00:05:48.700 He loses nothing out of his personal assets for his mismanagement. He only loses the right to rule. 56 00:05:48.700 --> 00:05:54.700 But the biggest problem is that Californians were only permitted to vote on who should manage the government apparatus, 57 00:05:54.700 --> 00:05:58.700 not on the legitimacy of the government apparatus itself. 58 00:05:58.700 --> 00:06:03.700 Even so, the very existence of a recall election taps into the unquot sense we all have 59 00:06:03.700 --> 00:06:10.700 that there is nothing sacred about government managers. They can be replaced, deposed, overthrown. 60 00:06:10.700 --> 00:06:18.700 The government is not permanent. It can fall if the people will it, provided the system permits such a thing to happen. 61 00:06:18.700 --> 00:06:24.700 The system that makes this impossible is in some sense unjust, because it makes power alone the measure of all things. 62 00:06:24.700 --> 00:06:32.700 If we believe that power must be justified in some way, there ought to be a mechanism to check power by the prospect of overthrowing it. 63 00:06:32.700 --> 00:06:47.860 It is crucial for heads of state to understand that their rule is contingent. This serves 64 00:06:47.860 --> 00:06:53.500 a crucial role in keeping power in check. Even when putting together the U.S. Constitution, 65 00:06:53.500 --> 00:06:57.180 the right of the Congresses, the people's representatives, to impeach the President 66 00:06:57.180 --> 00:07:02.260 and convict him was firmly established. The founders expected that this threat would 67 00:07:02.260 --> 00:07:19.580 In the modern world, however, governments have worked to make themselves unimpeachable, 68 00:07:19.580 --> 00:07:20.580 so to speak. 69 00:07:20.580 --> 00:07:26.780 It was once only dictators who referred to themselves as permanent fixtures, unalterable 70 00:07:26.780 --> 00:07:27.780 facts of history. 71 00:07:27.780 --> 00:07:34.020 The U.S. started doing the same thing in the 1990s when it became the world's only superpower. 72 00:07:34.020 --> 00:07:40.140 Madeleine Albright declared that the U.S. is the world's only indispensable government. 73 00:07:40.140 --> 00:07:43.300 She said indispensable nation, but we know what she meant. 74 00:07:43.300 --> 00:07:47.860 In our own time, as President Bush has not only declared the U.S. government to be permanent 75 00:07:47.860 --> 00:07:52.700 and eternal, he has set up the U.S. as the sole judge of all other governments in the 76 00:07:52.700 --> 00:07:56.820 world which are somehow deemed dispensable. 77 00:07:56.820 --> 00:08:02.820 Other regimes can be changed, even decapitated, but only one, the most powerful of all, is 78 00:08:02.820 --> 00:08:05.460 regarded as sacrosanct. 79 00:08:05.460 --> 00:08:08.820 Why is the U.S. the world's only permanent government? 80 00:08:08.820 --> 00:08:12.500 Is it something written into the fabric of the natural law? 81 00:08:12.500 --> 00:08:13.500 We know the reason. 82 00:08:13.500 --> 00:08:19.700 It has the most guns by far, and therefore no one is in a position to object. 83 00:08:19.700 --> 00:08:24.700 The impeachment power all but gone, the right of secession declared null and void, the impossibility 84 00:08:24.700 --> 00:08:29.740 of Recalling Presidents and the rise of the permanent bureaucratic class, does this mean 85 00:08:29.740 --> 00:08:35.340 that there are no mechanisms remaining to us to check the power of the state? Is there 86 00:08:35.340 --> 00:08:40.500 nothing we can do to dislodge these people from their seats of power and prestige? 87 00:08:40.500 --> 00:08:46.460 There still is another force at work, the propensity of governments to overreach in 88 00:08:46.460 --> 00:08:52.460 so many areas that their exercise of power itself can lead to their own undoing. The 89 00:08:52.460 --> 00:08:58.580 The overreach can take many forms, financial, economic, social, military. In this way, with 90 00:08:58.580 --> 00:09:02.660 enough passion for liberty burning in the hearts of the citizenry, governments can be 91 00:09:02.660 --> 00:09:08.400 responsible for their own undoing. It comes about as a result of overestimating the capacity 92 00:09:08.400 --> 00:09:15.400 of power and underestimating its limits. I believe this is happening in our time. 93 00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:35.400 It may not be obvious when taking a broad view, but when you look at the status of a huge range of government programs and institutions, what we see is a government that is once enormously rich and powerful, but also fragile and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. 94 00:09:35.400 --> 00:09:43.400 Events of the last year indicate just how far the government has slipped in its ability to manage the economy, society, culture and world order. 95 00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:53.400 Despite the exalted status of the State today, the vast and sprawling empire called the U.S. Government may in fact be less healthy than it has ever been. 96 00:09:53.400 --> 00:10:02.400 The other day we had a special speaker come to Auburn, probably the most famous man who has visited us since the country and western singer Alan Jackson anyway. 97 00:10:02.400 --> 00:10:08.400 He was Mikhail Gorbachev, a very interesting figure in the history of nations. 98 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:19.400 He came to power with the reputation of a reformer and institute of many reforms that were designed not to give the people more liberty, but to stop the unraveling of an empire before it was too late. 99 00:10:19.400 --> 00:10:29.400 But it was too late, and all his talk of perestroika and glasnost couldn't fool the people, who had become convinced that the Soviet machine was something of a hoax. 100 00:10:29.400 --> 00:10:35.800 The empire unraveled not because of him, but despite his efforts to save it. When it came 101 00:10:35.800 --> 00:10:40.740 time to make the crucial decision of whether to try to hold the empire together by much 102 00:10:40.740 --> 00:10:48.440 more force, history had already made the choice for him, and the empire dissolved in the blink 103 00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:53.080 of an eye. Not too many months later he was out of a job, not because he was recalled 104 00:10:53.080 --> 00:11:03.720 Ron Paul has said for some years that the U.S. may be in a similar position to that 105 00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:09.080 of the last years of the Soviet Union, an empire that everyone believes will last forever 106 00:11:09.080 --> 00:11:14.240 but which has decayed at its very foundations, financially and militarily overextended to 107 00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:15.240 the breaking point. 