 The two major political parties have proven to and beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. And now we libertarians have an historic opportunity to prove the balance of the expression. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Well over this country, where tax revolts occur in Fulton County, Georgia, and cabinets trim $1 billion from the budget of the most socialist state in the country, laughingly referred to as the People's Republic of Massachusetts, the state of which Ronald Reagan once said, no, I've never been to a communist country, but I have been to Massachusetts. I submit to you that what's happening is that the nation is turning libertarian. And the question before us now as a group is no longer whether we will get our leadership act together and trigger the type of change which is necessary to the more efficient operation of government and the daily lives of our friends and fellow neighbors. That whether we can mobilize quickly enough to stay ahead of the change that is already occurring. The danger for us is not that we will continue to be trivialized and marginalized by pointing to such silly things as the drug issue, silly in the sense that it is always used to trash our principles, but whether we can put together an economic agenda and a leadership cadre that can stay in front of the changes in the country. People are viscerally coming to the conclusion which we came to intellectually years ago. Now I realize that intellectuals believe that intellectual apprehension of great principles is superior to the visceral apprehension of great principles and in a theoretical sense that may be true. But I've got news from the front. The visceral apprehension gets more done and is more telling in the last analysis than the intellectual apprehension. If we're not careful, we who know full well how things ought to be ordered in a truly free society will become nothing more than archaeologists telling the story of what happened while we were intellectualizing. The time has come for us to claim our rightful place, seize our rightful point in history, and be about the business of building the very coalitions which other speakers today have more eloquently than I could tell us about. Speaker after speaker as I listened today, I didn't hear every bit of the meetings but I heard enough of them to hear that the same concern as being voiced by people who identify with the libertarian movement are stalwarts in the movement, big L, little L, whatever. Fellow travelers, terrible term but useful for these purposes, are all coming to the same conclusion. We have the superior answer but we're lousy at communicating it. What we need to do is to reject categorically the philosophical imperatives of Tweedledum and Tweedledummer in the other two parties while quickly emulating their brilliance at organization and marketing. They have no difficulty selling inferior ideas. We have some difficulty marketing superior ideas so it's obviously to the marketing that we must turn our attention. To do that, let us take back people who belong to us. Thomas Jefferson belongs to us. He does not belong to the statists. The man who thought that all government was evil, perhaps necessary but evil, who thought the Bill of Rights was necessary to curtail government's expansion, who joined Madison Mason to threaten that he would work against the Constitution's ratification if not guaranteed by the framers who authored it while he was in Paris, that specific guarantees of individual liberty would be added at the first opportunity, belongs to us and not to them. And we need to take what he said both to understand what's unfolding in our country and what is necessary to market it. We are not marginalized radical lunatics. We are the heirs of a great tradition of personal freedom and personal responsibility. And indeed what we see happening around this country as we meet in Atlanta to speak was predicted by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as Washington could see down through the corridors of time to the Civil War. Jefferson looked down the corridors of time and saw this day. He would be sorely disappointed it's taken so long, but he saw this day. Thomas Jefferson observed in the Declaration of Independence, people are more disposed to suffer evil so long as evil is tolerable, a seeming unnecessary observation from a man who didn't mince his words. While I supply the obvious, because he was looking down through history's gaze, he recognized people would tolerate all manner of small insults so long as their main purpose was not impinged. But he knew if ever their main purpose would be impinged, they would rise up and act. I'm sure he thought it would take a lot shorter than 200 and some odd years, but he clearly demonstrated in this seemingly unnecessary observation in the Declaration that he knew it was inevitable. Mankind is more disposed to suffer evil so long as evil is tolerable. Thomas Jefferson thought the government was evil. If you substitute government for evil in the text, mankind is more disposed to suffer government so long as government is tolerable. And that's true. So long as taxes are reasonable, though we may not like them, we tend to pay them. So long as regulations are