WEBVTT NOTE The End of Power? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Sometime last month I thought that I was dreaming my fondest dream. 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:12.000 The chief executive of the United States, the head of the world's biggest government, 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:21.000 the holder of the keys to the political kingdom, the modern Caesar who will someday ascend to the clouds after his death like his predecessors, 4 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.000 the Fuhrer of what his staff calls the world's indispensable nation, 5 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:31.000 The prophet and sultan of the world's model social democratic state, 6 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:41.000 this man denied on national television not once but three times that he had had sex with a 21-year-old intern in the Oval Office. 7 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:49.000 This is a turning point in American history, not because of the details of the case, but because of what it represents. 8 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:56.000 The beginning of the end of the moral mythology surrounding government power. 9 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:01.000 There's been a lot of wailing and moaning about the disgrace to the presidency that this represents. 10 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:08.000 And there's no question that it is a humiliation to the president and a deadly blow to government itself, 11 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:15.000 which depends so crucially on pumping up public respect to the institutions of power. 12 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:20.100 What I don't understand, of course, is why the decline of respect for Clinton's unconstitutional 13 00:01:20.100 --> 00:01:24.320 power should be something to regret. 14 00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:30.120 For anyone who longs for liberty, this is the moment of a lifetime, that the legitimacy 15 00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:34.960 of power would come under severe strain as a prelude to the crack-up of the central state 16 00:01:34.960 --> 00:01:35.960 itself. 17 00:01:35.960 --> 00:01:41.320 In the eternal struggle between liberty and power between the freedom of individuals and 18 00:01:41.320 --> 00:01:47.380 and Families and the Arrogant Demands of the Central State, Power is Slipping and Liberty 19 00:01:47.380 --> 00:01:54.960 is at last making strides as it has been steadily and systematically for the last several years. 20 00:01:54.960 --> 00:01:59.200 The humiliation visited upon the White House is but one of many signs that the Central 21 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:06.200 State is coming unglued and that a new era is dawning. The distance between Liberty and 22 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:11.360 and the present omnipotent state is no straight shot, of course, and the trends of the moment 23 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:16.280 could reverse themselves, especially if the intellectual vanguard of the free society does 24 00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:24.980 not follow through. But the moment is truly upon us. The Cold War is over and the presidency 25 00:02:24.980 --> 00:02:31.480 as an institution is in deep trouble. Socialist intellectuals are grasping at straws and today's 26 00:02:31.480 --> 00:02:42.280 We're in the midst of a technological boom that benefits the cause of liberty in more 27 00:02:42.280 --> 00:02:44.160 ways than even we know. 28 00:02:44.160 --> 00:02:49.800 Meanwhile, the state is losing prestige day by day and therefore losing its confidence 29 00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:52.600 that it is really in charge. 30 00:02:52.600 --> 00:02:56.480 Consider that since the news about Clinton's escapades were first made public over the 31 00:02:56.480 --> 00:03:00.980 internet, he's held no press conference, made no public appearance without using a 32 00:03:00.980 --> 00:03:05.740 in a Foreign Leader or a Dramatic News Event as a Shield. 33 00:03:05.740 --> 00:03:09.740 Even during the attempted run-up to war, he could not go before a phonied up town hall 34 00:03:09.740 --> 00:03:12.940 meeting and confront the American people with his rationale. 35 00:03:12.940 --> 00:03:19.340 He had to send three freakish minions who might well have been from another planet into 36 00:03:19.340 --> 00:03:22.980 the heartland where they were chewed up by average people demanding to know what was 37 00:03:22.980 --> 00:03:26.820 really behind this drive for war. 38 00:03:26.820 --> 00:03:29.060 The result was a great debacle. 39 00:03:29.060 --> 00:03:33.620 Here are the top dogs of the executive branch being pounded in ways not seen since the height 40 00:03:33.620 --> 00:03:39.780 of the Vietnam War. When Albright, Cohen and Berger are in Washington, they have roses 41 00:03:39.780 --> 00:03:46.780 thrown at their feet. Not in Ohio, however. Not anywhere in the real America. The event 42 00:03:46.780 --> 00:03:52.420 reflected what the White House calls poor planning. And what does that mean? The setting 43 00:03:52.420 --> 00:03:59.020 is supposed to be intimidating, where everyone who can ask a question is being glared at 44 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:03.980 at by Everyone Else. The audience is supposed to be hand-picked, so they feel it's a privilege 45 00:04:03.980 --> 00:04:10.020 to attend and thus do nothing to rock the boat. The public is not supposed to be invited 46 00:04:10.020 --> 00:04:15.860 on a first-come, first-served basis. But by sheer incompetence brought on by Lewinskyite 47 00:04:15.860 --> 00:04:21.860 distraction, the administration stumbled so badly that its consequences were felt by the 48 00:04:21.860 --> 00:04:26.980 entire foreign policy establishment, including the State Department, the misnamed Defense 49 00:04:26.980 --> 00:04:31.580 Department, the CIA and the National Security Agency. 50 00:04:31.580 --> 00:04:36.740 In the post-war period, these agencies have attempted to foster a public impression that 51 00:04:36.740 --> 00:04:42.380 they're engaged in a deeply complex science of geopolitics, requiring high-level training 52 00:04:42.380 --> 00:04:43.380 and education. 53 00:04:43.380 --> 00:04:48.940 But in Ohio, they were exposed not only as mere mortals, but as incompetent fronts for 54 00:04:48.940 --> 00:04:55.340 a power grab, lecturing average questioners on how little they knew about foreign policy. 55 00:04:55.340 --> 00:05:00.300 The government hacks were of course furious they were being questioned at all, much less 56 00:05:00.300 --> 00:05:04.460 denounced by hundreds of scraggly protesters. 57 00:05:04.460 --> 00:05:08.140 This level of resistance didn't come about in the 1960s until after the draft was in 58 00:05:08.140 --> 00:05:12.620 full swing and the body bags started arriving. 59 00:05:12.620 --> 00:05:17.180 And the protests were marred then by the perception that being anti-Vietnam war was implicitly 60 00:05:17.180 --> 00:05:22.460 a socialist act because it meant being sympathetic to the communists. 61 00:05:22.460 --> 00:05:25.180 But all this is ancient history now. 62 00:05:25.180 --> 00:05:31.660 Fighting the likes of Cohen, Berger and Albright is not disloyalty, it is a patriotic duty. 63 00:05:31.660 --> 00:05:36.340 This level of resistance, both political and intellectual, seriously hinders the ability 64 00:05:36.340 --> 00:05:41.580 of government to function. They no longer issue the blank cheque they were granted during 65 00:05:41.580 --> 00:05:46.820 the Cold War. Their war games, henceforth, will have to be conducted under a new level 66 00:05:46.820 --> 00:05:49.460 of public scrutiny. 67 00:05:49.460 --> 00:05:54.700 The negotiated peace facilitated by Kofi Annan actually has a secret history. 