WEBVTT NOTE The Role of the Intellectuals 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:24.000 And noisiness and the lack of the basic civility reminds me of the remark of Tsar Nicholas the first after he told us, was reading to his grandson stories of what happened in the French Revolution and then he finally said, now you see why men must be treated like dogs. 2 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:53.000 As a matter of fact, I didn't mean that at all, because now it occurs to me that there's an evaluation form that some of you maybe have not filled out yet, and I simply wanted to point out that there'll be a little presence for all of you at the end, from me, personal presence from me. 3 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:03.000 It was really tough getting a hold of as many Fabergé eggs as I needed. 4 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:14.000 Now, we're coming to the end of the seminar, and I have to tell you, I think that it is certainly one of the best seminars we've ever had. 5 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:43.340 and in fact that I'm not sure exactly when we had one that I would put ahead of it and many people have told me that they ascribe that to the to the work of the Dean but that can't be the whole story as a matter of fact that Pat isn't here but 6 00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:49.900 that Lew Rockwell is, and I think Jeff is. Is Jeff here? Jeff is not here, but you know 7 00:01:49.900 --> 00:01:55.380 who's ultimately responsible for this seminar and everything that the Institute does. 8 00:01:55.380 --> 00:02:12.380 Now I'm going to be discussing today the perennial question of the role of the intellectuals. 9 00:02:12.380 --> 00:02:28.600 intellectuals. 10 00:02:28.600 --> 00:02:35.080 This is a question which has been discussed especially by people from our point of view 11 00:02:35.080 --> 00:02:37.280 for many, many years. 12 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:43.280 There was a great anthology called The Intellectuals written by a man who was a friend of Murray 13 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:51.960 Rothbard's that is collected, George de Husser, and you'll only find it in used bookstores 14 00:02:51.960 --> 00:03:01.300 nowadays, a big anthology, and things by Mises, everywhere from Mises to Stalin, and George 15 00:03:01.300 --> 00:03:06.500 de Husser was a great guy, explained his principle of selection, which was that anybody who had 16 00:03:06.500 --> 00:03:14.500 If you had anything to say against the intellectuals, who was included in this anthology, which is a good principle of selection. 17 00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:18.500 The issue of the intellectuals has come up very often. 18 00:03:18.500 --> 00:03:30.500 You'll find it discussed in a number of important and good essays in a book that's been mentioned already, edited by Hayek, called Capitalism and the Historians. 19 00:03:30.500 --> 00:03:36.500 And the question is, basically, why do the intellectuals act the way they do? 20 00:03:36.500 --> 00:03:55.500 I mean, it's no secret, one of the speakers gave Dr. Higgs statistics on the number of Republicans and Democrats, even Republicans, for heaven's sake, at the major universities, and you saw what was involved. 21 00:03:55.500 --> 00:04:05.500 One Republican in history departments, 18 Democrats and on and at whatever it was, Cornell or something, Stanford, on and on and on. 22 00:04:05.500 --> 00:04:19.500 Now, one particular free market man who's written about this is Max Hartwell, R.M. Hartwell, an expert on the Industrial Revolution. 23 00:04:19.500 --> 00:04:23.500 And he gave a very good talk one time at the Mont Pelerin Society. 24 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:30.700 and he pointed out that there is of course this aversion to to the free 25 00:04:30.700 --> 00:04:35.980 market system on the part of intellectuals but his lecture was 26 00:04:35.980 --> 00:04:41.380 especially noteworthy for drawing attention to the systematic quality of 27 00:04:41.380 --> 00:04:47.340 this hostility especially as experienced by the typical educated citizen in a 28 00:04:47.340 --> 00:05:01.340 for Western Democracy, he noted that historians against capitalism is only one element in a battery of self-reinforcing prejudice against private property and the market economy. 29 00:05:01.340 --> 00:05:04.340 This is the way a student goes through college nowadays. 30 00:05:04.340 --> 00:05:15.340 In literature, economics, philosophy, sociology and other subjects, the student is continually subjected to data and interpretations that converge on a single point. 31 00:05:15.340 --> 00:05:22.700 The Viciousness of Private Enterprise and the Virtuousness of State Intervention and State Supported Labor Unions 32 00:05:22.700 --> 00:05:34.060 And as he says, what people experience in the universities is then reinforced, of course, by the media, by the cultural establishment, by the churches 33 00:05:34.060 --> 00:05:39.660 So this question, why this hostility on the part of intellectuals? 34 00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:41.660 There have been a number of theories. 35 00:05:41.660 --> 00:05:54.660 Joseph Schumpeter had a famous theory having to do with the overproduction of intellectuals or would-be intellectuals in a capitalist system. 36 00:05:54.660 --> 00:05:59.660 There's just too much money spent on higher education. 37 00:05:59.660 --> 00:06:03.660 And I'm going to be telling, I've decided I'm going to be telling my students this from now on. 38 00:06:03.660 --> 00:06:05.660 What are you doing here? 39 00:06:05.660 --> 00:06:16.660 Bill Gates left Harvard without a degree, Michael Dell left the University of Texas at Austin without a degree, and one could go on and on. 40 00:06:16.660 --> 00:06:28.660 So what are you doing here? What they're doing there actually is training for some career that will give them some guaranteed low-level income for the rest of their lives, public school teachers or something of that kind. 41 00:06:28.660 --> 00:06:36.660 When we hear from these intellectuals, as Schumpeter said, a never-ending condemnation. 42 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:43.660 Now the particular indictment of capitalism, why capitalism is bad or doomed and so on, changes. 43 00:06:43.660 --> 00:06:47.660 It changes from generation to generation. 44 00:06:47.660 --> 00:06:54.660 It used to be that capitalism cannot provide wage slaves subsistence in their own slavery, 45 00:06:54.660 --> 00:07:04.660 Capitalism promotes slavery, they'll get poorer and poorer, or capitalism creates wars unnecessarily among imperialist powers. 46 00:07:04.660 --> 00:07:11.660 When I was a kid, it cannot compete with socialist societies in technological progress. 47 00:07:11.660 --> 00:07:16.660 That was the line at the end of the 50s after Sputnik. 48 00:07:16.660 --> 00:07:23.660 Capitalism promotes automation, as they used to say back then, with permanent unemployment. 49 00:07:23.660 --> 00:07:30.220 It both creates a consumer society and its piggish affluence, as Galbraith told us, 50 00:07:30.220 --> 00:07:35.260 and it also proves incapable of extending this piggishness to the masses, to the underclass. 