 at the same time an exhilarating experience and a potentially terrifying responsibility. In either case, though, I welcome it, I thank you for it, and I assure you I am both up to it and up for it. With your confidence and your forthcoming indispensable support, I am convinced that on November 2, 1982, history is what we will make. In the coming months, the press, the public, and the opposition will perceive me as speaking for you. And by all the rules of traditional power politics, it would seem that my having received this nomination would entitle me to speak for you. But we are not politicians, we're libertarians. Therefore let it be clear to those who would consider us to be just another party or simply one more collection of special interest politicians that the distinction between a politician and a libertarian is a clear and an important one. Politicians claim to speak for just about everyone and anyone, the choice often being a function of the characteristics of the group they happen to be addressing at the time. But libertarians make no such pretensions. Besides the right to speak for individuals who have positively authorized it, libertarians recognize that they have only the right to speak for themselves and that when we do so what we speak of and for is liberty, the inalienable right of every individual to think, act, and speak for himself. Sometimes it seems that the greatest truths are often the most puzzling ironies to those who will not see them. In this sense, it is perhaps ironic that in our very personal, ultra-individualistic advocacy of liberty for all, we achieve a universality of appeal, interest, and purpose that politicians can only dream of and lie about. As I begin this campaign, I will appreciate evidence of an individual endorsement and commitment from each and hopefully every one of you. If you will do that for me, I pledge to you that I will employ all my strength to be as potent an advocate of liberty as I can be. At this point, I believe you have a right to know my deepest thoughts on the subject of liberty and then to know how I will apply them to this campaign. Allow me then between sniffles and the next few minutes to share them with you. I believe the history of the human race can be seen as a saga in which a few people have traditionally attempted to control the lives and fortunes of many and in which those people who were the subjects of such repression and tyranny consistently sought to escape from it. Epic tales describing captivities, enslavements, exoduses, and freeing saviors formed the basis for modern culture, religion, and literature. For many millennia, monarchies, empires, and dictatorships have been evil facts of life. Serfdom and slavery for the larger part of recorded history have been the most prevalent human conditions. Yet even in those times, there was hope because there was escape. One could in history shows that countless did make a new beginning by fleeing the geographical area under a state's control by becoming self-exiles in new and exotic lands. People risked all for the promise of freedom. The history of every culture records and reveres these movements of peoples seeking a better way to live. Inevitably though, the powers of nation states followed these flights and empires grew to record sizes. But in turn, people would simply flee again to new lands and new freedom. Our own country's beginnings involved settlement and resettlement, and constant migrations of Indian tribes. Escaping warring and tyrannical enemies or seeking more abundant lands or both, the European settlers, were mostly repressed outcasts from the continent, seeking a new beginning in America. Even during the last century, the oppressed within this country and indeed from around the world found wide open spaces to settle in, work in, and live in as each saw fit. Indeed, this country's call to the oppressed lasted much longer than that from other areas of the new world. Tolerance, diversity, freedom, and individual responsibility were the hallmarks of a country which was conceived in liberty. Our party's symbol, the Statue of Liberty, was inscribed with a message which was taken seriously and literally by the oppressed people of the time. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. The message was taken seriously because compared to other rebellions across the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, the American Revolution had somehow been different. Other uprisings merely replaced monarchies with dictators, substituting new tyrannies for old. But the writings of the revolutionary activists prior to and during the American Revolution were conspicuously void of any ideas about the structure of government that would replace that of Mother England. Indeed it appears that the American Revolution was fought more for the idea of eliminating tyranny than for the idea of replacing or substituting tyrants. Subsequent to the war, the Articles of Confederation and even the much later Constitution appear in historical context to have been after thoughts to a revolution which may never have even contemplated them. The powers of our constituted government were extremely limited in the first 100 years of the nation's history. Not so much by the words of the document which had created them, but by the sheer geographical mass of the continent and by a pervasive spirit which survived the first and second generations after the revolution and which was characterized by a very healthy distrust of government, its taxes, its armies, and all its workings at an equally healthy respect for individual freedom and responsibility. So too, freedom of movement permitted movements to freedom, so that if oppressed in the East, one could find freedom in the West as did the Mormons, or if oppressed in the South, one could seek freedom in the North as did black slaves. It has only been during the course of this century that the great migrations