 Well, what an honor it is to have as our keynote speaker, Judge Andrew Napolitano. You know, I could take up his whole time giving his various attributes and his achievements. Let me just say that he's a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School, of course, senior judicial analyst at Fox News. He was the youngest life tenure Superior Court judge in the history of New Jersey. He's taught at law schools. He's the author of seven books, two of which are New York Times bestseller. Here's the latest one on two of our favorites, Theodore and Woodrow. I highly recommend it, of course. But you know, he's, we could, many wonderful and unusual things about him. First of all, this is a man of Cisaronian ability as an orator. I mean, he just, it's, if you haven't heard him before, you're in for a treat. He's also a great scholar, but he has the ability to communicate his scholarship, the results of his scholarship to regular people in a way that's quite extraordinary. Most of all, he's a great moral voice, not only for the cause of freedom, but for everything that is right and true. And so I hope you'll help me welcome somebody who I might also add gets huge honorarium when he goes to speak at various organizations and groups, but comes as a, your fellow donor to the Mises Institute and no charge for us. So please help me welcome great Judge Andrew Napolitano. Thank you, God bless you. Thank you. Thank you, my friends. What a delight to be here. Very comfortable to be in a room where I don't have to worry about getting in trouble for what I might say. We won't talk about that. I will tell you, I walked out into a room this size once when I was brand new to the Superior Court, and I was trying a small claims cases. So a typical small claims case takes about 15 minutes to try. Might be, the dry cleaner run my dress, but he also tried to pick up my sister. The lawyer comes up to me said, your honor, my client needs an Italian translator because he can't speak English. All right, I call the courthouse administrator. The translator is busy in another courtroom. So I say to the throng in my courtroom, can anybody here speak Italian? A little guy in the back raises his hand, he comes up, and we swear in this translator to translate so that we can try the case. Here's exactly what happens. Lawyer to translator, give the court your name. Translator to witness, what is your name? Let me see, let me see where this is going to go. Ask your next question, counsel. Lawyer to translator, give the court your address. Translator to witness, where is your house? I looked at this little guy, I said, I thought you told me you could speak English. He said, I can't hear you, I said, I thought you told me you could speak Italian. He said, I can't hear you, honor, but my English, she's not too good. One time I was picking a jury and a distribution of cocaine case. Look, I believe that you should be able to put into your own body whatever you want. But I took an oath to uphold the law of the state of New Jersey, which prohibited this stuff. The state troopers stopped a guy coming off the George Washington Bridge with a truckload full of cocaine. Pretty clear cut case, he's entitled to a trial. So I have about this many people from whom I have to pick 12 in New Jersey. The judge picks the lawyer. 12 people who have no bias, no knowledge of the facts, no prejudice, no interest in the outcome. I had a feeling that there were people in this room that didn't want to be on this jury. So I said, is there anybody here that doesn't want to be on this jury? A woman raised her hand. What is it, madam? She said, I can't be on this jury because of my occupation. Thinking to myself, what the hell can she do? It's a drug distribution case. I said, what is your occupation, madam? She said, I'm a soothsayer. This is 1992. Who calls themselves a soothsayer? I fell for this. I said, all right, madam, how does that keep you from being on the trial? She said, judge, I already know how the case ends up. I should have said, OK, lady, tell us and save us the next three weeks in the courtroom. From ridiculous events in courtrooms to profound events in courtrooms. Some men say the earth is flat and some men say it is round. But if it is flat, could parliament make it round? And if it is round, could the king's command flatten it? Now, this was St. Thomas Moore arguing as his own lawyer representing himself in his trial for treason, the alleged, and under the laws of England at the time, the proven act of treason was Thomas Moore's refusal to acknowledge that Henry VIII of all people was the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England for that refusal to say yes to that command. He was charged, tried, convicted, and of course executed. His head was separated from the rest of his body. Now, when he's making this argument to the jury, of course the parliament couldn't make a round earth flat. And of course the king couldn't make a flat earth round. He's not only appealing to the common sense of his jurors, he's appealing to their understanding of the natural law, their understanding of the order of things, their understanding of immutable laws that regulate and control even the king, even the government, even the parliament. It was his way of articulating, shortly before his execution, what Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas had articulated, what John Locke and Thomas Jefferson would articulate. Jefferson's articulation of it is a little bit more familiar to us because he wrote the words in the Declaration of Independence and we know these words from our childhood. That all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and among these is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now when Jefferson wrote this and when the founding fathers who led the War of Secession from Great Britain, when's the last time your public school teacher referred to it as that, the War of Secession from Great Britain, which of course is what it was. