 However, through the magic of radio, we are going to move forward and let me introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen, our speaker of note, Mr. Gene Burns. Thank you very much. I appreciate the introduction. Let me make two immediate clarifications, lest I run afoul of people with long memories. As many of you realize, who heard my speech to the 1983 California Convention in the San Francisco area, I was not nominated. I withdrew before the actual nomination in New York. I want to clarify that. And I've received some calls from people around the country relative to the 92 nomination about which I have said nothing. Which means precisely what it says, about which I have said nothing. And about which I am not saying anything tonight. I appreciate the invitation to come back to California. I had a great time in California in 1983. Have, of course, been back to California for other reasons. Had the pleasure last July of hosting two days of Tom Likas' program on KFI in Los Angeles while he was on vacation. And I do sneak out to the wine country from time to time to pay a visit. It was a delight to be out in this area. I have friends in Carmel and it's been a pleasure visiting with them while I've been here. And this speech gives me the opportunity to do that, for which I thank you. I have done some work with the New Hampshire and Maine Libertarian parties and the Massachusetts Party. And I'm happy to report from the Northeast that we have met with some success. The gubernatorial candidate of the New Hampshire Libertarian party, one of the fastest growing Libertarian parties in the country, achieved more than 3% of the vote in the last election and therefore achieved for the party permanent ballot status in the state of New Hampshire. The Libertarian party is an officially recognized party in the state of Maine, having just registered there. And we in the People's Republic of Massachusetts have managed in the last election to pass a proposition which makes access to the ballot about 65% easier than it was prior to the adoption of this proposition. And it was my pleasure and indeed an honor to be asked by the Libertarian party to sign the petition for status in Massachusetts online number one, which I did and those petitions have now been filed and the Libertarian party is an official party in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as well. But let's not kid ourselves, our movement grows slowly. And I want to address myself to that tonight, as well as addressing myself to the market conditions in which it grows currently, because I think there is cause for optimism of the kind which Lynn has already spoken of. But I think we have to be cautious as to how we address the opportunities before us in moving Libertarian ideals at, I think, an historic time in their development. The truth is, as you look around the country and as you listen to the average American, which I do professionally 20 hours a week, four hours a day, five days a week, something is wrong. And the average American knows viscerally that something is wrong. Candidly, the average American unfortunately does not know what it is or what to do about it. But more and more, individual Americans are waking up to the reality that the system has either broken down or gone awry, that no matter who gets elected, whether you vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledummer, nothing changes. The problems remain the same and indeed they grow worse and more intractable. We find ourselves engaged tonight in a war which is the result of an interventionist foreign policy which is routinely not debated. Presidential election year in and presidential election year out. One of the most critical elements of a nation's national existence, committing her resources and her citizens to the path of war, is off the political table because we routinely brag that we are possessed of what we have called a bipartisan consensus in foreign policy. Whatever the hell that means. As citizens, we find ourselves now heir in the most optimistic estimates of a debt approximating a half a trillion dollars in the savings and loan debacle. But in the 1988 presidential election, neither the Republican candidate who ultimately won nor the Democratic candidate who lost addressed this issue in any significant forum, in any significant substance, and an issue which would cost the average tax-paying voter being asked for his or her vote in this election in 1988, was off the table by common consent of the two major political parties. The only person in the campaign talking about the issue was the only person in the campaign with a proven record on the issue. The only person running for president who was not guilty of contributing to the problem, Ron Paul. He had voted in the Congress of the United States, one of a handful of members of Congress when he represented Houston, against the legislation which tied the average American pocketbook to the bad judgment of the savings and loan thieves. And now we are told by these same major party candidates in congressional elections that the problem in the savings and loan scandal was deregulation. We are told that it's we free market advocates, capitalist running dogs, who insist on free market economics, who delivered up this incredible disaster to the American people, but we know that that is absolutely wrong. It wasn't the deregulation that caused the disaster, it was the cotton-headed legislation of a bought and paid for Congress in the fob pocket of the savings and loan industry that legislated our wallets into the breach along with deregulation. There's not a damn thing wrong with deregulation, so long as the bad judgment of the bad performers leads to bad results for them and not for us. But putting us on the line was the mistake. People look around themselves now. They see a war. They support but don't like. They see a savings and loan disaster they're going to have to pay for and don't understand. They see a government which is more expensive. They see a man they elected twice who promised to make the government smaller, he made it bigger. A man they elected twice who promised to limit the number of cabinet secretariats, he increased them. A man they elected twice who promised to rebalance the budget in his first term, who served up the highest budget deficit in American history, and they conclude, you can't believe