51 00:07:36.300 --> 00:07:44.300 It oppresses women, racial minorities, that's a more recent condemnation, meretricious popular 52 00:07:44.300 --> 00:07:49.580 culture, as the Frankfurt School tells us, and on and on. And somebody says it doesn't matter the 53 00:07:49.580 --> 00:07:57.580 and the specifics of the indictment, what matters is the verdict that the intellectuals have in their pocket from the beginning and it's a verdict of death. 54 00:07:57.580 --> 00:08:00.580 It's a verdict of death on capitalism. 55 00:08:00.580 --> 00:08:04.580 So, why? 56 00:08:04.580 --> 00:08:12.580 Hayek had some ideas which I find typically refined and benign. 57 00:08:12.580 --> 00:08:25.580 He thought the intellectuals judged capitalism to be wrong because they have an engineering model of society and capitalism doesn't permit itself to be planned and so on. 58 00:08:25.580 --> 00:08:37.580 But I would say that probably intellectuals in the humanities are more anti-capitalist than intellectuals in engineering or in the sciences. 59 00:08:37.580 --> 00:08:52.580 Hayek also maintained that you have to, the intellectuals, he actually said that you cannot present any kind of orthodoxy to the intellectuals because that's the one thing that they decline to accept. 60 00:08:52.580 --> 00:08:56.580 That was really a blinkered view on Hayek's part. 61 00:08:56.580 --> 00:09:20.580 Look at the 20th century, with tens and tens of thousands of intellectuals supporting Stalinism, right, so that Raymond Ayron wrote a book in 1957, The Opium of the Intellectuals, about Marxism and Communism, and it wasn't just the left that intellectuals adhered to. 62 00:09:20.580 --> 00:09:30.380 We look at the examples of Martin Heidegger, Robert Braselach, Giovanni Gentili, Ezra Pound, and so on, who were very attracted to fascism and national socialism. 63 00:09:30.380 --> 00:09:41.180 I came across a great, I think, a very interesting entry in the diaries of Golemann, who was a German historian and the son of Thomas Mann. 64 00:09:41.180 --> 00:09:50.020 And in his diary of 1933, he wrote, 18th of May, Joseph Goebbels spoke in front of a writer's meeting in the Hotel Kaiserhof. 65 00:09:50.020 --> 00:09:55.720 And Goebbels, who was a propaganda minister of the Nazis, as you know, Goebbels said, 66 00:09:55.720 --> 00:10:10.520 we Nazis have been reproached with not being concerned with the intellectuals. That was 67 00:10:10.520 --> 00:10:16.400 not necessary for us. We knew quite well, if we first have power, then the intellectuals 68 00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:18.880 when will come on their own. 69 00:10:18.880 --> 00:10:21.240 And Gullemann wrote in his diary, 70 00:10:21.240 --> 00:10:23.880 thunderous applause from the intellectuals. 71 00:10:25.520 --> 00:10:27.800 Now there are various views. 72 00:10:27.800 --> 00:10:30.240 So Champeter's idea then is that 73 00:10:31.920 --> 00:10:34.980 with the overproduction of college educated people, 74 00:10:36.760 --> 00:10:39.840 they can't get jobs they think are commensurate 75 00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:41.780 to their value. 76 00:10:43.560 --> 00:10:46.360 They're consumed with resentment and envy. 77 00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:52.280 Where they see some business man or business woman making a very decent income and they 78 00:10:52.280 --> 00:10:55.560 think to themselves, why should they be making this income? 79 00:10:55.560 --> 00:11:01.200 They can't deconstruct William Blake and the other things which are desperately demanded 80 00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:06.160 on the market. 81 00:11:06.160 --> 00:11:14.760 But the real problem is that very successful intellectuals, rich as well as famous intellectuals, 82 00:11:14.760 --> 00:11:23.160 became socialist, Zola, Gerhard Hauptmann, Brecht, H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, John Dewey in the United States. 83 00:11:23.160 --> 00:11:26.760 They were not unemployables, so there's a problem. 84 00:11:26.760 --> 00:11:37.860 Now, Mises has, to my mind, a number of theories about the root of the anti-capitalistic mentality. 85 00:11:37.860 --> 00:11:40.760 Sometimes he says it is because of envy. 86 00:11:40.760 --> 00:12:04.760 And he actually, in liberalism, does some volunteer psychiatric nosology by categorizing a new mental illness, as if the Shrinks needed a new one, called the Fourier Complex, after the French Utopian Socialist, that has to do with envy, failure, the loser, and life blames the system. 87 00:12:04.760 --> 00:12:13.160 But again, I don't think that that's sufficient considering that, you know, these news anchors 88 00:12:14.200 --> 00:12:18.760 make whatever, you know, cantaloupe brains make two million dollars a year. 89 00:12:22.120 --> 00:12:29.320 However, in another essay, Mises has, I think, a more accurate theory, which is that 90 00:12:29.320 --> 00:12:37.680 Our whole culture is permeated in America less than elsewhere, so Europe is really the 91 00:12:37.680 --> 00:12:44.440 better example of this, with a contempt for money making and this contempt nurtured and 92 00:12:44.440 --> 00:12:51.160 sustained through the centuries under changing regimes is a natural outgrowth, he says, of 93 00:12:51.160 --> 00:13:01.160 It's a way of a specific class morality. It's a way that a certain class within society sees life and the world. 94 00:13:01.160 --> 00:13:12.160 And specifically, it is the morality and way of looking at the world of the classes that are sheltered from the market by the circumstance that they live from taxes. 95 00:13:12.160 --> 00:13:16.160 You see, they don't have any appreciation of the market. 96 00:13:16.160 --> 00:13:21.660 They are, of course, professors, as he says, priests, bureaucrats, professors and army officers. 97 00:13:21.660 --> 00:13:25.160 In our society, professors, but also from the churches. 98 00:13:25.160 --> 00:13:35.160 I mean, the Methodist and Episcopalian bishops who generate this constant stream of rubbish about the economy, 99 00:13:35.160 --> 00:13:38.160 right, there's a terrible unemployment in society. 100 00:13:38.160 --> 00:13:45.160 Well, the Catholic Council of Bishops will come up with a recommendation, we have to increase the minimum wage. 101 00:13:45.160 --> 00:13:51.160 These are people who have no idea of the market. Why should they? Especially professors. 102 00:13:51.160 --> 00:14:01.160 Why shouldn't everybody just live from a check that comes from some source somewhere that they have no idea of? 103 00:14:01.160 --> 00:14:08.160 And so Mises says, so this class is in control of the, kind of a pre-Gramscian analysis, 104 00:14:08.160 --> 00:14:17.160 This class is in control of the ideology of society, and that is what creates this anti-capitalistic mentality. 105 00:14:19.160 --> 00:14:28.160 There is something that should be mentioned here, and that is that a certain group of writers, principally George Stigler... 