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors. If they had lost the War of Secession, which we call the American Revolution, they would have been hanged as traitors, but they won and they are celebrated as founding fathers. But when they signed this document, knowing what it said, in those days they read things before they voted for them and signed them. Like today, they were wedding to the United States of America at its birth, the concept of the natural law, and the simple modern articulation of that is this. Our rights come from our humanity and not from the government. And that articulation formed the basis, at least in theory, of the War of Secession against Great Britain and of the earliest parts of our existence as a country. Now whether you believe that we are the highest and best creatures of nature, or whether you believe as I do that we were created by an all-knowing, all-loving God who has counted the hairs on our heads, in either case you can accept the argument that we are sovereign human beings. If we are the highest form of nature at this point in the history of existence, we are sovereign human beings. And because we are sovereign human beings and the government is a temporary organization based on fire and force, the individual is greater than the government. If we are creatures of an almighty, all-knowing, all-loving God created in his image and likeness, then the one aspect that we absolutely share with him, we don't share everything because we have human bodies and he doesn't, talking about God the Father. But the one aspect that we truly share with him is freedom integral to our existence. As he is perfectly free, we are perfectly free. Now the landscape of history is littered with people abusing their freedom. It's a testimony to the misuse and abuse of freedom. But it's also a testament to the existence and perfection of human freedom. We are free to do as we wish because that is the essence of our existence. So if the government tries to exalt itself above that freedom, it's not only getting in our face in a way we don't like, it's violating the laws of nature. Because whether you call it nature or him, God the Father, nature and God are superior to the government and they have created us with this freedom. In 1787, when the Constitution was being written in secret in Philadelphia, the Scrivener was James Madison. He kept the notes. We've since seen the notes. Many of his notes were eventually engrafted into language of the Constitution. The first argument we know from his notes was where does our freedom come from? Now Madison said, this is not an argument that we should engage in. You remember what many of us signed 14 years ago was the Declaration of Independence. We already stated where our freedom comes from. Well, the world was different then. The king was gone. The British troops were gone. They'd come back in the war of 1812, but at the time in 1787 they were gone. So this argument did exist in secret in Philadelphia. Madison made the Jeffersonian argument. I know Jefferson wasn't there. He was still the U.S. ambassador to France. He was in Paris at the time. But his argument was much as Jefferson made, much as Moore made. Our rights come from our humanity. Governments are instituted by our consent with our limitations to protect that freedom. There was a big government crowd at Philadelphia, personified typically by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, and they argued that because you need the government to protect our freedom, because the government's resources are limited, the government can decide what freedoms to protect and what freedoms to restrict. And therefore, while strictly speaking, freedoms don't come from the government. They are subject to the approval of the government. This argument, which lawyers call positivism, which basically means the law of the land is whatever the lawgiver says it is. So it was adopted by all the great nefarious dictators and monsters of the 20th century. It's even been adopted by the monsters who dominate the Congress and the executive branch today and has been for a while. But it is exactly the opposite of the natural law. When Aquinas articulated the natural law, he said that an unjust law is no law and that a law that violates the laws of nature, one that, for example, silence speech because the government didn't like the speech, is a law that does not worthy of being obeyed and that no one has an obligation of obeying an unjust law. So the argument in Philadelphia was pretty much resolved by the first ten amendments added to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. And those amendments, obviously, without going through all of them because this is about three or four weeks in the first year of law school, basically articulate rights not that the government creates or guarantees, but that the government will leave alone. If you remember the opening lines of the First Amendment, again, phrases that we memorized in our youth, I see some people here that aren't too close to one they may have memorized it, they're very young people here, which is deeply gratifying to all of