 So we've got a medical doctor, a Ph.D. doctor, and a son of a doctor. Ooh. But Lou, we know you know as much as doctors. So somebody out there can start us off. Maybe this gentleman. Is this on? Yes, it is. Okay. Something that I... I'm Bill Anderson, and I teach economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland. And Bill's one of our affiliated scholars with Mises. Something that I think to go along with it. It's more of a comment, but I'd like to see how you respond. And that is that not only are we seeing this growth of a police state and imprisonment, but the law itself has undergone, I guess, a bit of a revolution. And that is that in the past, especially in criminal law, we had what we called mollum and say, directing our law. And that was that an act was bad. And it was understood universally to be bad. I mean, societies throughout history have had laws against murder and rape and theft and the like. But now what we have is a growth of mollum prohibitum. And that is that the government just sets a bunch of rules. They have arbitrary numbers and targets and the like. And if you violate that, then you go to prison. We can talk about our metastasizing prison system, but it would not have been possible without this legal revolution. Because well over half of the people in prison today, in American prisons, are there for what we would call violations of mollum prohibitum. In other words, they broke a rule as opposed to what we would call, let's say, committed a crime historically. Now that's my thinking, but I would like to know how the panel would look at that particular comment. Well, so the general question, if anybody didn't hear it, was basically the distinction in law between acts that have always been known to be harmful to others and ethically, morally, they've always been looked down on, as opposed to acts that are victimless in a sense, but they're just prohibited by the state. As Dr. Anderson pointed out, a huge number of our jailed criminals are in jail simply because they violated a state rule as opposed to violating a long-standing ethical rule. So, I know Tom has a lot to say about our legal system and the criminal justice system in particular. Well, it seems as the government grows larger and its ambitions grow greater, the list of things that you might do that it would consider wrong or punishable by jail time would grow along with it. And so it's not just the drug war, which would be a case of a victimless crime, but also the huge regulatory thicket that becomes impossible to know what I can do with my business, what I can't do. Anti-trust law is impossible to figure out. I don't know if I can tell the joke, but I mean, you could make a case under anti-trust law that lowering your prices is wrong, raising your prices is wrong, and keeping your prices the same is wrong. So, that's sort of an administrative crime. And then we have people who just for no good reason just seem to enjoy, just enjoy lording it over people. And I'm just talking to Ben Swann the other day about what's going on in Chicago where Rahm Emanuel is upset about electronic cigarettes, where basically you're exhaling vapor. Now, here we are in this world with every, you know, Dr. Paul is talking about all the things that are wrong in the world. And he's worried about electronic cigarettes because the children might start smoking electronic cigarettes, even though the point of them is to help wean you off real cigarettes. It's not to get you to start smoking e-cigarettes. And he wants to ban them or you've got to go out on the street if you want to smoke them. So, here you have people who are trying to quit smoking and he's forcing them out there with the smokers. Like, there's no second-hand effect of an e-cigarette. Like, there's no conceivable health benefit. It's just they like doing this to us and these people are going to lecture us about the vices in our lives. And yet the very first opportunity we ever have to peel back and look at the reality of their lives, we find out case after case after case they are involved in every conceivable vice under the sun. Present company accepted. Okay, I know we got somebody else. Oh, just one short comment. I think the problem is that these individuals who like legislation, they want a legislation against vices and bad habits. They should ever do that. That's not their business. But the other thing is the original intent was not to have a federal police force. And so if there's going to be any of these laws, they should be legal. So I'm for, you know, radically reducing the size and scope and authority of the federal government. And we might have a much better chance at handling this. But as Tom points out, the local people can be just as bad sometimes. But you can't have laws against vices and bad habits. That's just totalitarian that is extreme. Quickly mentioned that Senator Dick Durbin and a bunch of similar creatures wrote a letter to the committee that puts on the golden globes and also warning the Oscars that they've actually showed people smoking e-cigarettes on the air. And this had to be banned. So they're already, they're threatening them too. I just want to quickly mention a great book by Harvey Silverglate who is a defense attorney in Boston called Three Felonies a Day. And he argues that just by living, you're committing three felonies a day. And it's a good book. Well attendance today is the force. So who do we got? This gentleman in the deck tie. I'm a little bit confused