not too burdensome, though we don't like them and find them inconvenient and even morally wrong, we're prepared to tolerate them. But when, as he observed, there is evinced a design to reduce us under absolute despotism, then we must act. He said we must rise up and throw off the government and replace it with something more amenable to our future. Not in any violent way, but all over the country that's happening. When the Cabinet of Massachusetts decides a billion dollars must be cut from the expenditures of the Commonwealth and turns to some of the most coveted agenda items of the left to carve out a smaller government, people are rising up. When an angry woman in Atlanta joins with others to challenge the Board of Assessors and wins, the message is far greater than just the issue of the Assessors and their constitutionality dating back to the 50s. The woman has demonstrated that she's not willing to take the rapacious bite of taxation any longer. All over the country these events are occurring. Every day people come to the conclusion that is inescapable, something is dramatically wrong. The nation which was founded on the concept of a widest possible grant of personal liberty and economic independence and personal responsibility has come to a standstill. People no longer have enough money to educate their children as they see fit to buy homes, to take a vacation, to live their lives generally unhampered by the intrusions of government. Why? What's wrong? How did we get here? Just a small collection of seemingly minor insults and usurpations? But they have now evinced the classic design to reduce us under absolute despotism, and that we will not take. The statists who don't recognize this important message are doomed, and libertarians who do not profit from this extraordinary message will truly be marginalized. Thomas Jefferson, you know, set up in this great document, the Declaration, which some sort of trivialized, you know, he knocked it off in an afternoon, got a couple Maderas, went up to the room, shared that room, you know, with a couple other politicians. No five-story house in Georgetown for Tom when he authored this document, no he was in rented digs in Philadelphia, sharing them with others, sharpened his pen, opened his ink pot, stretched out his fool's cap, and he wrote down what he thought we ought to say to the king. The other four members of the Committee on Style generally agreed with it. There were some disagreements. He abolished slavery in the first draft. Georgia and Virginia would not tolerate that, and so slavery was in. But apart from that, very few changes, just a few changes for style really. And sometimes I don't think we realize what he said. I know the government doesn't realize what he said. We don't understand the hierarchy of human nature and values which the man established, and we've not pointed to that. So when someone says to us, well, you people want to sell drugs to my children, we should say, no, we don't. That's not it at all. But while we're talking, let's talk about where your liberties come from and what kind of state they're in at the moment. Shall we do that? Let's talk about that, shall we? Let's not talk about this drug. Do you take drugs, my friend? No? All right. Do you tell your children not to take drugs? I thought so. I don't take drugs either. Though, if folks want to take drugs, that's their business. Folks have a right to be wrong. I have a right to say they're wrong, but they have a right to be wrong. Some of the greatest lessons in life are learned from failing. One of the problems with America today is we've taken out the idea of consequences for behavior. We've homogenized away consequences even for our own children. I want you to have better than I did, Johnny, because I grew up in the Depression. So you give Johnny better, and Johnny doesn't learn the lessons you learned, which gave you the substance to give Johnny better. Johnny's generation skips a lesson. Johnny doesn't learn that failure can be very instructive. Don't you agree with that, my friend? We say to this fellow, but now back to the hierarchy of human nature. Thomas Jefferson was not making idle conversation. When he reported in the most often quoted statement of his great document, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is where most folks stop. The hyphen apparently scares them. There is, I guess, in America, certain hyphen phobia. We don't find it possible to get by the hyphen. In fact, I think the slogan of this party might be beyond the hyphen. We've got to get folks beyond the hyphen because we must discuss with people urgently the nature and role of government in a free society. Government is choking us with its cost. What is it? What was it designed to be? What were the intentions of the framers for government, which has grown like spores on a rainy day? One need not conduct a seminar to arrive at this answer, nor spend a lot of time reading great works, although that's a worthy pursuit. One need only get beyond the hyphen because the entire sentence, the most quoted sentence of the document, quoted on patriotic holidays and in speeches just like this one, if completed, delivers an important lesson. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, period. Well this sets up a very neat hierarchy of human existence. People were here first, and so were their rights, given them if you're pious by their God or by the order of nature, if you're not. And he only mentioned three, he said there were others. Clearly among them, he said, are among them. And when he, Madison and Mason would fight like hell to demand the Bill of Rights be attached to the Constitution, he expanded the three. It is not an accident that Article 1 reads, the Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the right of speech and press and of the people to peaceably assemble and to redress their government for caring for their grievances, that's not an accident, those are some of the others. Among these he had said in the declaration, now he says there are more, here they are some of them, speech, press, religion, assembly, the right to bear arms, the right to ban against self-incrimination, you can go write down the list. And all of these rights predate the government. Indeed, if you must have government, and the history of the human race has demonstrated needing it or not, we are prone to have some. What you must do is guard that it does not impinge upon these rights which predate it. The villain is not your next door neighbor, it's the authority in your town. They tend to impinge your rights, Walter is quite correct, find one that is the same as it was intended in any historical context, it's not there. They have all been to some degree impinged, because we did not listen to what Jefferson said about the hierarchy of human existence. That's our message, drugs, yes we'll deal with drugs, sure prostitution, yes we can deal with all of those things, but first let's deal with the very core of the hierarchy of human existence. What is government? What was it intended to be? It was intended to be a device having as its purpose guarding the liberty of citizens, a liberty already conferred by God or the order of nature. That was government's role and responsibility to preserve life, liberty, happiness, the right to pursue it, speech, press, religion, assembly, gun bearing, and so on. That long ago has ceased to be government's purpose. Government has become the problem, not the solution. You cannot expect the problem to deliver the solution. The solution must be delivered by some exterior force. That solution will be delivered by the people of this country and in the very near future, in places all over the map, and the question for us is will we be leading it, following it, or absent from the fray? I was disappointed, I didn't come to Georgia, as indeed I didn't in Massachusetts last week and won't in Wichita next week, to give you an analysis of how you failed, because as I look around this room and remember last year's meeting you haven't failed. You seem to be succeeding quite well, your candidates have done well, you're organizing very well, but I did have one small twinge of disappointment. When I read the article in the Atlanta newspapers today about the tax revolt, I would only have wished I saw the Libertarian Party somewhere in the article. I've said to my own party in Massachusetts, I would only wish that I see you testifying before the committees of the legislature more often. I would only wish that I hear a clear unambiguous clarion call for the concept of human freedom, which we know is the order of the day in a truly free society. I would only wish that I heard more often the words Libertarian in the midst of compelling debates in our society on important everyday issues. I also wish, responding to something that Dick Boddy said this morning, which I think is a very compelling reminder, that we would make a better case for our own personal charity. We don't take a back seat to anyone else in this country in the manner of personal charity, community involvement, taking care of our families and our obligations. When someone says to Libertarians, well, who will take care of us if you lunatics dismantle the government? We should demonstrate, not just say, you take care of yourself in your own first, and your neighbor next voluntarily, and you join voluntary associations to solve problems in your region. And then and only then, when there are overarching considerations that cannot readily be handled by the individual and free associations, then we say, let's have a common, countrywide purpose, and we'll call it government. It's easier to organize the national defense on a corporate level than it is to climb the barricades with a musket, so we don't mind doing that. We recognize that all liberty is bracketed by all other liberty. The right of my fist clearly ends where the right of your chin begins. To the extent that we cannot police that region adequately, we may have to have someone assist us in the policing to arbitrate our disputes before chin and fist meet. But most things we can handle ourselves. Many things we handle ourselves, but we don't tell that story compellingly enough. We should show up at charitable endeavors. We should lead them ourselves. We should arrange and organize them ourselves, and proudly display that for all to see. We are not mindless, rational troglodytes living in caves. We are flesh and blood human beings living the same problems and