68 00:05:54.700 --> 00:05:56.220 It was fear. 69 00:05:56.220 --> 00:06:00.620 Fear of the public, fear that this war looked too suspicious to average people, especially 70 00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:04.740 in light of the sexual allegations against the president. 71 00:06:04.740 --> 00:06:09.780 This will probably go down in history as the wag the dog syndrome. 72 00:06:09.780 --> 00:06:13.900 In the movie, the president is caught molesting a young girl visiting the White House, and 73 00:06:13.900 --> 00:06:18.500 the president's spinmeisters conjure up a make-believe war in Albania as a means of 74 00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:20.900 with Public Distraction. 75 00:06:20.900 --> 00:06:23.260 In the movie version, the trick works. 76 00:06:23.260 --> 00:06:28.140 The masses sing and sway to music composed by hired guns and participate in all the public 77 00:06:28.140 --> 00:06:33.140 war rituals concocted by the president's political advisors. 78 00:06:33.140 --> 00:06:36.420 In the real life version, the masses had a different response. 79 00:06:36.420 --> 00:06:40.820 Of course, public opinion polls showed overwhelming support for bombing Iraq, and it was upon 80 00:06:40.820 --> 00:06:45.740 this weak read that the administration, more driven by polling data than any in American 81 00:06:45.740 --> 00:06:49.940 and History based its military campaign. 82 00:06:49.940 --> 00:06:53.180 But polls ain't what they used to be. 83 00:06:53.180 --> 00:06:57.580 People are not likely to answer pollsters in ways that reflect core beliefs. 84 00:06:57.580 --> 00:07:01.700 They're likely to say what they think they should say because in these politically correct 85 00:07:01.700 --> 00:07:08.500 times they don't want to be called upon to justify an unconventional view to a pollster. 86 00:07:08.500 --> 00:07:15.540 Experts on polling, for example, now discount the meaning of any polls taken on racial topics. 87 00:07:15.540 --> 00:07:20.140 To have these polls challenged and discredited is to destroy the Clinton administration's 88 00:07:20.140 --> 00:07:25.140 political crystal ball. If you can't trust polls and whether to go to war, for goodness 89 00:07:25.140 --> 00:07:31.720 sake, what can you trust? Certainly not the Defense Department. It turns out that for 90 00:07:31.720 --> 00:07:36.260 two weeks prior to the Anon meeting, the entire Pentagon and all branches of the armed services 91 00:07:36.260 --> 00:07:42.020 underwent an unprecedented and deep penetration by teenage computer hackers playing all sorts 92 00:07:42.020 --> 00:07:48.020 of Games, especially with their personnel files and payroll records. 93 00:07:48.020 --> 00:07:51.780 These kids, and there may have been only a dozen or so, wreaked havoc on the Pentagon 94 00:07:51.780 --> 00:07:54.900 and its confidence in its war-making powers. 95 00:07:54.900 --> 00:07:59.420 At the time Madeleine Albright decided to endorse negotiations, she was aware that this 96 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:01.820 was happening. 97 00:08:01.820 --> 00:08:06.860 What the Clinton administration forgot is that the democratic politics means majority 98 00:08:06.860 --> 00:08:09.460 rule only in theory. 99 00:08:09.460 --> 00:08:13.900 In reality, the agitated minority drives the process forward. 100 00:08:13.900 --> 00:08:18.580 In other areas like racial politics, the administration seems to understand this. 101 00:08:18.580 --> 00:08:24.720 But in areas like gun control, homeschooling, land rights, taxes and warfare, it is just 102 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:27.420 now getting the message. 103 00:08:27.420 --> 00:08:31.540 Smart people with courage can make a huge difference in the course of human affairs. 104 00:08:31.540 --> 00:08:35.120 They did this time and they will again. 105 00:08:35.120 --> 00:08:37.380 But the administration resents the heck out of it. 106 00:08:37.380 --> 00:08:41.660 They have a hard time believing that they are being so battered by what they understand 107 00:08:41.660 --> 00:08:45.020 as a minority of anti-government agitators. 108 00:08:45.020 --> 00:08:50.960 This is ultimately what was behind Hillary's attack on the supposed right-wing conspiracy. 109 00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:55.220 But at least her formulation helped everyone understand how the administration defines 110 00:08:55.220 --> 00:09:00.600 a right-wing conspirator, namely anyone who questions the idea that the executive department 111 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:05.260 ought to have total power over the country and over the world. 112 00:09:05.260 --> 00:09:08.340 For at least a month, the pundits have been mulling over the question of how it is that 113 00:09:08.340 --> 00:09:14.740 Clinton's approval rating could be approaching 70% even after the devastating revelations 114 00:09:14.740 --> 00:09:20.180 about his private life. The most conventional explanation is that the economy is in relatively 115 00:09:20.180 --> 00:09:25.820 good shape. What that means is that for the first time in some 25 years, the financial 116 00:09:25.820 --> 00:09:31.300 condition of the American family isn't systematically and noticeably getting worse every single 117 00:09:31.300 --> 00:09:38.580 When people are asked whether the President is doing a good job, the first question that 118 00:09:38.580 --> 00:09:42.460 comes to mind these days is, well, what is his job? 119 00:09:42.460 --> 00:09:48.500 He's no longer protecting us from an evil empire overseas, battling the rise of totalitarianism 120 00:09:48.500 --> 00:09:53.780 in Europe, presuming to dig us out of a Great Depression, or trying to win some far-flung 121 00:09:53.780 --> 00:09:56.300 world war. 122 00:09:56.300 --> 00:10:00.780 Maybe the best the government can do for us these days is entertain us, and on that score 123 00:10:00.780 --> 00:10:06.220 Or I have to say the Clinton administration gets very high marks. 124 00:10:06.220 --> 00:10:12.220 We also cannot discount the people's intense and general hatred for the media and specifically 125 00:10:12.220 --> 00:10:17.620 the resentment that people feel towards the newspapers and the TV networks for having 126 00:10:17.620 --> 00:10:24.340 trumpeted details of a case that most of us would not like to have discussed publicly. 127 00:10:24.340 --> 00:10:29.620 But there is a deeper reason why the special counsel Ken Starr is garnering very low ratings 128 00:10:29.620 --> 00:10:32.620 and the President, High Ones. 129 00:10:32.620 --> 00:10:36.500 Clinton is first of all nothing if not an impressive political figure, and like Ronald 130 00:10:36.500 --> 00:10:40.780 Reagan before him, he has a way of seeming to separate himself from the government he 131 00:10:40.780 --> 00:10:47.100 heads. He is rarely seen with congressional leaders, he's not particularly partisan, 132 00:10:47.100 --> 00:10:52.880 he runs his own show, runs it his way, he's so shifty ideologically that his inconsistency 133 00:10:52.880 --> 00:10:57.900 can be easily confused with independence, and no one in American public life is better 134 00:10:57.900 --> 00:11:02.060 at Avoiding Blame than Bill Clinton. 135 00:11:02.060 --> 00:11:05.460 So it may not be inconsistent that people can report trusting government less now than 136 00:11:05.460 --> 00:11:10.280 at any time in post-war history and at the same time have a passive positive feelings 137 00:11:10.280 --> 00:11:11.280 for Clinton. 138 00:11:11.280 --> 00:11:15.480 But there's another crucial point that must be addressed and that is the persona of Kenneth 139 00:11:15.480 --> 00:11:21.380 Starr, the consummate G-Man using wiretaps, the subpoena power and all manner of legal 140 00:11:21.380 --> 00:11:26.940 trickery to get people to tell federal prosecutors details about a person's private life that 141 00:11:26.940 --> 00:11:30.660 But the government would have no business knowing if the case involved a private citizen. 