politicians, no matter how sincere they look or act, who they are or what party they belong to, because they're all liars and thieves whose purpose it is to subvert our way of life. Well, the good news is with that kind of reasoning, they're almost there. They've got to go one more step as we know. The problem is not the politicians, though they are hardly fitting for exculpation of blame. The problem is the government. The problem is what the government has become. You cannot ask the government to deliver the solution, it's the problem. You will never get from the problem the solution. And that's what frustrates libertarians, because we know we're right, we know our message is accurate, our philosophy historically grounded, our economic principles solid, our instincts genuine, and yet we grow only slowly, because it is not easy to bring people along on such a fundamental philosophical question. It is necessary to go back to the first issue before we even discuss the next election. What is government? What is it? Where did it come from? How do we get it? How do we grow it? How do we support it? What do we want it to be? If anything. In order to answer those questions, we have to go back to some historical evidence. We can't just moander around about how bad the two major political parties are, although they are bad. We cannot talk about how inept their leaders are, though they are categorically inept. And we cannot simply join with our fellow citizens and say yes, we appreciate the fact that this mess is intolerable, though it is intolerable. We have to offer a solution. But in order to offer a solution, we have to patiently take people through some very important pieces of historical business. We must think about what government was intended to be and what was said about it in the earliest days of this country. Then we can see where we have gone awry, and having seen where we went awry, we can fix it by holding to the principles which we have abandoned. I gave 14 speeches in a year's time in the state of New Hampshire during the year I turned 50. I offered the same services to the state of Massachusetts without charge, paid my own expenses, because I thought that under the Old Testament idea of the Year of the Jubilee, I'm not particularly religious, but I like this Year of the Jubilee business, I wasn't rich enough to have a symphony commissioned in my honor on my 50th birthday, was too heavy to have an obelisk crafted, knew it would be a colossal waste of marvelous marble. So I said, let's do something different, I'll just talk. This is what I do anyway for a living. I'm not the dullest bulb in the chandelier. And in that series of speeches, I had to find a thesis to which to address myself, and the thesis was the nature and role of government in a free society. What is the nature and role of government in a free society? I don't know who the presidential candidate is going to be in 92. I don't know who the vice presidential candidate is going to be. I haven't even addressed myself to that issue yet. I don't even know who the major parties are going to put up for those offices. But I do know what the issue better be for the party that wishes to prevail and if not win at least make major strides with a disaffected unhappy angry American people. And that issue had better be the nature and role of government in a free society. We need to stop just a moment and look at the record and figure out where we were before we get any angrier about where we are and certainly before we attempt to determine where we're going. Now I know when I gave these speeches in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, when I'd introduce that topic, I would say what is the nature and role of government in a free society? It sounds rather ponderous. You'd see people eyeing the nearest exit. They'd say, my God, I didn't come here to take a short course or a seminar. I just wanted to hear what he had to say. You'd have to assure them that the answer is really quite simple. I could take another two and a half minutes answer the question and sit down. Well, you paid the flight out so I can't quite sit so readily. I have to strut and fret a little bit so I'll answer the question and then I'll strut and fret a little bit and then I'll sit down. Because the answer to that question what is the nature and role of government in a free society is very easy to answer. It's found in the Declaration of Independence in the part of the most famous quotation we almost never hear. On all these patriotic holidays, flags flying and bands playing and hearts beating, we hear the famous quote that is, for most of us, the central piece of business of Jefferson's great document. We hear it repeated by stump speakers and politicians who profane it by uttering it and others. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The statement reverberates throughout this country. The statement is incomplete. Following that last word in the document there is a hyphen, not a period. The phrase that's never quoted on the 4th of July is the phrase that answers the question, what is the nature and role of government in a free society? For Jefferson knew that the more important part of the sentence was the part we don't quote. He, in synthesizing the philosophers of the age of reason, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, recognizing the inherent worth of the individual and his right to self-control, sketched this idea of self-government completely, not halfway. So he wrote in the document, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, period. What is the nature and role of government in a free society? Listen very carefully first, not to the words. The words we can apprehend easily. Listen rather to Jefferson's all-important hierarchy of existence. Jefferson communicates in his usual direct and brilliant fashion the hierarchy of human existence. For what Thomas Jefferson says in this sentence, in this the birth certificate of the United States of America, is that people were here first. And when they got here, their God, if you are pious, or the order of nature, if you are not, imbued them with certain inherent rights with which you are born. When you draw your first breath, you are free. When you draw your first breath, you have the right, he first said to property, changed in the convention to pursue your happiness. And you are free, obviously, to