 Our next speaker is David Bose, who is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and who has been a figurehead of libertarianism for well over three decades. His most recent book, The Libertarian Mind, has been released and has already garnering incredible praise. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Bose. Thank you everybody. What a great time to be a libertarian. Great weekend to be a libertarian. It's great to be here with everybody. So glad to see so many people here. I want to talk to you a little about what a great time it is to be a libertarian and also what it means to be a libertarian. I think we can start out by saying over the past few years, I think you can argue that in 2008 the American public rejected the extreme social conservatism and the endless wars of the Republican Party. In 2010 and 2014, Americans rejected the big spending, big government agenda of the Democrats. And what that means, I think, is that Americans are searching for a new public philosophy. And I have one to suggest to them. Libertarianism answers both of those problems. But as libertarians active on policy issues, we have our work cut out for us right now. We are facing unsustainable entitlements that are going to be a particular problem for your generation. We are trying to extricate ourselves from endless wars. The president's response to all this is to say, I've got a pen and no constitution so I can do anything I want to. So it's an exciting time to be a libertarian. And one of the things that many of you may be too young to appreciate is how different this is. Everybody's talking about libertarianism. This was not true when I was young. This was not even true halfway through my years at the Cato Institute. And now suddenly, I pick up the newspaper and I'm reading about the libertarian wing in Congress and the libertarian faction of the Republican Party and the rising libertarianism in America on a range of issues. And that's new. We haven't had that before. So it's an opportunity. It's a challenge to do it right. A lot of this started, of course, with Ron Paul's 2008 campaign. One of the things that, first, Ron Paul attracted all this attention and he got especially a lot of buzz on the internet, a lot of buzz among young people. And people took notice of that. And then right on the heels of the Ron Paul campaign, we got the financial crisis, followed by the Wall Street bailouts and the automobile company takeovers and then President Obama's stimulus bill. And then on top of that, the government takeover of healthcare and all of these things were pushing people in a libertarian direction. A lot of people might have said a conservative direction, but it was anti-big spending, anti-big government, pro-constitution. Sounds libertarian enough to me. And then a couple of years ago, all the revelations about how the NSA and other government agencies are spying on us. And one after another, for weeks, we were learning things and of course we all know where we learned them from. One by one, one after another, we're learning about what the NSA and the government are doing to us. And people didn't know this and it turns out Congress didn't know it either. They haven't done anything about it, but they had not bothered to ask. And that was something that pushed people in a libertarian direction. And now look at a lot of the issues that we're talking about these days. Freedom to smoke marijuana, freedom to marry the person you want. The Federal Reserve, police misconduct in Ferguson, Missouri and other places. All of these issues are about individual freedom and the scope of government power. And that's got journalists talking about how there's, if not a libertarian moment, at least a libertarian conversation going on. No wonder the Gallup poll is finding record numbers of people saying the federal government has too much power and the federal government is trying to do too many things that should be left to businesses and individuals. And students are an important part of that growing libertarian sentiment. I get asked a lot by journalists, is the libertarian movement growing in America? One of the things I always say to them is, you know, seven years ago, and for many years before that, there was no national libertarian student organization. Now there are two. That's like an infinite increase. Politico wrote recently, you could argue that the rapid growth of these libertarian groups has been the real story of campus politics in the Obama era. And of course it's not just in this country. When I was a young libertarian, I could never have imagined libertarian conferences in Sofia and Nigeria and Ukraine. That's amazing. And congratulations to the African Libertarian Student Organization and Ana from Belgrade. Amazing. And I know it's not easy in places like that. I know that students for liberty have been arrested in Gambia and Venezuela, beaten by police in Ethiopia. So whether it's overseas or here, I am so proud of what you have done. So congratulations. Give yourself a round of applause. A lot of this is about politics. I talk about politics a lot partly because I work in Washington. Even though I work at a policy institute, I get asked about politics a lot. And the fact is I know a lot about politics. I always found it interesting. And I know that politics is my entertainment. So I do know what's going on. I like to talk about it. But I think at this conference, for your generation, for you, for the libertarian movement, what's more important is the idea of freedom and libertarianism, which is the philosophy of freedom. More than politics, it's important to know what we believe is right, what it is we