106 00:14:38.160 --> 00:14:54.160 George Stigler, a great economist and one of the leaders of the Chicago School, he and then Gary Becker and some others came up with the theory, 107 00:14:54.160 --> 00:15:03.160 intellectuals and ideology don't matter very much, because what matters are individuals acting in their own narrow self-interest, 108 00:15:03.160 --> 00:15:08.360 and they will then create coalitions according to the public choice way of looking at things 109 00:15:08.360 --> 00:15:13.120 and that's what increases the government little by little and that's what accounts for the 110 00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:17.240 large government we have. 111 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:24.680 Now I want to make clear, not only do I get no royalties from sales of Chrysos and Leviathan, 112 00:15:24.680 --> 00:15:29.120 Professor Higgs doesn't get any royalties since he signed away his rights to it many 113 00:15:29.120 --> 00:15:30.120 years ago. 114 00:15:30.120 --> 00:15:34.400 So this is not any kind of self-promoting thing as some other speakers have been engaged 115 00:15:34.400 --> 00:15:37.280 in at this seminar. 116 00:15:37.280 --> 00:15:43.120 But if you want the definitive reply to that and the definitive defense of the idea that 117 00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:49.120 ideology is crucial and ideas are crucial and so that what intellectuals do for good 118 00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:55.120 or bad is very, very important, you should read the chapter, it's only about 12 or 15 119 00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:59.780 pages, in Crisis and Leviathan where Professor Higgs deals with that. 120 00:15:59.780 --> 00:16:06.600 And really, we see in a very important historical example, the crucial role of ideology. 121 00:16:06.600 --> 00:16:09.620 And that was in the rise and fall of Soviet communism. 122 00:16:09.620 --> 00:16:18.860 I mean, there's no way of explaining Lenin's activity throughout his life on the basis 123 00:16:18.860 --> 00:16:24.940 that, what do you say, future, discounted future flow of income or something. 124 00:16:24.940 --> 00:16:29.200 The idea that somehow, yeah, I'm going to get into power and then I'll have everything 125 00:16:29.200 --> 00:16:35.360 I Need and all the best caviar and babes and so on. 126 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:39.840 Lenin was not interested in those sort of things, he was an ascetic and Lenin 127 00:16:39.840 --> 00:16:43.360 created this Bolshevik movement and basically the Bolsheviks, now of course 128 00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:46.680 there was a lot of self-interest that played into it once they got into power 129 00:16:46.680 --> 00:16:51.700 but they came to power on the basis of ideology and the Soviet regime through 130 00:16:51.700 --> 00:17:08.700 The Soviet regime, for 70 years, spent enormous amounts of resources on propagating ideology so that on a stigorous basis that you can explain action on the basis solely of immediate self-interest. 131 00:17:08.700 --> 00:17:18.700 Well, the general spread of ideology on the part of the Soviet authorities over this length of time, I think, is very significant. 132 00:17:18.700 --> 00:17:21.400 Why Did the Soviet Regime Fall? 133 00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:26.420 We raised the question before, did it fall because of Reagan's arms buildup? 134 00:17:26.420 --> 00:17:35.460 Well, I agree with Dr. Higgs that it was in the cards, and especially that the regime 135 00:17:35.460 --> 00:17:39.460 was doomed because of the lack of economic calculation. 136 00:17:39.460 --> 00:17:43.700 It was basically a third world country with nuclear weapons. 137 00:17:43.700 --> 00:17:57.700 Really, as I saw when I was in Moscow in 1987 and went to Gum's department store, you know, their Bloomingdale's, it was not laughable, it was pitiful. 138 00:17:57.700 --> 00:18:12.700 It really was pitiful that there were people in Soweto who had an enormously larger range of consumer goods at their disposal, or in Jakarta, than these citizens of Moscow. 139 00:18:12.700 --> 00:18:18.900 And Moscow, of course, always had the best of what was available in the Soviet Union. 140 00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:25.900 So it was an economic disaster and then the information revolution came. 141 00:18:25.900 --> 00:18:31.500 And then it wasn't simply the international ballet dancers and chess players and musicians and so on 142 00:18:31.500 --> 00:18:34.000 who knew what the West was really like. 143 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:38.600 Everybody got to know what the West was really like. 144 00:18:38.600 --> 00:18:49.100 because of computers, because of the video cassettes, because of all of the methods of information transmission that became available. 145 00:18:49.100 --> 00:18:55.100 And the regime could not withstand that, and Gorbachev tried to somehow reform communism. 146 00:18:55.100 --> 00:19:02.100 It didn't work, and they fell apart. 147 00:19:02.100 --> 00:19:16.900 So that the question is still why the intellectuals, going back to this idea of why they're adversarial to the capitalist system. 148 00:19:16.900 --> 00:19:28.260 Now there was a very interesting book, a fascinating book, written about 15 years ago or so by Henry Ashby Turner of the Yale History Department. 149 00:19:28.260 --> 00:19:33.580 In those days, it was the best history department in the United States, in my opinion, a magnificent 150 00:19:33.580 --> 00:19:34.820 history department. 151 00:19:34.820 --> 00:19:39.460 And this is German big business and the rise of Hitler. 152 00:19:39.460 --> 00:19:45.900 There had for a long time been the notion that big business was responsible for the 153 00:19:45.900 --> 00:19:50.980 rise and triumph of the Nazis by bankrolling them, basically. 154 00:19:50.980 --> 00:19:57.100 And Turner did a magnificent job of research and debunking. 155 00:19:57.100 --> 00:20:02.020 But at the end of this book, he raises the question, how come all of these other historians, 156 00:20:02.020 --> 00:20:09.220 famous historians, Alan Bullock, Norman Stone, Stuart Hughes of Harvard and so on, and on 157 00:20:09.220 --> 00:20:16.420 and on and on, repeated these myths that somehow big business was behind Hitler. 158 00:20:16.420 --> 00:20:24.600 And he said sometimes it was because of distortion, deliberate distortion of the evidence. 159 00:20:24.600 --> 00:20:29.880 But that was a small part of the case. The real reason was that they began with a natural 160 00:20:29.880 --> 00:20:38.260 bias against business. As intellectuals, as academics, they distrusted business and especially 161 00:20:38.260 --> 00:20:44.720 big business. They're willing to accept any story about big business and the terrible 162 00:20:44.720 --> 00:20:51.000 machinations and their conspiracies against workers and consumers because they had no 163 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:57.080 No Knowledge and, in fact, a deep suspicion and animosity towards business. 164 00:20:57.080 --> 00:21:05.400 Well, these are professors and what I want to present is the idea that why the media 165 00:21:05.400 --> 00:21:10.400 is anti-capitalist, why the churches and so on, because ultimately all these people go 166 00:21:10.400 --> 00:21:19.640 through higher education, are processed by these anti-business academics. 167 00:21:19.640 --> 00:21:43.640 So this, in a way, goes back to what Mises said, that the people who determine the official ideology in the country are people who know nothing about business and, in fact, find it very distasteful, and much could be said about that. 168 00:21:43.640 --> 00:21:59.640 Basically, you know, business people, as some of you know, and those are students here who may eventually get a job and make a living, will also learn, business people live and die by the market. 