WEBVTT NOTE A Future of Liberty 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.660 Ladies and gentlemen, the Leviathan state, that monster devouring civilization in this 2 00:00:05.660 --> 00:00:12.660 century, is in the throes of death. This is not a wish, it's not a prediction, but a conclusion 3 00:00:13.360 --> 00:00:18.700 drawn from a broad look at the trends of the last decade and a half, which, if we take 4 00:00:18.700 --> 00:00:25.000 the right steps, can be continued into the next century. The direction of history can 5 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:31.000 can be obscure in times like these. We've become accustomed to a fast pace of change, 6 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:37.400 to the growth of skepticism towards government, as if these were normal features of life. 7 00:00:37.400 --> 00:00:42.840 So it's useful to take a step back, the better to see the overall picture. That's been the 8 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:46.940 perspective of this conference, and in my few minutes I want to compare our present 9 00:00:46.940 --> 00:00:51.760 situation to 50 years ago and to 50 years in the future. 10 00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:59.760 In 1947, Keynesian economic theory was just coming into its own after the most costly war in human history. 11 00:00:59.760 --> 00:01:08.760 It had been a decade since the height of the New Deal, which was the central plan managing our country for years and making a terrible mess of it. 12 00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:16.760 Why should the Russians have all the fun of remaking a world? asked New Dealer Stuart Chase in 1932. 13 00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:20.760 And by 1947, everyone important seemed to agree. 14 00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:29.760 After the war, there were murmurings of political dissent, but they were quickly crushed by a new national project, namely winning the Cold War, 15 00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:35.760 an enterprise that cost trillions of dollars and four decades of public attention. 16 00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:43.760 Fifty years ago, the political establishment, consisting of northeastern elites and led by the self-named wise men, was at its height. 17 00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:48.760 Every important intellectual knew that the central planning was our future. 18 00:01:48.760 --> 00:01:51.760 Most aspired to run the central plan. 19 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:56.760 The creation of the full-blown entitlement state was still two decades away, 20 00:01:56.760 --> 00:02:00.760 but even this early it was seen as an inevitability. 21 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:04.760 Social scientists were designing the order of the future. 22 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:10.760 The age of the managerial class of scientific and public-spirited bureaucrats had been born. 23 00:02:10.760 --> 00:02:20.760 We had fought a war against militarism, imperialism and national regimentation only to fasten these same ideas ever more tightly on America. 24 00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:28.760 Internationally, the foundational apparatus for a world state was being constructed by all the top minds in Britain and the U.S. 25 00:02:28.760 --> 00:02:33.760 World resources would be apportioned according to need on the model of the Marshall Plan. 26 00:02:33.760 --> 00:02:37.760 There would be a World Central Bank issuing a world currency. 27 00:02:37.760 --> 00:02:43.460 Agency. There would be a global trade agency managing the flow of goods and services. Everybody 28 00:02:43.460 --> 00:02:49.440 important was behind Bretton Woods, a new deal for the Western world. The United Nations 29 00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:55.620 would manage large issues like war and peace and smaller issues like labor relations. As 30 00:02:55.620 --> 00:03:02.120 for the media, they were kept and cartelized, reporting just what they were told to report. 31 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:05.960 The media had dutifully handed down press releases from the War Department and the White 32 00:03:05.960 --> 00:03:11.760 House for many years. They won Nobel prizes for covering up the crimes of totalitarian 33 00:03:11.760 --> 00:03:18.320 murderers. By 1947, the media had become accustomed to their role as the fourth branch of government 34 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:23.520 and thought this constituted journalistic integrity. As for public opinion, people resented 35 00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:29.200 the intrusions of government as they always have, but they considered the larger framework. 