 So we decided we would finish up today with a speaker panel Q&A You already know our speakers We rock well David Gordon Justin Paltano and Dr. Ron Paul So we're very interested in your questions and thoughts, but Before we do so I wanted to give a special thanks to two of our real host and hostess for the day I don't know where they're seated Gary and Nina Turpanjian are sitting here They are They're both Relatively relative to some of our benefactors relatively new to the Mises Institute and we're affected by Ron Paul's two campaigns, I know and We're very generous in making today's event happen for us all they live in the in the Rancho Palos Verdes area generally here I will not hear but in Los Angeles and we're very thankful to both of you and We're very glad you're part of the Mises Institute So with that we have these two young men with microphones We ask that you speak into the mic and we ask that you Go with a question rather than a soliloquy Given the discussion and the optimism and that's great, but we had a long ways to go So talking at the term government love most people think nothing to like that term And then selling the concept liberty or freedom if you go out in the street and talk to people you got freedom I guess we go anywhere in the world by any clothes We want apparently we have a lot of freedom That's just is there's some language changes here that we can make to propel our movement Well, one of the things that I try and emphasize perhaps to the type of audience that you're speaking of is To ask them who owns their income them or the government Why is it the government gets their income at the same time they do and why is the government Disagrets the decide how much of their income they get to keep and then you can make the same argument with their home I mean here in California real estate taxes are about as oppressive as they are in New Jersey So that should be relatively easy arguments to make and then I sort of play off on something that I think Ron may have used before It's actually a Murray Rothbard argument and it's fairly effective And that is there are three ways to acquire wealth and one is by the sweat of your brow and one is Because you were fortunate enough to inherit it and the other is the mafia model Which is your property or else and then I pause and say Which model does the government use? Judge Napolitano, this is a question. I've been wanting to ask you for years Are you in favor of having the goal being a stateless voluntary society and if not? Why not am I in favor of what being a stateless aside our society being stateless the absence of any political state Are you in favor of that or not and if not why not well? I would be in favor of that as the goal I mean, I Except when Walter block is in the room. I'm the most libertarian person in the room and Ideally I could probably protect my life liberty and property better than than the government can but that's an ideal and and that Ideal is not going to come out come about overnight. So I would be in favor of the Incremental movement toward that ideal This question this gentleman this question is for the judge Respectfully go easy on me on your answer, please I'm with regard to the threat of Ebola and you're you're comment about the lady that was Incarcerated unjustly for sure, but there is a great risk So where is the line between? Protecting her from getting on an airplane and spreading that risk versus her rights and her freedom Well in my world there wouldn't be a TSA and the government wouldn't decide who gets on the airlines the airlines would Because they have the most to lose and so if the owner of the plane decided He didn't want someone on that plane for whatever reason the owner American Airlines United Airlines Delta Whoever it might be can make that decision and then we wouldn't we wouldn't reach the issue with Chris Christie locking her up In a tent but in the present world in which we live We still at least in theory have the presumption of liberty and the burden is always on the government To show why that presumption is lost it never switches to the individual Was I easy on you? Dr. Paul in your talk you mentioned you said that I think we are all naturally libertarian and they beat it out of us. I Thought that was great. Do you agree that elimination of corporal punishment of children is an important step? To removing the conditioning of people to accept the violence of the state punishing kids Well, I don't happen to believe in it. I don't know whether I'm going to Have a policeman who's going to be rounding up parents who might have slapped their kid on their bottom for do it Something wrong so Corporal punishment. I think unless a child is really injured Needs to be ignored but you know to me that is minor but I Don't personally believe in it and didn't experience it and I think of course that's that is the best side to have is to understand that it's not worth anything and it doesn't accomplish the goals so I Basically would aim to have no no corporal punishments, but There's there's a limit to it I mean if kids are getting beat up and and really injured then somebody has to do something about it Questions is for Ron Paul Ron you ran you may recall running for president in 2008 you got 5% of the vote and You may recall running in 2012 and you got 10% of the vote I'm looking forward to getting 20% of the vote in 2016 So when are you going to announce I just wonder why I wonder why you have a guess to me Dr. Paul my name is Mack and I live here in Temecula and I've listened quite a bit to Your expounding and your development of the homeschool program, and I'm just curious I've got a daughter who's 16. She's a little bit too late to the party But I'm just curious as to how you see over maybe the next 10 15 20 years the progression from Independent or homeschool learning away from state learning Of course, I think a