making the same decisions every day that everyone else makes. We must stop the marginalization, and we can do that without compromising our principles. We can sell it better by taking back people like Jefferson who clearly belong to us. We must organize at the local level the ward, the precinct. I know from my own experiences in 1983 as a candidate that many libertarians disdain the scut work of politics, but without the scut work of politics, you cannot be a political party. Without you buy the precinct lists and work them, without you knock on doors in your neighborhood and talk to your neighbors about political matters, you cannot be a political party. I said in 1983, and I've said often since, and I'll say again in 1991, let us at last, and this is an urgent matter now, it was not in 83, let us at last decide if we are a political party. And if we are, let's act like one. If we are not, and we don't have to be, let us then say that we are an intellectual debating society, good at it, clever at it. We can refine debates excruciatingly. We can indeed talk at length about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin and be compelling in this exercise, at least we all think so. We must make a decision about what we are, and then having made the decision, we must act on the basis of the decision. If we are to debate great issues and have seminars with great speakers as we did today, and that is for the purpose of informing ourselves and others who might join us, fine, let's find a better name than Libertarian Party. But if we want to continue to be a Libertarian Party, then let's learn the rudiments of politics. The status do it very well. That's one lesson we should emulate. They organize brilliantly, and they publicize brilliantly, and they market relentlessly, and they've been very successful at it. I assume that the decision will be that we should be a political party, and if that is the decision, then let us get active at the local level, at the most rudimentary level of politics, and let us start observing what's happening around us and being heard on those issues. Let us bring principle to bear on everyday life. Let us operate in our communities as if we truly believe the principles to which we subscribe and believe that they were user-friendly for the average American. Let us deliver the message of the hierarchy of human existence enunciated so brilliantly by Jefferson to the people of this country. Let us let them know that what their gut is telling them in community after community about the pervasive intrusion of government and its expense is perfectly simpatico with the founding principles of this country. When I was a candidate in 83, a period in my life which I do not recall with any degree of nostalgia or warmness, when I was a candidate in 1983, an enterprising reporter at the Orlando newspaper I was then a broadcaster in Orlando while doing a story on my announced candidacy called a professor at the University of Virginia, which I'm sure you know was founded by TJ, and said, this guy is going to run for president on the libertarian ticket, and he's quoting Jefferson. The professor said, that's an outrage. The libertarians don't support public education, and Thomas Jefferson did. Now see it's one of those things if you say it fast enough it makes a great deal of sense. And since reporters are usually lazy and will take the spoon feeding which is given them particularly when the individual doing the feeding has an academic degree, he just said, oh that's right, printed it as if it were gospel truth, and went on about the business. Neither the reporter nor I submit to you the professor at the University of Virginia had ever read Jefferson on public education. Jefferson did indeed want a system of free education for folks, all folks to a very low level, and then those who merited it to succeedingly narrower higher levels. Because Jefferson's idea of public education was based upon a meritocracy, not an egalitarianism, we need to make that point. For when a professor at Jefferson's own university, one of the three great accomplishments he said he wanted on his gravestone, can so blithely misquote one of the framers of our way of life, we have a terrifying information gap which has led us to this disaster. And only if we redress the information gap, by tackling these issues head on, by making accommodations not by selling out our principles, but by making accommodations with groups with which we have a common purpose, telling them that they don't have to agree with everything we stand for, ask them if they're republicans or democrats whether they agree with everything either one of those people stand for, they'll tell you of course not. Then why do you hold us to such a standard of litmus test? More importantly, why do we hold ourselves to such a standard of litmus test? Why are we constantly running around scratching people to make sure that it goes all the way through to the bone? We don't have to do that. Oh, we don't want posers seizing the movement and taking advantage of us. No, of course not. But we need more people. A lot more people. And we're the natural ones to lead the development of this movement in this country because we know the principles on which it's founded. We