36 00:03:29.200 --> 00:03:34.660 In a year, we would be locked in a life and death struggle with the USSR, which only yesterday 37 00:03:34.660 --> 00:03:40.860 They had been our gallant ally. In the post-war world, you never knew who your friends were 38 00:03:40.860 --> 00:03:45.900 or your enemies unless the government told you. This much we were clear. This much was 39 00:03:45.900 --> 00:03:50.500 clear we were told. If the good guys were going to win, it could only be through the 40 00:03:50.500 --> 00:03:56.380 power of government. And so we pitted one totalitarian bureaucracy against another and 41 00:03:56.380 --> 00:04:03.100 put the longing for freedom on hold. Meanwhile, the domestic state grew even larger. By the 42 00:04:03.100 --> 00:04:07.860 In the mid-50s, our ideological choices had been made for us. You could be a liberal like 43 00:04:07.860 --> 00:04:14.140 John Kenneth Galbraith and believe in the welfare-warfare state. Or you could be a conservative 44 00:04:14.140 --> 00:04:20.140 like William F. Buckley and believe in the welfare-warfare state. Or you could join Arthur 45 00:04:20.140 --> 00:04:26.780 Schlesinger Jr. in the vital center between these two extremes. 46 00:04:26.780 --> 00:04:31.900 The rest of us, of course, had plenty to be outraged about, but who were we to complain? 47 00:04:31.900 --> 00:04:36.780 We had seen the awesome power of government at work in the war and its mass destruction. 48 00:04:36.780 --> 00:04:42.140 Besides, in peacetime, government was the motive force behind spectacular accomplishments 49 00:04:42.140 --> 00:04:47.540 like federal highways. In the academy, the old order had been overthrown and the government 50 00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:52.900 was in charge, thanks to the GI Bill. The intellectuals who still believed in classical 51 00:04:52.900 --> 00:04:58.920 liberalism and like Mises and Hayek had been relegated to the ghettos of academic life. 52 00:04:58.920 --> 00:05:04.920 If people knew who they were or cared what they said it was only to display them as Neanderthals. 53 00:05:04.920 --> 00:05:07.560 In time we would have wars within wars. 54 00:05:07.560 --> 00:05:13.680 The Cold War required that we win Korea, Lebanon, Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Congo, 55 00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:18.500 Vietnam and a series of other skirmishers whose drama was somewhat enhanced by the prospect 56 00:05:18.500 --> 00:05:21.220 of global nuclear annihilation. 57 00:05:21.220 --> 00:05:25.440 We had to win the race to space and at taxpayer expense. 58 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:29.440 We had to win the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on discrimination, 59 00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:35.440 the war on drugs, the war on voter apathy, all waged at taxpayer expense and all to the 60 00:05:35.440 --> 00:05:39.400 benefit of government and the detriment of our freedoms. 61 00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:44.040 These days we tend to look back affectionately at the 1950s, but in truth it was an age of 62 00:05:44.040 --> 00:05:46.000 allegiance to power. 63 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:51.800 The civil religion invented to unify the federal states for the invasion of the South and developed 64 00:05:51.800 --> 00:05:58.660 to unify the nation for the invasion of Europe in World War I had come to dominate real religion. 65 00:05:58.660 --> 00:06:03.000 Then in the late 1960s, a generation took upon itself the task of dismantling what was 66 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:08.400 left of the traditional structures of family and faith and private life. 67 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:12.920 Freedom of association and freedom of contract were declared dead. 68 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:15.060 Property rights were doled out by government. 69 00:06:15.060 --> 00:06:18.960 In the end, all that seemed permanent was the ruling class. 70 00:06:18.960 --> 00:06:23.680 There wasn't much hope for us, it was widely believed, but if there was any, who doubted 71 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:26.880 that it was the gift of almighty government? 72 00:06:26.880 --> 00:06:31.920 These sentiments were confirmed as the state grew, as public faith in government grew, 73 00:06:31.920 --> 00:06:37.260 and as the ideological forces behind statism found ever-new justifications for interference 74 00:06:37.260 --> 00:06:38.260 in our lives. 75 00:06:38.260 --> 00:06:45.680 But in the late 1980s, all this began to change, slowly and then at the lightning speed that 76 00:06:45.680 --> 00:06:50.600 continues to this day. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the way had been 77 00:06:50.600 --> 00:06:55.840 paved by crucial events in the 1970s, as Murray Rothbard was the first to point out at the 78 00:06:55.840 --> 00:07:02.160 time. The great monetary order designed in the aftermath of the Second World War unraveled 79 00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:08.840 exactly as Henry Hazlitt had said it would, leading to a debilitating and confiscatory 80 00:07:08.840 --> 00:07:13.960 inflation. Government mismanaged the economy on a scale we had not seen since the Great 81 00:07:13.960 --> 00:07:19.860 Depression. But the effects were contrary to everything Keynesian theory had predicted. 