homeschooling movement is going to continue to grow Fortunately in the 1980s when they tried to close it down before it even Got going that there were some poor rulings to protect it and it's growing by leaps and bounds and as more evidence Of bounds about the failure of the government schools. I think you're going to see a lot more I don't think we're on the verge of seeing the majority of people being homeschooled You know There's a lot of reasons for that and the homeschooling program that I have with the help of Tom Woods and Gary North This program is doing quite well and it's growing mainly by word of mouth and it's designed not to Ever believe we're going to have a hundred percent of the students I mean we're looking for people particularly interested in a certain type of education and that is based around the Freedom philosophy so you know what kind of study on that history you're going to have and you're going to have Classics and you're going to have an economic policy is quite different And you're going to have a foreign policy and it's not going to be taught by neocons So I think they're you're going to see a lot more I think our program is going to continue to grow and I think there'll be different programs Emphasizing different things ours is going to emphasize emphasize liberty Which means that it should be in the defense of protecting anybody who wants to have any kind of a homeschooling program Would would be protected but I think the the failure of the public school system is going to be with us for a while It's probably going to get much worse statistic statistics right now are showing that Homeschooling is much more successful than I ever dreamed so I think it's going to be here for a while. It's going to continue to grow I'm sure there's quite a few central committee members here. Do you have any direct advice or insight? Into the politics at the local level It's trying to help us out Well, I think that local level politics probably makes more sense than some of the national politics Because government should be much more local and this is where I have been surprised because every day We we meet people that were brought into the freedom movement back in oh wait and and I tell them to go do something, you know, whatever and and Some of I don't know why they'd join the politics But they have and they've gotten elected. So there's a lot of local people, you know involve and but I think whether you're in local Government or national government it has to be done with a precise goal and it's When young people come to me in my office they frequently say, you know, I want to I understand what's going on And I want to be a congressman and now what are you going to tell me? I says don't set that as your goal You don't want it just to be in politics for the sake of politics because that's why 99% of the people in Washington Are involved in politics locally? I think that would be less so because you have to deal with Some real Important property rights, you know, maybe somebody locally could wake up the people on the way they waste our money and Use eminent domain and taxes and property regulations and all these things So I think I think that's worthwhile Always with the goal of not saying well what do I have to do to please the majority who wants more government and vote that way but to Use as a tool to influence people to believe precisely in the principal property rights and very limited government. I Think everybody in this room can agree that inflation is theft on a grand scale, right? So why don't we start doing some kind of citizens arrest of guys like Ben Bernanke? Well, he didn't you say my name, but I'll take Well my my suggestion is everybody goes back and reads the the corny jacked of 1792 and You know it the Constitution was written and the first act was for the For the government to write the rules about gold and silver being legal tender You know, they had this old-fashioned idea that you shouldn't counterfeit You couldn't shouldn't kind of fit government paper and you shouldn't kind of fit government money and anybody that did They thought it was so serious back then that they invoked the death penalty for the counterfeiters back then So, I don't know whether you want to go that far or not But we have this problem now about the counterfeiters because if unless we reverse Bernanke's belief that he says that Gold is not money and only paper is money. So they are official counterfeiters and I've actually told him that But once again, it's going to be an understanding that system is going to fail and we're going to have an opportunity To have a new monetary system. I just hope we do a good job Like maybe turning it over to the marketplace and making sure nobody commits fraud leave it to the government Guess what people government to commit fraud, you know and things like that. So Yes, but I think the penalty is going to be You know an intellectual answer to it by just revoking their ability to do what they're doing And I think I think that they'll come the other hand if you do want to engage And a citizen's arrest The rule of thumb is the citizen has to witness the person commit the crime in order to justify the arrest So get yourself over there the next time they sign away our liberties We're on I was I was just going to say that All your hearings with are with Greenspan over the years all your instructions that you gave him may be starting to have an effect I don't know if you heard this but he gave an address at the council on foreign relations a couple days ago And he said the only real currency is gold No fiat currency including the dollar can come close. So they actually deleted that from the transcript They took it out of the video and all we have is an audio of his saying that You know this raises a question whether or not Greenspan told me the truth many years ago Because we were having a hearing but prior to