 All right. Well, I have a bunch of fun stories to tell and then some lessons to draw from them. I better keep an eye after I promise that I was going to keep us more or less on time. Here's the clock. Okay. I'd like to begin by saying this. Other than my children, and as you know, one of them is here with me in the audience today, I have never been prouder of anything in my life than to have worked with and been associated with Ron Paul. The cynic will scoff, but I mean it when I say that the man is genuinely a hero to me. Now, the biggest project I've worked on with him occurred after he left Congress, and that is the Ron Paul Holmes School Curriculum. It's a K through 12 curriculum. It's video-based and self-taught, which means that parents don't have to run themselves ragged. It gives students, wait for it, both sides of the story. How about that? Revolutionary. And it equips them to do things that no government school does, how to communicate effectively, how to manage their finances, how to run a home business, the sorts of things you would think they would learn in a school, but oddly enough, they don't. The website that I use for it, ronpaulhomeschool.com. Now, as I say, this talk is called Lessons of the Revolution. So here's the first lesson drawn from that homeschool curriculum. Politics isn't everything. Think about the enormous sums that have been blown by political action committees on hopelessly badly run campaigns. If even a tiny sliver of that had been spent to develop a homeschool curriculum that would educate thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people, think about where we'd be then. But it never occurred to anybody with all these billions of donor dollars floating around DC think tanks and political action committees, never occurred to anybody, maybe this isn't the best use of that money. How about a K-12 homeschool curriculum? That was Ron Paul's idea. Now, as I look back in anticipation of this talk, on the years 2008 and 2012, the years of the presidential campaigns we recall so fondly, so many fond memories came rushing back. Of course, we all remember the Giuliani moment, the Rudy Giuliani criticizing Dr. Paul in one of the Republican debates for having suggested that the United States might have been attacked on 9-11 for some reason other than, we're so awesome and they're just envious of our awesomeness. He just refuses to talk to people that way. He's not going to do it. And Rudy Giuliani piped up, ah, I hope the congressman didn't mean that. And you know how American society works. Somebody utters the truth by accident usually. Somebody else demands that that truth be retracted and the person sheepishly says, oh, I'm so sorry what I meant to say. Dr. Paul revolutionized the way American society works because he said, not only am I not taking it back, I'm going to double down on it. And the next day he brought the guy who had been the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, had a press conference with him and said, here's a bunch of books on what led to 9-11 that I think Rudy Giuliani needs to read because he seems so ignorant and uninformed. Like whoa, you were supposed to say, I'm sorry I said this, I was so wrong. We were attacked because we're awesome. And no, no, he went on the offensive. Yeah, that's my man. Yeah, go after Rudy Giuliani. That never happens, but it happened that day. I remember the massive turnouts at these state Republican straw polls. I went to one of these in 2008 when I was living in Alabama. Dr. Paul beat all the other candidates put together in this straw poll because who was going to give up his Saturday afternoon for Fred Thompson? After all, right? But we all did it. We all did it for Dr. Paul. I recall the thousands and thousands of cheering kids who flocked to him wherever he went. I remember there was one university event and it was either Michigan or Minnesota. It was one of those M universities and I just can't remember which one. But I remember seeing him come out to this packed audience and he did this. Like I can't believe what I'm seeing. I can't believe this is happening. I remember the grassroots put together in 2008, I guess it was 2007, an event called Paint the Town Ron. And at night, we went around our towns and we hung up signs saying Ron Paul for president, Google Ron Paul, who is Ron Paul? So the next day everybody wakes up and it's all over town. Now I would like to tell you that as good libertarians, we very, very carefully distinguish between public and private property when we put these signs up. I would like to tell you that. I remember the Ron Paul blimp that flew over the United States spreading the newspaper is going to tell you about Ron Paul, they're going to put a blimp in the sky and tell you about him. No one else is doing that for anybody else. Or my friend Michael Morisco, who got on his bike and rode the entire length of the United States to spread the message of Ron Paul. And you think, wow, it's amazing that a cyclist would do that. He wasn't even a cyclist. He was just a guy who, you know, he knew how to ride a bike like most of us. He was not a cyclist. He did this because he loved the man and he loved the message. Who was going to do that for Tim Palenti? You ever remember who Tim Palenti is? Whoever said, my life was changed forever when I encountered the philosophy of Mitt Romney. So I recall the joys, the friendships, these fun projects, the laughter. And yes, indeed, of course, also the heartache. But I also recall the blackout. So here's another lesson. The media is not just biased. The media has an agenda. Now, today that seems like, well, old hat. Yeah, I know I'm shaming you for clapping because it's such an obvious thing to say. I'm sorry. I hate to say things that are obvious, but it wasn't that obvious to everybody in 2007 as it is today. I think a lot of us were actually, as cynical as we may have been, we were actually surprised, weren't we? And just how far they would go to suppress the message of Dr. Paul. Today we're not surprised. Today, you're skeptical of, you know, seven masks and whatever. And they think you're some crazy extremist and they won't let you speak your mind. But this was a guy who was shooting laser beams right between the eyes of the American establishment. He wasn't saying the top income tax rate should be lowered by 3 percentage points. He was saying there should be no income tax. He wasn't saying we should invade country B instead of country A. He was saying, how about we not invade these countries and get our troops out of there? He wanted to abolish every evil, every force for evil in American life without compromise, even when many Americans confused those