82 00:07:19.860 --> 00:07:25.180 Political corruption, real and imagined, became a mainstay of presidential politics. The war 83 00:07:25.180 --> 00:07:31.600 on poverty and most every other war the government embarked on failed to live up to its promises. 84 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:36.720 The backlash had begun, but not without a series of diversions. In retrospect, it's 85 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:41.520 easy to see that the three great leaders of the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan 86 00:07:41.520 --> 00:07:47.680 and Mikhail Gorbachev were transitional figures. They did as much to advance the reconfiguration 87 00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:53.640 of our political loyalties as they did to forestall that reconfiguration. Indeed there's a close 88 00:07:53.640 --> 00:07:57.920 analogy among these leaders and their place in the history of our century. They were the 89 00:07:57.920 --> 00:08:02.600 last of the great statesmen astriding the world as living embodiments of the national 90 00:08:02.600 --> 00:08:07.880 or even international soul. Their public legitimacy depended on their claims to be fighting the 91 00:08:07.880 --> 00:08:15.880 and the corruptions of the past, while their power and status depended on the continuation of an inherently corrupt system. 92 00:08:15.880 --> 00:08:19.880 Indeed, all three were products of the system they were presuming to reform. 93 00:08:19.880 --> 00:08:25.880 They didn't succeed in battling the post-war establishment and indeed they worked towards shoring it up. 94 00:08:25.880 --> 00:08:31.880 But they nonetheless increased the public desire for the very reforms they claimed to be bringing about. 95 00:08:31.880 --> 00:08:36.880 Their long-run effect was in convincing the public of their rhetorical ideals, 96 00:08:36.880 --> 00:08:45.580 And even deeper contradiction lay at the heart of all three regimes. Despite protest to the 97 00:08:45.580 --> 00:08:50.200 contrary, they all believed in some variant of the central evil of the century, the welfare 98 00:08:50.200 --> 00:08:56.640 warfare state, a fact which is easily demonstrated by even a casual reading of their speeches. 99 00:08:56.640 --> 00:09:00.320 They could not imagine a world fundamentally different from the one that had dominated 100 00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:08.360 the scene since 1947. A world of superpowers, diplomats, foreign policy strategists, centrally 101 00:09:08.360 --> 00:09:13.840 managed industrial economies and big events on the world stage. In short, a world where 102 00:09:13.840 --> 00:09:18.720 the National Socialist Principle prevailed. Nations were collectivized and embodied in 103 00:09:18.720 --> 00:09:23.720 their heads of state. Thatcher, Reagan and Gorbachev were praised for their vision, but 104 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:28.600 their vision did not include a world that could somehow manage without important statesmen 105 00:09:28.600 --> 00:09:34.720 such as themselves. They could not imagine nor did they desire social systems not organized 106 00:09:34.720 --> 00:09:40.360 on the principles of leadership and centralization. They could not foresee the kinds of societies 107 00:09:40.360 --> 00:09:46.160 now being created by default, depoliticized societies that no longer desire mega-leaders 108 00:09:46.160 --> 00:09:51.560 on the Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbachev model. Societies where government and political leaders 109 00:09:51.560 --> 00:09:56.960 indeed are widely seen as menaces to social peace and prosperity. Indeed Thatcher who 110 00:09:56.960 --> 00:10:05.960 who ultimately fell from power for drastically raising taxes has more recently become the United Kingdom's fiercest critic of the decentralization of the British government. 111 00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:13.960 In retrospect, we can see that the really important forces for social change in the last five decades were not politicians. 112 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:19.960 They were not mainstream intellectuals. They were not public servants working in the permanent bureaucracy. 113 00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:25.400 The really important figures behind social change were a very small band of intellectuals 114 00:10:25.400 --> 00:10:29.960 who were never taken in by the claims that central planning would last forever. 115 00:10:29.960 --> 00:10:34.080 They continued to challenge the system of social and economic management at its very 116 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:35.320 root. 117 00:10:35.320 --> 00:10:39.520 They are the most important thinkers of our century, the Austrian School economists, who 118 00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:43.980 dared to repudiate and denounce the statism of their time and to reconstruct the social 119 00:10:43.980 --> 00:10:47.940 theory of freedom for our time and all time. 120 00:10:47.940 --> 00:10:50.420 But they paid a heavy price. 