142 00:11:30.660 --> 00:11:35.340 Now, of course, it's perfectly proper for the government to have an investigative arm 143 00:11:35.340 --> 00:11:39.140 that does nothing but investigate the government. 144 00:11:39.140 --> 00:11:43.640 And when a person becomes president and rules over the American people, it is proper that 145 00:11:43.640 --> 00:11:47.340 you surrender all rights to privacy. 146 00:11:47.340 --> 00:11:52.300 But ironically, it is not Clinton but Starr whose power and behavior to the average American 147 00:11:52.300 --> 00:11:57.980 seems most consistent with what we know about the way government actually does business. 148 00:11:57.980 --> 00:12:01.900 What institution in America subpoenas a mother to turn in her own daughter about lies the 149 00:12:01.900 --> 00:12:05.020 daughter might have told to a prosecutor? 150 00:12:05.020 --> 00:12:06.820 Only the government. 151 00:12:06.820 --> 00:12:10.340 And it is the American people's instinctive sense of the rights of the individual against 152 00:12:10.340 --> 00:12:16.860 Leviathan that caused the G-man to sink in popularity relative to the president. 153 00:12:16.860 --> 00:12:21.580 In this case then, Clinton is personally benefiting from the anti-government sentiment he so often 154 00:12:21.580 --> 00:12:34.580 Now it is his minions who decry the abuse of power, quote Lord Acton about the corruptions of power, and attack the supposed abuses of the Constitution by a federal prosecutor. 155 00:12:34.580 --> 00:12:38.580 And in this public relations war, the administration is winning. 156 00:12:38.580 --> 00:12:46.220 But it is not a long-term victory. What STAR is doing to the administration, spying on 157 00:12:46.220 --> 00:12:51.460 its employees, forcing them to testify against themselves and their pals, demanding their 158 00:12:51.460 --> 00:12:57.180 private correspondence and records of private conversations, is precisely what the central 159 00:12:57.180 --> 00:13:03.060 government does to the rest of America every single day. If STAR represents the abuse of 160 00:13:03.060 --> 00:13:08.260 of Power, What Does the Leviathan State Headed by Clinton Represent? 161 00:13:08.260 --> 00:13:13.960 In this crossfire between two government officials and the state is doing much to undermine itself. 162 00:13:13.960 --> 00:13:18.780 Its lies, its internal contradictions, its abuses of power are whittling away at its 163 00:13:18.780 --> 00:13:21.220 moral authority. 164 00:13:21.220 --> 00:13:27.960 For example, Clinton tells us that Saddam Hussein can't be trusted to tell the truth. 165 00:13:27.960 --> 00:13:33.380 Clinton says we must pay attention to Saddam Hussein's deeds, not his words. 166 00:13:33.380 --> 00:13:36.840 But does anyone really believe that Clinton can be trusted to tell the truth? 167 00:13:36.840 --> 00:13:39.400 Can anyone trust Clinton's words? 168 00:13:39.400 --> 00:13:43.400 Does anyone really have the stomach to pay close attention to Clinton's deeds? 169 00:13:43.400 --> 00:13:48.360 Now, Hussein is a typical head of state whose antics are all too familiar. 170 00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:53.840 But we too, it's familiar to us because we too live under a despotism. 171 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:58.020 These are governments bound not by law but by the will of man exactly the opposite of 172 00:13:58.020 --> 00:14:02.960 what the framers intended. Clinton and his advisors were sick of fooling with the leader 173 00:14:02.960 --> 00:14:09.020 of Iraq so they decided to carpet bomb the country for four days. What stopped this was 174 00:14:09.020 --> 00:14:15.440 ultimately the fear of a public relations disaster. The truth is that there is very 175 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:20.340 little of which the US government can accuse Hussain that its own apparatus of power has 176 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:23.020 is also not committed. 177 00:14:23.020 --> 00:14:28.340 Gassing its own citizens with chemicals, so Janet Reno did in Waco, Texas when her FBI 178 00:14:28.340 --> 00:14:34.100 pumped CS gas into a religious community and then burned the place to the ground. 179 00:14:34.100 --> 00:14:38.700 Oppressing ethnic minorities, well, the US government goes the sane one better and oppresses 180 00:14:38.700 --> 00:14:45.860 its ethnic majority by redistributing its wealth and violating its freedom of association. 181 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:49.800 Threatening its neighbors, US government doesn't restrict itself to its neighbors, its troops 182 00:14:49.800 --> 00:14:54.120 will travel halfway around the world to threaten. Ask the people of Northern Italy what they 183 00:14:54.120 --> 00:14:59.700 think about the hot-dogging U.S. fighter pilots whose antics led to 20 deaths on the ski slopes 184 00:14:59.700 --> 00:15:04.500 a couple of weeks ago. Ask the residents of Okinawa, Japan, who endure a non-stop crime 185 00:15:04.500 --> 00:15:10.220 wave and all-night jet engine noise imposed by U.S. troops. In virtually every country 186 00:15:10.220 --> 00:15:15.740 on the planet last week, there were demonstrations against the U.S. drive for war with Iraq. 187 00:15:15.740 --> 00:15:20.340 When Inon and Hussein struck a deal for peace, the entire world cheered, leaving only a handful 188 00:15:20.340 --> 00:15:25.500 of sneering warmongers like Trent Lott to gnash their teeth. 189 00:15:25.500 --> 00:15:27.260 But these are difficult days of the White House. 190 00:15:27.260 --> 00:15:32.700 If you want to see a preview of this administration's mark on history, I can't highly recommend 191 00:15:32.700 --> 00:15:37.700 enough Ambrose Evans Pritchard's remarkable book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, published 192 00:15:37.700 --> 00:15:39.140 this year by Regnery. 193 00:15:39.140 --> 00:15:43.460 It's been attacked wildly in the liberal and the neoconservative press, and there's 194 00:15:43.460 --> 00:15:44.860 a reason for that. 195 00:15:44.860 --> 00:15:50.460 There probably has not been a more compellingly written exposé of the criminal state in the 196 00:15:50.460 --> 00:15:55.280 history of political literature, and to think that this is only the first of many dozens 197 00:15:55.280 --> 00:16:00.100 of books that will be pouring out over the next four or five years, many of them inside 198 00:16:00.100 --> 00:16:06.340 our accounts of the deceit, crookery, duplicity and murder that lie at the heart of the state. 199 00:16:06.340 --> 00:16:12.640 Like the Evans-Pritchard books, these will not be philosophical tomes, but detailed exposés. 200 00:16:12.640 --> 00:16:16.280 And if you remember about how much damage David Stockman's book on the Reagan budget 201 00:16:16.280 --> 00:16:22.800 fraud did to that administration, we can only imagine how deadly the library of Clinton books 202 00:16:22.800 --> 00:16:26.720 will be for the reputation of the government. 203 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:31.160 Among the most notable ironies in this administration is that the White House, the most pro-feminist 204 00:16:31.160 --> 00:16:37.520 statist in U.S. history, is being done in by laws promoted by feminist status themselves. 205 00:16:37.520 --> 00:16:41.840 Intimidated by this lobby, Congress and the federal courts imposed sexual harassment laws 206 00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:46.640 Laws that made every company with more than 15 employees legally liable if anyone could 207 00:16:46.640 --> 00:16:52.140 claim to be put upon in the workplace. This resulted in a huge increase in the ability 208 00:16:52.140 --> 00:16:59.140 of litigants to loot companies. But sexual harassment law is only one facet of a massive 209 00:16:59.140 --> 00:17:04.280 legal edifice that unjustly intrudes into the workplace, with the EEOC attempting to 210 00:17:04.280 --> 00:17:09.960 manage every aspect of the employment contract. For 35 years, these laws have accumulated 211 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:14.220 to the point that race and sex quotas have become deeply institutionalized in American 212 00:17:14.220 --> 00:17:19.660 economic life, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses a year and repealing 213 00:17:19.660 --> 00:17:24.900 the freedom of association that Americans used to take for granted. 