us. We old-timers like to see that this message is being embraced by youth. John Paul II once said, the greatest thing we can do is relentlessly to seek the truth and selflessly to transmit it to youth. And you know that, that's why you're here. But those of you who remember this line from your youth, opening line of the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It doesn't say Congress shall grant freedom of speech. It says Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech. The article, the indicating an understanding by the framers that freedom of speech was something that pre-existed the country, that everybody there had, whether they were a patriot or Tory, whether they still wish that the king was here or whether they were glad that the king was gone. Everybody had the freedom of speech. Every single word in those amendments was scrutinized in 1787, even though they weren't added until four years later. And that word is included in order to manifest that understanding. I'm sure that your public school teachers didn't teach you that. I have this thing about public schools, even though I'm a product of public schools in New Jersey. And the thing about them is that they have no competition. And they have a guaranteed income, which is taxpayer dollars. And they have guaranteed clients, which is the students. And they teach as if they had no competition and no worries about income and no worries about clients. But we're stuck with that for now, at least in most parts of the United States. So back to the Bill of Rights, it articulates these rights that the government can't interfere with. So your right to think as you wish. Your right to develop your own personality as you wish. I've often told Bill O'Reilly, he should be most grateful for that right. You're right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say. You're right to worship or not to worship. You're right to keep and own a gun, which, my friends, is not the right to shoot at a deer, it's the right to shoot at the government if it is taken over by tyrants. These rights come from our humanity and the government is specifically restrained from interfering with them in the first ten amendments. Eventually those ten amendments would apply to the states and thus to all governments, local, county, regional, state, or federal. Okay, so we'll pass through the Washington years and we're in John Adams presidency. His vice president is Thomas Jefferson. Now, they didn't speak to each other. They didn't speak in the four years that Adams was president and Jefferson was vice president. You remember how people were elected in those days. Everybody ran for president. Whoever finished first became president. Whoever finished second became vice president. Could you imagine if we had this in the modern era? Well, we don't, we have the 12th amendment which changes that. So the disputed election in 1800, when Jefferson would beat Adams, it was decided by the House of Representatives. But in 1796, Adams beats Jefferson. So things are going along pretty well until there appears in the countryside something that today is inconceivable. It was fear of the French. What the heck were they worried about? They were worried that Jefferson's friends in France would come to the United States, would become American citizens, and would vote out of office the big government federalists. The George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, big government. We love debt, sound familiar, political party that was running all three branches of the government because Washington had appointed federalist judges and Adams continued to do the same. The very, very famous Marbury against Madison case has to do with the appointment of very low level federalist judge by John Adams. So anyway, they decide we're gonna take care of this problem by enacting the Alien and Sedition Acts. And the Alien and Sedition Acts would basically say, we have open borders and we can use people here. So if you wanna come, come. But if you're French, you have to wait 14 years before you can become a citizen and vote, then they added a most lamentable and unfortunate section to the Alien and Sedition Acts, the sedition part of it, which basically said, if you articulate words that bring the president or the Congress or the government in general into disrepute, you can be prosecuted and convicted and incarcerated for two years. By the way, note who's missing from that list, President, Congress government. The vice president is missing. Jefferson didn't want the freedom from criticism. He couldn't care less what they said about him and said if he ever became president and this monstrosity was the law, he wouldn't enforce it. So question, how did the same generation, in some cases, the very same human beings who wrote Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech and act a law that did abridge the freedom of speech? I once put this question to my dear friend, Lou Rockwell, and he said to me, the answer is what St. Augustine called libido dominandi. No, not that kind of libido, Lou, this is the lust to dominate. And with the exception of giants in our midst like Ron Paul, this is a lust that afflicts almost everybody in the government. They want to use the power of the government to take away our freedoms to enhance their own longevity and tenure in power and tell us how to live. So were they phonies when they wrote Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or did something happen to them by the time they made certain freedoms of certain speeches susceptible to