 Please go on eating, I'm sure you'll be done by the time I finish in an hour and a half. No. I'm gratified to see such a large crowd here, such a big age range, such an enthusiastic audience. Murray Rothbard, who I'm going to talk about a little bit today about his ideas, would have loved this. He would have said heroic. I mean, you're here on a beautiful day and you're in a very large room listening to me, and hopefully I'll repay that sacrifice. Okay, so to fix the economy, we must first fix politics. That was a very interesting insight of Rothbard's in the 1990s. He wrote a number of articles which I will talk about in which he talked about politics and what was emerging and what he sought to be emerging in the next 20, 30 years. His ideas and his thoughts were extremely prophetic, and his solutions, his remedies were very, very insightful. As far as I can see, libertarians, including myself until very, very recently, really failed to absorb the essence of what he was saying. It really takes a change of mind and heart to follow the advice that Rothbard was giving. So what I want to do is to start my talk with a quotation from Murray Rothbard. And I think this is really the key. He says, there has been a radical change in the social and political landscape in this country. And any person who desires a victory of liberty and the defeat of Leviathan must adjust his strategy accordingly. New times require a rethinking of old and possibly obsolete strategies. Now, Murray Rothbard wrote these words in the 1990s. They expressed the main theme of a series of brilliant articles he wrote calling for a radical readjustment of libertarian strategy to the new political realities that had emerged in the United States in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In these articles, Rothbard identified both the abstract social philosophy, which I'll talk about, and the concrete political movement that had emerged as the greatest menace to liberty and society. He also proposed a radical reformulation of the political spectrum and a revised political vocabulary, revised way of thinking and talking, to express the new strategy called for in the changed ideological and political context. Before proceeding further, I want to point out that Rothbard's articles, despite their deep insight and radical implications for libertarian strategy, have been largely overlooked by both friend and foe for a couple of reasons. First, when he was writing these articles, he was at work on his great two-volume work on the history of economic thought, which because of his untimely death would have been a three-volume work, but he unfortunately was not able to finish it. So, understandably, he wrote these articles quickly as kind of separate responses to various events, ideas, and political developments during what was a period of rapid change from 1991 to 1994. Rothbard's views were therefore presented as fragments in different articles containing inevitable repetition and overlapping, so I've sort of boiled the views down. This obscured the fact that, taken together, the articles presented a systematic and comprehensive strategy for radical social and political change. Secondly, these articles appeared in the Rothbard-Rochwell report, which is a journal of social, political, and cultural commentary. Unfortunately, Triple R, as it was called, had scintillating polemics, and so you sort of lost how serious and deep some of the articles actually were. And it covered a really broad range of topics, which sometimes diverted the reader from the deep theorizing that really informed these articles. So, after the fall of communism, Rothbard set out to identify the main political threat to freedom. With Nazism and fascism having, quote, been long dead and buried, Rothbard argued that social democracy, and we'll talk about that, represented the only remaining status program, and its advocates were hell-bent on making the most of their ideological monopoly. In the new post-communist world, Rothbard wrote, the enemy of liberty and tradition is now revealed full-blown social democracy. For social democracy, in all of its guises, is not only still with us, but now that Stalin and his heirs are out of the way, social democrats are trying to reach for total power. Now, social democrats you can think of as being the European name for left liberals in the American vocabulary or political vocabulary. Not only is social democracy still with us in many variations, but it has managed to define what Rothbard called our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left to the neoconservatism on the right, unquote. Make no mistake about it, Rothbard warned, on all crucial issues, social democrats, however they label themselves, stand against liberty and tradition and in favor of statism and big government, unquote. Furthermore, social democracy is far more insidious than other forms of statism because of the term democracy. It claims, in Rothbard's words, to combine socialism with the appealing virtues of democracy and free inquiry. As shrewd observers of the political scene for a century and a half, now they've been around as long as Marx, social democrats are indeed seriously committed to democracy. As Rothbard explained, the maintenance of some democratic choice, however illusory, is vital for all variety of social democrats. They have long realized that a one-party dictatorship can and probably will become cordially hated and will eventually be overthrown, possibly along with the entire power structure. Rothbard also noted that social democrats' devotion to democracy also serves as a pretext for an attack on those who assert the absolute inviolability of the right to free speech and a free press, that is us libertarians. This assault on free speech Rothbard prophetically