121 00:10:50.420 --> 00:10:55.180 Ludwig von Mises, once Europe's most important monetary economist, was uprooted by the tragic 122 00:10:55.180 --> 00:11:01.140 events of the 1930s and eventually relegated to an unpaid post at New York University where 123 00:11:01.140 --> 00:11:05.740 he taught a small group of friends and admirers in a basement classroom. 124 00:11:05.740 --> 00:11:10.620 If Hayek did better, he went to the University of Chicago, but was not allowed to teach in 125 00:11:10.620 --> 00:11:17.360 the economics department, as if to say that no real economist could oppose central planning. 126 00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:23.020 When Murray and Rothbard entered graduate school and eventually came upon Mises's Human Action, 127 00:11:23.020 --> 00:11:27.640 he chose the pursuit of truth above the path to professional prominence. 128 00:11:27.640 --> 00:11:32.460 The author of world-historic works on economics, he was rewarded with an ill-paid job at a 129 00:11:32.460 --> 00:11:37.080 trade school in Brooklyn with a windowless office the size of a coat room for the first 130 00:11:37.080 --> 00:11:39.480 twenty years of his academic life. 131 00:11:39.480 --> 00:11:43.360 But it was a choice he made consciously and indeed joyously. 132 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:47.880 He chose the path of long-term change over short-term benefit. 133 00:11:47.880 --> 00:11:51.320 As the Keynesian model began to break down in the 1970s, 134 00:11:51.320 --> 00:11:54.440 the writings of these men began to receive some attention. 135 00:11:54.440 --> 00:11:56.160 But for the most part, they and their followers 136 00:11:56.160 --> 00:11:58.160 remained outsiders and renegades, 137 00:11:58.160 --> 00:12:00.280 condemned because they refused to believe 138 00:12:00.280 --> 00:12:02.120 in a government-run society. 139 00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:05.880 It was the unworkability of central planning and socialism 140 00:12:05.880 --> 00:12:07.560 that led to their collapse. 141 00:12:07.560 --> 00:12:09.440 It was the ideas of the Austrians 142 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:11.720 that allowed us to make sense of these developments 143 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:14.280 and Point the Way Towards the Future. 144 00:12:14.280 --> 00:12:16.840 And what a future it is. 145 00:12:16.840 --> 00:12:18.480 We are now living through a time 146 00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:20.640 when people's traditional political allegiances 147 00:12:20.640 --> 00:12:22.960 are being radically transformed. 148 00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:25.680 Americans are learning to love the stateless, 149 00:12:25.680 --> 00:12:29.240 trust the stateless, depend on the stateless. 150 00:12:29.240 --> 00:12:31.440 They are turning to tangible relationships 151 00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:33.280 and repudiating the lie that the state 152 00:12:33.280 --> 00:12:36.420 is an appropriate substitute for the ties of family, 153 00:12:36.420 --> 00:12:39.580 religion, commerce and community. 154 00:12:39.580 --> 00:12:43.660 It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the end of the Cold War has had on the 155 00:12:43.660 --> 00:12:49.240 public perception of government. No longer is government what stands between us and being 156 00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:55.980 vaporized by a foreign foe. It is no longer seen as our defender or the key to our security. 157 00:12:55.980 --> 00:13:00.680 The power elite no longer has a trump card, it can pull out to say, you might not like 158 00:13:00.680 --> 00:13:06.480 the power we have, but look what we are protecting you from. The Cold War had become the bottom 159 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:10.920 Online Justification of the Federal Imperium, and though people debate about who should 160 00:13:10.920 --> 00:13:17.180 get credit for ending it, in truth no member of the ruling class saw its end. The crumbling 161 00:13:17.180 --> 00:13:21.900 of the old balance of power was a consequence of forces outside the control of the world 162 00:13:21.900 --> 00:13:28.780 managers. It was the beginning of the end of the old order of geopolitical central planning. 163 00:13:28.780 --> 00:13:33.700 Today we live in radically different times. The Gulf War was supposed to set a precedent 164 00:13:33.700 --> 00:13:40.420 for the US to Become the Perpetual World Policeman, but it may in fact be the last large-scale 165 00:13:40.420 --> 00:13:47.460 military operation in our lifetimes. Public resistance to foreign wars is higher now than 166 00:13:47.460 --> 00:13:53.900 in any time since after World War I. And consider this, all Poles show that government jobs 167 00:13:53.900 --> 00:14:00.140 carry with them extremely low social status. Today the most ambitious students do not aspire 168 00:14:00.140 --> 00:14:28.140 These positions are no longer something to aspire to, but something people accept after foregoing the fast lane of corporate life or the risks of entrepreneurship. 