108 00:11:15.240 --> 00:11:18.680 I agree with him on this. 109 00:11:18.680 --> 00:11:23.040 Let's gain some insight into how governments travel the trajectory from high prestige to 110 00:11:23.040 --> 00:11:28.080 to Humiliation by looking at the well-known tale of The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans-Christian 111 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:33.640 Anderson. It is much to teach us about the nature of the state and its stability in good 112 00:11:33.640 --> 00:11:40.240 and bad times. In the story, the emperor has the ambition to be well dressed. He'll have 113 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:43.800 nothing more than showing off his clothes in procession so that people might be ever 114 00:11:43.800 --> 00:11:49.240 more convinced of his glory. Now, we might think of this as a metaphor for the ideological 115 00:11:49.240 --> 00:11:59.240 The Philosophers tell us that all societies need a coercive head to ensure justice and fairness. 116 00:11:59.240 --> 00:12:05.240 The Political Philosophers say that the people demand a head of state to represent their interests. 117 00:12:05.240 --> 00:12:09.240 The Economists tell us that the state is essential to the provision of public goods. 118 00:12:09.240 --> 00:12:16.240 The Historians tell us that the state is indispensable for making war, which is said to provide the hinge of history. 119 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:22.240 The justifications multiply and change as often as the Emperor's clothes in the story. 120 00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:26.560 Some tailors of pre-established reputation are employed to make him the finest set of 121 00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:29.040 clothes that have ever been worn. 122 00:12:29.040 --> 00:12:31.040 But these are very shrewd tailors. 123 00:12:31.040 --> 00:12:34.760 They come up with the idea of positing the existence of a fabric that can only be seen 124 00:12:34.760 --> 00:12:38.640 by the smart and can't be seen by the stupid. 125 00:12:38.640 --> 00:12:42.120 The Emperor is thus unwilling to admit that he can't see the cloth. 126 00:12:42.120 --> 00:12:45.520 He's driven by vanity to praise the tailors as brilliant. 127 00:12:45.520 --> 00:12:55.160 He is surrounded by sycophants who are similarly unwilling to tell what is true. 128 00:12:55.160 --> 00:12:59.240 He first sends a minister who thinks, oh dear, can I be really this stupid? 129 00:12:59.240 --> 00:13:01.960 I should never have thought it and yet it must be so. 130 00:13:01.960 --> 00:13:03.760 Can it mean that I'm unfit for my office? 131 00:13:03.760 --> 00:13:07.960 No, no, so I can't have that, so I must say that I can see the cloth. 132 00:13:07.960 --> 00:13:10.920 What a beautiful pattern, he says, what brilliant colors. 133 00:13:10.920 --> 00:13:15.000 I should tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much. 134 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.000 Next comes the so-called honest courtier, whom I think of as the bureaucrat. He's shown 135 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:24.160 the cloth and thinks, I'm not stupid. Therefore, it must be my good appointment that I'm not 136 00:13:24.160 --> 00:13:30.300 fit for. Very strange, but I must not let anyone know it. He praised the cloth, expressed 137 00:13:30.300 --> 00:13:32.680 his joy at the beautiful colors and the fine pattern. 138 00:13:32.680 --> 00:13:37.920 Finally, the emperor himself. What is this, thought the emperor? I don't see anything 139 00:13:37.920 --> 00:13:42.600 at all. That's terrible. Am I stupid? Am I unfit to be emperor? That would be the most 140 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:49.720 A dreadful thing. Really, he said to the weavers, your cloth has our most gracious approval. 141 00:13:49.720 --> 00:13:54.800 Not uncontentedly, he looked at the loom, empty. All his attendants who were with him 142 00:13:54.800 --> 00:13:58.280 looked and looked, and of course they couldn't see anything either. But like the emperor, 143 00:13:58.280 --> 00:14:01.600 they said, it's very beautiful. 144 00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:06.080 Onward goes the agenda of wearing the unseen clothes at a major procession. And sure enough, 145 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:10.880 the population participates in the allusion. In the most dramatic and hilarious scene in 146 00:14:10.880 --> 00:14:14.880 In the story, the emperor walks in the procession, as all the people yell, the emperor's new 147 00:14:14.880 --> 00:14:20.280 suit, it's incomparable, what a long train he has, how well it fits him. Everyone knows 148 00:14:20.280 --> 00:14:25.880 how the story ends. A young child, too naive to understand the exalted status of the state, 149 00:14:25.880 --> 00:14:32.620 and thus to know what can and cannot be thought or said, notes, but he has nothing on at all. 150 00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:37.100 Another man says, good heavens, listen to the voice of an innocent child. The spell 151 00:14:37.100 --> 00:14:40.160 is broken and all the people lose their fear and creativity, he's got nothing on, he's 152 00:14:40.160 --> 00:14:50.160 Significant that the voice that shattered the illusion was not that of an intellectual, a bureaucrat, a politician, or even a clergyman. 153 00:14:50.160 --> 00:14:56.160 It's also significant that the voice did not come from the masses of the people who had gathered to observe the state in all its glory. 