prosecution? I'll tell you how frivolous this can be and then I'll get to what I really want to talk to you about today, which is the just war. Congressman Matthew Lyons was a Ron Paul type precursor who represented Vermont in the House of Representatives. He was an anti-Federalist, a small government Jeffersonian, if you will. And he decided to test the limits of the Alien and Sedition Acts and he did so by insulting the president. Now, the president, John Adams, had a couple of aberrations, one of which, aside from his political philosophy, was that he could be seen walking around Philadelphia and eventually in Washington in a purple robe. And sometimes Mrs. Adams would sew gold epulets on the shoulders of the robe, sort of hinting a little bit of an affliction to royalty. John Adams also had a problem that afflicts a lot of middle-aged men. He had a problem with his waistline. So Congressman Lyons decided he would challenge how seriously government was with the Alien and Sedition Acts by mocking the president's waistline. So in a public place, not on the floor of the house, because he'd be immune from prosecution for what he says on the floor. There's a long and interesting history behind that of British kings who executed members of parliament because of what they said in the parliament. But somewhere in a public place, Congressman Lyons referred to the president of the United States of America as rotundity. And for that, Congressman Lyons was prosecuted in a federal court in Boston, was convicted of violating the Alien and Sedition Acts and was sentenced to two years in a subterranean federal jail in a mountain in Western Massachusetts. Now, if you are from Hudson County, New Jersey, or Chicago, or Boston, or New Orleans, you'll appreciate the second half of this Congressman Lyons story. Because he ran for reelection to the Congress from his jail cell, and he won. By the time he gets out of jail as a re-elected congressman, he goes to Washington, his nemesis, John Adams is in retirement, and the great Thomas Jefferson is president. We were at peace in the Jefferson years, but we were not at peace in the years of the president who followed him. And the president who followed him decided to punch the British in the nose with a couple of skirmishes that were instigated by American warships in the Mediterranean. This would lead to the War of 1812. This would lead to British troops landing here. This would lead to their burning the White House and burning the Capitol Building, and quite frankly, what didn't start this way almost became an effort to take back the colonies. We of course also attacked British troops and what is now Canada in an effort to instigate this war. So we instigated the war in the Mediterranean and in Canada and it ends up being fought here. It was fought in the hills of Maryland where outside Upper Marlboro, Maryland, a platoon of 50 British soldiers was marching through the town. When they kidnapped four townsfolk and threatened to hang them. On the night before the hanging, a local militia from the town invaded the British encampment and kidnapped six British soldiers and threatened to hang them. Of course, the hanging of the townsfolk was postponed until this standoff could be resolved. How was it resolved? John Hodges, who was the mayor of Upper Marlboro, marched very bravely without any armaments, without any support, directly into the British encampment, introduced himself to the captain and said, I'm the mayor of this town. I'll make you a trade. I have a deal for you. We'll return the six troops, you return the four townsfolk. The captain said yes. The troops went back to their colleagues. The townsfolk came home. The war of 1812 was ended not because of this, but at about the same time, the British went home. The new country was preserved. There is a tumultuous parade in Upper Marlboro. At the parade are all local state and federal officials and the guest of honor, the parade marshal is the mayor because of what he did. At the end of the parade, there's a speech from a podium, not unlike this. The one federal judge in that part of Maryland introduces the mayor and praises him to the skies. The mayor gives a speech. The crowd goes crazy. The mayor walks down off the podium when two strangers meet him. One of them hands him a piece of paper. The other, as he reaches to grab the paper, puts handcuffs, shackles on his two wrists, and they cart him away. They were both federal agents, handing him an indictment for treason, providing aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime by returning the British soldiers to the rest of their troops. What the heck is this? This is the Justice Department deciding to prosecute a genuine, if ever there was, American hero. So the trial comes. The federal judge that introduced him at the end of the parade is the one presiding over the trial. Everybody in the jury had either marched in or watched the parade. The U.S. attorney prosecuting him was also on that day, I said, at the end of the parade. So the U.S. attorney stands up and says, well, look, you're on her. Everybody knows what he did. It was an act of treason, even though I applauded it at the time. I didn't realize it until the passage of time. Fence counsel stands up and says, we know what he did. And everybody in this courtroom appreciated it. The judge then says, I'll show you how different the days are today. Gentlemen of the jury, there were no ladies and juries in those days. It's a much better system today. Gentlemen of the jury, I want you to go across the street to the local