have life. Where did it come from, he said, from God or nature? And then after we got here, possessed already of these fundamental keystone rights, which are the basis of human interaction, then if we wanted one, we could have a government. Today, if you go out and about in this community, or any community in this country, and you say to the first ten people you see, where do your rights come from? They'll tell you from the government. And they are dead wrong. But it is that perversion of this idea of self-government that has taken us so wide of the mark and brought this country to the brink of ruin. We need only go back to Jefferson's hierarchy. People first possessed of their rights immediately upon birth, and then if they wish, he didn't say he even had to have one, if you wish a government. But he bound it more tightly because when the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 and wrestled with the form of government when it was decided after the Revolution that having a government of sorts was a good idea, Jefferson, who was then Ambassador to France, was receiving regular packets of mail on the debate. He did not participate, you may recall, being taken to Paris for his duties to the new country. And he wrote copious letters back. I like this, I don't like that. Beware of this, beware of that. And one of the things which disturbed him most of all in this new construct of government being hammered out in Philadelphia, a series of brilliant compromises, was that already, just a handful of years after he had written the birth document in Philadelphia in 1776, we began slowly to stray from the primacy of the human being. And so Jefferson, with Madison and Mason and others said, to those persons who had crafted this document, we recognize that given human foible, it's probably the best we can hope from this convention, but listen to us carefully. You either give us a solemn promise that you will immediately amend it upon its adoption to further specifically and categorically enumerate liberties held by the people, or we, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, will speak against this document in the ratification process and see it defeated. The framers in Philadelphia knew that not only would these three and others do just that, but they would prevail. If Jefferson came home from Paris and Madison, who carried the Constitution to Philadelphia literally in his briefcase, and who was the only one who kept copious notes on every argument in its crafting, and Mason, who was passionately devoted to personal liberty, ever took to the hustings, the Constitution was for doomed. It would never be ratified. And so they gave their word that the deal was struck. In those days, a politician's word had some meaning. Jefferson, Madison, and Mason believed them. Properly so. The Constitution was ratified. And 12 amendments were sent to the states for approval almost immediately. We'll celebrate those 12, indeed, in 92, the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights. Two failed. They were minor enumeration mathematical amendments. Ten were adopted. Listen to the language of the first one. The Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of press or the right of the people to peaceably assemble. Now what did they say? The Congress shall make no law respecting these rights. Didn't say the Congress should adopt these rights, promote these rights, certify these rights. The Congress, it said, shall make no law respecting these rights, which, what? Pre-existed the First Amendment. They were an expansion of Jefferson's already enunciated primal rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because he had said in the Declaration of Independence clearly among others. And now he, Madison and Mason, was adding the others. Rights reserved to the people, theirs at birth, before a government, and so concerned about them was Jefferson that he wanted a guarantee from the framers that the government would not abridge them, would not touch them, would hold them sacrosanct and violent. And on the amendments go, as you know, enumerating specific other guarantees which the people should hold. What is the nature and role of government in a free society? To secure the pre-existing rights of the people in whatever form or fashion they shall decide. And the government once created is expressly enjoined from infringing upon these primary rights. But this government outside these walls, indeed given the permitting process inside these walls, has grown beyond all imagining. Well beyond what Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Washington, Franklin, and others had envisioned it being. They crafted a weak central government having as its primary obligation the duty to see to a national defense within the context of a well-ordered militia reserving specifically to the states strong powers of administration in the belief that that government which governed closest to home governed most successfully and was most susceptible to the oversight of the people who had created it. Admittedly right out of the box the government began to expand. In an illegal act the Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall in 183 in the famous decision Marbury versus Madison seized for the Supreme Court the right of judicial review. It is not in the Constitution. The Constitution does not give the Supreme Court the right to review laws. It is not there. John Marshall seized it in an illegal decision a decision in which Marshall admitted he did not have jurisdiction. Jefferson was apoplectic. He was president that year and this involved the commissioning of certain constables and notaries in the office of the Secretary of State but for reasons that history does not disclose Jefferson let it go into history maybe because he felt he didn't have the power to fight maybe because he felt at this point there were other more important things to do and even then just a scant handful of years after these important debates government had begun to increase its scope and power illegally under the terms of the Constitution. Now we look at this government it is a labyrinthine horror which soaks up our substance in such incredible measure that we teeter on the edge of bankruptcy. When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he divided it into three elegant parts part one the enunciation of government and what it