154 00:14:56.160 --> 00:15:04.160 These people were all too willing to suppress what they knew in order to retain their position or not depart from received opinion. 155 00:15:04.160 --> 00:15:09.320 He said it was the voice of a child who told what was true, someone too unschooled to know 156 00:15:09.320 --> 00:15:15.400 the merit of repeating propaganda and too young to be afraid to speak plainly. He did 157 00:15:15.400 --> 00:15:20.080 not observe something others did not observe. What was different was his willingness to 158 00:15:20.080 --> 00:15:26.280 speak about it, and he caused enormous humiliation to the state. But he did not pull a gun or 159 00:15:26.280 --> 00:15:33.400 a knife. He did something far more powerful. He said what was true. That a young person 160 00:15:33.400 --> 00:15:38.100 One said what was true when no one else seemed willing to speak is itself significant. Murray 161 00:15:38.100 --> 00:15:44.580 Rothbard was fond of quoting Randolph Bourne on the virtues of youth. Youth puts the remorseless 162 00:15:44.580 --> 00:15:50.860 questions to everything that is old and established. Why? What is this thing good for? Youth is 163 00:15:50.860 --> 00:15:55.860 the leaven that keeps all those questioning, testing attitudes, fermenting in the world. 164 00:15:55.860 --> 00:16:00.420 If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and 165 00:16:00.420 --> 00:16:18.420 Youth is pessimistic towards the present, gloriously hopeful for the future, and it is this hope, said Born, which is the lever of progress, one might say, the only lever of progress. 166 00:16:18.420 --> 00:16:25.420 Once exposed by this young person as the crowd joins him in observing the absurd reality, does the Emperor run and hide? 167 00:16:25.420 --> 00:16:43.020 In short, the emperor knows that in some sense he has always lived a lie. He is no more glorious 168 00:16:43.020 --> 00:16:48.740 and exalted than anyone else, and he may well be less so. But he has done well so far by 169 00:16:48.740 --> 00:16:54.060 pretending otherwise, pretending to be above the common folk and especially fit to rule 170 00:16:54.060 --> 00:16:58.060 Why should he change his posture now? 171 00:16:58.060 --> 00:17:04.060 The truth about him has always been there for those who could see it, but somehow the system worked. 172 00:17:04.060 --> 00:17:12.060 Now that everyone could see what was true, what could he do but continue the racket in hopes that the system would continue to work for him? 173 00:17:12.060 --> 00:17:19.060 Now the story ends there just to the most interesting part where one wonders about the affairs of state the next day. 174 00:17:19.060 --> 00:17:22.060 Was the emperor more or less tyrannical? 175 00:17:22.060 --> 00:17:29.060 Was he more or less successful in taxing the people? Was his rule more or less secure? 176 00:17:29.100 --> 00:17:34.300 We cannot know the whole outcome with certainty, but we can know that his status had been seriously 177 00:17:34.300 --> 00:17:38.980 diminished. And if we had to think of this as an allegory for the role that ideological 178 00:17:38.980 --> 00:17:44.040 garb plays in covering the affairs of state, we know that a major myth has been shattered 179 00:17:44.040 --> 00:17:49.220 and thus the grip of the state over the people weakened, even to the point at which the emperor 180 00:17:49.220 --> 00:17:57.100 I submit to you that this procession of folly takes place every day in modern times. It's 181 00:17:57.100 --> 00:18:03.100 spread all over the newspapers, it's on television, it appears on websites. The masses of people 182 00:18:03.100 --> 00:18:09.740 may not be willing to admit what they see, or they may even see whatever it is they want 183 00:18:09.740 --> 00:18:15.540 to see. But once you have in your mind a model for understanding the state and begin to see 184 00:18:15.540 --> 00:18:19.940 Finally, the linkages between its failures and area after area of life. You begin to 185 00:18:19.940 --> 00:18:24.900 stand out from the rest. You think and talk differently from the courtiers and the masses 186 00:18:24.900 --> 00:18:29.380 of people who watch the same procession but are unwilling to say what is true. 187 00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:34.080 Let's look at the U.S. budget, which only a few years ago seemed to be approaching the 188 00:18:34.080 --> 00:18:38.740 point of being balanced. Of course, it was an illusion created by a massive infusion 189 00:18:38.740 --> 00:18:44.140 of revenue due to an artificial economic boom. You might expect governments around the country 190 00:18:44.140 --> 00:18:51.140 The Federal Reserve took the new revenue and ran with it, creating a vast apparatus of new programs only to find that when the recession hit, the money ran dry. 191 00:18:51.140 --> 00:18:59.140 Deficits exploded at all levels of government. Localities and states had to find new revenue sources or cut the budget. 192 00:18:59.140 --> 00:19:08.140 As for the Federal Government, once you wipe away the phony statistics, the real budget deficit surpasses $600 billion, which is a record. 193 00:19:08.140 --> 00:19:38.140 What's the effect of deficits? Because the federal government enjoys the legal power to counterfeit with impunity. Deficits do little to restrain spending. But the financial effects are real indeed. Unless the debt is inflated away, the US puts itself in hawk to foreigners and citizens willing to fund the deficit, the effect of which is to crowd out private investment and frankly waste hundreds of billions funding big government rather than productive private enterprise. Now the system of finance can work 194 00:19:38.140 --> 00:20:01.140 This cannot go on forever. If China's economy, for example, were to fall into recession and savings be depleted, they might stop holding U.S. debt and then the U.S. faces a very serious problem. 195 00:20:01.140 --> 00:20:10.140 There are other things that could make interest rates rise and dramatically raise the cost of funding the debt, creating ever more debt, putting pressure on the Fed to monetize. 196 00:20:10.140 --> 00:20:14.140 The scenarios for financial collapse are unlimited. 