169 00:21:59.640 --> 00:22:05.640 They have to respond to the market. They cannot depend on a guaranteed source of income. 170 00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:12.160 Now, I personally do believe that professors should have a guaranteed source of income 171 00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:18.040 and in fact lifetime tenure, I mean that's very important because of the special lofty 172 00:22:18.040 --> 00:22:21.440 work that we're engaged in. 173 00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:25.200 During the faculty meetings, for instance, we argue about merit increases, you know, 174 00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:29.280 I'm going to get an extra $150, no, I'm going to get an extra $150. 175 00:22:29.280 --> 00:22:34.920 We argue about dividing up the travel budget, you'd be I think very interested in hearing 176 00:22:34.920 --> 00:22:38.800 conversation of professors over lunch. It almost always has to do with their 177 00:22:38.800 --> 00:22:44.040 pension plans. The idea that somehow it's a feast of the intellect when 178 00:22:44.040 --> 00:22:51.420 professors get together. Nonetheless I do believe that that professors are in a 179 00:22:51.420 --> 00:22:56.860 special position and should be given this guaranteed lifetime job just as I 180 00:22:56.860 --> 00:23:01.520 believe very strongly that all of the young people here have a moral 181 00:23:01.520 --> 00:23:05.520 and the Federal obligation to pay their Social Security taxes. 182 00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:08.520 Really, that's very important. 183 00:23:08.520 --> 00:23:14.520 And really, I want to leave you with that bit of wisdom. 184 00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:22.520 So this is a big question why the intellectuals feel this way, 185 00:23:22.520 --> 00:23:25.520 and that would be my response. 186 00:23:25.520 --> 00:23:28.520 Ultimately, it has to do with the class character. 187 00:23:28.520 --> 00:23:42.020 And in a way, in a Marxist sense, the limited consciousness, the limited social consciousness of academic intellectuals because they only exist in a certain spot in society. 188 00:23:42.020 --> 00:23:46.020 They don't really see the way the rest of society works because of their own way of life. 189 00:23:46.020 --> 00:23:53.020 So in a way, you might say you can't hold it against them. On the other hand, it's intellectuals. 190 00:23:53.020 --> 00:23:58.020 The intellectuals are the ones who are supposed to have a wider vision and try to see things the way they really are. 191 00:23:58.020 --> 00:24:03.020 They have signally failed with that. 192 00:24:03.020 --> 00:24:11.020 Well, since this is our last session, I want to spend a lot more time discussing what you might have to say about it 193 00:24:11.020 --> 00:24:14.020 and raise a few questions. 194 00:24:14.020 --> 00:24:22.020 What do you think accounts for the anti-capitalist mentality in society and especially among intellectuals? 195 00:24:22.020 --> 00:24:28.220 Also, you might try to consider and offer your own ideas. What lies ahead? 196 00:24:29.660 --> 00:24:35.800 Are we faced with the rosy Pollyanna future that Professor Gottfried has presented? 197 00:24:38.300 --> 00:24:41.300 In his typical cock-eyed optimism? 198 00:24:44.180 --> 00:24:51.820 And if it threatens to be darker than that, what can we do about it? 199 00:24:52.020 --> 00:24:59.540 Is it possible that somehow we are going to be able to change the larger society, or instead 200 00:24:59.540 --> 00:25:04.500 of trying to change the larger society, I mean really running against the tide, it's 201 00:25:04.500 --> 00:25:07.180 not becoming better, it's becoming worse. 202 00:25:07.180 --> 00:25:12.620 They now say things that they wouldn't have dared say 20, even 20 years ago, let alone 203 00:25:12.620 --> 00:25:19.860 40 or 50 years ago, and propose things that nobody would have thought of. 204 00:25:19.860 --> 00:25:25.180 So should we try to change the larger society or should we concentrate our efforts on building 205 00:25:25.180 --> 00:25:29.420 smaller communities as Professor Livingston has suggested? 206 00:25:29.420 --> 00:25:34.300 Homeschooling would be an element of that for instance. 207 00:25:34.300 --> 00:25:39.260 And when the time comes and you have kids, I think that's something you really have 208 00:25:39.260 --> 00:25:46.420 to consider and certainly consider removing them from the public schools and also the 209 00:25:46.420 --> 00:25:50.740 The private schools, to a large extent, because they're beginning to emulate the public schools. 210 00:25:50.740 --> 00:25:57.140 Catholic schools teach the same ecological stuff to first graders that the public schools 211 00:25:57.140 --> 00:25:58.140 do. 212 00:25:58.140 --> 00:26:05.780 A friend of mine decided that he and his wife were going to raise their three kids by homeschooling 213 00:26:05.780 --> 00:26:12.020 when the oldest child came back from kindergarten and with a list of things to look for in the 214 00:26:12.020 --> 00:26:16.720 in a house, you know, where all the litter was put in the right place and so on, and 215 00:26:16.720 --> 00:26:22.320 this was going to be reported back as an assignment. 216 00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:28.240 So should we then concentrate on smaller communities and building up from there, or what would 217 00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:32.360 that mean? 218 00:26:32.360 --> 00:26:40.200 Also if things are as pessimistic as some might claim, what would be the point of a 219 00:26:40.200 --> 00:27:05.200 a seminar like this. It seems to me that, it seems to me obvious that this is, the seminar was a good thing. But then, in what way, what will, what will, what will it lead us towards that, that is worthwhile? Well, these are some questions and we have some time and I really appreciate anything you have to say about this. Yes. 220 00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:15.200 Well, Professor Ranko, first on behalf of our family, I want to applaud you and your faculty for your extraordinary venture, as we thought you would in parallel. 221 00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:17.200 You wanted to, thank you very much. 222 00:27:17.200 --> 00:27:38.200 And then the observation. You're blessed, all of you, or many of you, please, who have now embraced the intellectual aspects and some fractional applications of the world in the mind as it attaches to libertarian concepts. 223 00:27:38.200 --> 00:27:42.200 And among those primordial values you've discovered is ownership of yourself. 224 00:27:42.200 --> 00:27:44.200 That's primordial. 225 00:27:44.200 --> 00:27:47.200 And some told us how they can it, but they're clearly defensible. 226 00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:52.200 You need now, understand, it seems to me, only financial leverage to secure for yourself 227 00:27:52.200 --> 00:27:57.200 your future in a way that is not going to be learned, it is not taught, 228 00:27:57.200 --> 00:28:02.200 and therefore will not be learned in the colleges and universities of higher education. 