214 00:17:24.900 --> 00:17:29.700 There are few aspects of Leviathan that fly so aggressively in the face of fairness and 215 00:17:29.700 --> 00:17:34.500 justice as race and sex quotas, which are implied in the very existence of civil rights 216 00:17:34.500 --> 00:17:39.460 law. That's why the left, in light of the huge public backlash, has put on such a full 217 00:17:39.460 --> 00:17:47.420 And what does that defense come down to? They note disparities in income and position continue 218 00:17:47.420 --> 00:17:52.500 to exist in education and employment. And they argued that these disparities are prima 219 00:17:52.500 --> 00:17:59.220 facie evidence of malicious discrimination. But this is a wildly implausible theory. What 220 00:17:59.220 --> 00:18:03.920 this evidence of disparities actually reveals is that the distribution of talents and choice 221 00:18:03.920 --> 00:18:09.860 People's choice of occupation are not evenly distributed across demographic groups in society. 222 00:18:09.860 --> 00:18:15.280 To note that is not to say that anyone should be pigeon-holed in a predetermined place. 223 00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:19.680 But so long as people's choice of occupation is determined by free will, what business 224 00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:24.600 of government is it to override these choices and try to centrally plan some bureaucrats' 225 00:18:24.600 --> 00:18:29.680 idea of the ideal society and the ideal mixed society? 226 00:18:29.680 --> 00:18:35.880 Under the theory of affirmative action, that ideal should have been achieved long ago. 227 00:18:35.880 --> 00:18:40.240 But like socialism itself, the utopian vision is an elusive one. 228 00:18:40.240 --> 00:18:43.720 The clock has been ticking on the quota machine for some time. 229 00:18:43.720 --> 00:18:49.680 A case now for absolute freedom of association is being made more and more openly. 230 00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:54.120 I think it's only a matter of time before the civil rights central planners lose their 231 00:18:54.120 --> 00:18:59.200 will to power, and as with socialism itself, are swept away. 232 00:18:59.200 --> 00:19:05.240 You can see the future by looking at the status of employment contracts in the high-tech industries. 233 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:11.200 These industries are staffed by workforces overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. 234 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:15.400 Notice that there has been nary a word about the supposed unfairness of this fact breathed 235 00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:22.180 by the race and sex racketeers that use their extortion tactics in other economic sectors. 236 00:19:22.180 --> 00:19:27.860 They rightly assume the case would be difficult to make. The sector is so enormously competitive 237 00:19:27.860 --> 00:19:33.060 would make no sense for Oracle or Microsoft to maliciously discriminate against a minority 238 00:19:33.060 --> 00:19:38.140 if by so doing they would sacrifice profits or pass over some new important software development. 239 00:19:38.140 --> 00:19:43.220 At the same time, it violates everyone's sense of fairness that incompetence should 240 00:19:43.220 --> 00:19:47.420 be forced on companies struggling to take advantage of every innovation. 241 00:19:47.420 --> 00:19:52.420 But this is not the only area in which the software and computer industries are discrediting 242 00:19:52.420 --> 00:19:56.020 the old rationales for state power. 243 00:19:56.020 --> 00:20:00.980 The growth of internet commerce is one of the most exciting developments of our age. Not 244 00:20:00.980 --> 00:20:05.740 even the futurists who forecast the information age understood how the commercial impulse 245 00:20:05.740 --> 00:20:10.740 would transform this medium into a powerful vehicle for the reinvigoration of capitalism 246 00:20:10.740 --> 00:20:17.220 itself. These days, everything from CDs to sneakers to books to wine to used cars is 247 00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:22.000 available over the world wide web. It's remarkable to think that this extraordinary 248 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:28.600 Every medium has developed as a viable commercial center in little more than 36 months. 249 00:20:28.600 --> 00:20:33.120 With the advent of the web, we have the privilege of seeing an entire economy spring up before 250 00:20:33.120 --> 00:20:40.200 our eyes and teach us permanent lessons about the nature of social cooperation under freedom. 251 00:20:40.200 --> 00:20:41.960 No one person coordinates the web. 252 00:20:41.960 --> 00:20:47.620 It's a vast network of millions upon millions of producers, consumers and suppliers cooperating 253 00:20:47.620 --> 00:20:50.480 in mutually beneficial exchange. 254 00:20:50.480 --> 00:20:55.280 And these cooperative behaviors are counterbalanced by healthy competition for consumer loyalties. 255 00:20:55.280 --> 00:21:00.360 It's true that only the fittest survive, but who is fit and who is not is determined 256 00:21:00.360 --> 00:21:05.500 by a minute-to-minute plebiscite conducted by the consuming public with the results changing 257 00:21:05.500 --> 00:21:07.680 all the time. 258 00:21:07.680 --> 00:21:12.400 What we see developing on the web is no different from the way free markets have always worked. 259 00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:17.000 But it's been so long since we've been permitted to observe the power of unregulated markets 260 00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:20.420 that we almost forget just how glorious the site is. 261 00:21:21.600 --> 00:21:23.760 Gore, Clinton and the other status types 262 00:21:23.760 --> 00:21:25.400 like to tout the glories of the internet 263 00:21:25.400 --> 00:21:28.360 and what they call the information superhighway. 264 00:21:30.020 --> 00:21:32.120 An analogy, of course, to a government project 265 00:21:32.120 --> 00:21:33.800 right at the superhighway. 266 00:21:33.800 --> 00:21:36.400 And Dare suggests that it needs taxpayer subsidies 267 00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:39.200 to become a genuine social benefit. 268 00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:42.240 In truth, the medium has become their worst nightmare 269 00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:44.400 when they have tried to stifle at every opportunity 270 00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:46.200 with their proposals to tax 271 00:21:46.200 --> 00:21:50.640 and Put Listening Bugs in Everyone's Computer. 272 00:21:50.640 --> 00:21:54.560 Yet the Internet is breaking up the monopoly, for example, of the mainstream newspapers 273 00:21:54.560 --> 00:21:57.440 and the network news broadcasters. 274 00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:01.800 We often hear about how the news cycle has gone from being three or four days to being 275 00:22:01.800 --> 00:22:02.800 only hours. 276 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:08.440 We hear how breaking stories have become dull and dusty after only an hour or two. 277 00:22:08.440 --> 00:22:12.760 This is due not to some general degradation of the news culture as the mainstream media 278 00:22:12.760 --> 00:22:18.120 apologists would have it. It's a consequence of the cold bracing winds of competition that 279 00:22:18.120 --> 00:22:25.600 the mainstream media are facing for the first time in many years. Think of this. Matt Brudge 280 00:22:25.600 --> 00:22:31.960 is a college dropout with no prior experience in journalism, no money, no startup capital, 281 00:22:31.960 --> 00:22:37.040 no contacts, no old boy networks to call on, no membership in the Council on Foreign Relations 282 00:22:37.040 --> 00:22:42.320 or the National Press Club. Yet armed with a laptop computer and a one-room apartment 283 00:22:42.320 --> 00:22:47.560 and in Hollywood, he's broken almost every major news story in politics in the last 24 284 00:22:47.560 --> 00:22:51.960 months, easily beating the records of the Washington Post and the New York Times with 285 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:55.120 their thousands and thousands of employees. 