know that it stretches back to Jefferson and further back to the philosophers of the age of reason and further back yet. We know all that stuff. Now we must learn to concretize it and sell it to folks who don't know all that stuff but know that something is dramatically wrong. Something is wrong. I pay my taxes. I don't like it, but I pay my taxes. I go to work every day. I work hard. I work 60 to 70 hours a week. I go to church. I've raised my kids. I've tried to teach them right from wrong. I'm patriotic and loyal. I served in the military. And now look, I'm unemployed. My government is raising my taxes, seizing my money to give it to somebody else who doesn't work. Seizing my money to spend it on some cotton-headed scheme of which I do not approve. Something is wrong. What's wrong? What's wrong is simple. We've strayed far, far away from the framing principles of this country. We have failed to heed the warnings of Jefferson and others who warned us that government, if you have some, must be watched carefully because it has a rapacious need to expand, an insatiable need to get bigger. Indeed, it does not burnish Jefferson's record that he did not fight harder when the Supreme Court of the United States usurped the right of judicial review. He might still have lost, and he was mad as hell about it, but why didn't Congress take it up and restrain the court? Or if the Congress thought it was a good idea, as some do, why didn't Congress add it to the Constitution instead of allowing Marbury v. Madison to simply be a usurpation, a seizure of power not provided for in the document? In 1803, when the decision was wrongfully manipulated and engineered by John Marshall, the Chief Justice, a Federalist to the core, in 1803 we had already so few years out from the enunciation of these great principles begun to erode them significantly by allowing government to have power it was not given, and by not ratifying the power it seized to say that we thought it should have it. That's 1803. This is 1991. What's wrong? It never stopped growing. Uncontrolled and untrammeled, it has grown now to the point that it is a huge Diplodocus bureaucracy, but like the Diplodocus, it's now so fat it can't move in search of food. It's eaten all the leaves on all the trees that its long neck could reach and now Dippy is in real trouble. Dippy, the Diplodocus dinosaur, is about to sink into the muck. One can only hope Dippy will become something useful, like coal or even diamonds. Indeed, we say if Dippy was once said of a great British statesman, nothing he did in life became him quite so much as he's leaving it. We wish Dippy well. In fact, we'd all like to climb on his back and help the descent. We'd like to shove him into the muck a little faster. Government has eaten all the leaves on all the trees with an easy reach and it now reaches beyond and can't stretch. And folks are getting smart, they're moving the trees. Folks are moving the trees. So even though Dippy stretches, he's not going to make it, or she. What is our mission then? Our mission is to catch up with the people of the United States, something which movements like ours have often to do. We have a natural constituency all over this country. Its labels are insignificant. Its Republican and Democrat and Protestant and Catholic and Jewish and atheist, black and white and red and yellow, young and old, smart and not so smart, well, pardon me, smart and public school graduates. We will not attract this natural constituency by going on and on and on about the fine points of theory. We must join this natural constituency on the battlements where they are already forming up, driven there by their viscera, which says something's wrong, something in this country is dramatically wrong and it must be righted. And I must now move out to write it. In Fulton County, Georgia, in Boston, Massachusetts, in Dubuque, Iowa, in Los Angeles, California, I must now do something to change it. I must now find out what's wrong and act to write what's wrong. And at this historic moment, we libertarians must now provide the simple answer what's wrong, what is the nature and role of government in a free society to exist only to secure those rights which were here before the government. Not to take our substance and to give it to someone else, but to make sure we have a right to use our substance as we see fit for ourselves and for someone else. And only to do those things for us in common, which we cannot adequately do for ourselves. Not that we don't want to do, but which we cannot adequately do for ourselves. And that's as American as apple pie. That's Thomas Jefferson. That's the hierarchy of human existence. That's what rights are about. That's what responsibilities are about. We even support bad choices in the sense that we support the right to make them, though we disagree with them. We won't infringe on someone's liberty to make a mistake. If you can prevent someone from making a mistake, your liberty is the less. And we must make that message crystal clear. Because we must stand up and more readily condemn things which we do not like. And say that in our opinion they are not useful for our future well-being. We're not going to interdict them, except by our words and example