pointed out in 1991, and I'm quoting him here, constitutes an agenda for eventually using the power of the state to restrict or prohibit speech or expression that neocons and social democrats hold to be quote undemocratic, quoting within his quote. This category could and would be indefinitely expanded to include real or alleged communists, leftist, fascist, neo-Nazis, secessionists, hate thought criminals, and eventually paleo-conservatives and paleo-libertarians, unquote. So Rothbard saw that this, saw that the attack on free speech was already beginning in 1991. They were already talking about certain types of speech being undemocratic, which as we'll see is their religion. Rothbard probed deeper to expose a peculiar social philosophy that is at the root of all variants of social democracy as well as communism. He identified this philosophy as progressivism, which is far more than a social and economic program for the here and the now. It is a utopian social philosophy that looks towards the establishment of a future heaven on earth. All the crazies, all the crazy political ideologies throughout history have looked towards establishing a heaven on earth and established, of course, a bloody hell. The core belief of progressives is based on the Enlightenment myth that history is an inexorable and ever upward march toward the perfection of mankind. I guess today you'd have to say humankind. In the case of social democrats, perfection is defined as a society ruled and engineered by a righteous, efficient, egalitarian socialist state. Moreover, unlike traditional Marxists, social democrat progressives believe that history unfolds not through class struggle and bloody revolution, but through the relentless forward march of democracy. There's that word again. In Rothbard's words, quote, the left are in their bones progressives. That is, they believe in that history consists of an inevitable march upward into the light and into the socialist utopia. They believe in the myth of inevitable progress, that history is on their side, unquote. The final goal of this progressive and inevitable transformation of society is not, as it is with the traditional Marxists, the eradication of all class distinctions and the collective ownership of the means of the production under the dictatorship of the working class. Rather, it is in Rothbard's words, quote, a socialist, egalitarian state run by bureaucrats, intellectuals, technocrats, therapists, and the new class in general in collaboration with accredited victim pressure groups striving for equality. So he's saying this all in the early 1990s recall, okay, and this is unfolding right now. In the social democrat paradise, the capitalist and entrepreneur class will not be liquidated, nor will their means of production be expropriated, be stolen, and collectivized. Instead, the market economy will be retained, which we have today, but heavily taxed, regulated, and restricted. According to Rothbard, quote, the social democrats realize that it is far better for the socialist state to retain the capitalists and a truncated market economy to be regulated, confined, controlled, and subject to the command of the state. The social democrat goal is not class war, but the opposite. It's kind of a forced class harmony in which capitalists and the market work for the good of society and of the parasitic state apparatus, unquote. With neo-conservative progressives and progressives having hijacked the conservative movement and the Republican Party on the one hand, and the so-called new democrat, Bill Clinton, revealing his hard left progressive inclinations, Rothbard realized that the urgent first step in combating progressivism was to completely revamp the prevailing conception of the U.S. political spectrum and its vocabulary. On the left of this reconstructed spectrum that Rothbard was putting forward, Rothbard placed all political factions that are inspired by the progressive Marxist vision of social change and devoted to democracy, which they believe is the highest political value. These social democrats ranged from the neo-conservatives to left liberals and included their allied intellectual and media elites and official victim groups. On the right, he grouped all those who cherished traditional American liberties and social institutions and who aimed to stop, roll back, and undo progressive encroachments on them. Rothbard initially puzzled over the label that best suited his grand coalition of a fusion of right wing of opposition groups, which included many, but not all libertarians, there were left libertarians, various conservative groups, the traditional conservative groups. He summarily rejected the name conservative and tentatively proposed the terms radical reactionaries, radical rightists, or the hard right, but he finally settled on the name political economic reactionaries, or simply just reactionaries. Now, the term reactionary is particularly fitting for the opponents of the progressive vision. It is true that the word was coined during the French Revolution to designate those who wanted to restore the old ancient monarchy, but its modern usage can be traced to Karl Marx, who used the term as a pejorative to describe many of his predecessors and opponents in the 19th century socialist movement and who had a lot of utopian schemes involving turning back the clock to the pre-capitalist feudal era. Later communists and social democrats used reactionary as a smear word against the defenders of capitalism for opposing the allegedly inevitable march of history towards socialism. As Rothbard pointed out, quote, they become hysterical at setbacks, at regressions in the march, regressions which have of course been dubbed reactions. In both the communist and the social democratic worldview, the highest if not the