286 00:22:55.120 --> 00:23:00.660 The major reason for web success has less to do with technology as such, but rather its 287 00:23:00.660 --> 00:23:04.440 nature as an unregulated commercial center. 288 00:23:04.440 --> 00:23:11.560 No licenses, no labor unions, no government protected monopolists, no barriers to entry, 289 00:23:11.560 --> 00:23:16.360 and no price controls. For these reasons the forces of power are constantly trying to make 290 00:23:16.360 --> 00:23:21.480 inroads on this medium of freedom. Thank goodness for the remnant of states' rights that still 291 00:23:21.480 --> 00:23:27.400 exist in our system because it is due in part to the lack of a coordinated tax policy that 292 00:23:27.400 --> 00:23:33.240 the medium has received such a boost. Just a few days ago the National Governors' Association 293 00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:39.200 called for all states to tax internet commerce. Fortunately for us in Alabama our government 294 00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:45.000 has already, our governor has already seceded from this organization on grounds of its general 295 00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:46.000 uselessness. 296 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:52.240 But unless I'm very wrong about the present state of opinion in this country, especially 297 00:23:52.240 --> 00:23:56.600 among users of the web, this proposal is going nowhere. 298 00:23:56.600 --> 00:24:01.040 Any governor who has endorsed it is going to face a fantastic amount of opposition and 299 00:24:01.040 --> 00:24:06.200 political reprisal. 300 00:24:06.200 --> 00:24:11.160 There was a time, and it was not too long ago, when political dissidents were nowhere 301 00:24:11.160 --> 00:24:15.960 near as numerous as they are today. But with the growing dissolution of official political 302 00:24:15.960 --> 00:24:20.640 culture, the agents of the federal police state are simply unable to manage the ebb 303 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:25.640 and flow of opinion. That is why when they choose to go after particular people, they 304 00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:30.280 want to make sure they represent what they perceive to be the scariest element in American 305 00:24:30.280 --> 00:24:36.320 and Public Life. I speak, of course, of the Radical Right. I suppose if there were not 306 00:24:36.320 --> 00:24:42.440 a group called the Aryan Nation, the Federal Police would have to invent it. For all I 307 00:24:42.440 --> 00:24:49.180 know, they did. Just the other day, two fellows in Las Vegas were arrested by the FBI, their 308 00:24:49.180 --> 00:24:55.980 car shrink-wrapped, their apartment ransacked, held in jail, news media blared headlines 309 00:24:55.980 --> 00:25:04.780 Radical right-wingers plan anthrax attack on New York subway. 310 00:25:04.780 --> 00:25:08.860 I'll confess to having known some right-wingers in my day. 311 00:25:08.860 --> 00:25:13.940 Never once have I heard of anyone fantasizing about gassing and mass murdering tens of thousands 312 00:25:13.940 --> 00:25:15.500 of people on the subway. 313 00:25:15.500 --> 00:25:19.660 In the annals of the American right, I can't remember mass murder exactly being high on 314 00:25:19.660 --> 00:25:21.640 the political agenda. 315 00:25:21.640 --> 00:25:26.600 The right wing is not the equivalent of the government. 316 00:25:26.600 --> 00:25:28.280 Just on the face of it, the whole thing was suspicious. 317 00:25:28.280 --> 00:25:31.720 Well, within hours, of course, it turned out that the New York City subway bit was some 318 00:25:31.720 --> 00:25:35.320 sort of, quote, miscommunication. 319 00:25:35.320 --> 00:25:40.560 These guys hadn't exactly said where they planned their anthrax attack, but plan one 320 00:25:40.560 --> 00:25:41.560 they had. 321 00:25:41.560 --> 00:25:43.560 Hours later, another correction came out. 322 00:25:43.560 --> 00:25:48.960 It turns out they weren't planning an attack so much as they were planning to test an antidote 323 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:49.960 to anthrax. 324 00:25:49.960 --> 00:25:54.100 There, so later it turned out they didn't have live anthrax at all but a tiny amount 325 00:25:54.100 --> 00:26:01.840 of dead germs they were using to test out a new anti-anthrax gizmo that they had purchased. 326 00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:03.360 And whom had they purchased it from? 327 00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:04.360 Who had pushed it on them? 328 00:26:04.360 --> 00:26:05.880 Who had marketed it to them? 329 00:26:05.880 --> 00:26:09.560 A guy and the employee of the FBI. 330 00:26:09.560 --> 00:26:13.560 So the FBI story quickly collapsed into a handful of dust. 331 00:26:13.560 --> 00:26:18.040 Charges were dropped and the story of Las Vegas' right-wing anthrax subway murderers 332 00:26:18.040 --> 00:26:23.540 vanished from the newspapers has proved to be yet another PR disaster for the FBI along 333 00:26:23.540 --> 00:26:29.480 with the litany of others from Waco to Ruby Ridge to Richard Jewell. Federal police, Americans 334 00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:34.120 are coming to see, are not defenders of the public interest so much as political enforcers 335 00:26:34.120 --> 00:26:40.460 attempting to criminalize a certain brand of politics. Now as we know there are dozens 336 00:26:40.460 --> 00:26:46.140 of questions that the government does not like us to ask, much less actively seek answers 337 00:26:46.140 --> 00:26:52.860 For starters, why are federal taxes, as a percentage of GDP, higher than at any point 338 00:26:52.860 --> 00:26:59.100 in American history, even though government has less to do now than any time in the century? 339 00:26:59.100 --> 00:27:04.580 As no world war, no depression, welfare is a proven failure, why must taxes remain so 340 00:27:04.580 --> 00:27:05.580 high? 341 00:27:05.580 --> 00:27:10.220 In Congress, the past 12 months have been spent debating the merits of the flat tax 342 00:27:10.220 --> 00:27:14.700 and the national sales tax as alternatives to the present system. 343 00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:20.900 A number of very good people are involved in this debate but let me add an element of caution. 344 00:27:20.900 --> 00:27:27.660 No tax reform is worth the slightest exertion of energy if the end result is not lower taxes 345 00:27:27.660 --> 00:27:29.900 for the American people. 346 00:27:29.900 --> 00:27:35.260 And by lower taxes, I mean that less is taken from the national income and turned over to 347 00:27:35.260 --> 00:27:38.540 the government to waste and do damage with. 348 00:27:38.540 --> 00:27:45.540 Incredibly, however, all discussions of tax reform have so far presupposed that capital 349 00:27:45.540 --> 00:27:51.420 hill excuse for doing nothing, revenue neutrality. That is the idea that the government's income 350 00:27:51.420 --> 00:27:57.900 must never, ever be cut. Now, if neither the national sales tax nor the flat tax proposes 351 00:27:57.900 --> 00:28:04.540 to actually lower taxes, what's the point of all this discussion? Our scholar Mark Thornton 352 00:28:04.540 --> 00:28:07.540 Ronald Reagan revealed the secret last year in the free market. 