169 00:14:28.140 --> 00:14:32.700 It is hard to overestimate the significance of this trend. When the younger generation 170 00:14:32.700 --> 00:14:38.660 sees government as a haven for dregs and losers, we have taken the first crucial step towards 171 00:14:38.660 --> 00:14:44.420 changing the very structure of society. In my lifetime, there was no more watched event 172 00:14:44.420 --> 00:14:49.080 than a presidential news conference. Now the president can't find a network willing to 173 00:14:49.080 --> 00:14:55.180 carry one. In my lifetime, when Senator so-and-so visited the Rotary Club or held a town meeting, 174 00:14:55.180 --> 00:15:01.180 It was a big deal and attended by one and all, and his remarks were always featured on the cover of the local press. 175 00:15:01.180 --> 00:15:07.180 Nowadays, town meetings tend to be dominated by people who make demands Senator so-and-so hasn't been briefed on, 176 00:15:07.180 --> 00:15:12.180 like why the justice environment isn't persecuting the Waco murderers 177 00:15:12.180 --> 00:15:17.180 or investigating the claims that TWA Flight 800 was downed by friendly fire. 178 00:15:17.180 --> 00:15:25.180 Old-time congressional aides who have flitted from office to office for three decades express astonishment and frustration. 179 00:15:25.180 --> 00:15:33.180 Constituents are willing to believe government capable of any villainy, and they're unwilling to accept assurances to the contrary. 180 00:15:33.180 --> 00:15:39.180 These days, senators look forward to the banquets and conferences of beltway think tanks so they can get a sympathetic hearing. 181 00:15:39.180 --> 00:15:47.180 This turn of events is potentially lethal for the democratic socialist project, which requires our loyalty and confidence above all. 182 00:15:47.180 --> 00:15:55.180 As Hume and Mises and Rothbard argued, no government, no matter how tyrannical, can survive if the people withdraw their consent. 183 00:15:55.180 --> 00:16:02.180 And consent depends on trust. That's why the partisans of government power are so anxious to shore up that public trust. 184 00:16:02.180 --> 00:16:07.180 Much of what goes on in Washington these days is designed to do exactly that. 185 00:16:07.180 --> 00:16:13.180 This is the real impetus between the astounding tax abuse hearings on Capitol Hill. 186 00:16:13.180 --> 00:16:18.180 Don't think for a minute that this was the leaders' first choice in what to do with their time. 187 00:16:18.180 --> 00:16:23.180 Their internal polling shows that respect for Congress and the leadership is near zero 188 00:16:23.180 --> 00:16:28.180 after both the 104th and 105th Congresses failed to achieve their stated goals 189 00:16:28.180 --> 00:16:33.180 and indeed betrayed their own principles with a series of egregious tax and spending increases. 190 00:16:33.180 --> 00:16:36.180 Midterm elections are just around the corner. 191 00:16:36.180 --> 00:16:42.680 All political analysts predict lower turnouts than we've ever seen, perhaps the lowest in American history. 192 00:16:42.680 --> 00:16:46.680 What happens if the government holds an election and nobody comes? 193 00:16:50.180 --> 00:16:58.180 Rather than risk finding out, these hearings are designed to shore up interest and support on an issue that is extremely important to every taxpayer. 194 00:16:58.180 --> 00:17:02.680 And make no mistake, there are consequences to hearings like this. 195 00:17:02.680 --> 00:17:08.680 The tax collection agency is the teeth of Leviathan, just as the central bank is its lifeblood. 196 00:17:08.680 --> 00:17:14.680 Undermine the authority of the official confiscators, and society is that much less governable. 197 00:17:14.680 --> 00:17:19.680 Just as the largest and most powerful central governments in human history were not built up all at once, 198 00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:24.680 they are being torn down bit by bit, frequently in ways that surprise. 199 00:17:24.680 --> 00:17:29.680 But let's remember that the path towards dissolution is different in every political context. 200 00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:36.680 In Romania, it happened in one sweep of mass emotion and the bullets that ripped through Nikolai Ceausescu's chest. 201 00:17:36.680 --> 00:17:43.680 In the Soviet Union, the empire became financially unviable and politically unworkable, toppling like a house of cards. 202 00:17:43.680 --> 00:17:52.680 In China, we see a rare case of a top-down reform instigated by an elite that has lost faith in the old rationale for its power. 203 00:17:52.680 --> 00:17:56.680 In Chile, the reform was undertaken by a military dictator. 204 00:17:56.680 --> 00:18:03.080 in Singapore by an undemocratic ruling family, in Hong Kong by colonial officials, 205 00:18:03.080 --> 00:18:12.920 in New Zealand the reform has been led by labor governments, same is true in Britain where Tony Blair calls for a virtual dissolution of the old United Kingdom. 206 00:18:12.920 --> 00:18:23.480 In our own country we see the fall of power in a different form, the dramatic decline of the presidency itself, which means the decline of the executive state and all its works. 