about the role of NSA and government and that in the grand scheme of fascism. Senator Bernie Sanders made an inquiry and got back the word that Congress is being spied upon. Whistleblower of nine years ago Russ Tice said, he witnessed as NSA satellite intelligence analysts that U.S. senators, representatives, members of the administration, Obama, then unknown. Supreme Court Judge Alito and many more were tapped. So this is not even close to the Patriot Act, I would say. A suggestion is that maybe the NSA blackmails on what they know about members of government and of the administration and Congress. So I know the Russians have it easy. They have the KGB head and he is going to be president. So in your analysis, is the POTUS still Obama or is there a co-president such as Clapper? And where does this fit into the grand scheme of fascism? Well I want Dr. Paul to answer this one. But I've often wondered if the reason that Congress just lamely gives up its prerogatives isn't necessarily just because there are a bunch of lazy bums, but because maybe there's some pressure being put on them behind the scenes. I mean I hate to even guess at something like that, given the wonderful people who are in charge just looking out for our good. But I wonder what Dr. Paul thinks. I think it's Dick Cheney. He's into his fourth term, no he's into his fifth term. I don't think any of the presidents really are in charge. I think others are the people who provided the ability to get through the process and get through the media hurdles and get the money. And then they have a lot to say what's going on. And I think they also have a say on who becomes the Federal Reserve Board Chairman, which is probably just as significant as who is the president. This young lady here. I have a comment and then a question. I grew up in a really small town and my father's actually a police officer. And I've seen firsthand the militarization of the local police department in small towns. And because of a lot of the fear mongering with the media, they almost welcome it. So what is the solution other than the media is very biased, but a lot of Americans are aware of the NSA problems and the police state that's emerging. But for a lot of people, like I said, they welcome it. So what is the solution and what practically can we do to get people to wake up? Well, there are some areas where I think we're doing pretty badly and other areas where I think things are turning around. And one of them is that the younger people, well, they might be confused on economics. Well, that's what the Mises Institute is here for. But they're much better on war and they're much more skeptical of the police. They don't buy into the superstitions of their parents. And I used to, by the way, I used to think that anybody who had any problem with the police would go commie, who should pack his bags and get on out of the good old USA. And now I see that I shouldn't have thought that way. But the younger people don't have some of the superstitions we have. And Lou mentioned cop block. That's funny, I was just on their Facebook page a couple of weeks ago they had about 73,000 likes. Then I checked the other day they were at 94,000 likes. I mean, with that kind of growth, everybody would be a member of cop block by the end of this seminar. They're young people plus the ability to communicate forbidden ideas and videos and clips of what's really going on. So I don't know how this is all going to work out, but that is an explosive and very, very welcome combination. Anybody else want to? Okay. Where's our mic? Oh, it's this young man. Hello, my name is Anton Chamberlain. I go to Altoona High School in Georgia. And I know being the young age that I am, even I at times can be discouraged at times that things aren't necessarily going the way they want them to. And I was wondering how three of y'all have been able to maintain your enthusiasm or been able to work through the adversities that have been given to you by the media blackouts and just the naysayers and the people that call you neoconfederates and just how you've been able to work through those and maintain your sanity pretty much. Thank you. Well, I mean, there's nothing to be dour about. I mean, we still have a level of material prosperity that we enjoy every day that generations before us never enjoyed. We still have a degree of freedom of speech and we have the digital age to allow us to communicate. But, I mean, lots and lots. We always, I think, have this sort of fantasy that we live in the most dangerous and dramatic times of all. And we're pikers compared to a lot of folks at a lot of different stages in history. So I still wake up with a smile on my face and I have two young children, so that's my motivator. Just a second. Yeah, I've got a fifth child coming because our philosophy is we're just going to win the battle of ideas through sheer numbers. But seriously, I mean, we haven't got any... You know, anytime you're feeling down, I want you to throw some cold water in your face, smack yourself around, and try and think about what it would have been like to be Rothbard in 1967. The National Review crowd won't have anything to do with you even though you're next to Mises, the greatest living economist. The left, well, you can reach out a little bit to them, but increasingly less and less as the 60s go on. You are a free market economist who's anti-war. You could fit all of you in a phone booth. Remember those? Or Mises dies in 1973. Hayek gets