for freedom have seemed to slow or almost stop. The fact is there is precious little livable land left on the face of the earth that is not subject to the direct control of some government. Indeed, today's wars between governments involved disputes over it would seem increasingly trivial pieces of earth, a sheep pasture in the South Atlantic, a few hills smaller than Manhattan and the Golan Heights while of unquestionable value to the people who live there have assumed incredible importance to various governments and their armies. The fact is there is nowhere left to escape to. None of us can realistically escape to freedom anymore. We have no choice but to find it here, to find it now, and to forever devote our energies to its defense. For this reason, I view the growth of the libertarian movement as an entirely new phenomenon in human history. It is the first movement to seek freedom by standing firm and recognizing that governments do not grant freedoms, they take them away. It is the first movement which instead of escaping from the tyranny of political power exercises direct challenge to that power with principles which question the moral basis of politics and with programs which provide realistic, workable solutions to the problem of allowing all human beings to live in freedom. And for this reason, I caution my fellow libertarians not to be tempted to seek out heroes in movements of the past or other political parties in movements of the present. We need only look within this movement and within the heart of any individual who is not afraid to be free to find the real heroes of our time. In the last several decades in this country, Americans appear to have attempted to solve the problems of poverty, ignorance, crime, and other social and economic dislocations which were caused by increasing government interference and decreasing individual liberty with the attitude that if we can take the bad people out of government and replace them with good people, then the government will do good things instead of bad. In all fairness to the progressives of this century, I must say that it is with our hindsight and not necessarily a fault of their foresight that we now know that attitude was naive. What we now know is that government not only inevitably fails to do what we have expected of it, it doesn't even break even in the attempt. We have said feed the hungry. But since the government doesn't grow food, we find that all it can do is to steal food from those who have it and give it to those who don't. And unfortunately, those whose government job it is to accomplish this legal Robinhood ism must, after all, eat as well. The result from a purely practical standpoint is that if the government steals just enough to feed the hungry, when all is said and done, the rights of the producer to dispose of his fruits as he sees fit have been violated, his capacity and incentive to produce any more food have been decreased, leaving less for the government to steal the next time, the hungry are still not well fed but instead are criminally lulled into a sense of false future security. And the government? The government has eaten. And eaten well. Of course the logical extension of this activity eventually is a hungry farmer, a still hungry consumer and a well fed bureaucrat. The only a simple example, I believe it well illustrates the built in failure of even the most well intentioned laws which purport to solve problems by making them illegal. The response to government failure to accomplish what we have demanded of it has been tragically to demand more government activity to solve the problems the government has caused. In the simple example I have used we might have said well now feed the hungry farmer. Well the farmer of course has nothing left so the government might well order us all to eat less and then admonish us for our greed which has caused this terrible famine. Alternatively, the government might just order us to go fight somewhere else in the world so that it can steal food there. This destructive and inhuman process has progressed in nations all over the world including this one. To the point where I would state the opinion that the majority of activity in governments around the world today consists largely of causing more problems than the naive effort to correct problems caused by the government in the first place. And so government naturally grows bigger and individual rights become increasingly limited in the process. And an all important corollary to this is that those few individuals who managed to turn the power of government to their own purpose prosper at everyone else's expense. And so we seem to have returned to the ancient history of the few attempting to tyrannize the many. The world has become a dangerous place from which there is no longer any escape. So successful have governments been in concentrating power into the hands of a few that it now takes fewer people than are even in this room to annihilate human existence as we know it without our knowledge much less our consent. The basis for our government's promise of security for our future is in its policy of readiness to kill or be killed euphemistically called first strike capability. Well we propose the libertarian alternative. Born of the reason of the individual instead of the insanity of political power, our future security depends not on our readiness to kill or be killed but upon our willingness to live and let live. So we hold out our hope for the future expressed by our principles of individual liberty as not just a desirable alternative to the reign of political power but as a moral imperative for human survival. I don't mean to speak too long of doom if I didn't believe that we would prevail and prevail in time. I wouldn't be wasting my time in yours I'd be out digging my hole but the signs are positive all around us. Our movement is the fastest growing new political movement in America