207 00:18:23.480 --> 00:18:30.480 We feel a tinge of embarrassment when we realize that the sitting president is better known for his peccadilloes than his policies. 208 00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:34.480 Personally, I can't imagine a better situation. 209 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:37.480 We don't need to bring back the Fuhrer principle. 210 00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:46.480 The logic of dissolution requires that we lose faith in political leaders before we can regain faith in our own ability to solve our own problems. 211 00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:51.480 I pledge allegiance, begins the oath of fealty to government power. 212 00:18:51.480 --> 00:19:08.480 But the American founders did not write this oath. Indeed, men like Jefferson or Mason or Randolph would have winced adhering school children made to recite the civic prayer of a socialist minister, by which we swear never to break up the consolidated central state established not by the framers, but by Lincoln. 213 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:19.480 True American patriotism is of a very different sort. It is rooted in love of freedom and in rebellion against those who would encroach on our natural right to freedom. 214 00:19:19.480 --> 00:19:26.480 True American patriotism is rooted in the conviction that this is and must always be the sweet land of liberty. 215 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:32.480 A land whose freedom is rooted in law and whose law is rooted in the inalterable nature of man. 216 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:38.480 Our foundational loyalties must always be to the institutions our natural instincts tell us are important. 217 00:19:38.480 --> 00:19:41.480 Not social workers, but families. 218 00:19:41.480 --> 00:19:44.480 Not federal projects, but civic associations. 219 00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:48.480 Not government bureaucracies, but commercial relationships. 220 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:52.480 Not NATO or the UN, but the land of the free. 221 00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:56.480 Yet the ruling class declares this true patriotism to be traitorous, 222 00:19:56.480 --> 00:20:00.480 and crowns as patriots the actual traitors to our heritage. 223 00:20:00.480 --> 00:20:05.480 This is just one of the reasons they're being relegated to the margins of real history, 224 00:20:05.480 --> 00:20:08.480 which is increasingly not the history of government officials, 225 00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:12.480 but the actions of people willing to challenge their pretensions to power. 226 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:17.480 Let's fast forward 50 years and imagine the story that will be told about our own times. 227 00:20:17.480 --> 00:20:23.840 Times. Will it be about the Weld-Helms dispute over who's going to be ambassador to Mexico? 228 00:20:23.840 --> 00:20:29.080 Will it be about which party's plan for national education reform prevails? Far from it. The 229 00:20:29.080 --> 00:20:34.160 policy elites of today will be named in the footnotes if they are named at all. 230 00:20:34.160 --> 00:20:39.240 The truly significant people of our times do not exist within the government milieu. 231 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:43.840 They have names like Bill Gates and Mother Teresa, a capitalist and a humanitarian, seem 232 00:20:43.840 --> 00:20:49.800 seem to be doing great work outside of politics and therefore untainted by its corruptions. 233 00:20:49.800 --> 00:20:55.080 The ruling class is finding itself with fewer admirers without the proteges of old who aspired 234 00:20:55.080 --> 00:20:57.080 to join its ranks. 235 00:20:57.080 --> 00:21:03.320 What trends will the historians of the year 2047 say dominated our times? 236 00:21:03.320 --> 00:21:07.400 First as Murray Rothbard noted, the nation state is decomposing into smaller units of 237 00:21:07.400 --> 00:21:08.400 government. 238 00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:13.480 The example of the Soviet Union comes to first to mind, but we also see the logic of devolution 239 00:21:13.480 --> 00:21:18.860 applying itself in the most unlikely places. In Italy, in the United Kingdom and right 240 00:21:18.860 --> 00:21:23.860 here at home, artificial unions are under strain and historic loyalties are reasserting 241 00:21:23.860 --> 00:21:30.920 themselves much to the shock of world planners. In 1919, Ludwig von Mises said that the idea 242 00:21:30.920 --> 00:21:36.960 of secession could make democracy pro-liberty. He proposed as a restraint on government that 243 00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:42.020 no people, nor any part of a people, shall be held in a political association it does 244 00:21:42.020 --> 00:21:47.620 does not want. Absurd, everyone said, but today we see more and more that the principle 245 00:21:47.620 --> 00:21:54.540 of voluntary association is tenable and just. The second trend is this. The market economy 246 00:21:54.540 --> 00:22:00.440 is overrunning the dictates of central planners. This has created a vast and complex international 247 00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:05.940 structure of mutual benefit that operates largely outside government purview. It has 248 00:22:05.940 --> 00:22:10.700 accomplished technological feats no one could have imagined 15 years ago and done so in 249 00:22:10.700 --> 00:22:14.700 and the industries that are least regulated by government. 