the Nobel Prize the next year. He doesn't have to see it. And yet he just carries on, carries on, carries on. He doesn't get the feed. He can't send out a tweet and get 100 retweets instantly and be validated, right? And yet here we've got these tremendous advantages. We have Mises Institute with a great reach. Dr. Paul with over a million likes on Facebook. We've got this ability to reach people that Rothbard and Mises could only have dreamed of, and yet they thoroughly enjoyed their lives. They didn't say, whoa is me, and oh, things aren't going so well. But then we've got it made in the shade. So smack yourself around if you're getting discouraged. You know, I get a similar question asked frequently. How did you survive all those years up there? Wasn't it really frustrating for you? And I said, no, I was never frustrated. Never once. I tell them, I just had low expectations. But there's some truth to that, is your expectations make a difference. You know, I thought that, you know, me being in Congress, I first went to Congress in 1976 that I was going to, all of a sudden, change that system. I think I understood it a little bit better than that. So I wasn't expecting to do that. Quite frankly, I think more came of it than I ever dreamed because even after having been there for a long time, there's still, I think Jeff might have mentioned that, you know, I would talk to smaller crowds for a long time. I would go to college campus and get 15 or 20 people out and something changed in 07. All of a sudden, but things came together. But in Washington, no, I wasn't frustrated and I tried to make the best of it and I really, really welcomed a type of a victory. I remember Leonard Reed's advice that, you know, your approach has to be to spread the message. It has to be, you know, a much more calm demeanor. You don't grab a guy from the shirt and say, this is the way it is and you're listening to me. He says, become knowledgeable. He says, somebody might ask you a question and when they do, it's important. And I can remember and many of you in this room will know the name of Walter Jones from North Carolina. Walter Jones right now is probably the strongest anti-war proponent in Washington. He's not a libertarian. He admits that, but he changed his mind on that. But I remember him coming, sitting down next to me and he was having second thoughts about why his voting for the war and he wanted me to explain how you can be a conservative and be opposed to the war. And all of a sudden light bulbs went on. So for all the things that should have made me frustrated, Walter Jones and a couple others gave me a lot of encouragement. And he came from a highly military district, right? He had no interest whatsoever in changing his mind. I'll just say for me, the two things that counter. First of all, we have the truth on our side. And I think in a secular sense, in a religious sense, we know the truth will triumph. Also, it's fun to give the bad guys a hot foot. I mean, it's fun to fight them. So for me, those are the two things. Now, Lou, do you want to explain to our younger folks what a hot foot is? I think that's another term like peace officer that we've... Next question, who's up? Hello, my name is Chris Russell. I'd just like to get the panelists opinion on the Free State Project, which for those of you who aren't familiar, is an effort to move 20,000 Liberty Loving People to New Hampshire to exercise liberty in our lifetime. So I'm not a participant yet, but I'd just like to get your opinion on the Free State Project and also would you ever consider geographically the Media Institute participating in or moving to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project? Well, my mother was from New Hampshire. I spent a lot of time in New Hampshire as a kid. I love New Hampshire. And I think the Free State Project is a very neat idea. Of course, it's being targeted, as Tom pointed out, by the police and the newspapers. But it's a... I think it's terrific. For the Media Institute, we have a wonderful... In fact, I want to invite everybody to come and visit us. We have a wonderful campus in Auburn. So that's not movable for good or real. We couldn't move it. On the Free State Movement, I think it's fine. And I hope it works. I probably wouldn't move to New Hampshire, just wouldn't be in the car. But the only way I see that it could be a shortcoming is I want... For all of us. I can't believe Woodsy is being used as a pejorative here. Hi, I'm Ken, from Cyprus, Texas. I've got a question for Dr. Woods. Would you share briefly with this audience concerning the recent controversy with Mark Levin? Oh, I really don't want to, but only because you asked. You know, there's this radio host, and I don't really want to dwell on him, but he wasn't particularly nice to our esteemed friend and scholar here during the campaign. But Mark Levin's a radio host. He's got eight gazillion listeners. And they're very loyal to him and good for him for that. And I don't bother with this guy. I don't listen to him. I don't respond to him. Whatever. Except when he attacks me or somebody else. Then I defend myself. And the thing is that then I defend myself and people say, Woods, why can't you just work together with Levin? Well, do you ever say Levin, why can't you work together? Like, why is it always me? I mean, I hope these kids, these parents aren't teaching their kids. You know, if you're getting beaten up on the playground, why aren't you working together with that