today and we must continue that growth and increase it. And we will not succeed if we succumb to the temptation to become mired in the political muck of other parties and movements. Discussions of strategy and philosophy yes they're important but individual activism motivated by individual concern using strategy suited to that individual rooted in whatever individual philosophy may apply as the key to success. Some of us write, some speak, others contribute time or money or goods or services. The nature of the activity is unimportant. The only rule a libertarian can consider universal is that whatever he does best he must do it for liberty. There had better be room in this movement for everyone or it's not the movement it claims to be. Record numbers of people now protest taxes. Record numbers of people now avoid the draft. Record numbers of people are saying no to the insanity of nuclear weapons policy. Record numbers of people look at their government and say I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take anymore so get off my back and leave me alone. To these people I extend the invitation. Come home. Come home to the libertarian party. You're all talking about the same thing. Let's show you the whole picture. Join us in seeking a better way. For my part I'll do what I hope I do best, run for governor as a libertarian. In the process I'll do what I think we're all best at. I'll speak the truth, the truth that makes us free. When they speak of taxes I'll speak of theft. When they speak of the draft I'll speak of slavery. Drug education, government indoctrination, consumer protection, that's consumer fraud, anti poverty programs, programs that keep poor people poor, new federalism, if federal programs have failed what makes you think the states can do any better? Drug related crime, drug prohibition related crime, industry regulation, state subsidized oligopolies and monopolies, property taxes, rent on property you already own, business subsidies, welfare for the rich, welfare fraud, that's redundant, welfare is fraud. It's true that this is a statewide election but I won't hesitate to speak on any issue appropriate to any forum. I'd like to take a moment now to have a look at some of our potential adversaries. It's my favorite part. Lou Lerman, Lou tells us he's a self made millionaire. From time to time he likes to dabble in libertarian sounding economic rhetoric like many other fans of supply side ergonomics. Beware the status in libertarian clothing. Where would you be today Lou in your drug store chain? Without professional licensing, drug regulation, Medicaid subsidies, the FDA, the DEA, the Department of Health and Human Services and scores of other government programs which have kept the prices you charge high have erected barriers to new competitors who might enter your market and have filled your cash registers with tax dollars. Lou has a direct and very personal interest in the perpetuation of big government but like all good Republicans though, he wants government not to do less but to do what it does more cheaply and efficiently. God forbid the government should actually become more efficient at depriving liberty than it already is. Or as Will Rogers, an earlier Gary Greenberg, once observed it's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for. Mario Cuomo, I was watching TV a few weeks ago and I heard Mario say that he's from minorities and labor. Mario hasn't caught on to the fact that when politicians attach themselves to the special interests of narrowly defined groups, they add fuel to the fires of social strife, upstate versus downstate, young versus old, rich versus poor, gay versus straight, black versus white, labor versus business. These are classifications encouraged by government so that power brokers like Mario can tell who the players are in the game of grabbing control of that big pot of money in Albany. Mario, people have rights, groups do not. I represent no special interest, save the interest of each individual in his ability to peaceably determine his own destiny, to represent anything else is to create enemies out of innocent people. Besides Mario, how do you convince the black businessman and the white laborer that they have identical interests? It seems to me the only thing I'm certain they ought definitely to have as a common interest is the defeat of politicians like you who play upon class and racial differences to acquire personal political power, Ed Koch. He says people don't want a reduction in taxes if that means a reduction of services the state provides. I say, Ed, the state doesn't provide the services that those taxes ought to be able to pay for. Stop taking our money away, deciding what's best for us, and giving us a half-baked overpriced product in return. That's no service, that's the ultimate disservice. The people of this state know best how to dispose of their earnings in ways which are in their own and their neighbor's and loved one's best interests. You don't even know me. How dare you pretend to know how to spend my money better than I? These are a few of the people who want to take your money away and your rights with it to do the things that they want to do, leaving you with little left available to do what you want to do. If there are any other candidates whom I've ignored, they should not be insulted, but should take their exclusion from this list as a definite compliment. I have no designs on your money, your job, your property, your personal life. I believe the system they have built can be made freer to your benefit. I believe in the right and the ability of people to control their own lives. I don't believe that I have, and I know they don't have, the wisdom or the physical ability to guarantee a good life to every person in this state. But people can solve their own problems when allowed the freedom to do so acting individually and fully responsibly through voluntary association. To