250 00:22:14.700 --> 00:22:18.700 Innovation and entrepreneurship proceed at a pace that baffles the regulators. 251 00:22:18.700 --> 00:22:22.700 Even the likes of Ira Magazina is forced to concede this, 252 00:22:22.700 --> 00:22:26.700 as he did recently with regard to regulation of the Internet. 253 00:22:26.700 --> 00:22:30.700 In the United States, if enterprise is to be called free anymore, 254 00:22:30.700 --> 00:22:34.700 it's not because government lacks the will to strangle it. 255 00:22:34.700 --> 00:22:38.700 It is due to the enormous ability of market forces to outwit government time and again. 256 00:22:38.700 --> 00:22:46.700 The growth of high-tech industries in particular has made the subversive act of evading government far less costly and far less risky. 257 00:22:46.700 --> 00:22:53.700 Thanks to increased speed of access, we no longer have to depend on official institutions for information. 258 00:22:53.700 --> 00:22:58.700 The claims of government can be checked against other sources and by practically anyone. 259 00:22:58.700 --> 00:23:04.700 The most promising sectors of the economy are those that, for all practical purposes, exist in a state of anarchy. 260 00:23:04.700 --> 00:23:14.700 Consider the rise of all private communities, private courts and arbitration system, the homeschooling movement, and the large and growing microprocessor-related industries. 261 00:23:14.700 --> 00:23:22.700 They are wrecking havoc on the political elites. They are causing us to rethink all our assumptions about government and the private sector. 262 00:23:22.700 --> 00:23:29.700 This is precisely the opposite of what centuries of celebrated intellectuals had hoped and worked for. 263 00:23:29.700 --> 00:23:44.700 They sought to abolish economic law and the market economy, to circumscribe private life, to scrap family and tradition, to overthrow the natural elites, to install a world state and to transform human nature at its core. 264 00:23:44.700 --> 00:23:51.700 Indeed that last point was the crucial link to all the rest. But human nature is not to be outdone. 265 00:23:51.700 --> 00:23:58.620 One, it will always triumph and bury its undertakers, just as economic law continually reasserts 266 00:23:58.620 --> 00:24:03.500 itself against the designs of those who would repeal it, just as core loyalties that stem 267 00:24:03.500 --> 00:24:09.260 from human contact and contract will supersede the artificial allegiances manufactured by 268 00:24:09.260 --> 00:24:15.300 that ultimate artifice, the omnipotent state. Leviathan is crumbling because its traditional 269 00:24:15.300 --> 00:24:21.200 ideological infrastructure no longer compels public confidence. That is why on a daily 270 00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:26.200 On a daily basis, we see ever more excuses being manufactured to bolster its credentials. 271 00:24:26.200 --> 00:24:30.200 We can tick them off as easily as we can read the daily newspaper. 272 00:24:30.200 --> 00:24:48.200 Global warming, killer hamburgers, kids without health care, the education crisis, the gap between rich and poor, discrimination, teen smoking, terrorism, the shortage of affordable housing, and on it goes ad infinitum ad ad nauseam. 273 00:24:48.200 --> 00:24:57.700 Each of these pretenses for a power grab must be exposed and battled, even the ones that are so manifestly absurd as to deserve no comment whatsoever. 274 00:24:57.700 --> 00:25:06.700 Many of them will be the basis for new laws, no doubt, and these new laws will create new victims to add to the multitudes of old victims of government. 275 00:25:06.700 --> 00:25:14.700 These laws will also generate new and unexpected failures to add to the endless litany of government disaster that chronicles our century. 276 00:25:14.700 --> 00:25:21.700 In turn, it is our job to point to these victims and failures and provide the rationale for explaining cause and effect. 277 00:25:21.700 --> 00:25:29.700 If these visible signs of Leviathan's grip are everywhere, what will be the precise mechanism for loosening that grip? 278 00:25:29.700 --> 00:25:34.700 It's impossible to know, but we can know what will bring it about. 279 00:25:34.700 --> 00:25:40.700 The ideas that people hold about themselves and their relationship to the world around them. 280 00:25:40.700 --> 00:25:46.700 There's no point in pretending that social change can occur without intellectuals. 281 00:25:46.700 --> 00:25:48.700 It's a reality we cannot escape. 282 00:25:48.700 --> 00:25:53.700 Keynes knew it, and so did Marx to the world's detriment. 283 00:25:53.700 --> 00:26:00.700 Mises and Rothbard understood that if we surrender in the world of ideas, we've given up the entire battle. 