353 00:28:07.540 --> 00:28:10.740 There's nothing like a promise to rip up the present code and replace it with a different 354 00:28:10.740 --> 00:28:16.540 one to cause the political contributions to pour in, from large corporations and indeed 355 00:28:16.540 --> 00:28:21.220 from everyone who is affected by any change in the code. 356 00:28:21.220 --> 00:28:26.580 No tax reform since Ronald Reagan's first term has succeeded in lowering the tax take, 357 00:28:26.580 --> 00:28:29.700 and even that was short lived. 358 00:28:29.700 --> 00:28:33.460 Why should we expect another tax reform to do any better? 359 00:28:33.460 --> 00:28:37.580 In fact, the Republican leadership reports that their focus groups reveal a surprising 360 00:28:37.580 --> 00:28:42.780 disinterest among the American people on the idea of tax reform. 361 00:28:42.780 --> 00:28:47.820 The reason is clear, people don't trust Washington to tell them the truth. 362 00:28:47.820 --> 00:28:54.780 Time and time again, they promise tax reform and give us revenue neutrality or higher taxes. 363 00:28:54.780 --> 00:28:59.260 The best solution to the tax dilemma is right before our eyes. 364 00:28:59.260 --> 00:29:05.540 Lower them. Lower the rates. Lower the take. Lower the revenue. Lower them by 1%. Lower 365 00:29:05.540 --> 00:29:13.580 them by 99%. It's not the pace that is as important as the direction of change. 366 00:29:13.580 --> 00:29:19.840 Another major issue that has the public deeply confused is the workings of the monetary system. 367 00:29:19.840 --> 00:29:25.300 When Alan Greenspan testified on Capitol Hill last week, he was greeted by Hossan as appropriate 368 00:29:25.300 --> 00:29:29.100 to a witch doctor of a primitive tribe. 369 00:29:29.100 --> 00:29:33.300 As head of the central bank, he holds a mysterious power over society. 370 00:29:33.300 --> 00:29:38.100 And as bamboozler in chief, he is able to intimidate practically every lawmaker this 371 00:29:38.100 --> 00:29:44.980 side of Ron Paul into thinking that he's master of the universe, brilliantly managing interest 372 00:29:44.980 --> 00:29:49.460 rates and money flows to the betterment of mankind. 373 00:29:49.460 --> 00:29:50.460 But is he? 374 00:29:50.460 --> 00:29:51.940 Of course, far from it. 375 00:29:51.940 --> 00:29:56.740 Although Hales is the greatest Fed governor ever, in some ways, he's the worst. 376 00:29:56.740 --> 00:30:00.740 Never before has a Fed governor been so free with the power to bail out failing financial 377 00:30:00.740 --> 00:30:04.900 systems, not only at home, but abroad. 378 00:30:04.900 --> 00:30:08.300 Under his rule, the Fed has not only become the lender of last resort to the American 379 00:30:08.300 --> 00:30:14.420 banking system, but also to Mexico, to the U.S. stock market, and now to the entire Asian 380 00:30:14.420 --> 00:30:18.340 region and eventually to the whole world. 381 00:30:18.340 --> 00:30:24.220 In the last 3 years, the system faced a $50 billion bailout of Mexico, a $57 billion bailout 382 00:30:24.220 --> 00:30:31.860 of South Korea, $43 billion in Indonesia, $18 billion in Thailand, total of $118 billion, 383 00:30:31.860 --> 00:30:35.460 probably rising to at least double that. 384 00:30:35.460 --> 00:30:40.220 By delaying the day of reckoning with bailouts, Greenspan builds the international mountain 385 00:30:40.220 --> 00:30:45.940 of dollars and debt, making the inevitable collapse all the more devastating. 386 00:30:45.940 --> 00:30:49.900 One step at a time, Greenspan has chosen to back the interests of the New York banks 387 00:30:49.900 --> 00:30:54.580 that hold the bonds of Asian and Mexican governments, as well as the financial houses who have a 388 00:30:54.580 --> 00:31:00.580 huge stake in emerging markets, and he's backed these interests over a rational economic policy. 389 00:31:00.580 --> 00:31:06.420 At the time of the Mexican bailout, we argued that this was a disastrous precedent for world 390 00:31:06.420 --> 00:31:11.140 finance. If Mexico gets a bailout, then no government with links to the U.S. financial 391 00:31:11.140 --> 00:31:13.380 System would be allowed to fail. 392 00:31:13.380 --> 00:31:18.180 And sure enough, only a few years later, Asian economies have failed as a consequence of 393 00:31:18.180 --> 00:31:21.980 their own ill-conceived monetary policies. 394 00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:26.000 Sure enough, Greenspan has stood side by side with the Clinton Administration in arguing 395 00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:31.100 that the bailout of these economies is in the U.S. self-interest. 396 00:31:31.100 --> 00:31:35.420 The Administration released the Exchange Stabilization Fund as a first round and then approved an 397 00:31:35.420 --> 00:31:51.700 Congress will soon be considering a bill to refund the IMF. In a normal time, the vote 398 00:31:51.700 --> 00:31:57.280 would not be controversial. But this year, faced with a massive constituent backlash, 399 00:31:57.280 --> 00:32:01.380 the Congress is prepared for a cataclysmic battle that will set the stage for future 400 00:32:01.380 --> 00:32:31.380 The choice is this. Will we continue down the path to further centralization of monetary power, making the IMF the de facto world lender of last resort? That way lies a monetary debacle of global proportions. It is a prescription for a level of financial recklessness and hyperinflation that no Fed Governor, no matter how smart, will be able to prevent. The other path is towards pulling out of these financial commitments. 401 00:32:31.380 --> 00:32:37.380 and allowing failing economies to fail on their way to the restoration of a sound financial system. 402 00:32:37.380 --> 00:32:47.380 The truth is that the present monetary order is unviable over the long term, as much as the U.S. might have benefited from it in recent years. 403 00:32:47.380 --> 00:32:54.380 Subtly and without any announcement that the world has made a transition from the failed system of affloating exchange rates 404 00:32:54.380 --> 00:32:59.820 to the failed system of relatively fixed exchange rates to the full-blown world paper dollar 405 00:32:59.820 --> 00:33:03.500 standard we now find ourselves on. 406 00:33:03.500 --> 00:33:07.420 To those of you who have wondered whatever happened to price inflation, the advent of 407 00:33:07.420 --> 00:33:09.900 this new system provides your answer. 408 00:33:09.900 --> 00:33:14.620 If you look at the growth of the US-based money, you'll find that monetary inflation 409 00:33:14.620 --> 00:33:19.500 has been no more restrictive than it was in the late 60s and early 70s. 410 00:33:19.500 --> 00:33:24.920 From the end of 1990 to the end of 1996, the Fed used its open market operations to increase 411 00:33:24.920 --> 00:33:31.020 the monetary base, which is currency plus bank reserves, by 55 percent. 412 00:33:31.020 --> 00:33:33.160 Currency itself increased 60 percent. 413 00:33:33.160 --> 00:33:39.260 He averages 9.5 percent a year compared with 8.5 percent in the early 70s and 10 percent 414 00:33:39.260 --> 00:33:41.540 in the late 70s. 415 00:33:41.540 --> 00:33:46.020 The difference between then and now is that the U.S. suddenly faces a seemingly unlimited 416 00:33:46.020 --> 00:33:48.120 demand for dollars. 417 00:33:48.120 --> 00:33:52.720 These dollars stored in the form of U.S. debt held overseas are then used as base money 418 00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:59.120 upon which governments like Korea and Indonesia can inflate their own currencies. 419 00:33:59.120 --> 00:34:03.200 The primary monetary objective of Greenspan and the Clinton Administration is to keep 420 00:34:03.200 --> 00:34:05.680 those dollars overseas. 421 00:34:05.680 --> 00:34:10.040 So long as they are, they believe, Federal Reserve inflation can be exported far from 422 00:34:10.040 --> 00:34:15.080 our shores, prices can be held in check from the forces of the boom-bust cycle kept at 423 00:34:15.080 --> 00:34:17.360 bay. 424 00:34:17.360 --> 00:34:23.640 This is precisely why the administration is so anxious for a bailout of Asian economies. 