should be the declaration of human sovereignty part two a specific bill of indictment against the King of England pungent phrases short one right after another he did this he did that he did the other and then part three the ringing parloration in which he calls the colonists and the convention to pledge their honor and their lives and their fortunes to the conduct of this business if one reads the bill of indictment against George III one finds this rather extraordinary charge he the King has sent hither amongst us swarms of officers to eat out our substance if that is not the definition of the tax policy of 1991 I don't know what is we said taxation without representation was tyranny but we have now such an intervening level of bureaucracy setting policy and making decisions with regard to tax matters that we are not indeed represented in the most fundamental issue of the amount of money we pay for the government we may or may not want we said in the early days that we had lofty feelings about presumption of innocence because we were terrified by the King's starred chamber proceedings everyone we said would be innocent until proven guilty to and beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt making the sovereign in this case the state bear the burden of proving a case and what have we done turn this precious liberty on its head in every regulatory law in the country where when you are charged with a breach of regulations you are guilty until you at your own expense prove yourself innocent an absolute perversion of one of the most fundamental guarantees under our way of life why? because we found it more convenient to let some petty fogging bureaucrat do the work which we as citizens should have done I used to be amused during the Vietnam war period not about much but about the howling of Congress they would bellow and weep about how Lyndon Johnson had usurped their power when it was clearly obvious that he couldn't under the Constitution they had frittered it away I asked Ernest Greening one time the senator from Alaska after the war was over why he and Wayne Morse had not introduced a resolution of war so that a debate could be held on declaring war so that we would at least in this adventure be consonant with our Constitution he said we didn't do it because we thought it would pass I said wasn't fidelity to the Constitution more important than the end result shouldn't we be dramatically demonstrated in such a constitutional debate to be at war rather than to be conducting wars through the back door outside the framework of the Constitution what we lack in government today is a independent co-equal Congress with the testicular fortitude to exercise its rights and responsibilities instead we have an imperial presidency and a lap dog Congress and a judiciary out of control and a government which is so big we simply no longer understand it let alone appreciate it and in this circumstance stand the libertarians now in the past as you know we have been marginalized because of some of our less popular opinions and it's very difficult in those debates to ever catch up once we start talking about such things as the legalization of drugs we try to say to Americans that liberty is indivisible that if you are free you are free we believe you are free you are free to do as you choose even wrong things you're free to make mistakes you're free to make cotton-headed decisions you are free to put yourself in harm's way and you are free indeed to terminate your existence though generally these are things which most of us do not counsel we would argue against these unfortunate choices we would argue strenuously against them many of us would donate our personal funds to organizations which would take to the marketplace to convince you of the wrong-headedness of these decisions but we do not retreat from the belief that among those rights which we hold sacred is the right to be wrong if you do not have the right to be wrong liberty is a charade if you do not have the right to make a mistake you are not free and we do not retreat from that position though that makes us appear to favor such things as drugs I take no drugs you may if you wish I even argue with my doctor about those he prescribes but I will not retreat from the position which says you are free to take them if you'd like provided you do not say if you do and become disabled that you have an automatic claim on my money because you made a mistake you may have a claim on my charity but not on my money that's what we must tell the American people but we are well beyond these matters now when libertarians speak now we are not victimized by hit and run attacks of sharp shooters who talk about such things as legalization of drug use or sexual acts these are now passe there are far more important things on the public agenda people are no longer no longer at all interested in bread and circuses there are no longer interested in these peripheral matters as their substance shrinks as their money is taken from them without their consent in many cases they are concerned about their ability to feed their families see to their future see to their kids college education see to a decent retirement and see to a decent life they are sick and tired of a government which has become a gigantic income redistribution mechanism they are tired of having their money taken against their will and spent for people who more and more demand that they be taken care of as a matter of right when no such right exists in our documents or our history we stand on the threshold of an historic opportunity for the libertarian movement because we have known for some time what many Americans are now just discovering that the problem is the government it is too big, too oppressive, too intrusive and we know the solution it must be smaller less big, less intrusive, less expensive we may have in these meetings spirited debates we love these spirited debates about how small, how intrusive and how expensive we drive ourselves into ennui with these debates long into the morning hours we debate the libertarian variation of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin but we are united on one important principle smaller than now less expensive than now less intrusive than now and soon I stood in this state in 1983 February of that year in Oakland at the Hilton and in that speech at that banquet at that