the hearing we were invited to have a one-on-one with with the chairman And it was sort of scheduled so I knew about it And I thought well I think you know because most people know about Golden and freedom the article he wrote in 1966 for the objective is newsletter for ran and ran So I dug that up because I just happened to subscribe to Rand's newsletter back then and and so I took it up And it was an old faded green In newsletter so I took it in and as we were sitting down there to chat for a few minutes I I asked him I showed him the color. I said do you recognize what this is? Yeah, I know what that is. So I opened it up to the Golden Freedom article, which was a fantastic article Everything is correct. And I said do you remember this article? He says yeah, yeah He says and I so I asked him I said if I said would you sign it for me? So he so he autographed this article and I said do you want to put a disclaimer on it? And his answer now, this is the important thing his answer was no He says I had just read this not too long ago, and I fully endorsed all the arguments in there So now what's Louis saying is sounding like the old Alan Greenspan? We'll see This question is for dr. Paul I have to confess in 2008. I was completely ignorant. I didn't know anything about the monetary system I didn't even know what the Federal Reserve was Of course, I'm a perfect product of the California government school system all the way through my structural engineering degree from Cal Poly But learning about all this and largely thanks to the Mises Institute and all of you gentlemen up there Has completely changed my thinking on everything. So my question for you is this You spent all those years in Congress. How many of those Supposed representatives of the people Understand what the Federal Reserve is what's happening? What the everything that's going on how many of them understand that or they just ignorant Or is it something far worse? There's probably about ten And about seven of them understand it and why they have to defend it because that's how they run wars and the welfare state And they know exactly why they believe in the Federal Reserve And then there's three or four or five that are on our side and they understand it clearly But no not too many do but it is changing mainly because people like you have changed your mind And you've gotten wind of the corruption through the monetary system So it Outside of Washington is growing and that's where it's necessary and and they talk about the Fed now and actually Because of this these changes It was something that I had worked on since the 70s Back then it was Henry Gonzales in Texas the populist liberal Democrat that wanted an audit of the Fed So that was when I first got active in that and right Patman and other populist Democrat always wanted to open up the Open up the banking system. So but but That has floated I kept working on it But it wasn't until the OA campaign because of these various educational activities and the college kids Waking up to this that Through the effort through the campaign for liberty an organization we have we lobbied You know and got information to the members and they brought it up twice in both times It passed overwhelmingly in the house with strong Bipartisan support. So it was a good example of how if views change They're not just partisan and they bring together both liberals and Democrats to have monetary reform And so we're making a lot of progress on on that but we But they'll be tenacious though when it comes to it But basic understanding of the I don't know the exact number But there aren't that many that really understand exactly how the Fed works I think the crisis helped get the attention because we were able to dig out some figures to show that the Fed was probably Involved with anywhere between 13 and 15 trillion dollars In churning that money to bail out all their friends and the average people are starting to get wind of this So I think we're making good progress on that issue Rana if you'll recall Ron there was a Congresswoman from the Empire State who shall remain nameless who sat on the banking committee with you and once asked you Came up to you after a hearing and asked you said oh, I thought we were still on a gold standard You mean we're not on a gold standard But it's okay because she was just on the banking committee Shall rename nameless as far as I know still in Congress Protecting the value of dollar My name is Bill Blair, and I have a question for the judge Today we've spoken a lot about liberty and Jeffersonian philosophy of government Could you tell us how you feel jury nullification? might Help us or you know move us toward a freer society Well, I'm personally all in favor of jury nullification And I'm personally in favor of the judge informing the jury that they can nullify the prosecution What you for those of you are an unfamiliar with this jury nullification Often occurs where the defend the evidence of guilt is strong enough to convict But the jury is of the view that the person ought never to have been Prosecuted and that the government was wrong to prosecute this person for violating this statute under this time There are many many historical examples of this the Constitution of the state of New Hampshire Compels judges to inform juries that they have the right to nullify When you think about it the 12-person jury is itself a bulwark Against tyranny as long as they are truly free to vote their consciences They it might be necessary to inform them They are truly free to say even though the defendant performed these acts He should be declared not guilty because the government had no bring the business bringing this prosecution I wish every judge would say that to every jury Dr. Paul we're all very Appreciative of your political work in Congress and especially in your efforts to end the Fed the mechanism that their state is