are fighting for. We may disagree about the tactics of how we get there, Republican Party, Libertarian Party, no party at all, reading or voting, all of those kinds of things. But we want to know what it is we're trying to achieve. So I always like to talk at these conferences about what it is we stand for. And one of the descriptions I like came from Adam Smith, the simple system of natural liberty. That's really all we're talking about, the simple system of natural liberty. Liberty is what happens when you let people alone. If you leave people alone to make their own decisions, liberty and civil society and economic growth flourish. In practical terms, of course, libertarians favor smaller government, less spending, lower taxes, free trade, civil liberties, personal freedom, and a less interventionist approach to defense and foreign affairs. We celebrate civil society, free association, and the social progress that they generate, and we seek strict limits on the size, scope, and power of government in order to maximize freedom. Now, a lot of times when I talk politics, when I talk to journalists or political consultants, we use terms like fiscally conservative and socially liberal. That's simple enough for people in Washington to understand. But really, of course, you ever think about the phrase fiscally conservative and socially liberal? It sort of implies libertarians are inconsistent. But in fact, we're the consistent ones. We favor economic freedom and personal freedom. It's the conservatives who are inconsistent favoring freedom in some areas and not in others. And the liberals who are inconsistent favoring freedom in some areas and not others. But as I say, for people in Washington, you have to make it pretty simple. So sometimes we say, look, there are millions of people out there, and I have data to prove this. Millions, tens of millions of people out there who describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. And what that means is they are not buying in to the liberal box or the conservative box. They're thinking outside the red-blue system. Even if they don't think about the fact that they're not part of one of those teams, when you press them on it, oh yeah, I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Now that's a low bar, but it gives us something to talk to people about. Really, we're the ones who are consistent. As for me, when I'm asked, what is it you stand for, I hold this truth to be self-evident. It's wrong to initiate force against innocent people. A year or two ago, a young colleague at the Cato Institute complained to me that we spend a lot of time complaining about government, but not much talking about the benefits of freedom. And he had a point. I mean, we are a policy institute. It's our job to recommend better policies. That means pointing out the flaws in current policies. So yes, we spend a lot of time complaining about the U.S. government. Occasionally about foreign governments and international governments, but especially about the U.S. government. So I tried to start writing a little bit about the benefits of freedom. Why is freedom so great? Freedom is important because each one of us is the owner of our own life. Who else would be? Who else could be? Each of us owns our own life. And that means that we have the right and the responsibility to make the important decisions about our own lives. That's what freedom means. A chance to pursue happiness, to flourish in your own way, to take chances, possibly to fail. And it's wrong to use force to make other people live the way we think they should. It's okay to persuade, it's okay to make offers, but we should not use force to impose our way of living on others. One of the reasons for that, of course, is that we might be wrong. Humility is a very important part of the libertarian approach. Lilian Harmon, a 19th century libertarian, late 19th century said, why would I want to make laws about how to live reflecting the way I think people should live when, as I hope, in a decade or two, I may be wiser and have a better understanding and think I was wrong. We want the scope to make choices and to change our minds and to learn from what other people are doing. One aspect of freedom of libertarianism is summed up in the wonderful Gadsden flag. Don't tread on me. That inspired our founders. It was what they wanted to say to the British government, keep your laws off me. Don't tread on me. But students for liberty came up with a better t-shirt. Don't tread on anyone. Because while it's important and it's historically right to say, don't tread on me. I have rights. I have my body. I have my property. Don't tread on me. It's also important to remember. It's not just about me. It's not just atomistic individualism. It's about respecting others as we respect ourselves. So what we really mean is don't tread on anyone. Now, I want to offer a bit of Dutch Uncle advice to young libertarians. Somebody told me this afternoon nobody knows what Dutch Uncle means. So I will just say, well, it really means advice. It means the kind of advice you might get from an uncle who isn't quite your grandfather or whatever, but an uncle who is very stern and tells you what you need to know. So here are a few pieces of advice that I recommend. Don't let anybody tell you that libertarians should be good little boys and girls and vote for whoever the Republicans nominate. Celebrate the freedom to flourish more than the freedom to discriminate. Don't confuse support for peace and non-intervention with support for authoritarian governments and their interventions. Question authority, but don't embrace political and scientific ideas just because