tavern where we have reserved a table for you and plenty of liquid refreshment. And when you consume the liquid refreshment, come back here and give us your verdict. At this point, at this point, the jury foreman raises his hand and says, Your Honor, even though we would love to partake in the court's generosity at the tavern across the street, we don't have to deliberate. We already know the verdict. You know the verdict already? Yes, what is it? The verdict is not guilty. So, of course, everybody in the courtroom goes wild. It's a just and fair result. What was that? That was the first example of jury nullification. That was 12 farmers saying to the almighty federal government, You see this threshold? Thou shalt not cross it if your heart is unjust. That's what happened in this case. Now, here's the dark side to the case. The Justice Department has had an unwritten rule since day one that no prosecution for treason shall be had without the personal approval of the President of the United States. What left-wing big government pinco creep was the President of the United States in 1812? James Madison, the scrivener of the Constitution. So you see these things happen over and over and over and over again. I'll give you one more example in the modern era. The Congress does reluctantly and every once in a while recognize that there are certain areas of human behavior that the Constitution does not permit it to regulate. It's a rare recognition. But when it can't regulate by regulation, it regulates by bribery. So the Congress decided not too long ago that speed limits were too high in the country. People were going too fast on highways, local, state, and federal. And we would save fuel and save lives if we went slower. So Congress went to every state legislature and said, you see those federal highways in your state? Here's a check for, fill in the blank. In New Jersey it was $100 million. Here's a check for $100 million. If you cash the check, you have to agree to use it to repave the federal highways. And after you have to agree to lower the speed limits on them and on all roads to 55 miles an hour. State of South Dakota said, forget about it. We'll take the money and we won't lower our speed limits. Now, could you imagine if anyone in this room approached a state legislature and said, here's $100 million. Now enact the law. I want you to enact in return for accepting the $100 million. You'd be indicted for bribery or attempted bribery. But of course the Congress has exempted itself from obeying the laws that it has written, which is why this is not considered a bribe. So these cases are litigated to the Supreme Court of the United States. And the Chief Justice writes an opinion saying, no, it's a contract. You want the cash, you accept the strings that come with it. Now, what big government left wing president signed this bribery statute into law? What destroyer of states' rights did this? Ronald Reagan. So you can see what happens when people get to Washington. They are not all faithful to the values that they have articulated on their way there, as is Congressman Paul and members of Congress around him. They succumb to this libido dominandi. In the present era, of course, we see this articulated to horrific degrees. Even though the Constitution says that only Congress can declare war last spring, two springs ago, so we're talking about 2011, when Congress was on a spring, it's spring break. Did any of you know Congress gets a spring break? Well, they do. And while they were on spring break, the president was in Brazil. And he announced from a television studio in Brazil that he was dispatching American warplanes to bomb Libya. Didn't have time to confer with the Congress, even though he's supposed to confer with them under the War Powers Act as unconstitutional as it is, because it unleashes him for 90 days. He's supposed to tell them he didn't have time. He didn't have time to ask for a declaration of war as the Constitution acquires. Of course, he had time to get permission from NATO and from the Arab League, but that's another story for another time. And hence he began the bombing of Libya. This bombing, of course, destroyed not only the Libyan government, not only the Libyan military, but the Libyan intelligence forces, police, highways, and infrastructure, and unleashed the roving mobs that governed Libya, at least two of which invaded our consulate in Benghazi and killed our ambassador. There's a theory, of course, that he wasn't our ambassador, that he and the fellows that were killed with him were CIA agents involved in gun-running. And that's why the president doesn't want to talk about it, and that's why Governor Rami doesn't want to talk about it because he gets intelligence briefings, and they're essentially the same briefings that the president gets. But that's not my argument here. My argument here is the failure to conform to any standard of principle before killing people. Same president has gleefully dispatched drones to kill human beings. He actually has a kill list. He reviews that kill list and decides who shall live and who shall die. Well, where is that in the Constitution? George Bush didn't do that, but of course he claimed that he got power as some source other than the Constitution. He wasn't able to say what that source was. In the early days of this kill list, the president invited David Axelrod to sit in on the meetings. Mr. Axelrod is the president's campaign chairman. So his two cents was input in deciding who would be killed. However they made these decisions, they decided to