WEBVTT NOTE How I Won in the Election 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:21.000 I've probably had more trepidation deciding what I was going to include and what I was not going to include in my 30 minutes and of course being somebody who believes in the rule of law, I'll stop at 30 minutes and I guess Mark can decide to get out the Ludwig von Mises hook and pull me to the side and say time for questions or I can talk a little bit longer. 2 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:31.000 The title was How I Won the Gubernatorial Election, which is going to be a tall order. 3 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:40.000 I can talk about small victories along the way, but I thought Mark and I had agreed to change it to how I took the goober out of gubernatorial politics in Alabama. 4 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:44.000 It's probably nice to just start out with thanks. 5 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:56.000 The Von Mises Institute is certainly a sanctuary to come back to where you can talk about liberty and not have to dodge eggs and other barbs and slings and arrows. 6 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:02.000 It actually beckons back to the first brown bag that I ever attended. 7 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:13.000 There was a discussion about going back and forth between, you know, the Democrats and the Republicans and big government, small government, and sort of sheepishly first chimed in. 8 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:19.500 I believe it's the first thing I ever said at the von Mises Institute is I said well it's not really a pendulum, it's a ratchet, right? 9 00:01:19.500 --> 00:01:27.000 And you've basically got the Republicans that have been willing to take sort of the power pole and you know really do the things that guys like Lincoln and Hoover do 10 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:36.000 and then sort of Wilson and FDR understand the easiest thing is just to have the non-power pole to bring it back and you just keep ratcheting to bigger and bigger government 11 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:50.000 Which I promptly saw Lew Rockwell, you know, crack one of those nice wry smiles, which I took as a sign that, yeah, maybe this guy really gets it, but you never know with Lew, it might have been just gas, we'll have to ask him. 12 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:54.000 I'm afraid to find out what in fact it may have been. 13 00:01:54.000 --> 00:02:02.000 So perhaps the best place to start is just with the numbers at the end of the election. 14 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:12.000 The Democrat received 29 percent, the Republican 29 percent, and I received 2 percent, which was a record. 15 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:17.000 By what percent? 2 percent. What a surprise. 16 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:25.000 There are a lot of folks who, especially when you're one of the Leviathan parties, that seem to want to claim property rights to voters. 17 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:31.000 How dare this libertarian come in and take votes from us as if they have a stake to acclaim to it. 18 00:02:31.000 --> 00:03:01.000 claim to it and of course what was nice and one of the victories of course that I'll talk about along the way is we offered an alternative and for those who actually knew there was an alternative out there to vote for came out and voted and you know it's pretty clear that's where the two percent was derived and the other victory perhaps if you look at it in nominal terms the campaign beat the margin of victory by over tenfold now of course as most of you know whenever somebody dares 19 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:06.800 is to, you know, wave their fist at the Leviathan parties immediately in their special session 20 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:09.680 that was supposed to solve the problems of education. 21 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:14.660 They got nothing done with respect to education, but they managed to change the ballot access 22 00:03:14.660 --> 00:03:20.400 laws to be even more restrictive, and I guess, you know, part of the jokes that I'll hit 23 00:03:20.400 --> 00:03:28.980 along the way is, well, your local legislator here, Mike Hubbard, was the one that sort 24 00:03:28.980 --> 00:03:58.980 The Federal Reserve authored making sure that the laws got changed to be more restrictive and one of the great things that an earlier campaign of mine discovered was the way to get signatures was just to go at the primaries where you had everybody that you knew was showing up was likely to be a registered voter and we lowered the barrier so now they wanted to make sure that you had to have things in deadlines before the primaries which is what got the Republicans in trouble and for those of you who don't remember what I'm referring to George Bush pretty narrowly 25 00:03:58.980 --> 00:04:14.980 to be a write-in candidate in Alabama because of these ridiculous laws that they had put in to restrict ballot access, but of course, when you're one of the Leviathan parties, you just change the law at the last minute to make sure that you don't have to adhere to the laws that you're making. 26 00:04:14.980 --> 00:04:20.980 Taking the goober out of gubernatorial politics was a fun catch line. 27 00:04:20.980 --> 00:04:25.980 It's pretty clear that we say that at our own peril. 28 00:04:25.980 --> 00:04:30.980 To think that governments run poorly is just a foolish thing. 29 00:04:30.980 --> 00:04:34.980 Governments run incredibly well, they're extremely efficient, 30 00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:38.980 once you understand what the objective function is. 31 00:04:38.980 --> 00:04:41.980 We tend to suffer from the illusion that, you know, 32 00:04:41.980 --> 00:04:47.980 they're out there to generate public good and do what their stated purpose is. 33 00:04:47.980 --> 00:05:17.980 running for Congress was much easier because when folks said what do you stand for I'd say you know go pick up article 1 section 8 of the Constitution read those enumerated powers that's what I stand for and if that's not you know listed there then I'm not interested in doing it well why I came to be as the gubernatorial candidate and I make no remorse whatsoever I was delighted and it was an honor to be the face that they put 34 00:05:17.980 --> 00:05:19.480 at the top of the ticket. 35 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:22.480 I know you're probably wondering, couldn't they come up with a better face than that? 36 00:05:22.480 --> 00:05:30.180 But certainly, I thought that I was pretty well-placed to head the party and go out and champion liberty 37 00:05:30.180 --> 00:05:35.280 and the discourse that it takes to champion it as a candidate. 38 00:05:35.280 --> 00:05:39.780 When I went to my candidate interview up in Birmingham before the executive committee, 39 00:05:39.780 --> 00:05:43.580 I wanted to run again for third U.S. House. 40 00:05:43.580 --> 00:05:48.380 And the discussion got, you know, sort of a little bit more heated, a little bit more heated. 41 00:05:48.380 --> 00:05:51.860 And they finally said, well, you know, we really wanted you to run for governor. 42 00:05:51.860 --> 00:05:57.220 And so I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and run for governor. 43 00:05:57.220 --> 00:06:05.300 And I didn't feel as bad about leaving the third district behind because it went into the capable hands of Mr. George Crispin here in attendance. 44 00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:09.300 And we actually had a pretty good lineup of candidates. 45 00:06:09.300 --> 00:06:12.820 I'm very proud of the list of candidates we had. 46 00:06:12.820 --> 00:06:18.580 and I considered a victory. I think in the end we fielded just under 70 candidates. 47 00:06:18.580 --> 00:06:25.860 We've got one of our other candidates here with, well, should I say retired Sergeant Tim or at the moment, 48 00:06:25.860 --> 00:06:35.220 soon to perhaps be unretired sergeant who was our sheriff's deputies candidate, got Dick Clark who was PSC. 49 00:06:35.220 --> 00:06:41.300 And Mark, you decided to not do anything that last round. 50 00:06:41.300 --> 00:06:43.260 How did I let you off the hook? 51 00:06:43.260 --> 00:06:45.060 I just must not have punched you enough. 52 00:06:48.860 --> 00:06:53.420 Well, too bad Professor Alt isn't here, 53 00:06:53.420 --> 00:06:55.640 so I could give him credit for why I've decided 54 00:06:55.640 --> 00:06:56.940 to address it in this fashion. 