kid? Look, you've got to defend yourself sometime. And he was saying terrible things about me, about Judge Napolitano. He wouldn't choose the judge's name, but he would call him judge, some bad name, and we all know who he means. And I don't have time to make many YouTubes anymore because I'm recording videos on history and economics and government for a certain slave driver's home school curriculum over here. So I don't have a lot of time, but it was only because I felt, there we go, it was only because, see, but that was a voluntarily agreed to whipping. So that's okay. I don't have time, but I felt like I've got to, I know this sounds melodramatic, but I thought lately he's been really attacking people who support state nullification. He says, you're kooks, you're crazy, but I have a pretty good argument for it and he has not actually tried to address that. And I just thought, all right, I just can't let this go on without a response. So I made a response and I told him, if you want to keep calling names, there's no way I can stop you. I've never called you a name. I said, none of the other people you're calling names have called you a name. And I even said, we were probably raised differently from you, so that may have something to do with it. I said, but if you want to debate me anytime you want, you know, let's go ahead. You name the place and you and I will have a debate and, you know, I even was proposing judges who would determine a winner and then we'll have a cash award for his favorite charity if I lose. And then if I win, I have another charity and he's not going to like giving money to it. So that's that. You know, I was talking to somebody once about being a successful talk show host and I thought that would be a neat thing to do, but I don't think I'm cut out for that. I don't know whether you consider yourself a talk show host, but they told me how to be a successful talk show host and the many big shots in this country that are talk show hosts and maybe they got, you know, to be so big because they said a successful talk show host is somebody who can talk forever without saying anything. This gentleman's been very patient. My name is Israel Freeland. I'm out of Austin, Texas. And first and foremost, I'd like to say thank you for being here because it's not every day that you can sit amongst peers and heroes. That being said, I'm also appreciative that you've mentioned Sheriff Andy Griffith as well as the Tankman, so much so that I have the Tankman tattooed on the back of my leg. I'm currently over a decade in active duty with the military. I've been to the Balkans. I've been to Iraq. And being part of that, it has its plus sides and I feel more so its negatives. I still have about 18 months left in my current contract and because I feel like I'm contractually obligated to be there. But I feel too, while being there, I was able to mentor fellow soldiers so much so that they voted for Dr. Paul. And I see the militarization of our police force where my own personal friend, Antonio Bieler, who was also a combat vet who started the Peaceful Streets Project with the help of Pete from Cop Block. And I see what they're doing after the fact. I see, especially like the APD, so much so trying to recruit from within the military while we're serving to go over there. And I feel like, well how do you combat that? How do I join the APD too to hopefully try to influence and be a sheriff, Andy Griffith? Or do I continue along the road of filming police officers? Or do I attend these and try to pass that on to my children? I guess I'm looking for some guidance because I feel that I am defeated where I feel like those small victories are those low expectations. I don't know if it's enough right now. Well, I know a lot of young people over the years have asked Ron, what should they do? Well, I think it's a personal choice. Every individual has to make that choice. Some people leave and get out of it and reject it. You're talking about being on active duty, mostly? Yes, sir. I had a couple people on my channel the other day interviewed him, a husband and wife, and they were really tired of it, and they declared themselves conscientious objectors. And that's not advice because, you know, and I referred to, you know, what they do is they get young people in. And when I was involved, there was a draft going on. And though I didn't like what was going on, you know, I wasn't ready to give up my medical career, my license, and fight the whole system. But boy, I think it's personal. It's sort of like practicing civil disobedience. If you're doing peaceful civil disobedience, you might be arrested, you might have to go to jail. And some people make that decision, others, you know, aren't as likely to do that. But if you make the best of a situation and think you can do something positive, I don't think that's a terrible choice. But Lawrence Vance, it'd be interesting to know what he had to say. But it can be very tough. It's good that you're thinking about it, at least that you have that thought in your mind on trying to do the right thing. It'd be nice if we had a website of testimonies from people who have been in your shoes or people who have transitioned out and what their experience was and what their advice is. Because I know there are a lot of them because I get emails from them. So that's a project for somebody to take on. Not me, of course. Somebody else. Well, I think we have time for two or three more quick questions. We have the