229 00:28:02.200 --> 00:28:07.200 So ownership of yourself is something with which you've gained a certain level of comfort. 230 00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:12.220 The fruits of your labor should be always remembered as yours, and there are ways in 231 00:28:12.220 --> 00:28:17.700 leverage in the financial community that can assure for you a future of independence from 232 00:28:17.700 --> 00:28:21.800 your job in no more than ten years. 233 00:28:21.800 --> 00:28:27.200 If you simply apply the knowledge of leverage in the financial community, you'll be independent 234 00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:32.240 of the state, independent of your job, you'll have the means of income flowing to you that 235 00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:37.240 gives you a great deal more latitude than the dependency you'll end up with if you don't. 236 00:28:37.240 --> 00:28:46.240 So you're blessed to have had a mindset developed over time that precludes intervention in your life by those who otherwise have no interest in it. 237 00:28:46.240 --> 00:28:51.240 That's a very good suggestion. And you're going to be at the party tonight? 238 00:28:51.240 --> 00:28:52.240 Unfortunately. 239 00:28:52.240 --> 00:28:53.240 Not? 240 00:28:53.240 --> 00:28:56.240 Unfortunately, I'm a capitalist. I have to get back and earn a living. 241 00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:15.240 Well, you have been the blessing from Nelson and Nash, a great book that's available for you, and you have things in there that would be very useful. 242 00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:20.240 Seems like that lever is going to get him out of that work this afternoon with an accident. 243 00:29:20.240 --> 00:29:38.240 But I believe that the ideas that are generated here are worthy, obviously, and should be promulgated through the political process at the county level is one that I concentrate on personally. 244 00:29:38.240 --> 00:29:45.240 But that is very important. The homeschooling invention, get the ideas into the homeschooling. 245 00:29:45.240 --> 00:29:50.240 And into that arena, there are a number of homeschooling organizations that are important. 246 00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:57.240 I'm sure they'll belong right on the Austrian concept, and it can be taught at the lower levels. 247 00:29:59.240 --> 00:30:07.240 Well, I've got to see the need for some kind of university or something that is controlled by people who are like-minded with us, 248 00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:11.240 somewhere in the United States at least, where at least I feel like I can go. 249 00:30:11.240 --> 00:30:23.540 What this conference has made me realize is that I'm going to have to proceed with caution in my next years in college when I learn philosophy and history and I can learn what someone said, but as far as the perspective, it's all going to have to be in my own. 250 00:30:23.540 --> 00:30:29.840 I would like to have some kind of place where I knew that there would be allies or something where I could degree or something like that. 251 00:30:29.840 --> 00:30:38.240 Yes. There are a couple of colleges like that in the United States. They are, in fact, Grove City College and Hillsdale. 252 00:30:38.240 --> 00:30:41.240 Pretty, pretty good institutions of higher learning. 253 00:30:41.240 --> 00:30:46.240 They don't have the prestige and reputation of other colleges. 254 00:30:46.240 --> 00:30:49.240 It's kind of a vicious circle, though, isn't it? 255 00:30:49.240 --> 00:30:55.240 I mean, how are we going to get a college when the whole academic world is tending in the opposite direction? 256 00:30:55.240 --> 00:31:00.240 How do you get people into positions there and so on? 257 00:31:03.240 --> 00:31:05.240 Rachel, you have any ideas? 258 00:31:05.240 --> 00:31:10.240 Help us, Rachel, Rachel, please, dig a bit. 259 00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:13.240 I mean, I think, I don't know if I'm quite as negative. 260 00:31:13.240 --> 00:31:14.240 Good. 261 00:31:14.240 --> 00:31:15.240 Well, first of all, I do think it's... 262 00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:16.240 I hope, I hope, yeah, I hope so. 263 00:31:16.240 --> 00:31:21.240 I think it's important to be constructive and not just negative, like in terms of, you know, 264 00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:26.240 yes, we're anti-state, but we also have, as Dr. Livingston's talked about, ideas for communities 265 00:31:26.240 --> 00:31:34.240 and constructive realms of choice for people to live in and overlapping realms of authority and so forth. 266 00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:40.640 But I also think, I mean, I think economics has changed the scene somewhat. 267 00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:44.640 For instance, in philosophy, you see people like David Gaultier. 268 00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:52.240 And I'm not saying that I agree with him, I'm just saying that different economic views and gave theoretic views have become respectable. 269 00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:58.640 And that's a big change, you know what I mean? In terms of talking about extremely minimal state. 270 00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:16.640 So, you know, maybe there's, and there's always that one or two conservative people on the, on the faculty everywhere, I mean, you know, it's true, he was saying about the history department, you were saying about the history department, that there's always twenty-nine in one, but that's something. 271 00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:20.640 But there are signs in different disciplines like philosophy, you're saying. 272 00:32:20.640 --> 00:32:27.640 In the case of philosophy, Bob Nozick's book, Anarchy, State and Utopia, made a big difference years ago. 273 00:32:27.640 --> 00:32:35.640 I remember when Bob came to Murray Rothbard's apartment for the first time, 274 00:32:35.640 --> 00:32:38.640 began discussing some of these ideas and so on. 275 00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:46.640 Now, the thing about Bob Nozick is that he's known as a young hotshot at the time, 276 00:32:46.640 --> 00:32:58.640 Peter Singer was one of the most brilliant younger philosophers, so that his saying these things, which, honestly speaking, other people, especially Murray, had been saying before, that made a big difference. 277 00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:04.640 And then, you know, Peter Singer was one who had a big review in the New York Review of books praising Bob's book. 278 00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:05.640 Really? 279 00:33:05.640 --> 00:33:08.640 Yeah, Peter Singer, right, before he became... 280 00:33:08.640 --> 00:33:14.640 That's not since he wants to redistribute all our wealth to the Third World. 281 00:33:14.640 --> 00:33:17.640 and to the animals, and to the animals, don't forget the animals. 282 00:33:17.640 --> 00:33:23.640 So Bob Nozick made a big difference there. 283 00:33:23.640 --> 00:33:28.640 Actually, I can tell you the story of it. 284 00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:33.640 Bob was a social democrat when he entered Princeton Graduate School. 