 Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that very very warm welcome, and I would like to Welcome the Atlas Foundation Board of Directors and and IHS people and other out-of-town guests to the Washington area and at the same time I wish you every success in Getting out of the Washington area safely and as a As a lover of liberty, I want to also thank you for your continuing continuing vision and The great work started by my departed friend Sir Anthony Fisher it was his vision That led to the formation of free market think tanks in Europe and South America and North America and more recently. I'm very happy to say on the continent of Africa And I think that it was his vision and others That if mankind is left to his own devices he would settle down and naturally be a capitalist and I think that the vision of the institutes and the great work of the institutes that Sir Fisher set up was Was kind of seen in some in my getting these people as as Alex talked about To help me talk to five million Americans on the Rush Limbaugh show and I and I tell you that the listeners were enthused with the with Atlas Foundation sponsored institutes Scholars that I had Now when I said that mankind's natural tendency is to be a capitalist I Should have also said that this tendency includes a high standard of morality and Indeed most of the problems that we encounter represent a breakdown in moral standards which are part and parcel of Capitalism free markets laissez-faire whatever name we might give to the process where Property is privately held and mankind goes about His ordinary business engaging in peaceable voluntary exchange Frederick Bastiat, which I'm quite sure most of you know about he's the French philosopher economist who wrote an excellent little book called the law and If you have not read the book Your instructions are to read the book tomorrow, and if you don't have the book write me a letter And I will send you a copy of the book Frederick Bastiat said when law and morality contradict one another the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his sense of morality or Losing his respect for the law we Americans are increasingly encountering Bastiat's cruel alternative and Let me spend just a few moments Examining this phenomena traditionally the common law assumption was that if one behaved morally and used common sense the reasonable person doctrine Some of his actions could possibly lead to civil penalties for accidents and mistakes But not to criminal penalties With the growth of the Leviathan state in our country That is all changed under what lawyer James D. DeLonge calls the new criminalization in our country with its increased complexity and arbitrary provisions no one No American can rely on his moral compass or common sense to steer him clear of Criminal prosecution For example, let me give you a few examples an engineer in Maryland was contracted to do work on private property He was imprisoned For polluting the navigable waters of the United States by merely dumping two truckloads of soil on dry land a Rancher was criminally prosecuted for clearing brush from old irrigation ditches Another man was brought brought to before a grand jury For stabbing a falcon falcon, whatever you want to call With a pitchfork that was killing one of his chickens Another man was charged for shooting a bear in self-defense in Newark, New Jersey 500 people Have been fined for putting aluminum cans in their trash these and possibly thousands of other examples Damage the societal sense of morality That is people who see themselves as responsible law-abiding people Begin to develop a contempt for the law And when we lump what's trivial with what's barbaric as Criminal activities as we are increasingly doing in our country It undermines our sense of moral Priorities as in the case of Newark where 500 people have been fined for Deliberately or inadvertently Putting beer cans in their trash That Kind of says to people well, it's more important to prosecute people for these kinds of activities Then to prosecute all the thieves murderers and rapists in Newark, New Jersey the growth of Leviathan State is undermining Our moral priorities, I believe Deficits and debt are another example of our declining morality in our country Now we all know That we have federal deficits Exceeding 300 billion dollars a year. I know at the Clinton administration they give another number, but if you Take away all the games. You're talking about 300 billion dollars or more a year And we have a national debt that's approaching five trillion dollars and Matter of fact that Five trillion dollars national debt is understated because if we include all federal obligations Such as social security government retirement guarantee loans etc etc. We'd be talking about something closer to 16 trillion dollars Now this is something Unprecedented in our history for the most part the only time in our history when we ran deficits was during war times in 1787 federal spending was about three million dollars a year or about One dollar per citizen by 1910 The federal government spent a little more than 600 million dollars a year about six dollars and seventy five cents per person By 1929 the federal government spent three billion dollars a year They went up to twenty nine dollars per person today the federal government spends over four billion dollars per day and that comes to six thousand dollars per person and Controlling for inflation that represents a nine thousand percent increase in federal spending between 1929 and today Now the our founding fathers Who were paying about sixty seven cents a year in taxes they went to war with Great Britain Claiming that taxation without representation is tyranny Now that reminds me of a conversation I was