evils as forces for good. And so the media hid him. It got to the point where John Stuart, remember him from the old daily show? John Stuart is not on our side, but even he was a guest. He said, when did Ron Paul become the 13th floor in a hotel? I remember there was a headline from Reuters in the 2008 campaign following one of the Republican debates. The headline was 2008 Republicans back war. No mention of Ron Paul being very ostentatiously anti-war, no mention. Then later that night CNN had their post-debate spin and they had Ariana Huffington and she said everybody on that stage supported the war and no one questioned her. And that's, that's Orwellian. That's, that's bizarre. And I already told you in the interlude about MSNBC putting a screen up about fundraising and the political war chests of the various candidates and they skipped over Ron Paul who was in second. So they, they skipped right from first to third. I mean, I don't think that was an accident. They had an intern. I mean, Dr. Paul is a very easy last name to spell. It wasn't that. There's a pattern developing here. All of us recall similar examples of this. So there's a lesson. You know, we're going to have to build our own things and fight, fight this fight ourselves. How about the way the official conservative movement greeted Ron Paul? Oh, the conservative, oh, they're all for lower spending and oh, they just love the Constitution. It's their favorite thing in the world. And then somebody comes along actually intending to implement these things and they treat him like the return of Godzilla. That's the conservative movement for you. He's a kook, they said. And a lot of folks who should have seen through that, a lot of folks who thought they were cheeky because they voted for Mitt Romney allowed themselves to be snookered. And now I'm not saying that we have to, they have to hold their heads in shame for the rest of their lives. We've all made mistakes in our lives, but that was a big one. That was a big one. You had the opportunity to support the Thomas Jefferson of the 21st century. And you said, you know what? They could have, rather have Romney. That guy seems like he's got a lot of really good ideas and he'll stand up for me. Okay. Imagine Mitt Romney being in charge of COVID. Let's just put it that way. Okay. We all know how that would have turned out. And so those people, many of whom today now see the light. They, many of these people are fighting against the insanity and the lies surrounding COVID. And these people supported anybody but Ron Paul in those days. Well, they helped to give rise to that kind of Republican party. And now they're getting it good and hard. The one guy who would have had the guts to stand up to a Fauci and all the rest of them is the one you said, oh, he's not respectable enough for me. Respectability is what I value above all things. What made him non-respectable? What made him a kook? What? Because he said our foreign policy is expensive, counterproductive, makes us hate it all over the world, and is based on stupid propaganda that would insult a second grader. All of that's correct. Monetary policy. He said, if you favor the free market but you also favor the Federal Reserve, there's some kind of disconnect going on here. Because the Federal Reserve, especially in its modern version, is like a central planning agency. And it's going to plan out and balance employment and inflation because it thinks it can do that with its various tools. Not to mention it pushes interest rates artificially low. And if you believe in the free market, wouldn't you think there would be negative consequences of a government-established monopoly artificially pushing interest rates to a level where they don't want to be? You don't think that's going to lead to any bad consequences? F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for telling you that's going to set the business cycle into effect. You're going to have an artificial boom, and then you're going to have a bust that's going to devastate a lot of people. We got to talk about this. That's what Dr. Paul was talking about. Because of his knowledge, he was able in 2001 to go on the House floor and say, this tech bubble that just burst, they're trying to replace it now with a real estate bubble. And that's going to fare no better. How about that? Meanwhile, one of his opponents, just weeks before Fannie and Freddie went belly up, said that the idea that there was anything wrong with the economy is just carpeting criticism from left liberals. That was the intellectual level Dr. Paul was up against. And also, he shocked people. You're not supposed to go to Florida and call for free trade with Cuba. No focus group tells you to do that. You're not supposed to go to the reddest of red states, South Carolina, and say, we should legalize drugs. So he's a kook. No, no. He's an honest truth teller who doesn't measure every phrase he utters according to focus group results. So a lot of people now who are fighting the good fight against all the madness, they learned a lesson from the Ron Paul revolution, good and hard. You should have listened. You shouldn't have fallen for the propaganda. I'll never forget. I'll never forget. One night it was time for a Republican presidential debate. And Sean Hannity said, began the coverage by saying, well, tonight all eyes are on Tim Pawlenty. What kind of a lizard person are you? Why would anybody's eyes be on of all people in establishment bore like Tim Pawlenty? And then Sean Hannity professes to wonder, what could have gone wrong in the country? Oh, okay. Well, look in the freaking mirror. Maybe you'll get an answer. I might add, by the way, who are the two best people in public life right now in terms of elected officials on the COVID matter? Well, they happen to be two people who were created by the Ron Paul revolution, Rand Paul and Thomas Massey. We gave them to the world. So now why did Dr. Paul do all this? Why did he, why did he defy political convention time after time? Well, first and foremost, we know a good chunk of the reason. He's an honest man. He believes passionately in these ideas, wants them to be heard. But another clue and yet another lesson of the revolution comes from Dr. Paul's repeated reference to an essay by Albert J. Nock, I think from the 1930s called Isaiah's Job. Now, Isaiah's, I think probably he, I think Nock more wanted to refer to Elijah, but it doesn't really matter. Listen to the way Albert J. Nock adapts the Lord's instructions to Isaiah into a modern vernacular, and see if you don't hear something that sounds a little familiar, a little like maybe, maybe we know this story. So this is the Lord speaking to Isaiah