kill three Americans. Three Americans who had never been charged with a crime or indicted by a grand jury, just gone, evaporated by a drone because the president decided that he hated or feared them and they had to go or that their departure would increase the likelihood of his getting reelected. Regrettably when Governor Romney was asked at one of the debates if he agrees with this policy, he said yes, I might actually do it more frequently than President Obama has. Now, when these guys decide to kill people, whether they are doing it because they believe the country is going to be attacked, whether they're doing it because the country has been attacked, or whether they're doing it to please their European socialist buddies, they have to comply with the Constitution. The president took an oath to uphold the Constitution and federal law. The oath to uphold the Constitution and federal law requires that the president also uphold federal treaties entered into, pursuant to the Constitution and consistent with federal law. And one of those treaties articulates that the United States of America cannot engage in war unless it follows the principles of the just war. It doesn't use that phrase, but that's what it refers to. The just war is a series of originally theological principles but now legal principles articulated by Thomas Aquinas which the country has rarely followed. Just war requires that six preconditions exist before a country may lawfully enter into war. And the first of these is that all other alternatives be exhausted because war kills individuals and because human beings are greater than the state. The state cannot kill them unless and until all other reasonable feasible means of addressing the public evil that the war supposedly will eradicate has been addressed. The second is that the cause must be just. It must be to correct a profound, enduring, imminent public evil. It can't be to dispute, to resolve a border dispute or it can't be to add to the size of a country. It has to be to correct a profound public evil that cannot be corrected by any means short of war. The third is that war can only be declared by a competent lawful authority, not by the president and the Arab League and NATO, not by LBJ tricking the Congress into enacting the Gulf of Tonkin Revolution, not by FDR looking the other way when he knew goddamn well the Japanese planes were on their way but this would help him persuade a reluctant public to enter a war 3,000 miles ago in Europe but by a competent authority that knew the facts and knew that the reason for those facts was not created by the chief executive. When'd you hear that in your public schools? The probability of success must be strong. We can't send young men and women into the known death and destruction of their human bodies without the probability that the just cause will be a victory. The force used must be proportional. You don't go after a NAT with an atomic bomb. In fact, you don't go after anybody with an atomic bomb. Well, we're so worried about Iran developing an atomic bomb. Let's see, who's used an atomic bomb? Who killed a quarter of a million innocents with an atomic bomb, floral? Who maimed millions of innocents with atomic bombs? Was that a just use? Of the execution of a war against the country that had already been decimated and was within inches of surrendering anyway. The final aspect of the just war, of course, is that it be fought fairly and quickly. It can't be used as an excuse to enrich the military-industrial complex and you can't fire one bullet more than is absolutely necessary to achieve the eradication of the profound and enduring public evil. Now, it'll take us all afternoon to apply these six standards to the wars in our lifetime, but let's just look at the wars that go on as we speak, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Was there a profound enduring public evil likely to harm anybody in this room? Is there anybody in this room who is more free or safer because we have spent 45,000 American lives, killed a half a million foreign persons and $2 trillion trillion on a credit card? Is anybody here more free or safer because of that? Was anybody in this room threatened by Colonel Gaddafi who though a monster was an ally who continued to receive even after we killed him, $4 million in federal aid from the same federal government that bombed him? Oh, because it was one of those laws enacted by Congress that they didn't have time to correct or change. So you see, my dear friends, how far libido dominandi has gotten us. You see how far the government has exceeded the confines of the Constitution and we as a public, because we sit here and permit this to happen, have gotten away from the rule of law. Was there anything even remotely just about any of this use of force? I think the answer to all of you is obvious. All right, just to cut the doom and gloom just a bit. I'm sitting in my office one day and O'Reilly's assistant calls me up and she says, hey judge, Bill's got an extra ticket to the Yankee Met game on Friday night. Would you like to go? I said, with Bill? She said, yeah, I think to myself, who the hell wants to spend a Friday night with O'Reilly? So I said to her, can I give the ticket away? She said, sure, I called up my then radio partner, Fox's chief sports guy, Brian, kill me tonight. I said, Brian, you wanna go to the Met Yankee game with O'Reilly? He goes, yeah, where'd you get the ticket? I said, nevermind, you wanna go? He said, sure, give me the ticket, I'll go. Now the Mets and the Yankees don't play each other