55 00:06:56.940 --> 00:07:01.180 But he always likes to cite George Will's three Rs. 56 00:07:01.180 --> 00:07:02.860 Well, it was pretty clear, once you 57 00:07:02.860 --> 00:07:04.780 get immersed in Alabama politics, 58 00:07:04.780 --> 00:07:06.800 and what the three Rs are. 59 00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:10.360 Religion, race, redistribution. 60 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:13.040 Now of course those of you who actually know the game, right? 61 00:07:13.040 --> 00:07:15.600 The first two are just inputs for the last one, 62 00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:18.160 which is the one that they're really interested in. 63 00:07:19.420 --> 00:07:20.460 It's amazing. 64 00:07:21.620 --> 00:07:23.320 I should have coined the term earlier, 65 00:07:23.320 --> 00:07:25.260 but I'm gonna go ahead and throw it out now 66 00:07:25.260 --> 00:07:28.000 and please feel free to use it as many times 67 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:29.600 and as often as you'd like. 68 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:38.600 Two wrongs make a right and a left. Nowhere is that more true in Alabama politics. 69 00:07:38.600 --> 00:07:46.600 The information machine is quite well-oiled, I'm assuming, in Alabama's everywhere else. 70 00:07:46.600 --> 00:07:56.600 But before we even announced our candidacy, the atheists crashed our party, which at first outset I thought was fine. 71 00:07:56.600 --> 00:08:03.600 You know, when they came and discussed, well, we'd like to run some candidates and, you know, we're atheists. Do you care? No, I don't care. 72 00:08:04.600 --> 00:08:07.600 I care less, you know, what religion you are. 73 00:08:08.600 --> 00:08:17.600 And promptly, the candidates that were part of this ticket started using the libertarian platform to espouse their religious beliefs. 74 00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:22.600 And we hammered them, and we hammered them, and we hammered them and said, listen, 75 00:08:22.600 --> 00:08:28.000 Listen, all the stuff you're talking about that deals with what the Alabama Constitution says, right? 76 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:34.700 We're here to promote life, liberty, define and force defend the peaceable transfer of property. 77 00:08:34.700 --> 00:08:38.900 Great. You will not use the Libertarian Party as a platform, 78 00:08:38.900 --> 00:08:47.700 just like I would never dream of using the Libertarian Party as a platform to advance my religious beliefs. 79 00:08:47.700 --> 00:08:52.700 Well, Andy Barnett once said, never wrestle with a pig. 80 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:55.460 You just get dirty and the pig likes it. 81 00:08:57.960 --> 00:09:01.840 Well, after three rather heated exchanges, 82 00:09:01.840 --> 00:09:04.080 most of them thankfully by email 83 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:06.120 and being charged with being bigots 84 00:09:06.120 --> 00:09:07.500 and all that other sort of stuff, 85 00:09:07.500 --> 00:09:11.040 the atheists decided to finally find 86 00:09:11.040 --> 00:09:13.700 that they weren't gonna be very effective 87 00:09:13.700 --> 00:09:15.740 with espousing their religion 88 00:09:15.740 --> 00:09:19.420 through the Libertarian Party. 89 00:09:19.420 --> 00:09:24.000 Now this is one of the important victories that many folks in the party did not see as 90 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:25.460 such. 91 00:09:25.460 --> 00:09:32.100 It was a victory that we allowed folks to come and use our party apparatus to advance 92 00:09:32.100 --> 00:09:33.100 liberty. 93 00:09:33.100 --> 00:09:38.820 It's also a victory that we policed our ranks and said we are not going to allow you to 94 00:09:38.820 --> 00:09:45.980 to Use the Libertarian Party to Advance Non-Libertarian Ideas. 95 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:52.280 Now once again, as I started out thanking you for being invited back to the sanctuary, 96 00:09:52.280 --> 00:09:58.060 the Ludwig von Mises Institute, I think, has made a very good concerted effort in policing 97 00:09:58.060 --> 00:09:59.540 their ranks. 98 00:09:59.540 --> 00:10:02.080 You're here to champion the cause of liberty. 99 00:10:02.080 --> 00:10:07.740 It's an incredibly important thing to do. 100 00:10:07.740 --> 00:10:13.140 Well, for some of you who want me to talk a little bit more about ballot access laws, 101 00:10:13.140 --> 00:10:15.660 here's my abbreviated version. 102 00:10:15.660 --> 00:10:20.180 The reason why all these groups were coming and sort of wanting to use the Libertarian 103 00:10:20.180 --> 00:10:27.060 Party was one of our prior election cycle candidates got over 20 percent of the vote, 104 00:10:27.060 --> 00:10:30.220 which gave you statewide ballot access. 105 00:10:30.220 --> 00:10:35.620 So thanks to that one candidate, and we had to fight quite a bit to even make sure that 106 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:44.620 The Leviathan Parties even recognized that it was in fact within the purview of the state law to allow us access to our ballot. 107 00:10:44.620 --> 00:10:48.620 We could field candidates statewide. 108 00:10:48.620 --> 00:10:51.620 Along the way I'm going to throw tidbits out. 109 00:10:51.620 --> 00:10:54.620 Here's one of the first. 110 00:10:54.620 --> 00:10:59.620 It would probably be a good idea to get some of the folks here at the von Mises Institute 111 00:10:59.620 --> 00:11:08.180 To put together a very concerted, concise, logical formula for ballot access laws. 112 00:11:08.180 --> 00:11:13.060 Now my first stab at it is the following, and I think it's pretty simple. 113 00:11:13.060 --> 00:11:19.820 To provide elections, you can make an argument, is a function of government, is a public good? 114 00:11:19.820 --> 00:11:25.460 Okay, let them pay the fixed cost of the election. 115 00:11:25.460 --> 00:11:34.220 The marginal cost should be paid by the candidates. Economists love marginal cost pricing. So, 116 00:11:34.220 --> 00:11:38.900 instead of having these ridiculous ballot access laws where we're wasting money and 117 00:11:38.900 --> 00:11:45.400 time going out there and getting signatures, instead of advancing our ideas, just pay. 118 00:11:45.400 --> 00:11:50.260 If it's the marginal cost to put a name on the ballot in a statewide race is $15,000, 119 00:11:50.260 --> 00:11:56.260 $15,000, fine, each candidate pay that $15,000, whether they're one of the Leviathan parties 120 00:11:56.260 --> 00:12:02.420 or whether they're the anarchist party or the panther party or the constitution party, 121 00:12:02.420 --> 00:12:05.900 but it all be the same for each party. 122 00:12:05.900 --> 00:12:11.140 Now what's nice about that for folks who think about issues like that, you're using that 123 00:12:11.140 --> 00:12:18.020 money to offset the cost of an election, a user fee, what a novel idea. 124 00:12:18.020 --> 00:12:22.460 And of course, that's the worst nightmare for the politicians because they like using 125 00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:27.700 ballot access laws as a barrier to entry. 126 00:12:27.700 --> 00:12:36.780 Well, the three R's. 127 00:12:36.780 --> 00:12:43.880 We decided to announce our candidacy and several of the other candidates that had already agreed 128 00:12:43.880 --> 00:12:48.280 to Announce in January on the Capitol steps. 129 00:12:48.280 --> 00:12:52.380 If this was a Ken Burns film, you know how they'll do the little ditties at the beginning. 130 00:12:52.380 --> 00:12:54.680 It's just got a catchphrase or whatever. 131 00:12:54.680 --> 00:13:00.180 This would sort of be, you know, maybe Cold Day in Hades or Snowballs Chance in Hades, 132 00:13:00.180 --> 00:13:01.880 something like that. 133 00:13:01.880 --> 00:13:08.580 It turned out to be the worst, most miserable day of the year in recent memory. 134 00:13:08.580 --> 00:13:12.480 I mean, how often do you see snow in Montgomery? 135 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:21.840 I've forgotten whose vehicle we planned to use that time, but it had broken down, so we all plopped into my old Dodge Daytona, 136 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:28.560 went down to the courthouse steps and had our announcement, and I promptly started the announcement with, 137 00:13:28.560 --> 00:13:33.200 I'm pretty sure it was said that the last time a libertarian was on the ballot in Alabama, 138 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:40.400 someone said it would be a cold day in Hades before another libertarian would ever run again, and of course, here it is. 139 00:13:40.400 --> 00:13:45.200 And I can still envision in my mind poor little Cynthia Bettis shaking. 140 00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:49.800 I can't tell whether it was a green winter weather in this horrible cold weather, 141 00:13:49.800 --> 00:13:55.000 but for some reason they had to deal with libertarians again. 