through Albert J. Nock's interpretation. Tell them what is wrong and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life. Well, what's the point of embarking on a mission like that that's doomed to failure? Well, here again is Nock speaking as the Lord. Ah, the Lord said, you do not get the point. There is a remnant there. Remember Dr. Paul talking about the remnant. What did he mean by that? There is a remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society. And meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the remnant. So be off now and set about it. And that's what Dr. Paul did. He looked for this invisible remnant, gave them comfort, made them aware of themselves and provided them a rallying point. So if he sold out for mainstream respectability, he would defeat his purpose entirely. Those approaches repel the remnant, said Nock. But on the other hand, the truth teller who appeals to the remnant will find them. Now, it's true, Dr. Paul wants to make his messages appealing to as many audiences as possible. And so he'll emphasize certain things that will resonate most with them as their way of first getting into our message. He never gratuitously drives anyone away, but he accomplished this task not by the usual method, which is to water down the message and obsess over focus group results. He simply explained himself boldly and without retreat. And we've grown so unaccustomed to that. We're so used of automatons and robots talking to us that this immediately grabs the attention of the thinking person. Now, there are a lot of people who do not want their worldviews challenged. They want endless goodies. They want checks with their names on them. They want to be flattered. They want to be told, you're the awesomest of the awesome. And that's why your government is hated around the world because we're so awesome. Well, somebody who's at that moral and intellectual level is not going to understand Ron Paul much less support him. So it's frustrating and fruitless to appeal to people like this, said Nock. And here again, Albert J. Nock. Isaiah preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen. Anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the remnant would listen. And knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he may know specific appeal to them. Did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way and did not care to straws whether they heated it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best. Now, I think he had such fundraising success as he did because the remnant had never been sought out by a presidential candidate before. This was an intelligent man who defied all political convention, taught the public about things they didn't even know they should be interested in in the first place, and had a record of consistency that impressed even the most hardened cynic. That got their attention. And now here's yet another lesson of the revolution. Although Nock spoke of the remnant as if it was a fixed number of people that you could seek out but not expand, Dr. Paul has shown that the remnant can be increased, not just found and inspired. And his commitment to the truth, even when it seemed to yield him only grief, seized the attention of a great many apathetic Americans and added them to the ranks of the remnant. Nock further described the task of finding the remnant as largely a thankless job. You're going to look in vain for tangible results. In any given society, the remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity, said Nock. You do not know and will never know who the remnant are nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know and know more. First that they exist, second that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the remnant means working in impenetrable darkness, said Nock. But Nock lived before the internet. Ron Paul now knows who the remnant are and there are millions of us. He has a sense of their numbers. He knows some of the things they're doing and we all know some of the things that everybody else is doing. He knows he's had an impact. Nock didn't think this was possible. In his day it wasn't. But Ron Paul did that job. He did, I say, his job. He found and built up the remnant. And as it happens, this remnant is now that group of people doing their level best to resist the irrational and unjust commands being issued by their government. Here's a parallel. Pope John Paul II shortly after becoming Pope said he wanted to travel to Poland and offer public masses there. This was not something the communist regime would have put number one on its list of things that had favored. But there was no way they could stop it. And what mattered even more than what John Paul said, although he did say he did strongly suggest to them that there was nothing permanent about the iron curtain. But what mattered the most was how many people came out to that. Some of the largest crowds ever. And they look at each other and they realized how many of them they were and how few the ruling class were. And that sparked just the right kind of thinking. That's what Dr. Paul did for us. We all felt scattered, isolated. And then we all came out, looked around and realized there are a lot more of us than we thought. And I told you earlier that when YouTube took away the ability to downvote things, that was its attempt to prevent us from realizing what our numbers are. Because every time the regime puts out one of its propaganda videos, it would be overwhelmingly downvoted. So they just took that away. That says something about our hidden strength. And again, we should remember, if RFK Jr. can get a book to number one in terms of sales in the country, in the face of a complete blackout, the remnant is out there. Now, we may not be the majority, but there are a lot more of us than we thought. And when it comes to fighting the current insanity, I happen to believe that most of us who are against it are far, far more intensely against it than most of the people who favor it are in favor of it. Some of them are in favor of it because it's what everybody else believes. And so they just want to quietly go along. But I feel like all of us who are against it are against it with every fiber of our beings. And let's remember too, at a time when we may feel demoralized, that their side has the bootlickers, the yes men, and the automatons, but our side has the rule breakers, the individualists, the creatives. I wouldn't count us out just yet. It's with this strength that we have, this newfound strength recognizing ourselves as the remnant, this strength that Dr. Paul shared with us, that we will come out on the other side of this victorious. Thank you.