 Morning, everybody. Welcome to FICON. We are already shredding. We are shredding all over the place. Wasn't that an amazing story, too? Amazing. That was incredible. Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Richard Lawrence. I'm our executive vice president at FICON. I'm here with my colleague. I'm Brittany Hunter. I'm a writer and editor at FICON. And we are so, so very happy to have almost 700 people already here at FICON 2018. Give yourselves a round of applause. We are just so excited to have you here for this opportunity to set your path to change the world. That's our theme this year at FICON, with all sorts of panels on everything from creativity, which Tina was mentioning, to urbanism, to environmentalism, to economics. We're talking about it all in the lens of radical responsibility. Yeah. And it's an amazing thing. And it's just an awesome opportunity to have all of you here in Atlanta today. So we're very, very happy to have you. Yeah. So for the FICON experience, please don't forget to go to your app store and download the FICON 2018 app. Additionally, we're going to have a screening room across from where you registered in the Learning Center. And all throughout the next three days, you can go in and see all the projects we've been working on here at FICON. Now, the important part, you may have noticed there is a QR code on your badges. You also may have noticed we have photographers walking around. They're about. They're about somewhere. They will take your picture. They will then scan your badge. And you will have that picture immediately texted or emailed to you. I only had one taken last night. And it was texted to me within about three seconds. But I feel like you may have had a few more pictures. 25. About 25. 25. And each of them branded with the hashtag FICON so everybody could see me be filled with FOMO. FOMO all around. All around. Because you know that there are a bunch of people here who are not able to come. So be sure to tag all your photos and all your posts with FICON because that is how everyone learns about it for next year. Absolutely. And one of the most important aspects of the work we do here at FEE is our seminar program. How many of you have been to a seminar? Would you please stand up? We have a handful of people. Awesome. Awesome. Let's give a round of applause to our alumni. Thank you so much for being a part of our alumni network of over 14,000 people. Let's do another round of applause for that. Awesome. And if you did not stand up, fear not. By the time the weekend comes to a close and FICON ends, each and every one of you students will be a FEE alumni. And we'll be sure to acknowledge all of you at the end. So be sure to stick around. Take advantage of the sessions. Do what Brittany said. Download the app because that has all the latest information about the sessions, the breakouts, the speeches, the panels, everything. So we couldn't put an event like this on without the help of some amazing sponsors. And if you haven't already had a chance to visit the sponsors in the Expo Hall, please do. They'll be there all throughout FICON. And talk to them, pick up their materials, see what kind of internships, jobs they're offering. There's some really amazing groups there. We will be mentioning a few groups from the stage throughout FICON. And a few of them that I actually want to mention right now include Loving Liberty, Market Urbanism, Reason, the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, the Ralph Smead Private Memorial Foundation, and Teliesin Nexus. Let's give all of our sponsors a round of applause. So it is my honor to introduce to you our first speaker of the day. And this is going to be a real treat for you. I talked about radical responsibility. This is a facet of what we call it FEE, the freedom philosophy. And our next speaker is going to be talking all about the freedom philosophy to kick everything off for FICON 2018. Our first speaker, of course, is Lawrence Reed. We call him Larry Reed. He is the president of FEE. And he has been involved with FEE since the late 1970s as both a writer and a speaker at events that we've had just like this all around the world. And he has written and co-written 18 books, actually eight books. And the latest of which is entitled Real Heroes, True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction. And that's available in the FEE Hub. So please be sure to pick that and all of Larry's other books up. He's also my boss. So it's a special honor to introduce him and to bring him on to the stage. Please give him a warm round of applause to welcome Larry Reed. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Brittany. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the entire Board of Trustees and the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education, it's my honor to welcome you to FEECon 2018. We're delighted to see you. You come from most of the 50 states in about 30 countries. And we're just delighted to see you. Are we fired up for Liberty? Great. Here at FEECon, we don't need any tax money for this stimulus project. We do it on our own. Our theme this year is Set Your Path, Change the World. The sentiment expressed in those words is so much a part of how we think and what we do at FEE that it's always a theme of every event, every FEE event, even if expressed in different ways. To flesh it out a bit, I'm going to draw from the balance of my remarks from a new essay in the second edition, brand new, hot off the presses of Are We Good Enough for Liberty? And I invite all of you to pick up a copy of it, or at least the first 300. I think that's all we got from the printer. But at the FEE Hub, we've got 300 and more hopefully are coming. FEE's founder, Leonard E. Reed, often said that it was the duty of every lover of Liberty to introduce it to others as a life philosophy. It's a phrase that we at FEE still use today and every day. We're able to preach it because we practice it. We preach it with conviction because we practice it with passion. What does it mean to regard Liberty as a life philosophy? First allow me to offer a few words about what it doesn't mean. If Liberty is your life philosophy, you're not its fair weather friend. You stick with it in good times and bad because its fundamental virtues are independent of what others think of it. Its true threats on its inherent merit, not on shifting perceptions. Its immediate prospects for success may fluctuate, but your commitment to it shouldn't. You don't apply a life philosophy to certain aspects of your life and not others, as did the soybean farmer who once told me with a straight face, Larry, I'm for free markets and no subsidies for everything but soybeans. Furthermore, if your speech, tactics, or behavior conflict with Liberty's high standards, if you're turning people off to it instead of winning them over, then you're defeating one of the main purposes of possessing it as a life philosophy in the first place. It ought to be something so lofty and universal that you're proud to live it and delighted when others choose to do so too. A life philosophy is neither superficial nor fleeting. You don't embrace it because it's convenient or fashionable or even profitable. It's deeper, more holistic, and lasting than that. It ought to be rooted in ideas and conduct that are right, relevant, and uplifting. It should cause you to be remembered someday as a man or woman whose consistency and example gave the world a model worth emulating. You can certainly commit your life to many things, to God, to truth, to family, to the future, etc. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Liberty, however, is right up there close to whatever the best thing is. That's because by definition, it makes it possible for you to fully commit to any or all of the other good things of life and enjoy the benefits thereof without arbitrary interference. I cannot imagine life without it. A life philosophy is made up of two components. The first is how you see yourself. The second is how you see or interact with others in society. Though these two components are distinct on the surface, they should actually be seamless and integrated one with the other. If they weren't, then your so-called life philosophy would be contradictory and schizophrenic, as if you had two lives and two philosophies. It would be like a thief arguing that theft is a good thing if he's doing it to you, but bad if you're doing it to him. Intellectual integrity demands a logical consistency, not selective and self-serving application. Let's look more closely at those components from a liberty standpoint. First, how you see yourself. If I were a socialist or a communist, I'd probably see myself as someone else's victim, or maybe as an insignificant piece of something seemingly more important, a mob, a group, a class, or whatever. I would likely subordinate myself to the collective will as determined by some powerful, influential person with a club and a microphone. I would seek political power over others as I convinced myself of my own good intentions. I'd spend most of my time trying to reform the world and relatively little attempting to improve myself. But I'm a lover of liberty, so I see myself as a one-of-a-kind, no one else's personal tool or plaything and in charge of my life. I'm not exactly like anybody else who's ever lived, and neither are you. To be fully human, to be fully me, I need things like choice and responsibility. I needed a mommy at age five, but certainly not at 25 or 65. Maybe on any given day, I'm a victim of somebody, but I'm in charge of how I react to that. If I let it paralyze me, I'm simply solidifying and reinforcing my victimhood. To be called a common man is no compliment because it's not commonness that makes me who I am, but my uncommonness. I relish the best, the heroic, the man or woman who carves himself out of the rock of commonality. No matter how many times other people may tell me what I should think, I will think for myself. If that means coming to conclusions that no one else agrees with, so be it. I'm especially eager to stand apart from the crowd when the crowd is wrong. I'm not so full of myself that I think I know enough or am sufficiently fit to manipulate others like pieces on a chessboard. I want to learn and grow from now until I breathe my last, and I want you to do the same. Personally, as a Christian, I believe God made me for a purpose. With His help, I will carry it out to the best of my ability. It may not be your purpose, but you didn't make me, and you can't live my life for me. Not peacefully, anyway. I will leave you alone if you leave me alone, and we'll celebrate our differences in peace and commerce. All of this is empowering, extraordinarily so. I can employ my uniqueness to make a difference in the world. I can't even be able to change it profoundly, perhaps as much as those who led the fight to