 Of course, our first speaker I don't think really needs much of an introduction, and I can't think of anything clever to say about him anyway. What else can you say about Roy Childs? He's a well-known Libertarian speaker and speaker in Jennifer, I guess. And he's here and graciously consented to give a keynote address, as well as to participate later on. And he's pouring positive today with Gary Greenberg. So I'll give you Roy Childs. Getting on the plane this morning in beautiful Washington, D.C., where I have been hijacked after living in San Francisco for three years, I tend to myself I don't want to come. And I've changed my mind seeing a lot of my old friends and hopefully making some new ones. I'm rather cheered by being here. And I'm definitely looking forward to the debate later on with Gary Greenberg because I intend to smash him. You'll hear me. This is going to be a rather odd keynote in certain ways because what I want to do is reflect on the meaning of the Reagan victory and the Reagan administration to date and talk about what we have accomplished over the last few years and what we can accomplish even more in the future. I think that the meaning of the so-called Reagan landslide was very clear. It was, according to all the polls that we saw, very simply a repudiation of President Carter's economic policies. This is very clear from every exit poll, every post-election poll that was made. Only 11 percent of the American people in 1980 voted for Ronald Reagan because, quote, he's a real conservative. That amounts to 4,750,000 votes or roughly five times the number of votes received by Ed Park in his much less valued but perhaps more important long-run campaign for the presidency as a Libertarian Party candidate. It was a referendum then on a failed economic policies that were themselves a retreat from traditional New Deal liberalisms. The philosophy of tax and spend, spend and elect. For about 40 years, almost 50 years since 1932, the governing coalitions in this country have been based essentially on New Deal philosophy. Reagan's victory has been widely counted as a move in a new direction, a new beginning. And indeed he has made some significant steps in that direction. His budget cuts, while actually merely cuts in the rate of increases of the budget, nevertheless when you take inflation into account, amount to about a two or three percent real cut in government spending. His civil liberties policy so far have not been unveiled. There's an attempt to revive UAC and other internal security committees, but so far no major moves have been made on the abortion front by Reagan or on any other major civil liberties front. In the area of foreign policy, of course, there's quite a force of a different color with the revving up of the situation in El Salvador. I will talk about that in a moment, but what I want to reflect on is the meaning of that landslide, that repudiation of Carter. Reagan ran flamboyantly because he is a good actor, despite what the liberal commentators like to say about him. I think he's the greatest actor in American politics today. He ran as the candidate opposed to the government. Not too much so, but just enough so that people would hear him out. In fact, that is what the American people were voting for. What do I take as my evidence? I take as my evidence the political trends which we see developing in this country, which we as libertarians must learn to grasp and to capitalize on. Among these are a very primary fact about foreign policy, which is while the American people, by and large, are in favor of a strong defense, they do not have any conception of what that strong defense ought to consist of. A second point is that while they are in favor of a strong defense, they are not supporters of interventionism. I take as an example of this the White House mail in the polls after the press campaign about El Salvador, which began on February 21st when Alexander Haig released a sheet of documents allegedly captured from Salvadorian guerrillas in San Salvador, which supposedly documented massive communist and particularly Russian support for the so-called Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador. Now this was kicked off at a press conference on February 21st with about as much sophistication as any media campaign for any foreign policy move that we have seen in our lifetime. Nevertheless, what has been the result? According to the polls, public opinion running against the Reagan policy in El Salvador are 6 to 1 against it. According to the White House's own accounts, the mail against the Reagan foreign policies is running 10 to 1 against Reagan's policies. This, after the most skillful political actor in the American political scene, were the most tough-minded generals, a press campaign even including alleged captured documents documenting communist subversion in El Salvador. They could not, and they weren't incapable of, getting the American people to wrap up in support, intervention in another country far away of little strategic importance in the United States. Now I'm not going to pretend that the American people at large are supporters of the libertarian foreign policy of non-interventionism. And in my debate with Gary Greenberg, I hope to demonstrate that non-interventionism is the only libertarian foreign policy. But let us make the general point that the American people are very skeptical of that aspect of Reagan's philosophy. They have been so from the beginning. Reagan left the Republican Party Convention with an enormous 40 percentile lead over President Carter. That dropped so that within two weeks before election they were within a hair's breadth of each other. Why? Because Carter successfully hammered again and again and again against the Reagan foreign policy rhetoric and rhetoric. And you mentioned dozens of times over the years that Ronald Reagan has advocated invading or otherwise slashing into some foreign country for one purpose or another. This hurt Reagan badly in the campaign. It hurt him so badly that he had to spend the last month of his campaign painting himself as a man of peace. He's a skillful actor and he pulled it off. And people who would not have voted for him out of fear that he might start another war decided that they could risk the possibility of a minor war with Reagan. They could not risk four more years of Jimmy Carter. And when they voted and voted in overwhelming numbers for Ronald Reagan, this is what they were voting for. They were voting for a candidate who was an opponent of the big government who said little about civil liberties issues in the campaign and who tried to paint himself as a man of peace. There was such a candidate in the race, of course, who fit these qualifications. And that was Ed Clark, the libertarian candidate. I want to talk a little bit about the civil liberties issues here because I think it has a strong bearing on what we are going to face in the next few years in trying to build