only morality is to be progressive, to be on the side of the inevitable next phase of history, in the same way the deepest if not the only immorality is to be reactionary, to be devoted to opposing inevitable progress or even, and at its worst, looking to roll back the tide and restore the past, to turn back the clock, unquote. Now, there's a lot of negative connotations to the word reactionary, which has been pushed by the Marxists. It's really strictly due to this polemical use by the Marxists that it's turning back the clock. Outside of politics, however, the term has a positive connotation in many uses, in particular the physiological antigen antibody reaction, which is the fundamental reaction in the body by which the body is protected from complex foreign molecules, such as pathogens and their chemical toxins. I got that from a medical book. In other words, the human immune system is what we're talking about, is reactionary. It reacts against and annihilates invaders and restores the human body to its healthy state. To be a political economic reactionary then is to seek to undo the ravages of our economic, social, and cultural institutions caused by progressive policies. To turn back the clock by ousting the invaders from their positions of power and restoring the social body, the old America, back to health. Rothbard perceptively applied his analysis of progressivism to explain the mystery of the bitter, hysterical, and long-standing leftist hatred of Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet of Spain and Chile respectively. The loathing of left liberals for these men is even greater than it is for Hitler for some surprising reason, which I will reveal. But Franco and Pinochet had thwarted the march of history, had actually turned back the clock by leading successful counter revolutions against democratically elected leftist social democratic governments, and that's what they really hate. Today we witness the same frenzied and unhinged vituperation by progressives heaped upon Donald Trump, Victor Orban of Hungary, I hear Bolsonaro of Brazil, the former president, and Georgia Meloni of Italy because these men and this woman have committed an even graveer sin against the progressive creed than Franco and Pinochet did. They have actually taken power in democratic elections while using explicitly anti-progressive reactionary rhetoric. Thereby exposing the myth that democracy is the guarantee of inevitable social progress toward an egalitarian socialist state. How deeply these elections shook up in disoriented progressives is demonstrated in the crazed tweet by a CNN pundit, I love this, that quote, a vote for Orban is a vote against democracy. So if you vote the wrong way, you're voting against democracy. Slightly less idiotic but more revealing is the resolution passed last year by the European Parliament asserting that Hungary is no longer a democracy even though there was voting, Orban won but had 80% of the vote. So no longer a democracy. They had to come up with another name. They called it quote, a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy, electoral autocracy. Autocrats don't usually stand for election, but Rothbard was right on the money and his valuation of the progressive response to the successful political reactions of Franco and Pinochet and this is what he said, let reaction occur, let the phases be rolled back, the phases of history, and these people flip out, go into orbit for then maybe their religion is a false one after all. After reconstructing the political spectrum to reflect the realities of the dawning post-communist era, Rothbard laid out the political strategy that reactionaries need to employ to roll back progressivism. He pointed out that reactionaries and progressives are both minorities and they're in polar opposition to one another. Between them are the majority of Americans who are confused and quote, torn between conflicting worldviews. They constitute a Rothbard who was following Lenin in this called the swamp. So the majority of Americans are the terrain over which the ideological battles will be fought. Rothbard summed up the problem facing the rightist opposition to the progressive power grab. Here's what he said, the problem is that the bad guys, the ruling classes, have gathered unto themselves the intellectual and media elites who are able to bamboozle the masses into consenting to their rule to indoctrinate them as the Marxists would say with a false consciousness, unquote. The state of affairs exists because from the beginning of the 20th century, progressive and corporate liberal politicians and their business and financial cronies have induced increasing numbers of intellectuals to justify and legitimize their rule in exchange for government subsidies or lucrative jobs in the federal government's ever-expanding regulatory welfare and warfare agencies and bureaus. When Rothbard called a monopoly of the... What Rothbard called a monopoly of the opinion-molding function, unquote, in society has thus been granted to a really privileged and coddled class that today consists of what Rothbard called a swarm of intellectuals, academics, social scientists, technocrats, policy scientists, social workers, journalists, and the media generally. I mean, this is in 1991, 1992, right up to the last article, shortly before he died. But he foresaw with great clarity what was going on and what would happen to us as the decades unfolded. What is to be done to break this formidable monopoly and overthrow the unholy alliance, that's Rothbard's term, unholy alliance, of the political establishment and its privileged intellectual apologists or justifiers? Rothbard recommends, quote, a strategy of boldness and confrontation, of dynamism and excitement, a strategy in short of rousing the