end the age-old institution of slavery. I'm not just another drone in the anthill after all. I can be a superb parent, a fantastic teacher, a remarkable influencer, a great friend. I can invent, produce, and innovate. I can be a risk-taking entrepreneur adding value to society. I can do things others won't or can't and in so doing I might stimulate and embolden them too. The sky's the limit, and I respectfully decline to live down to somebody else's low expectations for me. Take charge of your life, and even if it's hard to be optimistic at times for society as a whole, you can still be optimistic for yourself and for those you love and affect. This is how I think each lover of liberty should see himself. It's certainly how I see me. And guess what? I would like nothing better than for you to believe the same about yourself. Freedom is what I want for me and it's precisely what I want for you unless by your actions you forfeit the right. I embrace the golden rule. I do my level best to treat others the way I would want them to treat me which leads me to the second component of liberty as a life philosophy. How you see others. If I didn't believe in liberty, I might trust nobody but myself. I might see you as an obstacle to be ruled or overcome rather than as a partner I can associate with for mutual benefit. Taken to an extreme that really isn't all that infrequent historically, my hostility to your liberty could devolve into tyranny whereby you'll do as I tell you because I think your purpose in life is to serve mine. But I'm a lover of liberty, that would be an affront to my principles to do to you what I would never countenance you doing to me. I have enough respect for you that when we differ, my first resort will be to employ persuasion. Compulsion is always my last resort if I use it at all and in any event I will never initiate force. I will use it only in retaliation once you've proven yourself a threat by either using it against me or really threatening to do so. I believe it is a measure of my character that I deal with you from the loftiest of standards with honesty, intellectual humility, patience, responsibility, mutual respect, courage, and self-discipline. Until you prove otherwise by your behavior you are as entitled to those things for me as I am from you. I believe so strongly in those virtues of character in fact that I'm not going to let anybody's lack of them be an excuse to let mine slip. As a lover of liberty I respect your right to think otherwise and to do otherwise. I respect your right to be different, to be more successful than me, to be better than me at anything and everything for that matter and to gain the rewards that others offer you in return. I will not resent you, envy you, drag you down or try to forcefully make you what you're not. And I will not hire politicians to do these things to you under the mistaken assumption that doing so somehow absolves me of some or all of the guilt. I will never succumb to that most intoxicating of evil motives power over others. I strive to be better than that and you should too. To Leonard Reed, the means had to be just as good as the ends. If you want to influence others on behalf of liberty, he argued, you first got to be committed to self-improvement and then adopt a tolerant, inviting and hospitable stance toward others, whatever possible. Embracing liberty as a life philosophy requires that you get your own affairs in order. Be a burden to no one. Seek nothing from others through the process except that they leave you alone and be a model in everything you do so that others will be inspired by your example. Take charge of your life. Accept all your responsibilities at home and elsewhere without hesitation. Get your mental attitude in shape. Have a healthy sense of humor. A good feel for both your strengths and weaknesses. And a bubbly optimism and exuberance about making a difference in this world. Be a good citizen who respects the lives and the property of others. You can't expect to be free if you support making others less so. Make your life a non-stop learning journey. Read and become as informed about freedom in all its aspects as you can possibly be. How we make our case is almost as important as the case itself. Rarely is it appropriate to come across in a hostile or confrontational or condescending manner. It's never fitting to be arrogant or shrill or self-righteous. We should convey our ideas in the most judicious, inviting, helpful, and persuasive fashion possible. We should be magnets for every open-minded person willing to learn. We can have all the facts and passion in the world. But if we lack people skills we'll just be talking to ourselves. As indispensable as liberty is to the progress of humanity its future is never guaranteed. Indeed, on most fronts it's been in retreat for years. It's light flickering against the winds of ignorance, irresponsibility, short-term gratification, and power lust. That's why it's all the more important that those of us who believe in liberty become better exemplars of it and better conduct and more effective spokespersons for it in our speech today and tomorrow and for the rest of our days. FICON will help you do that. Thanks for being here and for committing yourselves to the loftiest of goals. I encourage you to consult the FICON app for the conference schedule and head straight from here now to the breakout session of your choice. I'll have a great and fun couple of days.