197 00:20:14.140 --> 00:20:19.140 The point is that in economics there are limits to how far the state can go. 198 00:20:19.140 --> 00:20:28.140 Yes, it will use every trick in the book to keep the game going for as long as possible, but even it bumps up against reality at some point. 199 00:20:28.140 --> 00:20:36.140 In any case, financial collapse of the state is the oldest and most common scenario in world history by which states are brought to their knees. 200 00:20:36.140 --> 00:20:42.140 And of all the governments in the world today, the U.S. may be the most prone. 201 00:20:42.140 --> 00:20:46.140 The tragedy, of course, is this will happen at the expense of the people. 202 00:20:46.140 --> 00:20:51.140 Their personal finance is demolished by the reckless ways of the state. 203 00:20:51.140 --> 00:20:58.140 Such a scenario is not an inevitability. The Federal Government could get its financial house in order. 204 00:20:58.140 --> 00:21:03.140 It could stop the reckless spending. It could cut back on the welfare and the warfare. 205 00:21:03.140 --> 00:21:08.140 It could shut down the central bank and institute a gold standard to provide fiscal discipline. 206 00:21:08.140 --> 00:21:14.140 Instead of performing inflationary tricks, it could attempt to tax the people to pay for every dime that it spends. 207 00:21:14.140 --> 00:21:19.140 Of all scenarios, I would think this is probably the least likely to take place. 208 00:21:19.140 --> 00:21:29.140 In the meantime, as the government spends more and more on less and less, its services continue to deteriorate relative to what the private enterprise provides. 209 00:21:29.140 --> 00:21:39.140 Consider the area of communications technology. It was revealed earlier this year that employees of the CIA are not permitted to have access to the web or Google. 210 00:21:39.140 --> 00:21:47.140 That tidbit of information is a window into a great reality. The government is remarkably blind as regards information access. 211 00:21:47.140 --> 00:22:09.140 Consider Mises.org. As Jeff Tucker pointed out earlier, with our new news feeder, we can immediately provide free market news and views in addition to scholarly work, as we post them instantaneously to millions of news sources around the world, in real time. 212 00:22:09.140 --> 00:22:16.140 We used to say that Misesian opinion was available to the world with a click of a mouse, but now that's not even necessary. 213 00:22:16.140 --> 00:22:23.140 News sites around the world stream Mises.org content the same as they stream the BBC, Reuters or the New York Times. 214 00:22:23.140 --> 00:22:27.140 This is true not only of our site but millions of individual blogs around the world. 215 00:22:27.140 --> 00:22:32.140 The result is a world connected as never before. 216 00:22:32.140 --> 00:22:38.140 Along with this has developed a vast international economy that is as once anarchistic and orderly. 217 00:22:38.140 --> 00:22:44.140 Everyone knows how eBay and the power of reputation creates this global marketplace without police. 218 00:22:44.140 --> 00:22:51.140 But fewer know about such sites as ExpertsExchange.com, where millions of technology developers pay $100 per year 219 00:22:51.140 --> 00:22:55.140 that access to the insights and help from millions of other experts. 220 00:22:55.140 --> 00:22:58.140 Those who solve problems are rewarded with cash bonuses out of the fund. 221 00:22:58.140 --> 00:23:02.140 All the entrepreneurs behind this site do is create the infrastructure. 222 00:23:02.140 --> 00:23:09.140 The rest is the product of the remarkable power of commerce combined with the creativity of human ingenuity. 223 00:23:09.140 --> 00:23:11.140 It's a wonder to behold. 224 00:23:11.140 --> 00:23:17.140 In thousands of years of trying, governments have created nothing of similar productive power. 225 00:23:17.140 --> 00:23:26.140 This reality is not lost on the younger generation, whose world is shaped not by the products of the state, but rather by private markets. 226 00:23:26.140 --> 00:23:30.660 It is this younger generation, as with the story, that can see the stark reality that 227 00:23:30.660 --> 00:23:33.980 the government is wearing no clothes. 228 00:23:33.980 --> 00:23:39.500 The times are creating remarkable idealists, but they need systematic education. 229 00:23:39.500 --> 00:23:44.180 The child who spoke about the emperor's clothes had courage, but he also needed as he grew 230 00:23:44.180 --> 00:23:49.260 up to read in the Austrian tradition so that he could systematize his views and develop 231 00:23:49.260 --> 00:23:53.900 a consistent perspective on economics and politics. 232 00:23:53.900 --> 00:23:58.420 That's one role the Mises Institute plays. We take the young generation in college that 233 00:23:58.420 --> 00:24:02.740 is very sophisticated about technology and holds the government already in a sort of 234 00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:08.500 tacit disdain and give them the reading materials to make sense of the bits of information that 235 00:24:08.500 --> 00:24:14.120 come their way. Those students who are involved in politics right now are attended to issues 236 00:24:14.120 --> 00:24:19.620 of military security and war and can't but be astounded at events that have taken place 237 00:24:19.620 --> 00:24:34.620 The notion of liberation in Afghanistan lasted only several weeks before those who were still paying attention realized it had been a myth cooked up by the war planners. 238 00:24:34.620 --> 00:24:47.620 Today the country is rife with violence, poverty, criminal gangs and the Taliban, forming again to stop the enormous rise of drug production that began only weeks after the Taliban was thrown out of the capital. 239 00:24:47.620 --> 00:25:02.620 As for Iraq, with bombings, killings, human suffering all around and nothing in sight but the bad choices of continued military dictatorship or fundamentalist Islamic rule, everyone but the war planners now regards Iraq as a disaster. 240 00:25:02.620 --> 00:25:14.620 The war planners believed that their will alone was enough to make and remake a country, whether Iraq or Afghanistan, and indeed the entire world because they operated the levers of state power. 