most experts reject them. Question the idea of rigid conformity to any one politician or one writer's party line. Commit yourself not just to liberty but to truth, honesty, integrity and decency and in so doing be part of the reasonable radical libertarian movement. At the Cato Institute we try especially to be part of the reasonable radical libertarian movement. We're in Washington. We're trying to talk to politicians and journalists. We're trying to talk to the television networks and so on. So we try to be reasonable but we remember that our presentation is reasonable but our ideas are steeped in the radical vision of freedom that libertarians should hold. Libertarian ideas are radical and yet they are also deeply rooted in western civilization as Brian Doherty wrote in his wonderful history of the libertarian movement Western civilization now runs on approximately libertarian principles, property, markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, a recognition of human rights, the rule of law, very imperfectly as we all know but still compared to history and compared to most of the world approximately libertarian principles. Libertarians have a record to be proud of. We have been fighting ignorance, superstition, privilege and power for many centuries and it is to those ideas and that struggle that we owe the best parts of our civilization. More than libertarians often acknowledge we live in a world often characterized by freedom and progress. We have extended the promises of the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to people to whom they have long been denied. Around the world more people in more countries than ever before in history enjoy religious freedom, personal freedom, democratic governance, the freedom to own and trade property, equal rights, civility, respect, a higher standard of living and a longer life expectancy. War, disease, violence, slavery and inhumanity have been dramatically reduced and libertarian people and libertarian ideas not always by that name have led the effort that have led us to that point. We should be very proud of what we've done to take humanity from where it was to the point it is now. We get our ideas from books and philosophy but also we care about the people whose lives are affected by government that exceeds its proper bounds. And we also remember that the difficulties we face here in America in getting our message out are nothing like those our friends in other countries face. People I think of like Yang Zili who spent eight years in a Chinese jail for reading Hayek and writing about the rule of law. Karim Amir, four years in an Egyptian jail for blogging about the oppression of women and Christians. Attila Yala exiled from his home in Turkey because he dared to raise political questions in public and of course so many who were actually martyred in the struggle for liberty and human rights. And even in gentle, peaceful Canada Ezra Levant summoned before the government to be interrogated by an agent of the state about what opinions he expressed and why he expressed them. But we don't worry just about those who suffer for exercising their right to free speech. We speak for all those who suffer under the burdens of government. And there I think of people like Shelly Parker who had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to win the right to own a gun to protect herself in a dangerous DC neighborhood. Suzette Kelo, the government took her home and gave it to a big drug company. Catherine Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed by police officers who burst into her house in the middle of the night because they had the wrong address for a fictional drug dealer. And all the elderly folks trying to get by on Social Security because for 40 years they weren't allowed to invest their retirement savings in real wealth. They remind us of what the founders told us that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. And in this day and age when, at least here in America, we don't intend to take up arms in defense of freedom, eternal vigilance is exercised by all the Americans who devote their time and money and effort to defending and expanding freedom. I was asked once by some skeptics what's the most important libertarian accomplishment in history? I thought for a moment and said, the abolition of slavery. Okay, they conceded, name another. Now I thought the abolition of slavery was pretty good. I thought that if you had the abolition of slavery on your resume, you could go to meet your maker in pretty good shape. But they said, they said that's one, name another. So I thought a little more carefully and then I said bringing power under the rule of law. That was a revolutionary achievement. As we all know, it is incomplete. But if you read Stephen Pinker's book on the better angels of our nature, if you read about the history, if you read Michael Shermer's new book, The Moral Ark, you will see that in more and more of the world we have at least partially constrained power within the bounds of law. In the United States we call it mostly the Constitution in other countries. There may be other ways of doing it, but we have constrained the arbitrary use of power. It's a revolutionary achievement, but it's incomplete. It's what the levelers in John Locke and the American founders fought for. It's what the protesters in 1989 against communism fought for. It's what Rand Paul filibustered for. It's what Yang Zili, Karima Maier, Chang Wencheng and the protesters in Hong Kong and Venezuela fight for in challenging circumstances. It's what we fight for here and now. Thank you for being part of that historic struggle. Thank you.