and arguments and persuasion, but we are going to identify them and say that they're wrong. And we will make common purpose with people who share our concern about personal freedom and personal responsibility. You can fool some of the people some of the time. And you can fool some of the people all of the time. But we must clearly prove that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Some say that one who speaks to a libertarian gathering should be very sensitive about the person whom he quotes in conclusion. Remember that not only must you the speaker pass all the litmus tests and survive the blizzard of pinpricks, I said pinpricks, but your sources must too, and those you quote must. So I am now about to commit a heresy. Look it's a trade-off. I'm going to commit a heresy, but I've already telegraphed I'm about to sit down. My hope is that your gluteus maximus has sent sufficient messages to your brain that you will be so overwhelmed at being told the latter that you will excuse the former. Now hang on, grit your teeth now. The late United States Senator Robert Francis Kennedy, well the junior senator from the state of New York was invited by the University of Cape Town, South Africa on that university's day of affirmation to give a speech. And the senator was asked if he would please enunciate the genius of America. What is it they asked Kennedy that makes America America? What makes America so great, rich and powerful and seemingly well-ordered? The senator did the very bright thing and turned to his speechwriters and said, what is it that makes America great? His speechwriters did not fail him as they had not failed his brother Jack. They all unfortunately, you know, after Bobby quit, as did all the moral guides that worked with the family. As we now unfortunately and regrettably know we in Massachusetts more compelling than you. The speechwriters came back and gave him a well thought out, well crafted speech of about 15 to 20 minutes. Copies are available from the library in Dorchester. Three short paragraphs of the speech are a clarion call for those who would galvanize Americans into the change which is necessary to recapture the sense of purpose which birthed this great experiment in self-rule. Kennedy said in Cape Town in 1966, and I repeat, the answer is to rely on youth, not a time but a state of mind, a quality of imagination, a love of adventure over a life of ease. Each time a man stands up for an idea, moves to improve a lot of others, or cries out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million centers of energy and daring, these ripples can build a tide which will sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and tyranny. The future may rest beyond our vision, he said, but it is not entirely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history but the work of our own hands match to reason and principle which shall determine our destiny. There is, he said, pride in that and even arrogance. In any event, it is the only way we can live. A sense of purpose and personal responsibility, an understanding of the fact that we have an obligation to the common wheel which will secure our liberty in the future, an understanding that every right brings a collateral responsibility, an understanding that government to be tolerated must be watched carefully and kept in check and in tow. A recognition of the reality that once you abandon responsibilities to a central authority you have bartered away your liberty. In the process it is a fact that they are inextricably linked, which is why Benjamin Franklin observed that he who yields a little liberty to gain a little safety deserves neither the liberty nor the safety. We must understand that and enunciate it carefully. We must go to our communities at the most rudimentary level. We must stand with our fellow citizens whether they be libertarians or not. We must join their visceral movement which says the government is too big and too pervasive and too expensive. We demand that it be smaller, less intrusive and less expensive. We know that that is properly the route this nation was destined to take. We know that we have strayed from the founding principles. We know that these folks in their viscera are correct. Well, even though we might argue on some obscure point that in their intellect we may have differences. What we libertarians in 1991 are commanded now by circumstances to do is to take the leadership role so that we can preserve those principles we say we believe, so that they are not marginalized by events, so that we are seen as a part of the solution and not swept away as yet another part of the problem. You can be guided by whatever personal impulse you find persuasive, can find your own quotes that do or don't pass the litmus test. You can say it any way you wish, but the message will not change. The future may rest beyond our vision, but it is not entirely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history but the work of our own hands match to reason and principle which shall determine our destiny. There is pride in that and even arrogance. The senator said, but it's the only way we can live. We libertarians would amend it just slightly to say it is the only way we choose to live. Thank you.