284 00:26:00.700 --> 00:26:05.700 In 15 years of running the Mises Institute, I hear the same critiques of our work again and again. 285 00:26:05.700 --> 00:26:12.700 We're told that our heads are in the clouds and we toy the way only to have our ideas buried in library stacks. 286 00:26:12.700 --> 00:26:20.700 But we must meet the enemy on its own ground, which means the upper reaches of the academy where ideas are born and shaped and reshaped. 287 00:26:20.700 --> 00:26:25.700 Citizen organizations are great, but they are not enough. 288 00:26:25.700 --> 00:26:33.700 Doing the hard work of liberty requires the defenders of free markets be able to assume what Murray Rothbard called the mantle of science. 289 00:26:33.700 --> 00:26:42.700 For the same reason, the vast majority of Institute resources go towards students, though some think we should be spending that money on lobbying in the belt way. 290 00:26:42.700 --> 00:26:50.700 But long-term change requires that good ideas influence every new generation of thinkers, not just the recent crop of politicos. 291 00:26:50.700 --> 00:26:58.700 We make no apologies for investing in education as our first priority. Every great body of ideas is the history of student-teacher relationships. 292 00:26:58.700 --> 00:27:04.380 In the Austrian School, as any other, if these bonds were ever severed for lack of institutional 293 00:27:04.380 --> 00:27:08.780 support, the body of ideas would lose its life. 294 00:27:08.780 --> 00:27:14.460 Paradoxically, we're also told that our work is too accessible, but we make no apology 295 00:27:14.460 --> 00:27:18.220 for seeking to make economics interesting and understandable to people in all walks 296 00:27:18.220 --> 00:27:19.220 of life. 297 00:27:19.220 --> 00:27:22.460 Mises and Rothbard are our guides here as elsewhere. 298 00:27:22.460 --> 00:27:28.260 They wrote great treatises on economics, published in tiny popular publications, and spoke in 299 00:27:28.260 --> 00:27:32.260 in front of any group that was curious to hear what they had to say. 300 00:27:32.260 --> 00:27:37.260 Economics in particular, Mises said, is the proper subject of study for every person. 301 00:27:37.260 --> 00:27:43.260 So at the Mises Institute, we seek to create a seamless web between academia and popular culture 302 00:27:43.260 --> 00:27:47.260 so as to influence the future in every way possible. 303 00:27:47.260 --> 00:27:51.260 Another criticism I hear frequently, we take too radical a stance. 304 00:27:51.260 --> 00:27:57.260 But we make no apology for our desire to bring about social change rather than to merely fit in. 305 00:27:57.260 --> 00:28:04.260 If it were our desire to seek status as an end in itself, we would approach matters very differently. 306 00:28:04.260 --> 00:28:09.260 And if your desire were merely to fit in, you wouldn't be here this weekend. 307 00:28:09.260 --> 00:28:12.260 But you are because you share with us a vision. 308 00:28:12.260 --> 00:28:16.260 A vision that's admittedly radical now, but mainstream tomorrow. 309 00:28:16.260 --> 00:28:21.260 Namely to bring about a society where private life is held at a premium. 310 00:28:21.260 --> 00:28:26.260 And where no autocrat or despot, democratically elected or not, 311 00:28:26.260 --> 00:28:31.500 is allowed to run roughshod over the private pursuit of prosperity and security. 312 00:28:31.500 --> 00:28:37.060 We seek, all of us, a society where politics means the enforcement of the rule of law, 313 00:28:37.060 --> 00:28:42.340 where economic development is left to those who own and control real resources, and where 314 00:28:42.340 --> 00:28:48.280 owners can use their property without violent interference by parasites who neither produce 315 00:28:48.280 --> 00:28:52.760 nor create, but live off those who do without their consent. 316 00:28:52.760 --> 00:28:58.960 We owe all of you, and all our supporters, everything for your backing for these endeavors. 317 00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:04.120 For we are partners in a revolutionary intellectual movement, and in the price we all pay for 318 00:29:04.120 --> 00:29:09.600 the stance that we take in these last days of the century of government power. 319 00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:16.280 But we can be confident for ourselves, for our families, for our fellow Americans, and 320 00:29:16.280 --> 00:29:21.160 for the future of our civilization, that what we are doing is right. 321 00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:28.160 I believe we can win. I believe it's within our grasp. But even if not, even if not everything 322 00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:33.800 goes the way we plan or expect, we must remember the line from Virgil that Mises adopted as 323 00:29:33.800 --> 00:29:38.920 a boy and kept to throughout the darkest hours of this darkest of centuries. 324 00:29:38.920 --> 00:29:46.960 Tude, cate malus sed contra adentior eto. Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more 325 00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:53.960 and more boldly against it, but as to make that our motto and stick to it no matter what the cost.