241 00:25:14.620 --> 00:25:24.620 State power sees people as pliable, all events as controllable, and all outcomes as the inevitable workings out of a well-constructed plan. 242 00:25:24.620 --> 00:25:35.620 Being the top dogs of the world's only superpower, they never doubted their ability to dictate the terms, and so they had no plan for what to do when things went wrong. 243 00:25:35.620 --> 00:25:41.620 What went wrong? Well, they forgot several essential components of the structure of reality. 244 00:25:41.620 --> 00:25:47.620 People's free will is often backed by the willingness to undertake enormous sacrifices. 245 00:25:47.620 --> 00:25:53.620 Most especially, it overlooks certain underlying laws that limit what is possible in human affairs. 246 00:25:53.620 --> 00:25:59.620 In the scheme of how the world works, even the largest state is only a bit player. 247 00:25:59.620 --> 00:26:08.620 Yes, it is capable of creating enormous chaos, transferring huge amounts of wealth, but not of controlling events themselves. 248 00:26:08.620 --> 00:26:16.620 That is why government action generates oftentimes the exact opposite of the policy that it is constructed to create. 249 00:26:16.620 --> 00:26:20.620 Donald Rumsfeld's now famous memo gives the game away. 250 00:26:20.620 --> 00:26:26.620 He admits he does not know whether the US is winning or losing, but he's suspicious it's losing. 251 00:26:26.620 --> 00:26:31.620 He admits that he lacks any means to discover whether the government is winning or losing. 252 00:26:31.620 --> 00:26:37.620 He admits that private armies are doing better with millions than government armies with billions. 253 00:26:37.620 --> 00:26:44.620 He goes so far as to contemplate whether the government is capable of beating its enemies or whether some new organization is needed. 254 00:26:44.620 --> 00:26:49.620 If these comments don't strip away the facade of the warfare state, I don't know what would. 255 00:26:49.620 --> 00:26:54.620 Indeed, the entire apparatus of the warfare state is defeated by this fact. 256 00:26:54.620 --> 00:27:01.620 Human beings don't respond well to being treated like prisoners in someone else's central plan. 257 00:27:01.620 --> 00:27:08.620 If the desire to wholly manage the future, the mega planner is always a mega failure. 258 00:27:08.620 --> 00:27:12.620 If not in the short term, then certainly in the long term. 259 00:27:12.620 --> 00:27:18.620 The Bush administration seems to have had bigger dreams than even FDR or Wilson. 260 00:27:18.620 --> 00:27:24.620 But the group that began believing they could reshape the entire world is now merely responding to events. 261 00:27:24.620 --> 00:27:29.620 Now, wherever it all was put into how the conquering heroes would manage the economy, 262 00:27:29.620 --> 00:27:34.580 of the Economy. It is as if they completely forgot about people's needs for electricity, 263 00:27:34.580 --> 00:27:39.260 clean running water, food, communications. The one principle that has guided the occupiers 264 00:27:39.260 --> 00:27:43.660 in their economic affairs in Iraq has been that whatever happens, the U.S. government 265 00:27:43.660 --> 00:27:48.500 must be in charge. This error has led them to kick out private entrepreneurs who attempted 266 00:27:48.500 --> 00:27:53.700 to start cell phone companies and airlines. Even now, the U.S. is putting street vendors 267 00:27:53.700 --> 00:27:59.600 out of business, establishing monopoly providers and throwing around U.S. tax dollars to well-connected 268 00:27:59.600 --> 00:28:04.820 Corporations in the name of rebuilding the country it first destroyed. 269 00:28:04.820 --> 00:28:08.200 The War Party has never understood what freedom means. 270 00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:13.680 They believe it is something granted by government or the military as a proxy for government. 271 00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:17.400 They believe that freedom is something that exists because of the people running the government 272 00:28:17.400 --> 00:28:19.800 or the laws that manage society. 273 00:28:19.800 --> 00:28:24.100 In fact, freedom means the absence of despotism of all sorts. 274 00:28:24.100 --> 00:28:26.020 It can never be granted by the state. 275 00:28:26.020 --> 00:28:28.240 It can only be taken away by the state. 276 00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:35.240 If a government manager desires freedom for a society, his only path is to get out of the way. 277 00:28:35.240 --> 00:28:41.240 The level of arrogance has also had an effect on how the administration believed it could fund this war. 278 00:28:41.240 --> 00:28:48.240 It's increasingly clear that the total cost of the Iraq War will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. 279 00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:51.240 And yet they proceed as if there are no worries about paying for it. 280 00:28:51.240 --> 00:28:56.240 Of course, the administration benefits by the presence of that great marble palace down the street 281 00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:03.240 that promises to print unlimited quality and quantities of dollars to pay for whatever the administration wants to do. 282 00:29:03.240 --> 00:29:12.240 The war policy of this administration may have failed in every way to achieve its stated aims, but it has succeeded in the one way war does succeed. 283 00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:17.240 It has transferred huge amounts of money and power from the private sector to the public sector. 284 00:29:17.240 --> 00:29:25.240 And believing that war is good for the ruling regime and its cronies really have so few been right about so much. 285 00:29:25.240 --> 00:29:29.440 If the government cannot be trusted to run wars or provide the national defense that 286 00:29:29.440 --> 00:29:34.540 so completely failed on September 11th, it surely cannot be trusted with managing such 287 00:29:34.540 --> 00:29:39.920 crucially important institutions as education. Yet the Bush administration has succeeded 288 00:29:39.920 --> 00:29:46.600 in making unprecedented inroads into local schools with its no child left behind policy. 289 00:29:46.600 --> 00:29:51.480 Just the name alone is worthy of the age of despots who purported to be the father and 290 00:29:51.480 --> 00:29:53.880 and Educator of Every Child. 