having in Cambridge, London with Lord Harris of high cross and Peter Bauer and several other people and Lord Harris of high cross he asked me Williams. He said where do you live and you know? I tend to be flippin sometimes And so I said I live in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania That's where the British ran George Washington, but we came out when the winner was over and kicked your butts out of the country and So he said yeah, you went to war with us for taxation without representation. He said how do you feel about it with? representation so So I owe Lord Harris of high cross I got you now our Proflegate spending is an example of moral is another example of moral decline because we've lost fiscal discipline and regard for future generations After all we might ask what is the moral basis for imposing massive obligations on future generations in the name of bread and circuses But the tragedy of it all is that there's little indication or Incentive to reverse that trend In 33 years we've had one balanced budget in our country But Congress tries Going back to 1974 we remember that Congress passed the budget control act You might ask is the budget and control In 1979 Congress passed the balance budget act making balanced budgets the law of the land Now you of course remember the 1984 tax increases that were widely publicized as and sold to Americans as a down payment on the deficit In 1985 we had the Graham Rudman Hollings emergency deficit reduction act Which mandated a balanced budget by the end of 1992 Then we had the 1990 budget deal that was supposed to bring cut the budget the deficit in half and of course Last year we had the budget deal Which was the largest tax increase in our history again sold to Americans as a as a deficit fighter Now there's I think one of the things we have to recognize is That there's little Private incentive among all of us to downsize government spending and This can be seen when we consider when we ask ourselves a question What are the prospects of a person winning? Political office either as a representative or as a senator or as a president who campaigned To strictly uphold the United States Constitution both its letter and spirit Refused to call for or participate in activities whereby the government confiscates what right rightfully belongs to one American and give it to another American to whom it does not belong Such a person campaigning on that kind of promise would never Win office that is if I'm campaigning if I'm running for the senator from Virginia, and I'd say I Will not Support I will not bring back Virginians Meals on wheels aid to higher education highway construction funds. I would never win office and if Such a candidate were actually elected he would have neither respect nor Credibility and his constituents would probably run him out of office and And the tragedy of all this the supreme tragedy of all this is that his constituents would be Absolutely right from an economic point of view That is and the reason is very simple. That is if a senator Does not bring home goodies for his constituents It doesn't mean that his constituents taxes will be lowered All that it means is that instead of Virginia citizens getting the goodies Iowa citizens get the goodies in other words He'd be asking his constituents to commit Harry carry And I don't believe that that's a very successful political argument We have in our country what some scholars called the tragedy of the commons whereby it pays for Everybody to use government in attempt to steal from everybody else in our country. It kind of reminds me when I was in the army But This is in basic training in 1959 for Jackson, South Carolina I had a lot of other problems because I was sent down for Jackson without a good orientation on southern way of life And so I had some adjustment problems but anyway, we had a Fulfilled Inspection and I showed up at the inspection without my mess kit and the sergeant standing about an inch and a half away from my face shouting in my face asking me where my Mess kit was and I told him it was stolen. He said that's no damn reason for showing up at a full field Inspection without your mess kit. He says if somebody steals yours steal somebody else's Now that might be a great way to run an army But it's not the best way to run a country That is we it pays for us to become a nation of thieves given the status quo or the tragedy of the commons Now other problems arise as Government grows we know that government has been growing and we know that it encounters fiscal problems Congress cannot spend as easily as it used to it still is able to spend but The fiscal problems they limit the politicians ability to transfer cash To their favorite constituents, so they seek other ways that result in Americans Encountering more of Basiat's cruel alternative and we become Criminals for engaging in activities previously deemed as moral and lawful for example Congress has a reduced ability to give cash handouts to farmers So what's an alternative? well Congress can Mandate a share of the gasoline market for ethanol producers and That forces consumers to give farmers Money that they otherwise would not get now Now here's how you criminalize human behavior a gasoline producer who refuses to use ethanol becomes a criminal whereby before he was not a criminal We have criminalized another activity if the Clinton and if the Clinton administration and Congress Managed to socialize our health care. What is moral and lawful right now? Namely paying a doctor Out of our own pockets will be a criminal activity lovers of kangaroo rats You know a lot of people out there love kangaroo rats They could go to Congress For an appropriation to purchase land for these creatures live But that would be a