 Good morning everybody. Welcome to FECON. Welcome to Atlanta, Georgia. We're thrilled to have you our first time FECON event. We expected about 500 and I think we capped out at about 750 so we're thrilled that you're here and that you come from so many places but all with the same idea in mind and that is to advance liberty perhaps the most noble objective earthly objective that we can seek to attain and thank you Matt for your remarks and Glenn before him Matt I should point out is in fact a fellow Grove City College graduate we're very proud to have graduated from that fine school although maybe I'm jumping to conclusions so we did graduate didn't we Matt I don't that's the only part I don't quite remember but I think this is coming off here okay before I get started I wanted to ask if there's anyone in the room who lost a roll of hundred dollar bills wrapped with a rubber band and the reason I ask is we found the rubber band 49 years ago a 14 year old in Western Pennsylvania first heard of the Foundation for Economic Education began to read its publications and it changed his life and that kid was me and if somebody had said to me back then nearly a half a century from now you'll be running that place I would have been awestruck and dumbfounded and now nine years into my time as president of fee I'm still awestruck and dumbfounded every day of the week what a venerable institution fee is with a 71 year history founded by one of the greats in the Movement for Liberty Leonard E. Reed no relation although I still have lots of people who say you know I wish I had met your father but he was a great man though we were not related fee does that to you it changes your life and it's it has done that for untold millions of people in our 71 years from all over the world now I suppose when I began reading fee publications in 1968 I already had a few instincts in the right direction thanks to a father who himself was not a reader of our kind of stuff but he had good common sense and great instincts and one of my earliest memories of that is I must have been maybe five or six years of age we lived about 11 miles from the border with Ohio and Pennsylvania at that time and I think to a considerable degree still has had laws on the books that protected dairy farmers from competition from milk coming from other states thank you Pennsylvania had these dairy laws that prevented or or hampered competition with milk coming in from out of state producers but my father didn't care much for those kinds of things and he noticed that the price of milk in next door Ohio was considerably less than the mandated price in Pennsylvania and there was a little town called Negley Pennsylvania just over the border few minutes ride from our house where you could buy milk as much as you wanted at a very cheap price and bring it back and in his case he decided to arrange with neighbors to sell milk to them for less than the legal price in Pennsylvania but for a little bit more than what he picked it up for in Ohio and on Saturdays we would frequently oops sorry about that on Saturdays we would jump in the car and go over to Negley and we'd fill the car up with milk and I remember at the time it was such a thrill because my father would tell my sister and me you know keep keep it down keep it covered if we get pulled over by the police don't say anything about the milk and so little did I know that maybe my career in advancing liberty was starting right then as a milk smuggler but it was some years later in 1968 when I deepened my understanding of liberty in the principles of free markets by being introduced to fee for the first time it changed my life later as a student at Grove City College I was enormously influenced by the teacher that both Matt and I had Dr. Hans Sennholz and every Sennholz student is full of stories of what it was like to learn under this great champion of Austrian and free market economics and my favorite story involves a very important principle that Dr. Sennholz gave us in the process of responding to a student he had just given a lecture a brilliant lecture for almost 50 minutes on labor unions and the evils of compulsory unionism and a student near the end of the period raised his hand and asked Dr. Sennholz this question he said Dr. Sennholz what you say sounds pretty good but not too many people here in our part of the country really believe in that so how are we to know that it's that it's true and for a moment there was complete silence in the room we didn't know if he was going to walk out or jump on the student or what but he got very quiet and then he said this truth is not a numbers game you can be alone and you can be right and then he paused and said I am alone and I am right but I'll never forget the truth is not a numbers game part of that because it's been so core to my thinking ever since well we at fee have principles don't we everyone associated with fee I think would proudly say we have principles again how many people go through life unable to ever say that they're committed to a set of ideas or what those ideas might be in my mind that's tragic but at fee we champion the concept of standing for something believe in something that you know to be right and work for it don't be a bystander when it comes to ideas that are both right and good don't be like the character Groucho Marx played in one of his films where he says to a group of people those are my principles if you don't like them I have others in other words I'll have whatever principles you want me to have and when the next audience wants them to be another set of principles I'll drop the first and adopt the second that's a person who has no principles at all if you're not willing to stand for something you will probably fall for anything at fee I'm so proud to say that even though we have changed in many ways we're focusing now on young people newcomers to ideas of liberty we're using technology like never before we've moved our headquarters we've cut our costs we expanded our outreach in so many ways but our principles have never changed they are identical to what they were when Leonard Reed started fee 71 years ago principles like private property the importance of the individual and limited government free enterprise peaceful voluntary interaction between peoples now maybe we've added in recent years a new dimension it's really not a new one Leonard would say well I was talking about that too we we have sort of dusted it off and maybe made it a bit more central to our message in that dimension is the indispensable connection between liberty and personal character I think fee has become in the last few years perhaps the premier organization in the liberty movement that seeks to advance an understanding of this critical point that there is an indispensable connection you can't have one without the other that liberty and character are two sides of the same coin and that liberty itself is a very high calling anybody can be a socialist it doesn't require much in the way of standards of character all it requires is that you want something that belongs to someone else and have the willingness to use force or employ force on the part by others to get it that's all it takes but liberty has much higher standards liberty is the only social political economic arrangement that requires that in order to have it we must maintain lofty standards of personal character we have to respect each other our rights our lives our choices our property our contracts we have to live in peace because if we don't we will lose our liberties and quite often our lives as well principles import are important they're critically important when it comes to personal character at fee we talk about how liberty requires that we be an honest people that we be truth tellers that we speak truth to power it requires that we be humble people at least in one sense in an intellectual sense that we recognize that as much as we may know there is still a universe of knowledge out there that we don't know one of the messages of Leonard Reed's classic essay I pencil liberty and character require that we be patient that we seek to work things out with others in a peaceful fashion even if it takes a little time liberty requires that we be responsible that we step up to the plate accept accountability for our actions and refrain from pointing the finger of blame on others when the source of the problem may be our own poor judgments liberty requires that we be people of courage because liberty is always under assault always has been always will be not simply from overseas powers that may wish to take our liberties but even under assault from people within our very midst people who will not respect the lives and the property and the contracts and the persons of other people these are the principles along with others that undergird both liberty and character you can't have one without the other I know we're here to share ideas make new friends learn new things but I hope you'll also consider this event a celebration a celebration of the principles that we share one of the principles I haven't yet mentioned but I'll close with it is the notion that we should celebrate the uncommonness of individuals this is a day when we hear so much egalitarian talk about the common man we put the common man on a pedestal but the more I think about this the more I think how terrible would be for a parent to tell a child Johnny if you work work real hard someday you can be common that's in my mind that's child abuse it's the uncommonness that we seek what we really want to see in a free society is people exerting their individuality being what makes them unique and special mustering those character traits that I mentioned to be uncommonly good and uncommonly great and so I'd like to leave you with a great little essays very short from a Turkish immigrant to the United States by the name of Dean Alfange this is almost a hundred years old he wrote this I do not choose to be a common man it is my right to be uncommon if I can I seek opportunity not security I do not wish to be a kept citizen humbled and dulled by having the state look after me I want to take the calculated risk to dream and to build to fail and to succeed I refuse to barter incentive for a dole I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat it is my heritage to stand erect proud and unafraid to think and act for myself enjoy the benefits of my creations and to face the world boldly and say this I have done thank you all and now I'm pleased to invite you to any one of the seven breakout sessions which are in that direction thanks everybody