using to Put their hands in everyone's pockets and do whatever they want so anything that would be a great benefit But since it's been so difficult politically Do you see any ulterior or any alternative ways of ending the Fed perhaps? Or maybe even using do you have any opinion on the use of Bitcoin to go about and end the Fed? Well, I think the Fed probably will do more to end the Fed than anybody else Because I think it's a non-viable system and finally it'll just collapse and a big question is what will what will they do for monetary reform? But although right now, you know the dollar is up and people think that it'll be salvaged forever and ever I don't happen to believe that because of how much Credit and money they're creating so I think that will finally and But there will be a replacement the freer the society is and the more options and the more choice you have on currencies I believe in competing currencies and I believe that if if Bitcoin Satisfies people and there's no commitment of fraud by doing it. It may well be a participant But quite frankly I have I have a political opinion and a personal opinion my political opinion is very very clear No fraud the government should butt out and they shouldn't touch it and let you do what you want But I'm still old-fashioned enough that I like to see real money that I would jingle in my pocket My question is for Lou and for dr. Paul I Would describe myself as a pretty hardcore libertarian and I read Lou Rockwell calm every day And I'm familiar with the writings of like Lawrence Vance and yourself where you say don't vote And there are some very articulate arguments for not voting Well, I do participate in the system I ended up running for office and ended up winning So my question is for libertarians and our co-capitalists Which is the the best way to hasten the big correction to bring about the demise of the Leviathan? Is it is it by not voting and participating which most people don't or is it by? Getting and our co-capitalists and libertarians to run for office like dr. Paul has done To change the beast from within so it's it is it to participate or to not? well, obviously people know what I have done and But the one thing is is what people do is okay with me So if somebody doesn't like to vote or think it does any good and they choose to vote by not voting That's okay, but I still think that if you're in the Process that it is totally worthless and it's a very negative thing if you don't have Somebody believing in something and you're doing it for that purpose because see if When I first went to Congress in the 70s if I decide, you know what? I really want to be chairman of the financial service committee because I'll be a powerful person and Then you look at the system and how you do that as you play ball You vote you vote with the leadership you go to them leadership, but then you follow some zombie who's the leader And then and then you then you get promoted and you raise a lot of money and you buy it You know a chairmanship might cost today. It might be 10 11 12 million dollars You know you have to raise to buy that by that seat now if that's the goal I think the electoral process is is terrible But if it's a place where you can use it as a bully pulpit and And set a standard I think it's worthwhile because quite frankly by going there. I First never thought I was going to be elected at the beginning. I always tell the story that when I told Carol I was gonna run she said why would you want to do anything like that and she says well? It's so dangerous. I thought I'm gonna be dangerous. She says you'll probably win But I guarantee her that you know that that wouldn't happen But but if the goal is like I told the young people if that is your goal just to be an office You lose sight of it and then you say how do I raise the money and how do I organize? How do I build these collisions? So I didn't expect much to happen then I thought well if I vote the way I said there's no way I'm gonna get real active so you know in the in the early years I well the whole time I'd always vote against every every bill that actually was beneficial to the district and They had every opportunity in the world to throw me out So if I would have stayed and promoted and stayed in office and became a chairman by doing exactly the opposite Then I think the political process is is very bad But so therefore I would say that those of you want to run I would like to see a certain target and a certain goal if you're supporting somebody find out what they believe in and See if you can trust them and see if you agree with what they believe in the big problem there is Everybody will tell you what they believe in if they know who you are and they think you're gonna be the best champion in the world But I could always tell within a week I help different members to get in within a week I could tell whether they have joined a gang or not because they want their political assignments and they want Something for their district and it as far as I was concerned. It was over so but I think that's an individual thing if somebody say That's too much. That's that's too much to think about. I'm just not gonna vote so Let's see what Lou is saying. Well, yeah, I don't vote and But I if somebody enjoys voting if they if they you know, I wouldn't tell them not to do it I I think in general it doesn't you know, it doesn't do any good And they you know, it's very important to the regime that you vote They really care that people vote you're you're demonized if you're a non-voter So that alone gives you some guidance that may be as to what you should do or what you shouldn't do You know, we could say there are many things that set Ron Paul Apart make him unique talk about his character is vast knowledge his intelligence his background and all that you know many many other Wonderful virtues we could talk about it But to me the