up our own constituency. The free libertarian party is not alone in seeing enormous growth over the last few years. I remember when I first moved to New York City in 1975, I thought of the New York City FLP at that point as being rather pathetic. It was pathetic not marrying numbers, but in the lack of any interest in issues, constituencies and politics that they simply didn't have much interest in it. This has changed, I think, because I think we've begun to find out that addressing issues that are pressing concern to the American people can be fun, it can be exciting, and we can stir up some enthusiasm. And indeed, we have done this. Now, I want to quote, this is a quote taken from my own article on the Reagan landslide in the January issue of libertarian review, but it's an interesting quote because it has to do with our finding our own constituency. And it's a quote from a fascinating article entitled, Is This The End of an Era? In the October-November 1980 issue of Public Opinion, published by the American Enterprise Institute, which of course is one of the leading right-wing think tanks in Washington, from which Reagan has drawn many advisors, and no doubt will continue to draw many more. In this Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, he was the star of that TV series like Freedmen's Free to Choose, it was called, In Search of the Real America, a very prescient and intelligent man. They argue that something very important has happened in American politics. People have changed their minds. Now, something very important might be happening right now, people changing their politics. The political tide has turned, but will the Republicans be able to ride the realignment wave? Now, they say the authors of this article wrote in 1970 of the social issue, quote unquote, as a time bomb ticking in the Democratic tent. Traditional values were being eroded by those perceived to be linked to the Democratic Party. Now the Republicans face the danger, the flip side of the social issue. It is still true as a 1970 that Americans approve of traditional values, but it is also increasingly true that garbo-like, they want to be left alone. The tacit toleration, for others at least, of drug use, abortion, pornography, illegitimacy, homosexuality, and premarital living together represents a title and liberating change in American attitudes and culture. Surely these changes have engendered hostility and often repugnance, but most Americans seem to be willing now to live and let live. The Republican Party, having brought its traditional conservatives to the modern mainstream of economics and politics, a mainstream with deep, cool waters and good fishing, can risk the whole catch by heading off into the shallow, rocky, swirling tides of right-wing social issues. Emphasis on prayer in the school, anti-sex education, anti-gay rights, anti-pornography, anti-ARA, anti-abortion amendments, and anti-evolution is a one-way ticket to the swamp of no return. Among other things, it should be noted that some of those good old boys in church on Sunday morning had their pickup trucks at the triple X-rated drive-in movies Saturday night. Now, what is happening here? What is happening is very important for us to think about. Political changes occur in the course of generations. Why? That's how long it takes for older generations to die off, and for younger generations to become influential, which is to say, no country has ever led by people in their 20s. It generally tends to be led by people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Now, what we are witnessing as a result of the post-World War II baby boom, which is very important to us as libertarians, is a whole liberalization of social attitudes toward a whole mess of things, such as the ones that Scammon and Wattenberg discussed in their article. It's simply a fact that you look at public opinion charts and you look at such things as gay rights or drug use or anything else, that the tolerance level increases drastically as the age gets younger. And for those of the baby boom generation, those who now are just becoming a voting age, reaching up to the upper end of about 34 or 35, these are about 77 million people, incidentally, while a third of the country's population are within this age group, they are beginning to reach positions of social and political influence. And some of the things that they are influencing is general public attitudes toward these social questions. And their attitude may be described probably as slightly permissive or at least tolerant. When after the election campaign, people were asked in the country at large if they saw the growing permissiveness in the United States as an example of moral decay or greater social tolerance, people in older age groups answered about evenly to vote, about 50-50. Once you've got below the 35-year-old age group, 35 and younger, it was three to one who saw these changes as representing greater social tolerance rather than moral decay. This ratio is going to continue to increase simply because as standards of living rise and people's income increases, they have increasing ways of spending it and of spending their time that look to their elders and elder generations as being sort of permissive. That is, they're doing things that older generations wouldn't have dreamed of doing. This has always happened across the course of generations. I recently debated a man who was the chief legislative aide of Senator Jake Garn of Utah before a conservative club in Alexandria, Virginia on the issue of victimless crime laws, and I was trying to make several points to no avail. I think the average or median age in the audience was something above 70. And I had a difficult time persuading people of virtually any of my social attitudes, more of the libertarian political attitudes which lie beneath me. However, I did make a point because as the debate was coming to a close, the moderator announced that afterwards the bar would be opened downstairs and we could go down and have drinks and continue talking with the two debaters. I made the point to some of these older women the very thought to their grandmothers of them going downstairs to drink in public with men, let alone wearing skirts that didn't even cover their ankles. Well, the point was made and I think we have to look long run over a period of 20 years or so to make the movement. We've got to look at what we can accomplish as we move into leadership positions in the future. What we accomplished in 1980 was an enormously successful campaign by any objective criteria. I am not here going to answer all the little charges and complaints and bickerings that people had. We all have our own ideas about how campaigns should be run. It's in the nature of the beast. I ran a campaign for US Congress in San Francisco. I received about five and a half percent of votes, almost 7,000. You might think I'm a terrific campaigner. I didn't do anything. What they were responding