285 00:33:33.640 --> 00:33:40.640 And it was my friend Bruce Goldberg, who was in the same entering year in the grad school at Princeton, 286 00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:47.080 Robert Mises, who you can say converted him, gave him Hayek and Mises to read and so on. 287 00:33:47.080 --> 00:33:50.560 And then Bob went back to his friends at Dissent Magazine. 288 00:33:50.560 --> 00:33:54.760 Now if you're not from New York, you've never heard of Dissent Magazine. 289 00:33:54.760 --> 00:34:00.280 You might remember that there was an early Woody Allen movie, I think it was Bananas, 290 00:34:00.280 --> 00:34:05.760 where he's in a magazine shop in New York and he sees Dissent Magazine and he also sees 291 00:34:05.760 --> 00:34:07.640 Commentary Magazine. 292 00:34:07.640 --> 00:34:13.040 And he thinks to himself, it'd be a really good idea if those magazines combined, they could call themselves dysentery. 293 00:34:13.040 --> 00:34:22.040 Anyway, Bob went to his friends at Dissent Magazine, these democratic socialists, and he said, 294 00:34:22.040 --> 00:34:30.040 If the minimum wage is good, why don't we have a minimum wage of $20 an hour? 295 00:34:30.040 --> 00:34:33.040 And they couldn't answer that. 296 00:34:33.040 --> 00:34:38.040 In other words, they could not answer the first step in the argument. 297 00:34:38.040 --> 00:34:49.040 It was simply a matter of belief, of faith on their part, a minimum wage, and that shook his social democratic position. 298 00:34:49.040 --> 00:34:53.040 And then he became, at least for a while, a libertarian. 299 00:34:53.040 --> 00:34:56.040 That made a big difference in philosophy, I think. 300 00:34:56.040 --> 00:34:59.040 But there was nothing, there's been nothing similar in other fields. 301 00:34:59.040 --> 00:35:12.040 Well, with the exception of what I discussed in my first talk on this new paradigm of the rise of the West based on guarantees for individual rights, especially property rights. 302 00:35:12.040 --> 00:35:21.040 But that has not percolated down. I don't think too many people that you've ever heard about that in your history courses. No. 303 00:35:21.040 --> 00:35:24.040 But it has made, again, some difference. 304 00:35:24.040 --> 00:35:29.400 So Rachel is on the on the optimistic side together with the professor Gottfried 305 00:35:30.680 --> 00:35:33.960 Anybody else have any feelings about this? Yeah, what do you think? 306 00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:37.840 All right good 307 00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:40.000 during the 300 years 308 00:35:44.720 --> 00:35:53.200 We lived what you folks have been telling us is why things happen for the good. Mm-hmm, but there was no 309 00:35:53.200 --> 00:35:59.200 There's no explanation of that to the same extent that has happened in the last 10 or 15 years. 310 00:35:59.200 --> 00:36:08.200 So the collectivists were able, with a handful of people, Fabians, etc., to replace their values with ours. 311 00:36:08.200 --> 00:36:20.200 Now, if a handful of people is able to have the revolution that they have, what you've done, what you are doing here in educating a large group. 312 00:36:20.200 --> 00:36:28.200 We're going to cross out, you're an American, I think, gives ground for some optimism. 313 00:36:28.200 --> 00:36:35.200 And I think that, whether, I think Lou maybe, if he wants to continue on this thing, this is a big enough job for the Institute. 314 00:36:35.200 --> 00:36:40.200 But there should be parallel efforts. Crisis is coming. 315 00:36:40.200 --> 00:36:48.200 You know, we've been living high on the hog, buying from overseas, they've been taking our checks and putting them in their checkbook and not asking us for the money. 316 00:36:48.200 --> 00:37:05.200 So at some particular point, there's going to be some crisis. So prior to, it'll be too late at the time of crisis for us to get any kind of a program. So prior to the crisis, we should have a program developed as to what we think should be done to meet that crisis. 317 00:37:05.200 --> 00:37:16.200 and at the vocal level, I personally think that our emphasis should be on educating the state legislatures. 318 00:37:16.200 --> 00:37:21.200 Now, I don't have any more faith in state legislatures than I do in national legislatures, 319 00:37:21.200 --> 00:37:27.200 but state legislatures don't have the power and they've got to compete with big things, so I would stroke them. 320 00:37:27.200 --> 00:37:34.200 I would say, hey, crisis is coming only because you let this federal monster usurp your duties. 321 00:37:34.200 --> 00:37:37.200 Well, yeah. Go ahead, please. 322 00:37:37.200 --> 00:37:41.200 And then I'd lay out the program. I would not be afraid of initiative at the federal level. 323 00:37:41.200 --> 00:37:47.200 I'd use the word initiative for a change of the Constitution, because everybody's afraid of changing the Constitution. 324 00:37:47.200 --> 00:37:53.200 I've got some ideas, and I'm sure others do, as to what some of those initiatives should be. 325 00:37:53.200 --> 00:38:03.200 Well, state legislators, I don't know, many of them tend to be very venal and just the representatives of special interests. 326 00:38:03.200 --> 00:38:08.640 Special Interests, I think of the New Jersey State Legislature, where you can go into the 327 00:38:08.640 --> 00:38:17.160 chamber there and point out the legislators who belong to the Gambino family and the ones 328 00:38:17.160 --> 00:38:22.160 who belong to the Bonanno family and other families. 329 00:38:22.160 --> 00:38:23.160 Not in the sense of family value. 330 00:38:23.160 --> 00:38:24.160 They don't have a printing press. 331 00:38:24.160 --> 00:38:25.160 They don't have a printing press. 332 00:38:25.160 --> 00:38:26.160 Potentially they're not as... 333 00:38:26.160 --> 00:38:27.160 It's possible. 334 00:38:27.160 --> 00:38:32.160 As I say, I have no more confidence in them, but they've got to compete against the other 335 00:38:32.160 --> 00:38:33.160 states. 336 00:38:33.160 --> 00:38:47.160 Well, it's possible, it's possible. Anybody have any other comments or feelings about this? 337 00:38:47.160 --> 00:38:51.160 I mean, it's not that anybody knows what's going to be happening. Yes. 338 00:39:03.160 --> 00:39:25.160 from a misapplication of Christianity, just the social work, trying to do good for mankind, and they get the feeling superior because we are doing business. 339 00:39:33.160 --> 00:39:52.160 What's more obvious than that Jesus never called on the tax collector to help the poor, but he called on individuals for their own sake and for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and for the sake of the poor to help the poor? 340 00:39:52.160 --> 00:40:02.160 One of the things is that it's very important to distribute the publication of the Institute and other organizations to the campuses of two students. 