convention as a candidate which I am not now I said to you what was the theme of that campaign the issue I said is freedom and the time is now some years later in February of 1991 in Monterey again in general congress assembled again at this banquet I say to you again the issue is still freedom and the time is more urgently now we must address this issue because we have the answer for a country choking on a bureaucracy it was never intended to see a perversion of self-government it was never intended to suffer now how does one bring a speech such as this to a conclusion I love to end speeches with quotations and I have several I carry around in my little satchel for this occasion I have a certain special satchel for libertarian occasions speech endings are not suitable for libertarian audiences they are not philosophically correct so I was thinking about what I could use tonight and you know I'm not going to use any of the big barn burners there's a great line from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare he's okay we didn't even know whether he lived or not libertarians would love that a guy who wrote a lot of plays didn't even know if he existed we'd get off on that if there is one a hell we'd argue that too I have a great one from Robert Kennedy but you got to be very careful with that one for obvious reasons but I want to go back where I started if I may let me go back to the document which birthed the country you know Jefferson was no slouch at the age of 32 he wrote the Declaration of Independence pretty much alone Thomas Payne had contributed some ideas as had others he was a member of a five member committee on style which included among others John Adams of Massachusetts Bay but the other four were bright and they'd said to Jefferson you're a pretty smart fellow why don't you bang out something and give us a shout and we'll see if we like it and if we do we'll give it to the convention he did they did and they did and you know the convention took it up adopted it virtually with minor changes for style one big change unfortunately the change that would serve up the Civil War Jefferson abolished slavery in the first draft he said it was inconsistent to proclaim freedom while holding other humans in bondage though he had this peculiar idea himself where he held slaves in his own day as did Washington but he abolished slavery in the first draft Virginia and Georgia said take it out or we won't sign on they were needed so out it came but all the other changes were stylistic and the Declaration was adopted Jefferson was a bright guy he was learned read Greek and Latin in the original had read law with a brilliant lawyer in Williamsburg and had studied at the College of William and Mary and used to stand outside the Virginia House of Burgesses and listened to Patrick Henry's thunderous oration as he would cajole his fellow burgesses with his comments about freedom this was not an intellectual lightweight who wrote this declaration he was not given the boilerplate rhetoric and he was not given the sloppy thinking strange then that we should find deep down in the body of the document the Declaration of Independence a seemingly innocuous observation said Thomas Jefferson people are more disposed to suffer evil so long as evil is tolerable it's not very Jeffersonian pretty self-evident actually why would Thomas Jefferson spare of language and keen of intellect state the obvious in an historic document such as the Declaration why would Jefferson say mankind is more disposed to suffer evil so long as evil is tolerable we have to study Jefferson's correspondence a bit to find the answer Thomas Jefferson was sending us a very important message which was anything but the sloppy statement of the obvious throughout his private letters those written from Paris during the debate on the Constitution and those written after to all manner of correspondence Thomas Jefferson held something very important repeatedly repeatedly he said without qualification all government is evil all government is evil you may have to tolerate some but watch it carefully it's evil once created it will arrogate to itself all manner of power it will grow beyond the bounds of all common sense and expand until it endangers the very liberties which gave it birth all government he said in his correspondence over and over and over was evil so now we can translate the seemingly unnecessary observation mankind is more disposed to suffer government so long as government is tolerable it's not so self-evident and it's taken us 210 years to come to this point and it's actually true it's a wise observance of human nature we'll pay taxes we hate so long as they're not too high we'll observe laws we deem silly so long as they're not too intrusive and we will abide a government we deem unnecessary so long as it does not impinge upon our obligation to our own families but let the taxes get too high or the government too intrusive and even the most quiescent of citizens will say enough that is enough and throughout this country in 1991 republicans and democrats and independents and libertarians and folks who know no ideology rich folks and poor folks white folks, black folks, yellow folks red folks men, women, children working hard in tough times to do just those simple things which orator after orator has told us we want to do we simply want the chance to live out our lives in purpose and happiness and we realize each day it's tougher and tougher and tougher because this intrusive mechanism is at the point where it's beginning to make it impossible and at that point stands this idea which is as new in an organized sense as the mid-seventies as old in a philosophical sense as the age of reason perhaps the dawn of time men and women are born free they may have a government if they wish but they always remain the masters never the slaves and if ever as Jefferson observed their events as a design to reduce us under absolute despotism it is not only our right but it is our duty to alter or abolish such government and to have such government as shall see to our future happiness in 1991 here and throughout this country the issue is still freedom and the time is urgently now but the audience is ready and the message is crystal clear mankind is more disposed to suffer government so long as it is sufferable and the word from the front is simple it is insufferable thank you