regularly, but they do six times a season. It's a big deal in New York. This particular year, the Mets had won three games. The Yankees had won two. This was the final of the six games that was played at Yankee Stadium. O'Reilly's limo and driver pick up himself and kill me at Fox in the middle of Manhattan. They go up to the Bronx where Yankee Stadium is. They have dinner at one of the three four-star restaurants in the new Yankee Stadium. They watch the game. This is a tumultuous game because the Mets are winning the whole game until the bottom of the ninth inning. When bases are loaded, Yankees are up. Derek Jeter at bat hits a routine pop fly into the infield. Normally the infield fly rule would be invoked if you're a baseball aficionado, but not in the bottom of the ninth inning and not when there's two outs. The shortstop for the Mets, a guy named Jose Castillo, if you live in New York, you'll never forget his name, drops the ball and the Yankees win the game. The place goes crazy. There's a tumultuous, almost upper Marlboro-like reaction to the Yankees winning this game. And of course, Jose Castillo is a goat. The phrase Pula Castillo enters the parlance in New York and it basically means to do the very opposite of what you are well-paid to do. So I see Kilmeade on Monday morning with Brian. Well, what was your, what was O'Reilly's reaction? They're both die-hard Mets fans. When Derek Jeter hit the pop fly and Castillo dropped the ball. It goes, oh, we weren't there. What do you mean we weren't there? What happened? Well, we left early. We left in the seventh inning when the Mets were winning and it looked like the Yankees were gonna lose. The game looked like it was over. I said, well, what were you and O'Reilly doing when he dropped the ball? Well, we were in the car and the way home. Oh, and what was your reaction when you were listening on the radio to the Yankee Mets game and Jeter hit the pop fly and Castillo dropped the ball. We weren't listening to the game. All right, Brian, what were you and O'Reilly listening to in his limo on the way home when Jeter hit the pop fly and Castillo dropped the ball? A rerun of The O'Reilly Factor. Only in America. By the way, the first part to that only in America is as Yogi Berra said when he once learned the mayor of Dublin was a Jew, only in America. In America, in America, on the 26th of October in the year of our Lord, 2012, 350 true believers in human freedom gathered in the middle of a pine wood site to celebrate and articulate human freedom. 50 years from now, 10 years from now, four years from now, will there be anything left to celebrate? Human freedom lies in everyone's heart. But like every muscle, it needs exercise. It must do more than just lie there. It is our generation that has been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. My dear friends, we must not shrink from that responsibility. We must welcome it. God love you and thank you. We have some time for some Q and A. I don't know if we have microphones, do we? Yes, we do. If you'll wait till this young lady gets to you, we'll start with this handsome young man with the striped tie in the front. Can you give us a shot so everybody can hear you? You mentioned that Madison was the first president to declare war, but Jefferson was actually the first president to prosecute an undeclared war against the Barbie pirates where our Marines stormed the shore at Triple Lady. How many insights on that? No. But I appreciate the correction. If somebody was believed in a religion like Buddhism, for example, that doesn't believe in a supreme being, would you have the same rights deriving as, I don't know exactly how to answer to ask the question. Can a person who doesn't believe in God, can a person who doesn't believe in God accept the natural law? Is that your question? Yes, the answer is profoundly yes. Many of our colleagues, perhaps many of you in this room, I don't wanna offend you, do not believe in or recognize the existence of a supreme being. Many of you believe, many of our colleagues in this liberty movement believe that human beings are the highest and greatest natural creation by natural selection. But they also believe that because we are the highest and greatest natural creation by natural selection, we are sovereign. And that sovereignty gives us a supremacy over anything else. That means that you can't enter my face, you can't use force and fraud against me and you can't authorize a government to use force and fraud against me. So speaking theoretically and academically, you can structure a support for the natural law from the absence of belief in a supreme being just as easily as you can do in the Augustine, Aquinas, Moore, Locke, Jeffersonian system, which presupposes the existence of a supreme being. Yes, sir. The comments by Hillary Clinton and reinforced by her boss about the right of somebody to criticize Islam would reinforce your comments about the danger of folks in authority to be very susceptible or worrying about criticism. We just had it in Moscow, the lower house of the parliament, the Duma, has just passed a law very apparently broadly worded on the same thing, making criticism of officials a treasonous act. Well, you know, the National Defense Authorization Act, which only a few members of Congress, Paul and many small government Republicans and even some liberal Democrats voted against at which the Republican hierarchy endorsed and the Democratic hierarchy endorsed and the president signed reports to give the president extraordinary and unconstitutional powers. So