visible cost and with budget squeezes Such a visible cost might not be politically viable So Congress can hide the transfer through the Endangered Species Act mandating that private land owners set aside a portion of their land for the kangaroo rat enforcing rules like these that have no moral foundation and Have the most trivial of benefits with increasing punitive measures undermines respect for and the perceived legitimacy of government and As that happens Government attempts to coerce respect that it cannot earn Because there are enforcement costs and the lack of resources government has to exact draconian penalties for minor offenses in order to set examples as a means to get general compliance Now the only hope that I have things look pretty dismal and matter of fact if you are a I think one one has recognized that the that normal state of human affairs is For a person to be subject to arbitrary control and abuse by others. That's a normal state of human affairs both historically and currently right now and Liberty the kind of liberty that you and I have known in our country is relatively rare in human history It's not the normal state of affairs I'm very sure that if a historian writing 300 years from now he may very well say well look that we had this little Historical curiosity called liberty mostly in the Western world for a few years, but everything went back to the way that it always was So I'm not that I'm not all that optimistic about liberty But the only hope that I have for the amputation of the heavy hand of government in our country is The 10th amendment movement movement The emperotic 10th amendment movement going on in many parts of our country You know, I've been writing a nationally syndicated column for about 14 years and last October I Wrote a column that brought in the most favorable and supportive mail that I've ever received And the columns start out with a sentence that I thought that I said in the column that I Think that we reached the point in our country Where Liberty minded Americans need to start thinking about secession and I was so And I was saying in the column I was saying in the column that I'm not an expert on secession But I was proposing that we keep the the Liberty minded Americans keep the 13 original States plus Texas and give the rest of the socialists with an option to buy it But anyway after having written that column I got quite a few letters about Movements that I had not heard of previously Several were secessionist movements. I think the largest of which is in Louisiana the the the peaceful succession secession movement One was the ultimatum resolution that's headed by I believe a governor ex-governor Bracken or something like that in Utah and ultimatum resolution these people in Utah are trying to get 38 state legislatures to call for The dissolution of the federal government when the national debt gets to six trillion dollars. That was a trigger point But there's the there's a tenth amendment movement. That's very interesting And it's a movement going mostly in the West going on mostly in the Western part of the United States Which suggests by the way that if you look at the states that are actually involved with this movement They're mostly in the West we might be able to just divide the country use the Mississippi River and divide the country up Call West United States and East United States If you went to the session rep but anyway Legislatures in Hawaii, Colorado and Missouri have already passed resolutions demanding that the federal government obey both the letter and spirit of the 10th amendment and cease and desist from federal mandates 14 other states Have a similar document in the introduction or draft stage now, Colorado very interestingly It has put a bit of teeth in Its version of the 10th amendment movement That is Colorado has passed Senate bill 157 for any of you who are interested in reading it Requiring that state agencies when making budget requests to comply with a federally mandated or authorized program They must show to the satisfaction of three bodies in Colorado That the program is both authorized under the federal Constitution and the state Constitution Now Colorado is going another step, which I think will prove to be very interesting And that is they're working on a measure now whereby in the event that the federal government retaliates Let's say they say to Colorado. Well, you're not removing. We told you get rid of asbestos in schools and you're not removing it and Therefore we're going to cut off your highway construction funds. Well, what Colorado is doing. It's in the currently in process of writing a bill whereby they will withhold taxes that they Collect and remit to the federal government to the extent of the amount that the federal government has cut the highway funds For example, they just won't remit their the federal gasoline tax to the federal government I think that all of us need to support these movements because if we if the federal government is forced to Obey the 10th amendment to the Constitution Well, then some of the other issues fall by the wayside such as some of the the takings under the In violation of Fifth Amendment or the the Brady bill or all the kinds of things Other kinds of measured by the federal government They would fall the side if we can get the federal government to obey the 10th amendment to the Constitution Let me just close by saying that the strongest weapon that we have against government encroachment encroachment on our liberties is in the arena of ideas and On that note, I wish the Atlas Foundation and the Institute for Remain Studies and and related think tanks And their prodigy Continued success we need all the help that we can get as we do battle with the hunt. Thank you very much