reason he's really been unique in the history of American politics. He doesn't have powerlust He doesn't actually want to run anybody's else's life let alone the next country or the world or whatever like most of these guys so if you if you're like that By all means run for office and it can be a as he's shown it can be a great educational platform if you're Inclined to that if you have the talent for it and if you don't have powerlust Yeah, go to it This last week defending myself for not voting on Tuesday and so I wondered if Lou you could address Perhaps if you were sitting across the table from Bill O'Reilly and he was giving you all of his best arguments in front of you know The nation why to vote? Why would you what's your hardest-hitting message against voting in no offense? That's that people who do run for office assuming you wouldn't cut the mic off, which is his normal practice one. Yeah Well, first of all, I'd say your vote doesn't count I mean unless the election is decided by one vote. It doesn't matter whether you vote it as an individual doesn't matter whether you voted or not I Would say also the you know the vote is this sort of the sacrament of the state religion. I'm a non-communicant And Again, it's just very very important to the regime that you do this so that again autumn, you know obviously that doesn't persuade a bill O'Reilly of anything but This year there were Only a third of the potential voters voted this has been the lowest and quite a long time It's you know our our non-voting party is expanding And I think that you know these people are again demonizes being lazy stupid They they're don't care about their neighbor. They don't care about the future and all that sort of thing But I when I find when I talk to people who are non-voters Even if they're not sophisticated people they they'll say things like well, they're all crooks It doesn't matter if it's crook this crook or that crook. Well, that's exactly right Unless we're on Paul's running right then it's a different different story, but since there's only been one Ron Paul in 200 years I'm not waiting around for more of them My questions for mr. Gordon There's been a lot of attempts over the years to codify Western thought and whether it's Mortimer Adler's great books And it's not to con all that I was wondering if you can point us to a resource that has attempted that with thought Liberty thought or maybe plans to write something like that Well on Attempts to codify thought I tend to think those haven't been too successful The basic thing is you just have to read as much as possible of the Sources I don't think there's you should let some kind of Someone else's ideas go Come between you and the sources, you know when they had the French encyclopedia in In the late 18th century the idea what they had was they were going to destroy all Previous books and they would have just an encyclopedia would have all the knowledge that people would need I don't think that's been very successful. So I Think you just really have to read as much of the sources as you can Jeff in the vein of Reframing the debate. Do you think it would be a useful reframing if instead of using the term a Stateless society we use the term a state-free society Well, I mean language matters clearly semantics matters and I have seen a comment I think it was just a random kind of comment online one time that said, you know anarcho capitalism It's almost two words that both have in have very negative connotations for a lot of people I mean that that's that's just the reality and and coming from Yes, as Mises did for you know born before World War I and coming out of Europe in the late 1800s There's a there were vast generations of people for whom the term anarchism meant left-wing Anarchism it meant Bolshevism it meant bomb-throwing that sort of peaceful Voluntaryism so, you know, it's it's been a loaded term and it's something we have to fight You know on the one hand I hate to almost seem dishonest by trying to use more flowery language that's not as honest or as accurate as it might be but You know your point is well taken. I think I think the term is going to continue to evolve I think libertarianism is is Slowly being supplanted whether that's good or bad. I don't know but I Will say this it's something we should all give a lot of thought to because semantics do matter We have time for one more Hi Lou or our Jeff you guys put on a lot of educational seminars Mises University And so on and so forth has there ever been any thought given to the idea of eventually conferring degrees You know the the state education complex of course wants to control that very much, but you already see private accreditation of sort existing in the marketplace with certain Tech certificates that you can get that are you know, you can become Microsoft certified Microsoft isn't a school per se It's not certified by any State or federal accreditation board, but nonetheless some Microsoft certification matters so I could very much see us going in that direction where you can get a Mises certification yeah, and Guido Halsman once did a study of this for us and The regulations in Alabama be a degree granting institution the normal sensor just as Jeff mentioned just Crazy I mean in terms of the number of faculty you have to have and many many other very expensive things, but We've thought of an eventually maybe granting degrees if that's possible It's also possible to grant Things that are not the government doesn't consider degrees like a diploma or a licensure in Austrian economics So yeah, I think that's if we have the support we would be very interested in doing something like that. Absolutely Well with that ladies gentlemen We conclude for the day the bookstore will be open for a while And we'd love to see all of you on the West Coast at an event next year. Thank you so much for coming It means the world to us