142 00:13:55.000 --> 00:14:03.600 Well, now it's a known quantity that we're in fact out there because the press has announced us. 143 00:14:03.600 --> 00:14:11.600 Our first stop after that was to go to the Montgomery radio station for the Don Markwell show. 144 00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:20.600 And all the caveats ahead of time, now John, you want to be careful, you know, Don Markwell, he's just, he's a quick wit and he's not going to suffer any nonsense. 145 00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:29.600 Now he was supposed to be on the show for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, went on there, had a delightful time, ended up being on there for an hour or more. 146 00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:36.600 Those are the victories. Every time you go out as a champion of liberty and somebody says, 147 00:14:36.600 --> 00:14:43.600 well, gee, I'm just going to let this person in the door, let them talk for five minutes and just usher them out real quickly. 148 00:14:43.600 --> 00:14:53.600 And then they discover that what you're saying actually makes sense. Wow, they are by far the biggest victories. 149 00:14:53.600 --> 00:15:00.400 After that, we promptly went up to the Birmingham radio stations to find what was the biggest question up there. 150 00:15:00.400 --> 00:15:06.000 They wanted to talk about Roy Moore and Myron Thompson. 151 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:10.500 Well, back to the religion. 152 00:15:10.500 --> 00:15:16.400 Now, when asked, I would happily tell people that I'm a Greek Orthodox Christian. 153 00:15:16.400 --> 00:15:22.300 As a matter of fact, one of my favorite chuckles was I was on a Christian radio station and after I got done, 154 00:15:22.300 --> 00:15:25.880 And I prefaced my comment when they asked me about these issues. 155 00:15:25.880 --> 00:15:30.100 There's absolutely nothing that Roy Moore or Judge Thompson 156 00:15:30.100 --> 00:15:35.340 can do to increase or decrease the power of my God, one centilla. 157 00:15:35.340 --> 00:15:36.980 And the thing they can do otherwise 158 00:15:36.980 --> 00:15:40.780 is nothing short of foolish. 159 00:15:40.780 --> 00:15:47.380 Afterwards, and clearly, a very religious radio station said, 160 00:15:47.380 --> 00:15:49.300 are you a Christian? 161 00:15:49.300 --> 00:15:52.220 And I said, yeah, I'm orthodox. 162 00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:59.940 I didn't know Sophocles was Jewish, so I promptly had to remind folks that I'm Greek Orthodox 163 00:15:59.940 --> 00:16:03.020 and yes, that happens to be Christian. 164 00:16:03.020 --> 00:16:09.420 The only time that I would even begin to volunteer that is when someone is asked. 165 00:16:09.420 --> 00:16:14.960 Now what was more interesting in sort of taking these victories where you could get them, 166 00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:19.460 folks calling into the talk shows, etc., etc., they'd ask me about it and I'd say, well, 167 00:16:19.460 --> 00:16:21.020 of course, two wrongs. 168 00:16:21.020 --> 00:16:27.020 I didn't know back then to use my catchphrase, two wrongs make a right and a left, but it applies. 169 00:16:27.020 --> 00:16:32.020 You have Myron Thompson over there, ruling wrongly, why? 170 00:16:32.020 --> 00:16:36.020 There's already avenues in place to deal with this. 171 00:16:36.020 --> 00:16:49.020 If you don't like Judge Moore's interior decorating skills, change the law, because the state law makes him steward of the rotunda. 172 00:16:49.020 --> 00:16:59.020 Of course the other thing is if you don't like his interior decorating skills, the next election cycle, you vote him out. 173 00:16:59.020 --> 00:17:10.020 Of course you have Myron Thompson on the other side and what this all comes down to, right, is that folks want to use the power of government to advance their ideas. 174 00:17:10.020 --> 00:17:27.020 What can be a bigger indicator that you have no true faith or at least no true power in the faith of your argument than that you have to use the power of government to subsidize it or somehow cram it down someone else's throat? 175 00:17:27.020 --> 00:17:40.020 Now when you read some of von Mises stuff, he clearly understands this. Religion, bad ideas, stupid beliefs will weed themselves out over time. 176 00:17:40.020 --> 00:17:49.020 They do not need the help of government to be promoted or quickly advanced to be disposed of. 177 00:17:49.020 --> 00:18:04.020 So, when you throw these little tidbits out, it was almost like folks would get angry at you. 178 00:18:04.020 --> 00:18:11.020 You're throwing water on the fire. Remember, you've got all those pigs out there that want to wrestle and they like it. 179 00:18:11.020 --> 00:18:16.020 When you throw water on them and you take away their mud puddle, they don't like it. 180 00:18:16.020 --> 00:18:22.020 That, to me, is the most important thing of letting competition into politics. 181 00:18:22.020 --> 00:18:26.020 Because Leviathan Party likes the sleight of hand, right? 182 00:18:26.020 --> 00:18:31.020 They sit there and argue with each other and they're really trying to get you to believe there's a difference between the two. 183 00:18:31.020 --> 00:18:33.020 But what's the objective? 184 00:18:33.020 --> 00:18:42.020 The objective is more government, more command and control, and understand government works incredibly well. 185 00:18:42.020 --> 00:19:12.020 All right, the next thing that I'd like to do with respect to just throwing out some ideas, as well as claiming it as victory, it was a wonderful situation to be in, and I'm about to talk about my campaign or second campaign manager, Dick Cronin, who is the executive director of the Federal Reserve, 186 00:19:12.020 --> 00:19:17.260 Clark, to actually have to turn people down for speaking engagements. We had so 187 00:19:17.260 --> 00:19:22.280 many places to go, so many places to be, that we couldn't actually be at all of 188 00:19:22.280 --> 00:19:27.420 them at the same time. That is an envious position to be in, to go out and champion 189 00:19:27.420 --> 00:19:35.180 liberty. Would it be a wonderful idea, and to watch the von Mises Institute 190 00:19:35.180 --> 00:19:40.460 mature over the last decade or so, what's been done on the website is nothing 191 00:19:40.460 --> 00:19:42.620 short of marvelous. 192 00:19:42.620 --> 00:19:52.620 Why don't we make a live streaming audio of Liberty Radio, or the Voice of Liberty, 193 00:19:52.620 --> 00:19:56.580 and I'll go ahead and tell you right now, I'll donate two or three days a week, and 194 00:19:56.580 --> 00:20:02.260 I'll come in and talk and take in 1-800-number calls, get somebody to be a producer, and 195 00:20:02.260 --> 00:20:06.500 if other radio stations want to pick up the link, let them pick it up and use it for free 196 00:20:06.500 --> 00:20:08.660 for a year. 197 00:20:08.660 --> 00:20:17.660 There's enough stuff here. What a wonderful thing to stand around these wonderful names. 198 00:20:17.660 --> 00:20:24.660 Mises, Menger, Rothbard, Tozik, some of this stuff is already on tapes. Just play the tape. 199 00:20:24.660 --> 00:20:27.660 Let folks know that you're out there from nine to five. 200 00:20:27.660 --> 00:20:33.660 You will be surprised how many people will click on to hear that voice and will start thinking, 201 00:20:33.660 --> 00:20:39.660 I can re-broadcast this cheaply. What a great deal. 202 00:20:39.660 --> 00:20:46.660 Of course, there will be a lot of folks that won't like the competition as we affectionately call here. 203 00:20:46.660 --> 00:20:51.660 Proved on the plains will not like something like that coming out to compete with it. 204 00:20:51.660 --> 00:21:08.540 Well, probably the next big event to talk about after announcing the candidacy was the forum 205 00:21:08.540 --> 00:21:15.180 that allowed all the candidates to come set up by the AU student government. 206 00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:21.580 And this was going to actually be a pretty well attended forum by all the candidates. 207 00:21:21.580 --> 00:21:27.620 Of course Scott Cajar, being the pit bull that he is at times, made sure he fought tooth 208 00:21:27.620 --> 00:21:32.780 and nail that the Libertarian candidate got included and of course once we did that it 209 00:21:32.780 --> 00:21:41.460 had the desired effect of all the other independent candidates were offered invitations, etc. 210 00:21:41.460 --> 00:21:46.580 Some little memories along the way, the day before, actually not the day, hours before 211 00:21:46.580 --> 00:21:52.940 I was about to leave to go over to the forum, a university administrator came by and knocked 212 00:21:52.940 --> 00:21:58.420 on my door at the office and said, you make sure you don't embarrass us out there. 