to in effect was Ed Clark and the Libertarian Party's generalized message which began in 1980 to reach the mass numbers of the American people for the first time in our history. We increased our vote total over 1976 by a factor of five. We received just under 950,000 votes for a man who a few months earlier was completely unknown in this country completely unknown. Nicholas von Hoppen was quite right when he said, we are making leaders. We're not just finding John Anderson's or people already well known. We are making leaders. All of us in this room are becoming leaders, becoming people to whom other people look for at least stimulating discussion if not guidance and political matters. Sometimes the discussions are so stimulating that they don't attend a second meeting. But that's partly why it's fun. Let's admit it. Let's admit it. So by any objective standard we accomplished an amazing number of things in 1980. Not only did a completely unknown man before the election began receive almost a million votes. Not only did we get on the ballot in every state in the Union plus the District of Columbia plus I think Guam or something just flaunted it. We ran a whole lot of congressional candidates, senatorial candidates, gubernatorial, state legislator. And we did quite well considering almost no one who ran had ever run for political office before. Most of them were taking off afternoons and evenings from real jobs that had to go through five or six days in order to campaign and to receive an average of four or five percent of the vote with pathetically little money. God, we know that. But it's an amazing accomplishment. Certainly we can criticize certain things about the Clark campaign or as we could about the Greenberg campaign and New York running for governor in 78. As God knows we could have about the Tuchile campaign in 1974. But ask yourself a question. Is there progress? I think there is. Is there a chance that we may be successful? I think also that there is. And I think one of the things we have to look at is that we are in a period of a new deal of coalition. A coalition of all those minority groups of blacks and unionists and all these other people who look to welfare state as their salvation. We now know that the majority of the American people are sick with this. They are sick with the results. They are sick of the crime in the cities. They are sick of what they see as just incredible corrupt bureaucracy squandering now in the order even under Ronald Reagan for $700 billion. Budget Cutter Ronald Reagan may leave office if he retires signing the first $1 trillion budget. Budget Cutter Ronald Reagan is increasing the defense budget now at a faster pace than any time since World War II. He is going to double the defense budget in real terms over a five year period. We are going to be spending over a five year period $1.5 trillion on defense. I used the word defense in quotes because we all know that in the campaign for the presidency some 60 to 70% of the defense budget is oriented toward the defense of other countries. Japan and Western Europe. We are subsidizing Volkswagen, Doxson, Toyota and all the other companies that compete with us in the international marketplace. It's a mistake. And I think increasingly as we make out our case and make it out with force a degree of true national security in this country at a much less cost. Simply by getting rid of those tripwires to involvement which are alliances and endless series of commitments to defend other countries. Commitments that would see us getting involved in everywhere from South Africa to Cambodia and Vietnam to El Salvador. Now many people don't remember the reason given for fighting the Vietnam War was to stop China so that they can oppose Russia. Sooner or later this kind of real politic is going to come straight against reality and hit it like a brick wall. I only hope that the American people survive this so that they can do the rethinking they need to do. But I think that what we represent is an ideology in search of a constituency which is there or is growing the growth of government has gotten so out of hand the number of regulations not just of the economy but the very structuring of our economic and personal lives the very interventions on our personal level the arrest last year of still more than 650,000 people on various drug related charges has been estimated that some 40% of the violent crimes in inner cities are drug related that is that they are crimes committed for me what the cost of morphing tablets is to a pharmacist the cost of maintaining a heroin habit today in inner cities is between 125 and 150 dollars a day if you get 20% of what you fence this means they have to steal if they're stealing five times that to support a daily habit you know what the cost is of morphing tablets of giving the same thing between I think I figured out between 45 and 60 cents a day and 15 cents now is anyone going to live a life of crime for this no I don't see too many people living a life of crime to be able to have a cigarette today the fact of the matter is that these social attitudes are attitudes which have to be rethought because the problems that are being caused by our policies and all these areas are increasing the problems and making the reality worse they are making life harder for us and I think that just as this younger generation in which I count myself at the age of 32 is going to do the rethinking on this area necessary to have new policies new attitudes toward life I'd like to end by quoting Samuel Britton and British man he is an editor of the Financial Times of London which is there equivalent to the World Street Journal he's written an extraordinary book published a few years back called Capitalism and Improvisative Society and it's interesting in that it's about permissiveness but she sees as nothing but another word for individual liberty and homage to Richard Cobden the great classical liberal who advocated laissez-faire and opposed British imperialism Samuel Britton put it best the need for a modern Cobdenite movement which would combine a belief in both personal freedom and economic freedom with non-interventionism overseas has still to be met it might attract much more general support or liberal liberal or conservative might ever imagine I think that as we go out into the world as we wage our campaigns as we become more professional as we become more knowledgeable as we speak out as we defend our views to all people that we can reach of every race, creed and ethnic background as we reach out and begin to impress upon people that we have some solutions the problems that we see in this country we will move into the positions of leadership and we will start winning significant campaigns beyond just the level of state legislatures and mayor's races I think that this is a great challenge for us and offers a great hope and there's nothing to do but to do it and get it done and so let's go to work thank you