free up the system, the following are some of the concrete proposals that I will put forth during my campaign. First is, Governor, I would veto any bill which would expand the power of the state, and by the same token, I will promptly sign any bill which has its intended effect, a reduction of government interference in the lives of individuals. As Governor, I will regularly and routinely grant executive pardons to those immorally jailed for the commission of victimless crimes. People have the right to learn from their mistakes. No one has the right to deprive another of his liberty simply because he does not approve of that other's potentially self-destructive behavior. I will send to the legislature a bill to provide for private school, tuition, tax credits as a first step towards the eventual separation of education and state. Not only is the quality of state education declining along with SAT scores while taxes to support it increase, but a system in which high quality private education is available only to the rich is inherently unfair. I propose that this bill, along with another, to repeal compulsory education laws can make a significant beginning towards returning both decision making ability and the means to finance it to those who should rightfully have it, individual parents and students. We are no longer fooled by the state into believing that irrelevant curricula, windowless schools, armed hallway guards, teachers who exercise corporal punishment and who carry weapons for defense and large numbers of graduates who are functional illiterates that all these things constitute education. I will urge the repeal of all rent control and rent stabilization laws. These laws have the effect of making affordable housing increasingly beyond the reach of the very people we are told these laws were intended to benefit the poor. Anyone knows who lives in a rent control department that he dares not move since the artificially low rents affected by rent control apply only to current tenants, not to new ones. Overall, the tragic effect of such laws is to discourage freedom of movement, discourage investment in new housing and in renovation of old buildings, and to create gross inequities and distortions in rents paid for for premises occupied. If ever a government program were designed to establish and to maintain ghettos, rent control is it. I will propose the repeal of all industry regulation and professional licensing laws. I've been called a fire breather before, but I didn't know my reach was that far. Is that going to be all right? Okay. A consumer who is free to choose among the widest range of prices and qualities from competing producers is better able to maximize his unique benefit in a free market than the government can do for him by restricting choice and competition, keeping prices artificially high and promoting licensed quackery by permitting occupational practice on the basis of criteria which have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of products or services rendered. I will propose total deregulation of the health, psychiatric and elderly care industries. I will also propose the shutdown and sale of state-owned facilities involved in these industries. Such state interference today constitutes a wholesale violation of the rights of the ill and the elderly to choose from competing private institutions which might cater to their individual needs. No one knows better than my friend Vicky Rohrer of Cortland how state law has worked to make individual concern and care for the less fortunate in our neighborhoods not only difficult, but illegal. Finally, the fuel for government expansion and the ultimate violation of individual liberty is the personal income tax. Accordingly, I will push for its repeal, not just for some, but for all residents of this state. These proposals are a beginning and certainly we will bring forth even more in the coming months. I believe them to be a good start on the road to the restoration of personal freedom and responsibility. Libertarian State Representative Dick Randolph of Alaska has said, freedom is the prize. Responsibility is the price. To those who fear freedom because of their inherent responsibility, I offer the council to abandon the notion that anyone, least of all the state, can handle the responsibility for your life better than you can. The state has attempted and will continue to attempt to break the pride and the self-confidence of individuals. But remember, with true freedom and the self-respect that flows there from, responsibility can be a joy. Remember as always, our proposals are interim measures designed to facilitate a humane and peaceful process of the withering away of the state. Government is superfluous in a society of truly free people who relate voluntarily and cooperatively and who exercise full responsibility for their lives and futures. Our goal is and always will be unsatisfied until each and every person we meet can with pride and self-confidence say, I am truly free. Liberty is a reality. Our opponents will confuse us with enticing demand side slogans like jobs, jobs and more jobs or supply side cries of tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. But we will clear the air with the real issue. The issue that we will insist be at the center of this and all future election campaigns forevermore. Liberty, liberty and more liberty. It wasn't too long ago when someone suggested I run for governor and I and I said yes because I thought we could do it, but I've changed my mind in the last 24 hours. Now I know we can do it with your help, your cooperation, your support. I will do anything that has to be done. I will go to any village, any hamlet, any city, any home, any church, any school, you name it, I'll go there. We're going to do this. We're going to get ourselves on the ballot permanently from now on so we never have to carry around those silly petitions again.