291 00:29:53.880 --> 00:29:58.280 Yes, I know it is supposed to represent a humanitarian spirit, but we need to ask ourselves 292 00:29:58.280 --> 00:30:03.480 whether having the government as the imparter of values at taxpayer expense is really such 293 00:30:03.480 --> 00:30:05.000 a good idea. 294 00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:07.960 Evidently, many people think it is a bad idea. 295 00:30:07.960 --> 00:30:12.160 As public school enrollments fall in both rural and urban schools in most places around 296 00:30:12.160 --> 00:30:17.460 the country, homeschooling is taking off and creating a cottage industry of textbooks and 297 00:30:17.460 --> 00:30:21.040 materials that parents themselves use to educate their children. 298 00:30:21.040 --> 00:30:25.780 The effect of this is fantastic, not just for the children who are the main beneficiaries, 299 00:30:25.780 --> 00:30:30.340 but also for the parents. A major problem of the public schools is that they socialize 300 00:30:30.340 --> 00:30:34.860 the parents into believing that they do not need to take responsibility for the education 301 00:30:34.860 --> 00:30:40.420 of their children. But homeschooling is bringing back an old value, that parents bear primary 302 00:30:40.420 --> 00:30:45.440 responsibility for their children's education and for their training generally. Homeschooling 303 00:30:45.440 --> 00:30:50.900 is still small by comparison to public education, but the trend line is enormously encouraging. 304 00:30:50.900 --> 00:30:56.060 Nor do I intend to slight private schools which are also growing in size and diversifying 305 00:30:56.060 --> 00:31:01.300 in shape. They are rising up to meet the needs of parents whose values are even more diverse. 306 00:31:01.300 --> 00:31:06.240 And this fact raises an interesting point. The growing multiculturalism of the American 307 00:31:06.240 --> 00:31:12.520 public is often treated as a problematic issue for national unification. But this presumes 308 00:31:12.520 --> 00:31:19.100 there is some political value to homogeneity. Believers in freedom might question this assumption. 309 00:31:19.100 --> 00:31:23.240 It could be that the rise of multiculturalism will indeed make the country ever less governable 310 00:31:23.240 --> 00:31:28.220 at some level. It will reduce the extent to which the population is attached to the central 311 00:31:28.220 --> 00:31:33.680 state as an expression of their values. A multicultural people will be ever less attached 312 00:31:33.680 --> 00:31:39.460 to the symbols of national unification. This could end up as one means by which the central 313 00:31:39.460 --> 00:31:46.460 state, heavily premised on the idea of a unified population, could unravel. 314 00:31:46.460 --> 00:31:54.620 Like all empires in human history, especially ones with growing populations and rising prosperity, 315 00:31:54.620 --> 00:31:59.940 this country is far too big and diverse and complex to be managed by a central state. 316 00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:07.460 It is essentially an unviable project and is destined to fail just as it has failed. 317 00:32:07.460 --> 00:32:11.620 It's true that the population is becoming ever more diverse in its values if it is true, 318 00:32:11.620 --> 00:32:14.200 as the political left constantly tells us. 319 00:32:14.200 --> 00:32:21.200 It makes no sense that there should be a single state that would presume overarching political jurisdiction over the entire entity. 320 00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:30.200 It's heresy to say it, but I think it's long past time we called into question the words of the pledge, one nation, indivisible. 321 00:32:30.200 --> 00:32:36.200 Crucially important in the process will be the growing problem of Social Security and the whole welfare state. 322 00:32:36.200 --> 00:32:43.200 For all the attention given to the income tax, it is increasingly less significant as a factor in looting the average American. 323 00:32:43.200 --> 00:32:55.200 For three-quarters of U.S. taxpayers, the bite that the payroll tax takes out of their paycheck, if we admit that both the employee and the employer tax comes directly out of the workers' wages, as they do. 324 00:32:55.200 --> 00:33:03.200 And what does the worker get in exchange? A bankrupt system that dulls out of pittance should you happen to reach the officially defined age of retirement. 325 00:33:03.200 --> 00:33:11.200 For the generations after World War II, this might have seemed generous, but for those who will retire in 20 years, it's nothing short of pathetic. 326 00:33:11.200 --> 00:33:17.200 Then there is the absurdity of retirement itself as promoted by the Roosevelt administration. 327 00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:23.200 The very idea that people need to throw in the towel at age 65 is a gross anachronism. 328 00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:31.200 Even more fundamentally absurd is the idea that Washington, D.C., which can't manage even the slightest improvement in our well-being, 329 00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:38.200 can care for us in our old age, providing a steady stream of income to substitute for the care given by savings and family. 330 00:33:38.200 --> 00:33:44.760 and Family. The very idea alone drives a wedge between the generation and pits young against 331 00:33:44.760 --> 00:33:49.280 old. For young people these days, they know that they will be caring for their elders 332 00:33:49.280 --> 00:33:53.600 and that they need to provide for themselves in old age. The government apparatus that 333 00:33:53.600 --> 00:33:59.600 loots them day after day, which is under intense financial strain, is nothing short of a fabulous 334 00:33:59.600 --> 00:34:01.800 failure. 335 00:34:01.800 --> 00:34:06.040 If the welfare state in the U.S. is under strain, it has reached the breaking point in 336 00:34:06.040 --> 00:34:16.040 in most parts of Europe, where nearly everyone recognizes that something must be done to dismantle the grave errors of the post-war planners who instituted such huge redistribution schemes. 