213 00:21:58.420 --> 00:22:04.940 I thought to myself, and for those of you who know some of the university administrators, 214 00:22:04.940 --> 00:22:09.100 I couldn't imagine anything I could do or say that would be an embarrassment, but it 215 00:22:09.100 --> 00:22:12.740 It was a nice little chuckle along the way. 216 00:22:12.740 --> 00:22:20.360 And of course I'm going to borrow from Paul Davis' nomenclature, puddle sharks. 217 00:22:20.360 --> 00:22:24.780 There are many puddle sharks you'll see along the way and part of the victories are just 218 00:22:24.780 --> 00:22:28.180 to give puddle sharks opportunities to do right. 219 00:22:28.180 --> 00:22:34.140 Of course those of you who know the works of Mises, Rothbard and some other giants, 220 00:22:34.140 --> 00:22:38.020 you can give them the opportunity but it's pretty easy to predict what a puddle shark 221 00:22:38.020 --> 00:22:54.020 At the forum, I was the lucky one. I drew the number one. Then Congressman Reilly had the unfortunate position of drawing the number two. 222 00:22:54.020 --> 00:23:04.020 At risk of using too many religious analogies, here was a man who looked as nervous as a prostitute in church. 223 00:23:04.020 --> 00:23:26.020 Research. He did not like sitting next to me one whit. Now some of it was very, you know, well done, very well reasoned, and it got to the point where if one more time the Republicans down the end of the line answering after me said, I agree with Sophocles, I was going to throw up. 224 00:23:26.020 --> 00:23:40.020 Of course, the only reason why they were agreeing with me is because I was there, and because the logic and reasoning was so sound, they didn't want to look like the fools that they would otherwise look like without somebody reminding them. 225 00:23:40.020 --> 00:23:54.020 My favorite one of the evening, and who started off first changed over time, was once they went to the second round, they just decided not to ask me a question. 226 00:23:54.020 --> 00:23:59.020 and Tim Lennox, who was the moderator of it from Alabama Public Television. 227 00:23:59.020 --> 00:24:03.020 You can see him getting this weird look on his face like something's bad wrong. 228 00:24:03.020 --> 00:24:06.020 He stops and he says, oh, excuse me. 229 00:24:06.020 --> 00:24:08.020 We were supposed to go to Mr. Sophocles. 230 00:24:08.020 --> 00:24:09.020 We left him out. 231 00:24:09.020 --> 00:24:11.020 And I said, hey, Tim, don't worry about it. 232 00:24:11.020 --> 00:24:12.020 I'm a libertarian. 233 00:24:12.020 --> 00:24:15.020 We're used to being left out. 234 00:24:15.020 --> 00:24:20.020 You have to have a little bit of fun and get a chuckle along the way. 235 00:24:20.020 --> 00:24:29.620 The best one of the evening of substance was, I happen to be in the middle of the rotation. 236 00:24:29.620 --> 00:24:34.060 And of course, they were talking about how you bring businesses into Alabama. 237 00:24:34.060 --> 00:24:40.820 Of course, all the usual rhetoric, right, of giving them tax breaks and subsidies and all this other sort of nonsense. 238 00:24:40.820 --> 00:24:45.940 And of course, it came to me and you have, I think it was 30 seconds to give your answers. 239 00:24:45.940 --> 00:24:53.740 I said, well, the obvious answer to the question is how you attract businesses into Alabama is with low uniform, certain taxation. 240 00:24:53.740 --> 00:24:59.340 Businesses love certainty. They will come looking for you if you are a bargain. 241 00:24:59.340 --> 00:25:06.020 And I ended like, you know, with 20 seconds left on the clock. It was an eerie silence. 242 00:25:06.020 --> 00:25:11.100 Then, of course, then it had to go to Bob Riley, who he just had no idea what to do, right? 243 00:25:11.100 --> 00:25:15.820 Because he's been pounding how great it is that he's giving tax breaks to Walmart and Hyundai 244 00:25:15.820 --> 00:25:18.620 and all this other sort of stuff. 245 00:25:18.620 --> 00:25:27.320 It at least pricked their consciousness a little bit that there might be folks out there that know the emperor doesn't have any clothes 246 00:25:27.320 --> 00:25:32.020 with respect to Leviathan parties. 247 00:25:32.020 --> 00:25:39.120 The favorite chuckle line of the night and then they had call in folks at the end 248 00:25:39.120 --> 00:25:44.720 and someone called in to get candidates positions on hate crimes. 249 00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:51.920 And of course, when it came to me, leave it to the libertarian to use Occam's razor. 250 00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:57.640 So I put forth the question, do you really care if you're killed by someone with joy 251 00:25:57.640 --> 00:26:00.740 in their heart or hate in their heart? 252 00:26:00.740 --> 00:26:06.560 You are still, you even heard folks say out in the audience, dead, and a couple of folks 253 00:26:06.560 --> 00:26:08.560 actually chuckled. 254 00:26:08.560 --> 00:26:13.720 Now of course, Bob Riley having to go after that one, you know, well yeah, I agree with 255 00:26:13.720 --> 00:26:22.720 All right, John, when you start trying to come up with crimes that are really about what's going on in somebody's head and, you know, all this wishy-washy convoluted stuff. 256 00:26:22.720 --> 00:26:31.720 The best story, and I wish he was here to tell it, was Scott Cajars at the end of this forum. 257 00:26:31.720 --> 00:26:38.720 Of course, at the beginning, after, you know, getting into these petty fights with one of the Leviathan parties, was it the Republicans? 258 00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:40.720 Sounds like probably the Republicans, anyway. 259 00:26:40.720 --> 00:26:43.920 They wanted to have the table that was right next to the door, right? 260 00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:47.520 And so, finally, you know, we just went ahead and put our table wherever it was, 261 00:26:47.520 --> 00:26:50.920 and, you know, folks were kind of sniffing and looking, and, you know, 262 00:26:50.920 --> 00:26:54.520 jeez, those libertarians, I guess, maybe. 263 00:26:54.520 --> 00:26:58.220 At the end of the forum, they rushed out, all our literature was gone. 264 00:26:58.220 --> 00:27:01.320 Gee, somebody's actually talking about something that makes sense. 265 00:27:01.320 --> 00:27:02.620 I want to hear some more. 266 00:27:02.620 --> 00:27:06.920 Liberty, gee, what a novel concept. 267 00:27:06.920 --> 00:27:09.920 They're the victories. 268 00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:12.920 All right. 269 00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:21.920 The next one I want to talk about leads to the primary, to our next R. 270 00:27:21.920 --> 00:27:26.920 We actually made a campaign issue out of the Williams case. 271 00:27:26.920 --> 00:27:30.920 And for those of you who aren't familiar with the Williams case, 272 00:27:30.920 --> 00:27:34.920 Mr. Williams was one of the folks that suffered in Marengo County 273 00:27:34.920 --> 00:27:45.920 Where back in the 60s, the Alabama State Lands Division just took his property, paid him nothing for it, claiming that the Federal Government said it was Federal Swampland legislation. 274 00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:55.920 And when they kicked the Williams family off and didn't pay him, they said they can live there until they die, but they can't farm or log on it. 275 00:27:55.920 --> 00:27:58.920 Sound like Swampland to you? 276 00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:03.920 Now, of course, when we promptly started reminding people of what the text is of the Fifth Amendment, right? 277 00:28:03.920 --> 00:28:10.920 You can't take private property unless it's for public use and without just compensation, here was a killer. 278 00:28:10.920 --> 00:28:19.920 Of course, once the Libertarian Party decided to make this a big issue, you started to see the Leviathan Party candidates get nervous. 279 00:28:19.920 --> 00:28:30.920 The day before the primary, Governor Don Siegelman patents the land back to the Williams family in a great display, a great show. 280 00:28:30.920 --> 00:28:34.680 So, of course I consider that a victory. 281 00:28:34.680 --> 00:28:41.920 Now what's bothersome about that is that folks make it an issue because Mr. Williams was black. 282 00:28:41.920 --> 00:28:46.160 Does it matter what color Mr. Williams was? 283 00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:49.000 Of course not. 284 00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:54.440 Now here's another caveat along the way in the victories. 285 00:28:54.440 --> 00:28:59.760 Right, you have to be willing to go talk to the leper and the tax collector. 286 00:28:59.760 --> 00:29:07.760 What does that mean? Yep, when you're invited to go talk to the Republicans and the Democrats, you go talk to the extreme parties. 