425 00:34:23.640 --> 00:34:28.240 If they are put in the position of selling dollar-denominated assets, it could set off, 426 00:34:28.240 --> 00:34:32.720 they believe, a dollar repatriation that could wreak havoc on the U.S. stock market, on interest 427 00:34:32.720 --> 00:34:35.400 rates and on the price level. 428 00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:41.760 The happy days of today would be replaced by the inflationary recession of yesterday. 429 00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:45.080 How long can the administration keep this from happening? 430 00:34:45.080 --> 00:34:50.880 That depends in part on how compliant Congress is in funding perpetual bailouts of foreign 431 00:34:50.880 --> 00:34:53.100 regimes. 432 00:34:53.100 --> 00:34:59.360 There is one huge political indicator that this compliance is not at all assured. 433 00:34:59.360 --> 00:35:03.880 I'm speaking about what may be the most politically significant development in international 434 00:35:03.880 --> 00:35:09.720 economics in decades, the failure of the fast-track legislation. 435 00:35:09.720 --> 00:35:13.880 As with GATT a few years ago, the entire establishment predicted the end of the world economy as 436 00:35:13.880 --> 00:35:19.880 as we know it, if fast track failed, but glory be, it was defeated. 437 00:35:19.880 --> 00:35:24.460 For years, average businessmen bought the claims of the executive state that it was 438 00:35:24.460 --> 00:35:29.680 all that stood between world economic order and cataclysm. But Clinton has been robbed 439 00:35:29.680 --> 00:35:34.200 of the ability now to negotiate trade deals, and businessmen have resorted to doing what 440 00:35:34.200 --> 00:35:39.080 they should have been doing all along, namely negotiating deals themselves. 441 00:35:39.080 --> 00:35:44.680 The U.S. political elite has been attempting to construct a world government for the better 442 00:35:44.680 --> 00:35:51.000 part of this century, but progress towards this goal has been seriously hampered. The 443 00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:55.840 failure of Fast-Track in particular bodes ill for the future of this project. It appears 444 00:35:55.840 --> 00:36:02.760 that the U.S. political elite has forgotten the crucial insight of Hume, Mises and Rothbard, 445 00:36:02.760 --> 00:36:08.480 that the accumulation, expansion and centralization of power ultimately depends on the consent 446 00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:13.680 of the Governed. If the people withdraw their consent, the tiny minority running roughshod 447 00:36:13.680 --> 00:36:20.880 over the majority will quickly lose its authority, thus legitimacy, and thus power. If this is 448 00:36:20.880 --> 00:36:26.520 true on the domestic level, it is even more true on the international level. This is why 449 00:36:26.520 --> 00:36:31.880 the US political elites are so anxious to have the UN serve as a fig leaf. It's why 450 00:36:31.880 --> 00:36:38.600 Why the U.S. dares not go to war overseas without the consent of our so-called allies. 451 00:36:38.600 --> 00:36:44.160 Consent is necessary for the successful exercise of power. But at perhaps the most bullish 452 00:36:44.160 --> 00:36:48.680 sign for liberty on the international front, the would-be world government can no longer 453 00:36:48.680 --> 00:36:54.680 garner the necessary level of consent. At the same time, here at home, we've seen 454 00:36:54.680 --> 00:37:01.680 a marked decline in the amount of anti-capitalist invective. Even socialist ideologues are having 455 00:37:01.880 --> 00:37:20.880 The movements to empower so-called stakeholders, save endangered species, save Social Security, stop terrorism, help the children, achieve racial reconciliation, and all the rest are covers for power grabs. 456 00:37:20.880 --> 00:37:26.880 But rarely do you hear the leaders of these movements overtly attacking capitalism. 457 00:37:26.880 --> 00:37:33.080 The key to all our efforts must be to emphasize how these and all the other interventions 458 00:37:33.080 --> 00:37:38.240 are hindrances to economic production and violations of human liberty. 459 00:37:38.240 --> 00:37:39.760 How can the case be made? 460 00:37:39.760 --> 00:37:45.480 In these times of rampant suspicion of government, times when a political promise is worth less 461 00:37:45.480 --> 00:37:50.440 than an Indonesian rupiah, in such times as these there is nothing government could do 462 00:37:50.440 --> 00:38:05.600 This reality has generated an unprecedented hostility between the government and the people, 463 00:38:05.600 --> 00:38:10.680 surely the most significant political development since the end of the Cold War. 464 00:38:10.680 --> 00:38:15.440 In fact, this attitude has been steadily growing for the last quarter century, but in the last 465 00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:23.440 In the last few years we have seen a development in our political culture that truly signals the beginning of the end of power. 466 00:38:23.440 --> 00:38:31.440 For the first time in my lifetime, and I dare say for the first time in this century, the government has begun to fear the people. 467 00:38:31.440 --> 00:38:37.440 In Jefferson's vision of government, the people are self-governing and thus have nothing to fear. 468 00:38:37.440 --> 00:38:43.440 When government fears the people and people fear the government, it's proof that something has gone very wrong. 469 00:38:43.440 --> 00:38:48.080 The government has formed a force independent of society to Jefferson. It is at this point, 470 00:38:48.080 --> 00:38:57.080 he argued, that it is time for a revolution. Mises agreed with this view but improved it. 471 00:38:57.080 --> 00:39:01.380 He argued that as soon as the people find themselves oppressed by a state, they should 472 00:39:01.380 --> 00:39:06.560 be granted the right to slip away from its rule, not by overthrowing the old government 473 00:39:06.560 --> 00:39:12.620 but by seceding from its control. In practice, of course, this is precisely what the American 474 00:39:12.620 --> 00:39:15.660 and Revolutionaries Did. 475 00:39:15.660 --> 00:39:20.220 What Jefferson never imagined was that the American government could ever become as big 476 00:39:20.220 --> 00:39:25.460 and as monstrous as it is today and not face the threat of revolt. 477 00:39:25.460 --> 00:39:29.620 The means by which it was done was also unimaginable to Jefferson. 478 00:39:29.620 --> 00:39:34.520 The nuclear threat, total war, mass democracy, government management of the economy, the 479 00:39:34.520 --> 00:39:36.780 welfare state. 480 00:39:36.780 --> 00:39:40.360 But Mises did imagine such a thing because he lived through it. 481 00:39:40.360 --> 00:39:45.480 He saw the world engulfed by the evil of socialism and communism, and his own native land taken 482 00:39:45.480 --> 00:39:52.280 over by a nationalistic variety of collectivism. Unlike us today, he saw no light at the end 483 00:39:52.280 --> 00:40:00.240 of the tunnel. He saw only destruction everywhere he looked. Yet he opposed it at every step, 484 00:40:00.240 --> 00:40:01.240 nonetheless. 485 00:40:01.240 --> 00:40:05.120 Indeed, if you look at the great intellectuals who constructed that beautiful edifice called 486 00:40:05.120 --> 00:40:07.480 of the Austrian School of Economics. 487 00:40:07.480 --> 00:40:11.120 You can see that they all faced huge obstacles. 488 00:40:11.120 --> 00:40:13.200 Carl Menger, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk 489 00:40:13.200 --> 00:40:16.160 saw the classical liberal order of the 19th century 490 00:40:16.160 --> 00:40:18.640 collapse before their eyes. 491 00:40:18.640 --> 00:40:21.040 Mises, Repke and Hayek saw their homelands 492 00:40:21.040 --> 00:40:23.920 engulfed in national socialism. 493 00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:26.240 In the United States, Frank Feder and Henry Haslett 494 00:40:26.240 --> 00:40:29.040 watched as the New Deal and the World War 495 00:40:29.040 --> 00:40:31.600 smashed what was left of American liberty. 