337 00:34:16.040 --> 00:34:26.040 The choice at this stage is between continuing decline and a revival of prosperity by sweeping away the old structures that are inhibiting free initiative and capital accumulation. 338 00:34:26.040 --> 00:34:31.040 Equally anachronistic is the idea of centralized fiscal and monetary management. 339 00:34:31.040 --> 00:34:40.040 Keynesian planners from the 1930s to the 1970s imagined themselves as masterminds operating a huge machine called the macro economy. 340 00:34:40.040 --> 00:34:44.040 But they made a terrible mess of things exactly as we might expect. 341 00:34:44.040 --> 00:34:51.040 They believed they were boosting aggregate demand when all they were doing was looting the private sector and ballooning the national debt. 342 00:34:51.040 --> 00:34:59.040 They believed they were stimulating production by creating new money and credit, but all they did was generate inflation and the business cycle. 343 00:34:59.040 --> 00:35:08.040 In their management of international trade, they believed they were harmonizing regulations across borders to create efficiency and protecting domestic industry from competition. 344 00:35:08.040 --> 00:35:16.040 But all they did was loot American consumers, entrench inefficient industries and create conflicts among nations. 345 00:35:16.040 --> 00:35:24.040 Even in this current recessionary cycle, the Bush administration has reached deep into the Keynesian grab bag and pulled out 50 year old gimmicks, 346 00:35:24.040 --> 00:35:29.040 None of which have helped the economy, but instead only forced all recovery. 347 00:35:29.040 --> 00:35:34.040 It's time the macroeconomic planners stopped pretending and gave up. 348 00:35:34.040 --> 00:35:44.040 What is desperately needed are intellectuals who understand the utter futility of all kinds of central planning, including fiscal, monetary, regulatory and trade. 349 00:35:44.040 --> 00:35:46.040 These are far rarer than you might think. 350 00:35:46.040 --> 00:35:57.040 Even today, people who call themselves economic libertarians also counsel the Federal Reserve to provide more liquidity to the system and otherwise attempt every manner of gimmickry to stimulate the economy. 351 00:35:57.040 --> 00:36:05.040 They haven't absorbed the central lesson of the liberal tradition. Society does not need central management by the state. 352 00:36:05.040 --> 00:36:08.040 Why is that a difficult message to get across? 353 00:36:08.040 --> 00:36:15.040 Those of us steeped in libertarian theory and the economics of the Austrian School are sometimes amazed that it takes others so long to come around. 354 00:36:15.040 --> 00:36:23.040 But we must remember that it takes intellectual work to begin to see the logic of economics, and to apply it to our world. 355 00:36:23.040 --> 00:36:29.040 The ignorance is vast and overwhelming, and we must do everything we can to combat it. 356 00:36:29.040 --> 00:36:37.040 Sometimes people ask why it is that if liberty is so central to the Mises Institute's mission, we concentrate so heavily on economics. 357 00:36:37.040 --> 00:36:45.040 Mises gave us the answer. The study of economics properly considered is the study of the rise and fall of civilization itself. 358 00:36:45.040 --> 00:36:54.040 Aside from the beauty and elegance of economic theory, economics delivers a bracing message to the state. Your power is limited. 359 00:36:54.040 --> 00:36:59.040 The structure of reality limits the possibilities for power to have its way in this world. 360 00:36:59.040 --> 00:37:12.040 Socialism will fail, central planning will fail, protectionism will fail, regulations, taxation, welfare, all these programs will often produce the exact opposite of their stated aims. 361 00:37:12.040 --> 00:37:17.040 Economics says to the state, society does not need you. 362 00:37:17.040 --> 00:37:26.040 The cooperative work of billions of people exchanging and creating is the very source of the quality of life, the very core of peace and prosperity. 363 00:37:26.040 --> 00:37:35.040 Economics sets the limits for the state, helps us understand our world, and leads us to make sense of the passing scene. 364 00:37:35.040 --> 00:37:40.040 With economics, we would never have been deceived about the true nature of the emperor's suit. 365 00:37:40.040 --> 00:37:49.040 That is not a message the state wants to hear, which is why we must be passionate, aggressive, entrepreneurial in delivering it. 366 00:37:49.040 --> 00:37:55.040 We're fortunate that the message is capable of connecting very closely with ordinary people. 367 00:37:55.040 --> 00:38:08.040 If we look at the way people conduct their affairs, in daily life we find that people are utterly and completely dependent on free enterprise and on the institutions upon which it rests, and less and less on the products of the state. 368 00:38:08.040 --> 00:38:13.040 We are enormously fortunate to live in times when the wonders of free markets are constantly before our eyes. 369 00:38:13.040 --> 00:38:24.040 We can observe the way the seeming anarchy of the market economy, which is global in scope, operates as an orderly, productive process that improves our standard of living in every way. 370 00:38:24.040 --> 00:38:27.040 not only provides the goods and services we need to live, 371 00:38:27.040 --> 00:38:32.040 it is daily creating alternatives to the status ways of doing things. 372 00:38:32.040 --> 00:38:38.040 Whether we look at communications, education, security, managing disputes, or any other area of life, 373 00:38:38.040 --> 00:38:42.040 the wonders of liberty and the failures of the state are all around us. 374 00:38:42.040 --> 00:38:47.040 In a grand procession in which the Emperor marches onward in a humiliating pose, 375 00:38:47.040 --> 00:38:52.040 and the rest of us wait for someone to break the silence and point out what is true. 376 00:38:52.040 --> 00:38:55.760 Murray Rothbard argued that there are two conditions that must be met in order to bring 377 00:38:55.760 --> 00:39:02.660 about a revolution, objective and subjective. The objective conditions are in place. Most 378 00:39:02.660 --> 00:39:07.100 everywhere in the world people have embraced the promise and prosperity of freedom and 379 00:39:07.100 --> 00:39:14.080 rejected the poverty of despotism. The institutions we love, commerce, creativity, enterprise, 380 00:39:14.080 --> 00:39:19.320 property, trade, voluntary association are on the march while the state is languishing 381 00:39:19.320 --> 00:39:25.800 with its creaking agent institutions of coercion, compulsion, war and welfare. 