341 00:40:02.160 --> 00:40:09.160 I know that the Interpolated Studies Institute does a lot of that, and in the past the Foundation for Economic Education, FBE, did that as well. 342 00:40:09.160 --> 00:40:13.160 And I know that Gary North is going to do some things about how they've done that. 343 00:40:13.160 --> 00:40:18.160 At first that might be quite expensive to distribute a lot of literature to college students, 344 00:40:18.160 --> 00:40:29.160 But it pays off because if the college students themselves do their part by getting involved by not only thinking of things through for themselves, but also by producing publications on their campuses and things like that. 345 00:40:29.160 --> 00:40:36.160 For example, I know that you had the New Individualist Review at the University of Chicago. That really, that lifts things up. 346 00:40:36.160 --> 00:40:47.160 That is what makes someone go from just being a sort of passive observer and reader of books to being someone who is actively involved in writing the books and is getting, fighting for the market in academia. 347 00:40:47.160 --> 00:40:57.160 Well, many of you are on college and university campuses. Is this something that could work? Is this something that could make a difference? 348 00:40:57.160 --> 00:41:02.160 Not to mention op-ed. 349 00:41:02.160 --> 00:41:05.160 Op-ed pieces. 350 00:41:05.160 --> 00:41:10.160 Do you have one problem, Peter Morton? 351 00:41:10.160 --> 00:41:12.160 Well, okay. 352 00:41:12.160 --> 00:41:16.160 I'm not necessarily on the totally pessimist side, 353 00:41:16.160 --> 00:41:20.160 but let me play the devil's advocate for a moment. 354 00:41:20.160 --> 00:41:24.160 As many booklets and pamphlets as you want, 355 00:41:24.160 --> 00:41:27.160 As many op-ed pieces as you want. 356 00:41:27.160 --> 00:41:38.160 And all it takes is one phony baloney statistic of the sort that has been described here of the part of Tom Brokow. 357 00:41:38.160 --> 00:41:47.160 A consumer advocate group has just released a study saying that American apples are bad for you. 358 00:41:47.160 --> 00:41:49.160 Do you remember the apple thing years ago? 359 00:41:49.160 --> 00:41:58.160 Right. And it turned out there was nothing to it. What was it about? Well, I mean, I don't know if any study has been made. 360 00:41:58.160 --> 00:42:08.160 I'm morally certain what it was about was to destroy confidence in the American food supply and on the people who supply it. 361 00:42:08.160 --> 00:42:16.160 That was the point of it. There was another attack on the capitalist system. This was another lie, basically. 362 00:42:16.160 --> 00:42:21.360 or about the three million homeless and everything else, all the others. 363 00:42:21.360 --> 00:42:28.060 So all it takes is one time on prime news where 10 million people or 20 million people see it. 364 00:42:28.060 --> 00:42:34.360 Or else I'll take the war part, the anti-war part of our position. 365 00:42:34.360 --> 00:42:38.060 You know, we can talk all we want. 366 00:42:38.060 --> 00:42:43.760 All it takes is this Christiane Amanpour on CNN, you know her? 367 00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:51.560 professional fermenter of war and of terror bombing of small countries to 368 00:42:51.560 --> 00:42:55.320 start talking about some terrible genocide that's occurring in Kosovo or 369 00:42:55.320 --> 00:43:00.480 whatever right and then and then and the TV does things the way it does people 370 00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:04.040 talked about movies I never see movies but one movie that I did see a number of 371 00:43:04.040 --> 00:43:10.280 times over on cable was a wag the dog if you haven't seen that okay you see how a 372 00:43:10.280 --> 00:43:15.280 How a war is produced. The television war is actually produced. 373 00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:18.280 So in other words, I mean, they have control of the media. 374 00:43:18.280 --> 00:43:23.280 Do you think that what we can do really can counteract that? 375 00:43:23.280 --> 00:43:24.280 What do you feel about that? 376 00:43:24.280 --> 00:43:30.280 You think that we can in some small way in our own communities counteract that? 377 00:43:30.280 --> 00:43:32.280 You do. Yeah. 378 00:43:32.280 --> 00:43:41.280 I was going to say, yeah, I think you can. A lot of times, conservative libertarian organizations don't even take the time to do a press release and send it to the media when they have a meeting. 379 00:43:41.280 --> 00:43:46.280 And that's something a lot of times papers are looking for news, and there are a lot of opportunities. 380 00:43:46.280 --> 00:43:54.280 And then there was a case recently with Gorbachev out west speaking to some globalist conference, where a group of concerned citizens got together, maybe a dozen people. 381 00:43:54.280 --> 00:44:00.280 One of them put some money up for a full page ad in the paper. They passed out flyers at the door. 382 00:44:00.280 --> 00:44:30.280 It got into the news, the television picked it up, it became a major controversy, and I think the following speaking engagement had to be cancelled, so that's an example of how a small group that's active can do something, and that can be done, there's a lot of opportunities that we miss, just because we sit back and say, there's nothing we can do, it's all bad, and letters to the editor do make a difference too, people respond and you respond back, other people get involved in the debate... 383 00:44:30.280 --> 00:44:49.280 Call C-SPAN, call CNN, or your local radio talk show. I did that the other day, and people in our community were saying we heard somebody was from Charleston, and it was me. 384 00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:56.480 I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but C-SPAN used to just 385 00:44:56.480 --> 00:45:04.680 televised the calls and answer the calls as they came in, right? I mean that was the old days a few years ago. 386 00:45:04.680 --> 00:45:11.180 Then they changed and what they do now is you're on the Republican line or the Democratic line or other line. 387 00:45:11.180 --> 00:45:19.180 And the reason for that was that, I don't know if libertarians had more time on their hands or were unemployed or something, 388 00:45:19.180 --> 00:45:27.180 But a very large proportion, a disproportion, a great disproportion of the calls that came in were from libertarians. 389 00:45:27.180 --> 00:45:34.180 So they had to change that. And I would suggest if you have a call C-SPAN, call on the Democratic line. 390 00:45:34.180 --> 00:45:43.180 I'm a Democrat, but you know, I believe a lot of what the libertarians say. 391 00:45:43.180 --> 00:46:11.180 My opinion doesn't count because I'm a 200% optimistic person, but you can see that in, for example, about the media, for example, in Spain, last year we created a web newspaper called Digital Liberty, and today it's the most hit on, the number one on the web. 392 00:46:11.180 --> 00:46:17.580 After the normal newspapers like El País, it's the number one of the digital newspapers. 393 00:46:17.580 --> 00:46:24.980 In Italy, I know that they have also a few new libertarian newspapers, and now all of them in the top rank. 394 00:46:24.980 --> 00:46:29.180 How did your libertarian website in Spain become so popular? 395 00:46:29.180 --> 00:46:31.980 Well, we managed to have some of the... 396 00:46:31.980 --> 00:46:33.980 It's not that you have special illustrations. 397 00:46:33.980 --> 00:46:47.980 ...popular radio speakers, they wrote for us and so they spoke about this newspaper in the radio and they started clicking the web page. 398 00:46:47.980 --> 00:46:50.980 Well, that's certainly hopeful. Some other? Yeah. 399 00:46:50.980 --> 00:47:01.980 I think it's important from my perspective to remember that even if this turned out to be during the lifetime of everyone here, 400 00:47:01.980 --> 00:47:11.980 not the opportunity that we hoped for, for a rebirth of liberty, that doesn't make the enterprise any less important or exciting. 