287 00:29:07.760 --> 00:29:18.760 But you've also got to be willing to go talk to the Association of Black Journalists, the Council of Conservative Citizens, the Southern League. 288 00:29:18.760 --> 00:29:25.760 Whoever wants to invite you in their door to talk, you go and you talk to them. 289 00:29:25.760 --> 00:29:31.000 And guess what? You start to find there's a lot of common ground. 290 00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:39.040 Boy, when the NAACP, well, a student invited me to join the NAACP after they heard my lecture 291 00:29:39.040 --> 00:29:46.280 about how the minimum wage discriminates against teens, minorities, blacks, whoa! They've 292 00:29:46.280 --> 00:29:52.560 never heard that stuff before. Why? Because they haven't heard Champions of Liberty come 293 00:29:52.560 --> 00:29:59.600 and give them that idea. You will be surprised how quickly the walls will come tumbling down 294 00:29:59.600 --> 00:30:07.440 when you're willing to go anywhere and talk to anybody that's willing to listen. Is it hard? 295 00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:15.760 Believe it or not, it isn't. When you go in well prepared and really understand the merits of 296 00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:24.000 of Liberty, it's as easy to go talk to the CCC and the Alabama Association of Black Journalists 297 00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:27.680 as it is to come and talk to the von Mises Institute. 298 00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:32.480 Now why does that sound odd to the Leviathan party? 299 00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:35.440 They have to keep track of their lives. 300 00:30:35.440 --> 00:30:37.120 I'm championing liberty. 301 00:30:37.120 --> 00:30:40.920 The same thing that I'm telling you today, I'm going to go tell whatever group I go that's 302 00:30:40.920 --> 00:30:43.520 willing to have me and talk to them. 303 00:30:43.520 --> 00:30:45.360 That's important. 304 00:30:45.360 --> 00:31:03.360 Consistent. Well, rule of law. You want the hook or should I keep talking? 15 minutes and we'll see if you want the hook out again and open the floor for questions. 305 00:31:03.360 --> 00:31:15.200 Back to the primary and quite nicely, Dick Clark is here who helped me write. We sent out press releases and all the sort of things that candidates 306 00:31:15.200 --> 00:31:20.880 are supposed to do about how the primaries are simply an anti-competitive device and 307 00:31:20.880 --> 00:31:28.040 a subsidy to the Leviathan parties. Why on earth should the taxpayers of Alabama pay 308 00:31:28.040 --> 00:31:33.240 to determine who's going to head up the Democratic Party ticket or the Republican Party ticket? 309 00:31:33.240 --> 00:31:38.960 Let them do it on their own purse. Wow, you'd have thought we sent shockwaves through the 310 00:31:38.960 --> 00:31:45.960 and Media. Someone suggest that? Now the power of ideas, planting seeds are important. I 311 00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:52.520 can't tell you how many times I alone and Dick has told me he's heard that parroted 312 00:31:52.520 --> 00:31:58.240 back since we put that idea out there. Don't use the primaries to just go ahead and weed 313 00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:02.680 out who ends up heading out the ticket on somebody else's purse. Do it on your own 314 00:32:02.680 --> 00:32:08.680 purse. Now some more chuckle lines along the way and it's funny how people will read 315 00:32:08.680 --> 00:32:18.680 After the primary, and of course it became known who were going to head up the Leviathan Party tickets, 316 00:32:18.680 --> 00:32:23.680 a journalist came and asked me who I thought the better candidate was. 317 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:28.680 And of course I kept trying to avoid the question, right? 318 00:32:28.680 --> 00:32:32.680 It's like asking me what smells better, chicken poop or turkey poop? 319 00:32:32.680 --> 00:32:35.680 I just don't want to get into that conversation. 320 00:32:35.680 --> 00:32:37.480 conversation. 321 00:32:37.480 --> 00:32:41.480 So of course they keep pressing and pressing and you keep talking about the ideas that 322 00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:42.800 you want to talk about. 323 00:32:42.800 --> 00:32:47.040 He said, well, say one thing about the difference between the two. 324 00:32:47.040 --> 00:32:50.880 And I said, well, I mean, Bob Riley's a little more accomplished prostitute. 325 00:32:50.880 --> 00:32:54.840 He's got 30% more campaign contributions than the other guy. 326 00:32:54.840 --> 00:32:59.640 So okay, one person has a little bit more to pay back once he gets into office than 327 00:32:59.640 --> 00:33:00.640 the other. 328 00:33:00.640 --> 00:33:01.640 Right? 329 00:33:01.640 --> 00:33:06.120 and the preordained auction for future theft. 330 00:33:06.120 --> 00:33:10.200 Somehow that got turned into an endorsement for Sigelman. 331 00:33:10.200 --> 00:33:14.880 Don't ask me how. 332 00:33:14.880 --> 00:33:24.640 Now back to Puddle Sharks and all this, you know, morass of Alabama politics. 333 00:33:24.640 --> 00:33:32.260 After the primary and when it came time to re-up contracts, I was not rehired by Auburn 334 00:33:32.260 --> 00:33:38.500 University nor was my campaign manager at that time, Scott Cajar, and of course very 335 00:33:38.500 --> 00:33:41.300 predictable out of the puddle sharks. 336 00:33:41.300 --> 00:33:46.780 And once again, you have to give the puddle sharks the opportunity to do right, even though 337 00:33:46.780 --> 00:33:52.380 you know a priori they're not going to do right, that's part of our jobs as champions 338 00:33:52.380 --> 00:33:53.380 of liberty. 339 00:33:53.380 --> 00:34:03.860 To add insult to injury, since I had the audacity to run as a candidate, my taxes got audited. 340 00:34:03.860 --> 00:34:08.460 What was the one big issue that they found? 341 00:34:08.460 --> 00:34:15.060 I had made over $3,000 interest and at the end of the year had not paid up to 90% of 342 00:34:15.060 --> 00:34:18.460 my taxes, so I had to pay a penalty. 343 00:34:18.460 --> 00:34:22.980 So it was fun not just to watch the puddle sharks in action, but it ended up being a 344 00:34:22.980 --> 00:34:25.300 campaign issue. 345 00:34:25.300 --> 00:34:29.940 When did they set that $3,000 cap on interest? 346 00:34:29.940 --> 00:34:31.940 1958. 347 00:34:31.940 --> 00:34:36.340 You could buy a Cadillac for $3,000 in 1958. 348 00:34:36.340 --> 00:34:41.620 Of course, that's one of those other issues, right, of how taxes just by inertia increase 349 00:34:41.620 --> 00:34:42.620 over time. 350 00:34:42.620 --> 00:34:48.420 I'm sure there were hundreds of people in Alabama that made over $3,000 worth of interest 351 00:34:48.420 --> 00:35:09.420 One of the issues shortly after the primary, and I think it was purposely put after the primary because they wanted to wait until you got the Leviathan candidates in place, and it wouldn't be an issue, was constitutional reform. 352 00:35:09.420 --> 00:35:12.420 You've got to love the libertarians. 353 00:35:12.420 --> 00:35:23.300 I mean, the campaign contributions to my entire campaign were less than $20,000. 354 00:35:23.300 --> 00:35:28.460 When you take the sweat equity and the time and the volunteering and the thought that was 355 00:35:28.460 --> 00:35:36.340 put into it, hundreds of thousands of dollars, I mean some of it just money can't buy. 356 00:35:36.340 --> 00:35:48.340 A previous brown bag invitee, Matthew Givens, went through and painstakingly was looking at this constitutional reform stuff and just giving me tidbit after tidbit after tidbit. 357 00:35:48.340 --> 00:35:55.340 I'm loving life, right? I get to go out there and throw the fastballs and watch the morons swing at them. 358 00:35:55.340 --> 00:36:02.340 The biggest one was, and I was on a talk radio show, I believe it was the Don Markwell show again, 359 00:36:02.340 --> 00:36:08.820 And when they announced that they were going to allow, with the constitutional reform, 360 00:36:08.820 --> 00:36:13.540 private contractors to just come and take property because they thought they could build 361 00:36:13.540 --> 00:36:15.980 a strip mall or whatever. 362 00:36:15.980 --> 00:36:21.060 And evidently this show had a lot of farmers listening to it at the time because when I 363 00:36:21.060 --> 00:36:26.460 promptly said, okay, you farmers out there, you want to vote for this sort of thing? 364 00:36:26.460 --> 00:36:30.140 Watch somebody come along and say, gee, well, we think we can make more taxes if we put 365 00:36:30.140 --> 00:36:41.640 Jack Venable's office got bombarded with calls. He said, I quote, in the paper after that, 366 00:36:41.640 --> 00:36:48.860 I have lost my stomach for Constitution reform. Too bad, it appears he's getting his stomach 367 00:36:48.860 --> 00:36:55.060 back. 368 00:36:55.060 --> 00:36:59.260 Other fun things to do with a constitutional reform debate, of course, when you have journalists 369 00:36:59.260 --> 00:37:02.660 You know, stick their mic under your nose and looking for sound bites. 