gentleman visiting us from Austria. Well, from Los Angeles by way of Austria. Yeah, Nicholas Kimmler from Vienna originally. I have a question to you, Mr. Dr. Paul. It was a very hopeful and a very inspiring message, you said. If we look back to the Austrians, if we go back to Manger, if we go back to Birnbaumberg, they're all very depressed about what happened, what they saw in the economical growth. Birnbaumberg was even saying to the emperor, if he's doing that, we will see the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian emperor. Nobody was listening. What gives you the hope right now in all the challenges that we are facing, like in China there's enormous challenges in the next years coming that we will not have the same principles that they are happening again, what happened in the First World War or Second World War, that they can break through, that we all hope for, that humankind is taking the next step of responsibility. Well, I'm hoping that we live in unique times and that something very special is going to happen, because right now there's not a worldwide movement to promote communism. Hopefully it's dead and buried in the Marxist sense, and they had their experiment. The Nazis had their experiment, the Keynesian now, they're coming to an end. So I think that maybe the world does change. I work on a theory that the human race has only been really active in promoting technology and all for most of it. Most of the major changes have happened in like 200 years or so, but it's been around thousands of years, several thousands of years, but everything that we have done technologically, we have all this technology now and the government's using it to spy on us. And what about all the other technology? Yes, we have jet airplanes and we fly commercial, but think of all the technology that's been used to just fight wars. So I really believe there could be a time where the human being can change the mind and say, well, maybe we can get smarter and look at history, even though I know the natural tendency of evil people to do bad things. My goal is to explain why you want government so small that evil people can't get control of the government and that evil people be taken care of in your neighborhood. And hopefully we can move in that direction because of the obvious failure here, and that's why we have to capitalize on the Austrian theories coming about and being right and correct and have more credibility at the same time. You can't be intellectually, although there's still some in our university, you can't be promoting Marxism, you know, and I'm hoping that we can totally discredit Keynesianism or they're going to discredit themselves and therefore we might be able to usher in a new age. Okay, we have time for, always time for Don Prince, Dr. Don Prince. Well, thank you. We've talked many times about that iconic picture of the tank man. Please go look at that picture because there's something even more wonderful in that. Look what he's holding in his hand. It's not a gasoline bomb or anything like that. It's a shopping bag. All right, let's have one last question. Hi, my name is Jason Miller. I'm an internet entrepreneur. I'm also a marijuana legalization activist and I'm involved with the Republican Party here in Harris County and recently began working with a group called RAMP, which stands for Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition. We're in the process of forming an advisory board and I'm curious if any of you or perhaps maybe colleagues that you know would be interested in serving an advisory role and do you think it's important to spread the message to conservatives that medical marijuana, industrial hemp and decriminalization, taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol are important issues? Sure. Well, yes, you're addressing maybe some conservatives would come over and join, but I would have to suggest the progressives have not been very good at, you know, moving along even though they're supposed to have been. You know, and Obama was supposed to lighten up. He's lightening up now not because he's changed his mind, but because the momentum is so great. But I look at it as, you know, when we talk about the drugs, I talk like I mentioned before, I talk about legalizing freedom, freedom of choice in all area and I see making your choice, excuse me, your choice about marijuana equal to your choice in your spiritual life and your intellectual life and it's all one and the same, prove me. Obviously everybody should hear this message, you know, conservatives, anybody else. But when you're dealing in a political context, you're dealing with activists who have been around a long time and whose ideas are pretty well formed. It's not impossible they could change their minds, but it's highly unlikely. You know, it would be like the chairman of the Republican Party suddenly deciding that he wants to be a non-interventionist. Like that's just not going to happen, right? He might be friendly or unfriendly to Dr. Paul, but that horse has left the stable. Like he is who he is and that's who he's going to be. So, I mean, if it's aimed at trying to get up-and-comers who are young and don't have as many preconceived ideas and to say that you have a home here, well, that I think you're more likely to have success with. But I think I would be more of a drag to your board than anything else. So to speak. Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a round of applause for our three speakers.