that like the Alien and Sedition Acts is a statute directly at odds with the constitutional guarantees of the freedom of speech, freedom of travel, freedom of movement, due process, et cetera. We leave it up to the courts to invalidate those statutes. They don't have that system in Russia. We have that system here. Sometimes it works. Sometimes if you call a totalitarian draconian regulation a tax, it doesn't work. By the way, just to extrapolate on that thought for a moment, if you'll permit me, the idea that the extraction of cash for the failure to comply with Obamacare as a tax has been picked up by one of the authors of Obamacare. Rahm Emanuel is now mayor of Chicago. Chicago is now the most difficult city in the country in which to purchase a handgun to protect yourself. Even after the Heller decision in which the Supreme Court articulated that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual personal right, not a right belonging to the states or to a militia, Chicago made it impossible to do so. And then a second opinion called McDonald, McDonald versus Chicago, which Chicago lost directly addressed that and Chicago thought it was out of luck. And then Rahm said, well, wait a minute, we have the Chief Justice saying we can tax anything we want. How about if we take a piece of ammunition, a bullet which costs 50 cents and tax it at $5? So now you see the beginning of the dreadful, horrendous, horrific, unnatural, unconstitutional use and abuse of this word tax to regulate human behavior. Rahm will get his way until this tax makes its way to the Supreme Court and it articulates that a tax on an item 10 times the value of the item is obviously not a tax it's intended to confiscate or deter the use of that item which in and of itself is a perfectly lawful item to use. Two more questions. Yes, I was interested in the Bill of Rights that you were just discussing about that. And what worries me about that line of reasoning with the Second Amendment was the original Bill of Rights was only to contain the federal government. And it seems to me as though incorporation which came after the 14th Amendment, I think it started 75 years later has created a great amount of mischief. For instance, with the Second Amendment, maybe it's not such a good idea for felons to have guns. So the federal government shouldn't do that but it seems to me like the state should be allowed to do that. That the state should be allowed to interfere with your natural right to defend yourself? No, but that if you have a convicted felon who of a state that had used force for his crime that the state would have the ability then to say, no, you can't have. Well, the state, the states do have that ability but it is not the convicted felons that the state is worried about. The state's worried about people in this room who might stand up and say, you see that threshold you're not gonna cross and if you do, you're gonna pay for it. No matter who you are. Is it a good idea to incorporate the Bill of Rights to the states? Well, I can't answer that in a short time period. I will say that the reason we have the incorporation is because of the most nefarious, unconstitutional murderous illegal war in our history which was the war of Northern invasion which your school teachers taught you was the American Civil War perpetrated by the greatest monster in the history of the country, Abraham Lincoln. This resulted in the destruction of states' rights. I'm not in favor of a state having the right to interfere with our natural rights any more than I'm in favor of the federal government interfering with our natural rights. But the destruction of states' rights from and after the Civil War resulted in the states becoming just administrative districts rather than sovereign entities that could foster atmospheres of more freedom than in neighboring states. I guess one more. Yes, young man. Well, give it a go with your youthful, strong voice. You got it. Excellent. Well, I... Okay. I guess I'll reveal my anarchistic bona fides by saying that I agree with Lysander Sponer. As the country had the right to secede from Great Britain, we have the right to secede from the government. That's a natural right to say I'm not gonna pay my taxes, I'm not gonna accept your benefits. Believe me alone. It is clear that the Constitution is unable to enforce itself because beginning in the progressive era and getting heightened in the New Deal era and almost without exception that I could give you probably a half dozen from the New Deal era to the present time, the federal government has written any law, regulated any behavior taxed to any event it wanted and the courts have engaged in sophistry and verbal trickery in order to justify it. I mean, you know that the Commerce Clause was written in order to regulate interstate commerce to Madison and company regulate meant to keep regular, to prevent Alabama from taxing goods coming in from Georgia but to make sure that goods could pass freely on a regular basis over interstate commerce. Fast forward 200 years and the Congress has regulated the size of your toilet bowl, the strength of the water pressure in your shower, the amount of sugar or high fructose corn syrup as the case is today in ketchup, the amount of lobsters you can pluck from the sea and the courts have allowed all of this gradually the slippery slope towards the dark hole of totalitarianism has been greased by courts who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. That's why we're all here. God bless you, my friends, have a great conference. Thank you.