370 00:37:02.660 --> 00:37:08.060 One of my favorites was Louisiana had constitution reform in 77. 371 00:37:08.060 --> 00:37:10.760 They have over 200 amendments since then. 372 00:37:10.760 --> 00:37:15.160 And you're complaining about our 1903 constitution with 800 amendments? 373 00:37:15.160 --> 00:37:17.260 Sounds like about the same ratio to me. 374 00:37:17.260 --> 00:37:21.660 Do you really think it's going to solve anything? 375 00:37:21.660 --> 00:37:27.260 Well, they'd say things like, yeah, well, you libertarians, you just don't want any government. 376 00:37:27.260 --> 00:37:31.880 Now, that's not actually true, right? We just want the government doing what it's actually 377 00:37:31.880 --> 00:37:38.040 empowered to do, nothing more, nothing less. And of course, no discussion of the campaign 378 00:37:38.040 --> 00:37:48.200 would be complete without education. Well, when folks started saying, gee, you keep talking 379 00:37:48.200 --> 00:37:55.000 about wanting to cut education, give us an example. Of course, the easiest one was just 380 00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:57.760 to go for the jugular first, right? 381 00:37:57.760 --> 00:37:59.960 Get rid of extracurricular sports. 382 00:38:00.960 --> 00:38:04.040 Let parents do it on their own dime, right? 383 00:38:04.040 --> 00:38:09.040 Have Dixie use football, have Edrico baseball, basketball, 384 00:38:10.080 --> 00:38:12.680 and let parents pay on their own dime. 385 00:38:12.680 --> 00:38:14.660 But what about the poor kids 386 00:38:14.660 --> 00:38:16.680 that won't be able to pay the fees? 387 00:38:16.680 --> 00:38:19.320 I said, you're in Alabama. 388 00:38:19.320 --> 00:38:21.360 Do you really think that that star player 389 00:38:21.360 --> 00:38:24.080 isn't gonna have people groveling over him 390 00:38:24.080 --> 00:38:30.080 to be the first one to pay his entrance fee into Dixie Youth football or whatever it is. 391 00:38:30.080 --> 00:38:36.080 Of course, that's when people really started to get scared. Why? They wanted to paint this 392 00:38:36.080 --> 00:38:42.080 as this libertarian nut candidate wants to do away with football. They did a poll on it 393 00:38:42.080 --> 00:38:51.080 and the first poll had 38% of the people agreeing with me. They yanked that poll real quick. 394 00:38:51.080 --> 00:38:57.200 Now, the plot sickens, right? You can actually march through the logic. 395 00:38:57.200 --> 00:39:03.760 Do you really want a public school worrying whether or not the English teacher is a good football coach? 396 00:39:03.760 --> 00:39:10.560 Whether the physics teacher can coach basketball? I just don't care. 397 00:39:10.560 --> 00:39:18.720 Now, let that person who wants to be the football coach or the basketball coach compete to be the best coach in this private little world, 398 00:39:18.720 --> 00:39:48.680 The next big issue, which was a delight to be invited to, and I was the only gubernatorial 399 00:39:48.680 --> 00:39:56.160 Video Candidate were prison issues and they had a forum in Montgomery. 400 00:39:56.160 --> 00:39:59.960 How we ended up getting invited to that forum was, and I can't remember whether it was you 401 00:39:59.960 --> 00:40:04.440 or Scott, got me onto the Roberta Franklin show. 402 00:40:04.440 --> 00:40:08.820 Now Roberta Franklin is hardcore. 403 00:40:08.820 --> 00:40:13.400 She just doesn't suffer fools lightly. 404 00:40:13.400 --> 00:40:19.900 And she'll happily volunteer to you that her son is in prison and thinks that what he did 405 00:40:19.900 --> 00:40:25.340 was wrong because it was a property crime and that he should serve his time, but there's 406 00:40:25.340 --> 00:40:28.500 no reason to abuse him while he's in prison. 407 00:40:28.500 --> 00:40:31.280 There's no reason to shear him while he's in prison. 408 00:40:31.280 --> 00:40:34.440 The data that she gives you is amazing, right? 409 00:40:34.440 --> 00:40:39.000 For you to use the prison phone to call home to your family, dare we make those nice and 410 00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:42.060 cheap so that you might be able to keep a family together. 411 00:40:42.060 --> 00:40:46.340 were horrific, some as high as $10 a minute. 412 00:40:46.340 --> 00:40:50.500 It was just amazing to watch the abuse. 413 00:40:50.500 --> 00:40:53.580 Or Roberta plops down the numbers in front of you 414 00:40:53.580 --> 00:40:57.420 and the documents, and it's just devastating. 415 00:40:57.420 --> 00:40:59.580 Well, we go to the... 416 00:40:59.580 --> 00:41:03.860 Well, let me talk more about the Roberta Franklin show. 417 00:41:03.860 --> 00:41:06.060 It's the first show that I ever went to 418 00:41:06.060 --> 00:41:07.820 when people called in and said, 419 00:41:07.820 --> 00:41:11.460 you're the guys that really think the war on drugs is a joke, right? 420 00:41:11.460 --> 00:41:14.740 You know, you sheepishly say, yeah, because you're waiting to just get hammered. 421 00:41:14.740 --> 00:41:19.340 Well, it's about time somebody said that, it makes common sense, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 422 00:41:19.340 --> 00:41:23.540 And then you get the caller that says, yeah, the war on drugs, it's a real problem. 423 00:41:23.540 --> 00:41:30.260 You know, I mean, disproportionately you see, you know, blacks and Hispanics are being put in prison. 424 00:41:30.260 --> 00:41:36.020 Well, you know, I kind of understand where you're going, but don't put me in the position of saying, 425 00:41:36.020 --> 00:41:41.260 well, the war on drugs would be OK if our prison population from it exactly mirrored 426 00:41:41.260 --> 00:41:44.580 of the U.S. Population, right? 427 00:41:44.580 --> 00:41:47.660 It just doesn't matter, wrong is wrong, 428 00:41:47.660 --> 00:41:49.820 whether you're doing it to somebody that's black, 429 00:41:49.820 --> 00:41:51.980 whether you're doing it to somebody that's Hispanic, 430 00:41:51.980 --> 00:41:54.700 whether you're doing it to somebody that's Greek. 431 00:41:54.700 --> 00:41:58.540 And it was just wonderful to listen to the people call in 432 00:41:58.540 --> 00:42:00.980 and the look of the producer of the show. 433 00:42:00.980 --> 00:42:04.100 It was just, you know, that RCA Victor Dogg look 434 00:42:04.100 --> 00:42:05.980 that you realize you've struck a nerve 435 00:42:05.980 --> 00:42:07.900 and they never thought of it before. 436 00:42:08.760 --> 00:42:10.520 That's the victory. 437 00:42:10.520 --> 00:42:13.960 That's the power of the libertarian argument. 438 00:42:13.960 --> 00:42:17.200 Championing liberty was just a wonderful thing 439 00:42:17.200 --> 00:42:18.720 that I was asked to do. 440 00:42:20.640 --> 00:42:24.140 All right, because I'm running out of time, 441 00:42:25.800 --> 00:42:26.920 and I do want to open the floor 442 00:42:26.920 --> 00:42:28.860 at least a little bit to questions, 443 00:42:29.960 --> 00:42:33.280 and finishing out on our three Rs, I guess. 444 00:42:36.280 --> 00:42:40.080 It really was interesting to watch the folks that got it. 445 00:42:40.520 --> 00:42:45.520 Roy Moore vs. Myron Thompson 446 00:42:45.520 --> 00:42:53.520 You basically have these different players that all they're trying to do is advocate their position using the power of government 447 00:42:53.520 --> 00:42:59.520 and it doesn't matter whether you want to advance the atheist religion, whether you're trying to advance the Christian religion, 448 00:42:59.520 --> 00:43:08.520 whether you're trying to advance Myron Thompson's religion where he wants everybody to pray to the federal government. 449 00:43:08.520 --> 00:43:21.520 What's interesting is watching the money, and it was just amazing the first time you 450 00:43:21.520 --> 00:43:27.800 talk to people and saying, gee, do you really think that the Southern Poverty Law Center 451 00:43:27.800 --> 00:43:35.240 didn't think we're going to go judge shopping for this guy to transfer wealth to us? 452 00:43:35.240 --> 00:43:41.000 Now once you start to watch the players, it's like watching pro-wrestling, right? 453 00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:45.760 You got Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant over there mumbling, and people are throwing money 454 00:43:45.760 --> 00:43:48.040 at the endeavor. 455 00:43:48.040 --> 00:43:53.660 When you start learning to watch and follow the money, it's just like, you know, getting 456 00:43:53.660 --> 00:43:56.060 out of that Socratic prison. 457 00:43:56.060 --> 00:44:00.440 You start to actually see the sun and the world around you, and it starts to be fun, 458 00:44:00.440 --> 00:44:01.440 right? 