masses from their slumber and exposing the arrogant elites that are ruling them, controlling them, taxing them, and ripping them off, unquote. For rousing right-wing populism of this sort is precisely what the ruling elites fear. They prefer a judicious, bipartisan, calm discussion of the issues in measured and solemn tones and without any acrimony. Progressives especially fear and warn against the so-called, quote, politics of resentment. Guess why? Because the resentment is directed towards them by the people that they're exploiting and ruling and expropriating. Resentment is good when it's directed correctly. Not only must the strategy of the right be confrontational, according to Rothbard, it must also fuse the abstract, I'm quoting him here, fuse the abstract and the concrete, must not only attack the elites and the abstract, but must focus on the existing status system on those who right now constitute the ruling classes, unquote. This means above all that the rightest strategy must be personal, must aim at exposing the lies, corruptions, and scandals of specific members of the ruling coalition. Thus Rothbard wrote of the anti-Clinton movement, if you recall that, it was wonderfully bitter and resentful, that rapidly coalesced during Clinton's first term as president. Here's what Rothbard said. The movement erupted in reaction to all the objectively loathsome attributes of the Clintons and their associates, the stream of lies, evasions, crookery, sex scandals, and frantic attempts to run all of our lives. But quickly the hatred of the personal attributes of the Clintons spilled over to his program and to his ideology. Thus we had the most powerful nuclear fusion in all of politics, the intense blending of the personal and the ideological. The growing realization of the socialist tyranny involved in all of Clinton's programs joined with and greatly multiplied by the loathing of Clinton the man, unquote. So we must bring together both. We must show that these people are not good human beings as a result their ideology is destructive and deadly. The final part of the Rothbardian strategy is to get those on the right to grasp a simple insight. And this insight was long ago grasped by the left. That politics is war. That is, in domestic politics as an interstate military conflict, in the words of a great political theorist Carl Schmidt, quote, the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence, quote, unquote. Furthermore, politics like war inherently involved what Schmidt called the distinction between friend and enemy. He called the friend-enemy distinction. To quote him again, war is the existential negation of the enemy. And that's true of politics. I mean, we shouldn't be afraid to be divisive. Politics is by its nature divisive. It's by its nature a war of the rulers against the rule. So even though Schmidt insists that shedding blood and killing is an essential attribute of war, it need not be so. The conflict in domestic politics is also war in the existential sense because the ruling elites, by virtue of their control of the state apparatus, not only threaten physical violence and even death against the rules, that is us, they actually practice violence and killing against dissenters or insurrectionists among the ruled. I mean, they're kidnapped and thrown in prison with kangaroo courts. Rothbard recognized that any serious political challenge to progressives by a united and self-conscious rightist movement would be a war and a religious war at that. I will conclude by quoting at some length a rousing clarion call to arms to all of us, back from the mists of the 1990s. This is coming from Rothbard and it's applicable today. We are engaged, he says, in the deepest sense in a religious war and not just a cultural one. Religious because left liberalism, social democracy, is a passionately held world view. Religion in the deepest sense held on faith. The view that the inevitable goal of history is a perfect world, an egalitarian socialist world, a kingdom of God on earth. It is a religious world view towards which there must be no quarter. It must be opposed and combated with every fiber of our being. And the metaphor is properly military. The looming struggle is far wider and deeper than over merely indexing capital gains, as many Rhino-Republicans would have it. It is a life and death struggle for our very souls and for the future of America. The war for reaction will require above all courage, the guts not to buckle at the all too predictable smear response of the media, the pollsters and all the rest. And above all, we need what the left fears above all. An adherence to the military metaphor, to the concept of us versus them, good guys versus bad guys, to taking America back. We must aim not only for rolling it all back, not only for saving us from the Leviathan state and nihilist culture, and not only for restoring the old republic, for eventually you must drive the wooden stake through the heart of the enemy to kill once and for all the monstrous dream of the perfectly socialized world. The lessons in all this, ladies and gentlemen, is that there is only two sides in the current political war. You are either progressive or reactionary. You either join or acquiesce in the forced march into socialism, or you join the great reaction to fight to turn back the progressive clock, or better yet, really to smash at the smithereens. Before ending, I just want to mention that I got a letter from a professor from Vanderbilt, Virginia, Abernathy, and she didn't like the word reaction, and she was telling me that the label that we should use, appropriate for ourselves, is patriot. Rothbard liked the word reaction, but I think there can be discussions on what word to best describe those who want to take America back. Thank you.