401 00:47:11.980 --> 00:47:21.980 I think about the people that I've talked to here tell me about the times when it was 10 of them getting together in a room with Mises. 402 00:47:21.980 --> 00:47:26.980 Things are certainly better in our situation in that we can have a meeting of this size. 403 00:47:26.980 --> 00:47:39.980 It doesn't mean that we've won anymore in the public, but I don't think we have to win the award to have it be meaningful, have it be important, and also have it be very exciting. 404 00:47:39.980 --> 00:47:50.980 If only for the reason that we keep alive the ideas so that at some point when the rest of the world is ready for them, this rebirth can happen. 405 00:47:50.980 --> 00:48:04.980 I think you can be just as proud of being in a group that kept the ideas alive as you are about being in a group that was there when the floodgates opened and we had this rebirth. 406 00:48:04.980 --> 00:48:09.380 It's very interesting what you say. I think you can find it on the fees website 407 00:48:09.380 --> 00:48:14.980 There was a famous essay by Albert J. Nock this man. We've mentioned a few times called Isaiah's job and 408 00:48:16.260 --> 00:48:21.460 and what he says there was talks about the Isaiah the prophet and Isaiah's 409 00:48:22.940 --> 00:48:28.420 Mandate from God and it was not to convert the world but to find the remnant 410 00:48:29.140 --> 00:48:33.900 As he as he called it and to keep the remnant going and the remnant is 411 00:48:33.900 --> 00:48:39.900 is a minority in every generation, but it's always there, it's always potentially there. 412 00:48:39.900 --> 00:48:48.900 May I ask you if you think that this view of yours, that it doesn't ultimately matter, 413 00:48:48.900 --> 00:48:56.900 that success comes in one's own lifetime, do you think that necessarily has a religious basis to it? 414 00:48:56.900 --> 00:49:18.900 Certainly can, I think. But I think that something I heard from Dr. or Professor Higgs my first time here, he made the statement that, you know, people have been happy in all times and people have found meaning in their life. 415 00:49:18.900 --> 00:49:36.900 and for some people it's a religious institution or experience that provides it, but I think it can be philosophical, I think it can have to do with your local community, it can have to do with a group of intellectuals like we have here that you derive your support and your meaning from. 416 00:49:36.900 --> 00:50:05.900 So I think it comes from a lot of different places. What's important is that I think ultimately for all of us our happiness is going to come out of our own life and the life of the people around us that we care about and that a miserable personal life or a miserable life among the people that are important to you will drown out any kind of global happiness or liberty or prosperity. 417 00:50:06.900 --> 00:50:22.900 They were talking about pamphlets and sending out pamphlets. There are a lot of available pamphlets on the internet, Mises.org, that they use for the university, Mises University. 418 00:50:22.900 --> 00:50:37.900 12 of those, and you could always download them and then grab them and do something with them, and everybody can do that, whether it's great or not. 419 00:50:37.900 --> 00:50:51.900 This has been done about 4,000 times, but it never has happened. We don't have a major media network. We don't have a TV station. Box is really not it, but that would take a heck of a lot of money. 420 00:50:52.900 --> 00:50:55.900 And you and I together have, yeah. 421 00:50:55.900 --> 00:51:01.900 Well, maybe the thing is to concentrate on converting billionaires. 422 00:51:01.900 --> 00:51:04.900 Yes? 423 00:51:04.900 --> 00:51:13.900 You might have seen the book by Dr. David Gordon out there, the high school type book, which the name of which, excuse me, I read this moment. 424 00:51:13.900 --> 00:51:21.900 I think it would be, I think it's got to be done on aggressors one to one, basically. 425 00:51:21.900 --> 00:51:28.900 And I think that something I'm trying to do with that, because I like the book very much, if you like it, 426 00:51:28.900 --> 00:51:43.900 to approach homeschoolers and private schools that you think might be open to that kind of thing 427 00:51:43.900 --> 00:51:51.900 to teach students at the high school level, get them real early into basic sound economics 428 00:51:51.900 --> 00:52:12.300 The book is available for inspection right here. David, does your book have a title? 429 00:52:12.300 --> 00:52:19.300 I've only read a third of it, but it's quite good, but I've read so far, and I think that it's really important to get good economics into the classroom or into the homeschool and the private schools of thought. 430 00:52:42.300 --> 00:53:03.300 I would second your recommendation of that book, as much as I have reservations about the author. 431 00:53:03.300 --> 00:53:06.300 Are there any other comments or questions? 432 00:53:06.300 --> 00:53:14.100 I think there is good fortune in the ranks on multiple levels, one is you did convert a billionaire, and that's the Koch family, 433 00:53:14.100 --> 00:53:21.300 the love is right behind them, which is often said, it is strong as a bull, and that tendency has supported citizens with non-economy, 434 00:53:21.300 --> 00:53:26.300 which is the largest public asset group in the country, and is a libertarian group. 435 00:53:36.300 --> 00:53:52.220 No, no. No, no. No. There was a big split among the brothers, an old story, but there 436 00:53:52.220 --> 00:53:58.420 was at one time some talk about them buying NBC. I think it was NBC or maybe ABC, but 437 00:53:58.420 --> 00:54:01.060 that never panned out, unfortunately. 438 00:54:01.060 --> 00:54:11.060 If they're this wealthy and they're really on our page, what are their contributions going to? Because I'm not aware of it. 439 00:54:15.060 --> 00:54:18.060 Two quick ones here. 440 00:54:18.060 --> 00:54:26.060 Hold on a second. Wait a minute. Who's the dean? Are you the dean or am I the dean? 441 00:54:26.060 --> 00:54:33.540 Yes. Very briefly, are there any clubs and colleges, von Mises clubs and colleges? 442 00:54:33.540 --> 00:54:38.540 Well, I don't know. I don't think von Mises clubs. There are libertarian 443 00:54:38.540 --> 00:54:45.660 organizations. Yeah? We just started the College of Libertarians on our campus last year. We also have a group called the 444 00:54:45.660 --> 00:55:00.160 We've got a great deal of people in there and we've been able to have a wide group of conservatives, not just neocons, but in fact they're a minority as far as I know. 445 00:55:00.160 --> 00:55:10.160 We've been able to do a lot of outreach, we have discussions, we have a web list where we talk about various issues and you know, kind of paleo-conservative and libertarian talk dominates the entire state. 446 00:55:10.160 --> 00:55:37.160 What Professor Gottfried was talking about before kicks in here, because this thought control, which is becoming more prevalent on campuses, including and not stopping short of violence, for instance, to prevent the conservative speakers from appearing on campuses, that seems to be becoming more widespread. 447 00:55:37.160 --> 00:55:48.160 Well, I think we had some good ideas and thank you very much for the seminar.