382 00:39:25.800 --> 00:39:29.760 What's left undone is for people like those of us in this room to work towards achieving 383 00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:32.840 the subjective conditions essential for revolution. 384 00:39:32.840 --> 00:39:38.720 We must make the intellectual case and teach the world to see the benefits of consistently 385 00:39:38.720 --> 00:39:42.600 embracing liberty in theory and practice. 386 00:39:42.600 --> 00:39:46.200 Our odds of victory are no better and no worse than they were in the 18th century when the 387 00:39:46.200 --> 00:39:50.740 and the founding generation threw up the rule of a foreign king and they were better and 388 00:39:50.740 --> 00:39:56.040 no worse than they were in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s when the people dismantled 389 00:39:56.040 --> 00:39:59.400 an imperial system of despotism. 390 00:39:59.400 --> 00:40:04.400 I'm optimistic about the prospects for liberty because our side has enough energy and enthusiasm 391 00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:10.980 to match and exceed anything coming from the partisans of stagnation and state power. 392 00:40:10.980 --> 00:40:15.420 The application of this energy in the area of political and intellectual activism has 393 00:40:15.420 --> 00:40:20.380 is a cumulative effect over time. As you know, in the workplace, the employee who is just 394 00:40:20.380 --> 00:40:25.820 slightly more productive than the average can end up as a champion in a year or two. 395 00:40:25.820 --> 00:40:30.580 It's the same in the intellectual arena. Long ago, we had become accustomed to thinking 396 00:40:30.580 --> 00:40:36.420 of ourselves as a tiny remnant of true believers who had to write for anyone willing to read, 397 00:40:36.420 --> 00:40:42.620 but seriously hindered in our ability to get the message out. After 1996, that all changed 398 00:40:42.620 --> 00:40:49.620 A key question to ask of any body of ideas is whether it's living or dying. Looking at the body of ideas of the Austro-libertarian tradition and where we stand today as compared with 10 or 20 years ago, there can be no doubt as to our status. We are living and growing at compounded rates, and this is paying off in so many ways. 399 00:41:12.620 --> 00:41:15.900 Many years ago there were only a handful of Austrians teaching in economics departments 400 00:41:15.900 --> 00:41:21.020 around the world. Today there are many hundreds and they no longer have to hide their views. 401 00:41:21.020 --> 00:41:25.940 On the contrary, they're hired precisely for their Austrian connections. It's easy to see 402 00:41:25.940 --> 00:41:29.780 where this is headed. Not too many years from now it will become the rule rather than the 403 00:41:29.780 --> 00:41:34.380 exception for every economics department at a vibrant institution to have at least one 404 00:41:34.380 --> 00:41:38.940 faculty member who embraces the Misesian tradition. 405 00:41:38.940 --> 00:41:44.860 The history of the Mises Institute proves this much. A little work done day by day adds up 406 00:41:44.860 --> 00:41:51.500 over time. Multiply that work by millions and we have a revolution on our hands. What 407 00:41:51.500 --> 00:41:57.540 should that work be? It depends on circumstances of time and place. We must first work to improve 408 00:41:57.540 --> 00:42:02.560 our own cultural circumstances and this is something we can control. We must free ourselves 409 00:42:02.560 --> 00:42:32.560 We must be good examples. An outstanding entrepreneur is the living embodiment of the power of free enterprise. A great teacher is a living example of idealism in practice. A great father or mother, of which we have many here, is living proof that the family is not the den of pathology that the left proclaims. A wonderful statesman like Ron Paul is proof that not all politicians need to care about self-interest only. 410 00:42:32.560 --> 00:42:36.560 No revolution in history has gone precisely according to plan. 411 00:42:36.560 --> 00:42:43.560 Every case is different, and the timing and nature of social change surprises the most brilliant intellectual architects. 412 00:42:43.560 --> 00:42:52.560 But know this, every time you learn something new about liberty, share a book, an article, an idea, contribute to a good cause, 413 00:42:52.560 --> 00:42:57.560 write a letter to the editor, or give another hero of liberty moral support, 414 00:42:57.560 --> 00:43:03.560 For your support, you are taking a sledgehammer to the foundation of despotism in our time. 415 00:43:03.560 --> 00:43:10.560 We don't know when it will finally crack, but we do know that it is the intellectual work above all that will bring it down. 416 00:43:10.560 --> 00:43:19.560 In its place, we must seek to plant a garden of liberty that will have to be constantly cultivated from its inception until the end of time. 417 00:43:19.560 --> 00:43:27.560 All states everywhere enjoy power only because people are willing to continue to obey and not challenge the powers that be. 418 00:43:27.560 --> 00:43:32.560 This means that power is ultimately based on the elusive notion called legitimacy. 419 00:43:32.560 --> 00:43:40.560 But legitimacy can vanish in an instant, exposed as a facade that covers up the massive looting machine that is government. 420 00:43:40.560 --> 00:43:44.560 It is the role of all of us gathered here tonight to break the silence. 421 00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:51.560 It is the role of the Mises Institute to teach so that young people can state the truth in ways that others find compelling. 422 00:43:51.560 --> 00:43:59.560 The Emperor may continue his march, but never do it again with the confidence that he can fool all of the people all of the time. 423 00:43:59.560 --> 00:44:04.560 Let us work towards a time when he fools no one. Thank you.