459 00:44:01.440 --> 00:44:06.440 Don't just start picking sticks and throwing rocks in at the puddle sharks and just watch them react. 460 00:44:06.440 --> 00:44:09.440 Don't get too immersed with them. 461 00:44:09.440 --> 00:44:12.440 Now, of course, when the waters start rising and the sharks start schooling 462 00:44:12.440 --> 00:44:16.440 and they start working in symphony together, that's when you're in trouble. 463 00:44:16.440 --> 00:44:25.440 And I certainly saw that as well, which will bring me to my final little tidbit story of note. 464 00:44:25.440 --> 00:44:33.360 Note, as the campaign was starting to come to a close towards election day, we were approached 465 00:44:33.360 --> 00:44:41.400 by a Tuscaloosa businessman who wanted to run a campaign ad. Well, thanks to some of 466 00:44:41.400 --> 00:44:46.640 these wonderful federal laws that they were trying to apply to a state election, which 467 00:44:46.640 --> 00:44:53.640 I thought was bizarre to begin with, they wouldn't let this businessman run his ad. 468 00:44:53.640 --> 00:45:03.640 So I get a call from this businessman. He says, you know, I've really got this ad I want to run about the gubernatorial race and the TV stations and the radio stations won't let me run it. 469 00:45:03.640 --> 00:45:15.640 I'll give $10,000 to your campaign if you run it. I said, sorry, you can't do that. What do you mean you can't do that? I said, you can't give $10,000 to my campaign. 470 00:45:15.640 --> 00:45:21.640 Well, why? Well, we put a $1,000 cap limit. That's the most that you can, you know, give to your campaign. 471 00:45:21.640 --> 00:45:30.640 I said, if you want to be, you know, really constructive like my mom and dad did, my dad gave me $1,000 and my mom gave me $1,000 as, you know, separate individuals. 472 00:45:30.640 --> 00:45:39.640 The silence on the phone was deadly. He couldn't believe a political candidate refusing money over principle. 473 00:45:39.640 --> 00:45:54.640 I said, finally I said, look, if you want to give to my candidacy, great. If you don't, that's fine too. I said, this is a First Amendment issue and part of my campaign is to champion issues of folks and if you want to run the ad, feel free to run the ad. 474 00:45:54.640 --> 00:46:24.640 I said this is a First Amendment issue and part of my campaign is to champion issues of folks and if you want to run the ad feel free to run the ad and so we had to put the little disclaimer on there about you know authorized by blah blah blah blah blah blah interesting to watch the media boy once we got it all set up and lock and loaded to go the media is right on the phone with Riley and the reason why I'm assuming they call in Riley 475 00:46:24.640 --> 00:46:29.640 is an ad showing Riley pandering to some business people. 476 00:46:29.640 --> 00:46:31.640 I mean, I didn't even like the ad. I don't care, right? 477 00:46:31.640 --> 00:46:34.640 It's a First Amendment issue. 478 00:46:34.640 --> 00:46:37.640 I'm getting phone calls up and down the line, you know, 479 00:46:37.640 --> 00:46:42.640 from attorneys and radio stations and TV stations about, you know, 480 00:46:42.640 --> 00:46:46.640 you authorize this, you know, we can't run this, blah, blah, blah. 481 00:46:46.640 --> 00:46:49.640 I said, look, you do what you want to do. 482 00:46:49.640 --> 00:46:53.640 The First Amendment, at last I checked, has not been repealed. 483 00:46:53.640 --> 00:46:58.120 This is a solid campaign ad, go ahead and run it. 484 00:46:58.120 --> 00:47:01.360 Well, when it turned out that I wasn't going to back down to them, 485 00:47:01.360 --> 00:47:04.600 then the Riley camp calls. 486 00:47:04.600 --> 00:47:10.360 And I'm on speakerphone with a group of thugs that was just unbelievable to hear. 487 00:47:10.360 --> 00:47:12.520 The threats were amazing. 488 00:47:12.520 --> 00:47:17.680 If that ad runs, we're going to make the next two years of your life miserable. 489 00:47:17.680 --> 00:47:20.360 Of course, my response back, I think, took them off guard. 490 00:47:20.360 --> 00:47:26.920 I said, now let's see, the congressman's inaction has made me homeless, you've taken 491 00:47:26.920 --> 00:47:36.080 away my job, you've audited my taxes. What else can you guys do? Kill me? Have at it. 492 00:47:36.080 --> 00:47:42.420 Once again, the silence on the speakerphone was deafening. I'm sure they had never been 493 00:47:42.420 --> 00:47:46.760 accustomed to hearing that from somebody. Right? I'm supposed to just cower to the 494 00:47:46.760 --> 00:47:51.760 and the Puddle Sharks, as everybody else does, that they're so used to. 495 00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:58.760 Now, it really is important, I think in my mind, and I hope you agree as well, 496 00:47:58.760 --> 00:48:01.760 that when you go out and you champion liberty, 497 00:48:01.760 --> 00:48:06.760 you've got to be able to go everywhere and anywhere you can 498 00:48:06.760 --> 00:48:10.760 and talk to anyone and everybody that's willing to hear the message. 499 00:48:10.760 --> 00:48:13.760 It's a powerful message. 500 00:48:13.760 --> 00:48:18.920 And the other thing that's really nice about it, when we feel that our almost 70 candidates, right, 501 00:48:18.920 --> 00:48:22.680 one candle doesn't detract from the light of another. 502 00:48:22.680 --> 00:48:30.720 We had almost 70 people out there at various stages in putting in various efforts out there championing liberty. 503 00:48:30.720 --> 00:48:39.840 Just to see those names associated with somebody out there championing liberty is important. 504 00:48:39.840 --> 00:48:46.120 Now, liberty, freedom, those words are getting bantered about so much these days that they've 505 00:48:46.120 --> 00:48:57.000 become drinking games. We've got to improve the lexicon. Think about my jest. Two wrongs 506 00:48:57.000 --> 00:49:05.000 make a right and a left. Right, left, conservative, liberal. None of those things mean anything 507 00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:11.160 anymore. We're going to have to be succinct. Get people to understand there's a difference 508 00:49:11.160 --> 00:49:18.080 between a command economy that we have here and an economy that champions and allows freedom, 509 00:49:18.080 --> 00:49:26.200 that actually allocates resources to their highest valued use because there is freedom. 510 00:49:26.200 --> 00:49:31.200 I'm going to finish with what amounts to be for some of you, I would think, a strange 511 00:49:31.200 --> 00:49:37.200 Strange Dedication, and there are two individuals, but for a similar purpose. 512 00:49:37.200 --> 00:49:45.200 I'd like to dedicate this to Ludwig von Mises and my paternal grandmother. 513 00:49:45.200 --> 00:49:49.200 Strange mix. 514 00:49:49.200 --> 00:49:56.200 It was maybe five years ago, was the first time that I had ever known that Ludwig von Mises was one of the folks 515 00:49:56.200 --> 00:50:24.200 How is that similar to my grandmother? She actually witnessed the burning of Smyrna. I never knew that until years after she died. She never talked about stuff like that, and it appears to me that Ludwig von Mises didn't talk about it all that much either. 516 00:50:24.200 --> 00:50:38.200 And I'm sort of torn. Did they purposely not talk about it because they wanted to make sure that folks weren't using that as something that they were going to hold up as a red badge of courage? 517 00:50:38.200 --> 00:50:50.200 The peril is, if you don't talk about it, you recycle the stage for that same issue to come back alive and revisit you again. 518 00:50:50.200 --> 00:51:05.200 I can't tell you how proud I am of my, I call them mine, our 68 or so candidates that went out and championed liberty, poked at the puddle sharks so other folks could see them and stay away from the puddles. 519 00:51:05.200 --> 00:51:24.200 It's an important public service. If you don't, what will be revisited upon you is every bit as ugly as what we've witnessed with the National Socialists and all the other use of command and control economy devices to pick winners and losers. 520 00:51:24.200 --> 00:51:29.200 If you think it's really that far in our past, you are sadly mistaken. 521 00:51:29.200 --> 00:51:34.200 I got a chance to look at it straight in the eye for almost a year. 522 00:51:34.200 --> 00:51:37.200 They're out there. They're very real. 523 00:51:37.200 --> 00:51:40.200 Well, that's about all I have to say. 524 00:51:40.200 --> 00:51:46.200 And it's always a delight to come and visit the von Mises Institute 525 00:51:46.200 --> 00:51:51.200 and be somebody that has been invited to talk at the von Mises Institute. 526 00:51:51.200 --> 00:51:58.200 We've got questions. 527 00:52:02.800 --> 00:52:06.280 Besides Mr. Blackstock asking when I'm going to come and record my tariff lecture. 528 00:52:06.280 --> 00:52:13.280 It sounds like your knowledge of economics was very helpful to you in the campaign in terms of dealing with going against much larger organizations. 