496 00:40:31.600 --> 00:40:34.800 And Murray Rothbard began his teaching career 497 00:40:34.800 --> 00:40:41.760 as the great society erected the redistributionist state on top of everything else. 498 00:40:41.760 --> 00:40:49.360 But these men upheld truth and hope as versus the ups and downs of the events of the day. 499 00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:55.440 In the long run, we will win this battle thanks to their heroic efforts. 500 00:40:55.440 --> 00:40:59.960 At the Mises Institute, everything we do centers on making the ideas of liberty come alive 501 00:40:59.960 --> 00:41:05.500 for Today's Students in Today's Times, not just to provide intellectual simulation, although 502 00:41:05.500 --> 00:41:11.440 that certainly is there. Our goal is to see that the liberty we all love prevails against 503 00:41:11.440 --> 00:41:18.080 the conspiracy of power. Our primary work is with students, the much-derided Generation 504 00:41:18.080 --> 00:41:24.900 X, so-called for its members' lack of moral direction and purpose. But there's another 505 00:41:24.900 --> 00:41:29.820 side to the story. We've been working with students for more than 15 years and never 506 00:41:29.820 --> 00:41:35.400 have so many been so smart, so intellectually hungry, so morally committed, so many fine 507 00:41:35.400 --> 00:41:41.180 young men and women come to our side seeking fresh approaches to social and economic issues. 508 00:41:41.180 --> 00:41:49.180 The university campus these days is usually constrained by PC taboos. We of course face 509 00:41:49.180 --> 00:41:54.580 no such restrictions on what we teach, on what our students read, on what our students 510 00:41:54.580 --> 00:41:55.580 Learn. 511 00:41:55.580 --> 00:42:01.500 And I'm pleased to announce that our graduates are now finding that they are sought out for 512 00:42:01.500 --> 00:42:07.420 their familiarity with and commitment to Austrian ideas and classical liberalism. 513 00:42:07.420 --> 00:42:12.180 They and their progress are a continuing source of inspiration to all of us. 514 00:42:12.180 --> 00:42:16.820 Let me mention a few other things that we have cooked up. 515 00:42:16.820 --> 00:42:21.860 In October, we're holding the first full-scale revisionist conference on the presidency itself, 516 00:42:21.860 --> 00:42:28.700 Applying the lessons we've learned under Clinton to many prior inhabitants of that office. 517 00:42:28.700 --> 00:42:33.060 You know those lists in which the academics rate the best and the worst presidents? 518 00:42:33.060 --> 00:42:35.580 We're producing a list too, I'll give you a hint. 519 00:42:35.580 --> 00:42:41.540 The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. 520 00:42:41.540 --> 00:42:45.300 But even before that historic conference, we have the wonderful Mises University, which 521 00:42:45.300 --> 00:42:49.020 cream of the crop students from around the country and the world come to study with the 522 00:42:49.020 --> 00:42:51.780 best Austrian faculty. 523 00:42:51.780 --> 00:42:57.780 And there's the Austrian Scholars Conference, founded as a direct hit on the Socialist Scholars Conference. 524 00:42:57.780 --> 00:43:01.780 Yes, there is such a thing, and it attracts about 2,000 people every year. 525 00:43:01.780 --> 00:43:04.780 We're not that big yet, but we have high hopes. 526 00:43:04.780 --> 00:43:06.780 We have two exciting book projects. 527 00:43:06.780 --> 00:43:15.780 The first is Fifteen Great Austrian Economists, in which our scholars tell the stories of the men and the ideas that built the Austrian School over the past 500 years. 528 00:43:15.780 --> 00:43:19.780 We expect it to be a permanent part of the core Freedom Library. 529 00:43:19.780 --> 00:43:24.280 And then we have Murray Rothbard's magnificent treatise, The Ethics of Liberty, 530 00:43:24.280 --> 00:43:29.780 appearing in cooperation with the Center for Libertarian Studies and New York University Press. 531 00:43:29.780 --> 00:43:36.780 First came out in 1982, but in a tiny printing and was neglected, very unjustly neglected. 532 00:43:36.780 --> 00:43:40.780 We feel sure that this revised edition with a brilliant introduction 533 00:43:40.780 --> 00:43:46.780 will be seen as the strongest possible case for the purely free society ever made. 534 00:43:46.780 --> 00:43:51.380 In addition, this is the first year of the quarterly journal of Austrian Economics published 535 00:43:51.380 --> 00:43:56.060 in cooperation with Transaction Press of Rutgers University. 536 00:43:56.060 --> 00:44:00.580 And of course, our widely influential publications like The Free Market, The Mises Review, Austrian 537 00:44:00.580 --> 00:44:05.220 Economics Newsletter, all make the precise difference in the world of ideas that we intend 538 00:44:05.220 --> 00:44:07.220 them to. 539 00:44:07.220 --> 00:44:10.660 Also this year, the Institute is finishing a permanent home for Liberty that will house 540 00:44:10.660 --> 00:44:14.180 the Rothbard Collection for visiting scholars from around the world. 541 00:44:14.180 --> 00:44:20.440 We have plenty of space to hold our seminars in political economy and much, much more. 542 00:44:20.440 --> 00:44:25.780 We have a two-volume Mises biography in process, first ever. 543 00:44:25.780 --> 00:44:30.860 We're producing a scholars edition of Human Action, the original 1949 edition considered 544 00:44:30.860 --> 00:44:35.620 to be the best and most definitive edition for reasons the editors will explain in their 545 00:44:35.620 --> 00:44:37.900 introduction. 546 00:44:37.900 --> 00:44:44.580 While other books are in progress on money, fed, welfare state, transaction publishers 547 00:44:44.580 --> 00:44:49.680 will soon be releasing our path-breaking defense of the right of secession. 548 00:44:49.680 --> 00:44:54.020 All this is in addition to our flourishing op-ed program, our films on economics, our 549 00:44:54.020 --> 00:44:59.500 scholarships for graduate students, our distribution of Austrian books and research materials throughout 550 00:44:59.500 --> 00:45:01.620 the world. 551 00:45:01.620 --> 00:45:05.420 We do it all with no connections in high places. 552 00:45:05.420 --> 00:45:11.380 James Mann won't soon be speaking from this podium, but we have something far more valuable. 553 00:45:11.380 --> 00:45:17.020 We have your support, and we have the memory and the spirit of Mises and Rothbard, which 554 00:45:17.020 --> 00:45:20.360 are always in our minds and in our hearts. 555 00:45:20.360 --> 00:45:24.740 We constantly remember that they fought with all their might at times when liberty seemed 556 00:45:24.740 --> 00:45:29.340 a much more remote prospect than it does today. 557 00:45:29.340 --> 00:45:33.500 Don't we have the responsibility to complete their work, to see to it that they didn't 558 00:45:33.500 --> 00:45:38.420 Human makes such huge sacrifices in vain to make their dream a reality, and indeed we 559 00:45:38.420 --> 00:45:41.180 do feel we have that responsibility. 560 00:45:41.180 --> 00:45:45.020 But there is an even greater reason to fight on behalf of freedom. 561 00:45:45.020 --> 00:45:51.680 It is because freedom is what is best for our families, for ourselves, for future generations, 562 00:45:51.680 --> 00:45:58.380 because it is right, because it is true, because it is the key to saving civilization itself. 563 00:45:58.380 --> 00:46:01.240 Like you, we care intensely about the future. 564 00:46:01.240 --> 00:46:05.740 We understand that the real course of history is determined more by intellectual forces than 565 00:46:05.740 --> 00:46:11.760 any other. For all of us here this weekend working for the defeat of power and its replacement 566 00:46:11.760 --> 00:46:18.680 by liberty, sweet liberty from the tyrannous governments and monstrous ideologies of this 567 00:46:18.680 --> 00:46:24.760 bloody century offers its own rewards. But no reward will be so great as that we will 568 00:46:24.760 --> 00:46:30.040 enjoy on the precious day and perhaps the not too distant future when we can say that 569 00:46:30.040 --> 00:46:31.040 that we have won.