529 00:52:21.200 --> 00:52:38.200 Invaluable. And, you know, I was sincere in my beginning comment about, you know, having a sanctuary for liberty, like the Ludwig von Mises Institute is, is more valuable than any campaign contribution in dollar amounts that you could ever enumerate. 530 00:52:38.200 --> 00:52:44.760 Enumerate, giving me the armor, the ideas, to go in a group of other people who know 531 00:52:44.760 --> 00:52:50.440 how to think through things with logic and reason instead of trying to advance some agenda 532 00:52:50.440 --> 00:52:52.720 is incredibly valuable. 533 00:52:52.720 --> 00:52:59.760 The economic paradigm is something that I think I do a pretty good job at teaching. 534 00:52:59.760 --> 00:53:06.000 This was basically my widest range teaching endeavor that I've ever undertaken, certainly 535 00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:11.000 bigger than my 200 student sections over at Auburn University. 536 00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:21.000 You could almost look through all the things you've said today. 537 00:53:21.000 --> 00:53:31.000 A lot of the world's down to the victory is just being able to educate so many people about the issue. 538 00:53:31.000 --> 00:53:38.620 Absolutely and you know he's a pretty under reported general in the 539 00:53:38.620 --> 00:53:42.820 Revolutionary War but you know Nathaniel's green success was right we 540 00:53:42.820 --> 00:53:46.900 fight we get beat we live to fight another day and sooner or later you're 541 00:53:46.900 --> 00:53:52.540 going to wear down you know the Tories the Leviathan Party and people are going 542 00:53:52.540 --> 00:54:00.300 to wake up and say gee you know this has merit the scary thing about all this is 543 00:54:00.300 --> 00:54:06.380 is the numbers, how close they are, right? You basically had Sigelman with 29%, Reilly 544 00:54:06.380 --> 00:54:14.140 with 29% and just how angry they were, the hate mail and emails that I received when 545 00:54:14.140 --> 00:54:18.420 they thought that Sigelman had won, got a whole bunch of emails and said, well, I guess 546 00:54:18.420 --> 00:54:24.180 you should be happy you got Sigelman re-elected. And then when Reilly pulled his neato turnaround 547 00:54:24.180 --> 00:54:27.900 shenanigans game and he won, then I got hate mail from the Democrats saying, gee, I guess 548 00:54:27.900 --> 00:54:31.900 Yes, you should be happy that, you know, you got Riley like that. 549 00:54:31.900 --> 00:54:36.900 You know, it didn't matter to me one whit which of these two got elected. 550 00:54:36.900 --> 00:54:42.900 What scares me is when folks get 29 percent of those eligible to vote 551 00:54:42.900 --> 00:54:48.900 and they start talking about capital, mandates. 552 00:54:48.900 --> 00:54:50.900 What the heck is that? 553 00:54:50.900 --> 00:54:52.900 Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, John. 554 00:54:52.900 --> 00:54:54.900 Twenty-nine on twenty-nine. 555 00:54:54.900 --> 00:54:55.900 Yeah, oh, I'm sorry. 556 00:54:55.900 --> 00:55:05.900 Am I not clear? Okay. The 29% is those eligible to vote that actually could cast a vote in the gubernatorial election. 557 00:55:05.900 --> 00:55:15.900 29% of them voted for the blue tick, 29% of them voted for the red tick, and 2% voted for, you know, other. 558 00:55:15.900 --> 00:55:27.900 Now the sad thing of it is, and people were talking, you know, I was on one of the big radio stations, I think it was 104.3 in Montgomery, 559 00:55:27.900 --> 00:55:35.900 where we on, it was one of those oldie stations. We had call after call coming in, wait, there's somebody else out there to vote for? 560 00:55:35.900 --> 00:55:39.900 We didn't even know you existed, right? And of course what I didn't bother talking about, 561 00:55:39.900 --> 00:56:09.900 I thought I'd hammered him too much before was the Myron Thompson endeavor. We basically wanted to be in the debates because we had major party status by law in Alabama to be on the debates and APTV decided, well, you know, we're just going to let the Democrats and Republicans in and, you know, come up with whatever ridiculous criteria they want and we said, look, if this was the Huntsville News or anything 562 00:56:09.900 --> 00:56:16.900 and they want to box us out, fine. They're a private endeavor, they can do whatever they want. 563 00:56:16.900 --> 00:56:22.900 Alabama Public Television, sorry, you take state and federal government money, you can't pick winners and losers. 564 00:56:22.900 --> 00:56:26.900 And it just drove people absolutely batty that we were giving them that argument. 565 00:56:26.900 --> 00:56:36.900 But you really do mean it'd be okay if you weren't invited if it was an NBC show instead of an APT show? Yes! 566 00:56:36.900 --> 00:56:52.900 So what it ends up being, you know, your question is you've got this 40%, right, 29-29-2 other that either didn't like any of the candidates, so you could say sort of none of the above one, or they just weren't informed. 567 00:56:52.900 --> 00:57:01.900 I'm convinced that if I was allowed on those two APT debates, we would have received much more than 2% of those eligible to vote. 568 00:57:01.900 --> 00:57:06.900 Thank you for getting me to clear up what the 29, 29, and 2 were. 569 00:57:06.900 --> 00:57:10.900 The comment made, I heard your message. 570 00:57:10.900 --> 00:57:18.900 Do you think most people really understood that if they followed your line of law toward liberty, 571 00:57:18.900 --> 00:57:22.900 that would mean no more hitties from the government for them to do? 572 00:57:22.900 --> 00:57:29.900 My own mother, who hears me, re-urgentating the lecture about her being so evil. 573 00:57:29.900 --> 00:57:33.900 Bless their heart, but she hasn't swatted you yet. 574 00:57:33.900 --> 00:57:40.900 We'll agree, and then she'll say, oh, I'm so glad the prescription medication is really coming out, so I'll get my medicine cheaper. 575 00:57:40.900 --> 00:57:41.900 Right. 576 00:57:41.900 --> 00:57:46.900 Do people really understand that they're being cut off, too, as they call me? 577 00:57:46.900 --> 00:57:49.900 Right, and the answer is yes, I do think they understand. 578 00:57:49.900 --> 00:57:53.900 And the second part of the answer is it's a prisoner's dilemma. 579 00:57:53.900 --> 00:58:02.900 Nobody wants to give up on their gravy because they just can't imagine liberty ever coming their way again. 580 00:58:02.900 --> 00:58:08.900 I guess if I wanted to add a third dedication, one of my favorite lines is my maternal grandmother, 581 00:58:08.900 --> 00:58:12.900 when she got her first Social Security check, she gave it to her oldest son and said, 582 00:58:12.900 --> 00:58:16.900 here, I don't need this, I just heard on the radio the government's in debt. 583 00:58:16.900 --> 00:58:22.900 Of course, they promptly convinced her, oh no, mother, you don't want to send that back to the government. 584 00:58:22.900 --> 00:58:37.900 People who really haven't thought about, and it's a great sort of fear machine, have vested interest in you just keep going back to the Leviathan Party. 585 00:58:37.900 --> 00:58:43.900 And I guess as they run back and forth between the poison well, right, you've got the red well over here and the blue well, 586 00:58:43.900 --> 00:58:47.900 and people keep drinking from them, and they come and they talk to the libertarian candidate and they say, 587 00:58:47.900 --> 00:58:52.380 And they say, gee, we're getting sick, and we go to the other one, and we're getting sicker. 588 00:58:52.380 --> 00:58:58.380 Sooner or later, they're just going to, you know, die. 589 00:58:58.380 --> 00:58:59.980 And it's not a pretty picture, right? 590 00:58:59.980 --> 00:59:04.580 I mean, what we forecast in the end, pick whatever command and control, 591 00:59:04.580 --> 00:59:09.580 whatever leviathan government, when it goes to its natural conclusion, it's not pretty, 592 00:59:09.580 --> 00:59:11.900 because all you've been messing with is the law of gravity. 593 00:59:11.900 --> 00:59:14.980 You keep putting off the inevitable. 594 00:59:14.980 --> 00:59:16.980 I think that folks know exactly what's coming, 595 00:59:16.980 --> 00:59:29.980 George, did you say your grandmother witnessed the burning of Smyrna that's in Izmir today? 596 00:59:29.980 --> 00:59:33.980 I guess that's correct. 597 00:59:33.980 --> 00:59:38.380 I didn't know about it until my grandmother's neighbor told me. 598 00:59:38.380 --> 00:59:43.460 I just went up to Baltimore this summer, and she called it Smyrna, but you've got Greeks 599 00:59:43.460 --> 00:59:57.460 I'm just recalling the chapter on the first democide of, what he called the democide of this century, which was the Turkish killing of the Armenians, in a few weeks, too. 600 01:00:13.460 --> 01:00:14.860 In conclusion, there are a lot of dead people.