 Being kind of rough on our friends from Fox, huh? I have been asked to tell you two things. One, there's a book signing on the second floor Skyway level. And for another, if you're leaving to go get a smoke or exercise your freedom of movement or whatever, get your ticket scanned on the way out so you can come back in. But don't leave until you hear our next speaker, who is Dr. Paul's former congressional chief of staff, 1978 to 1982, at which point he left to found the Ludwig von Mises Institute, currently in Auburn, Alabama. You know who he is? He is Llewellyn Rockwell. He joins us now. Sometimes people say that the American people are cynical about politics. Looking at the way the Bush administration has used and abused its power over the last eight years, is it really surprising? You would have to be sedated not to be cynical. It should be clear why the Ron Paul movement took the country by storm. It represents something different, something hopeful. Sometimes commentators talk about how the Pollyans allegedly have a dark view of American society. Of course, the opposite is true. The people worked so hard and donated so much to save this country from the regular politicians speaks very highly of their outlook. On the other hand, it's true that Pollyans don't have a very high regard for existing political structures. Consider Bush. He broke an election promises and trampled on American liberties. He hasn't done a single decent thing for the country. And what he has done contradicts all the values he said he would uphold. Both times, he tricked people into voting for him. I could report this wasn't his intention. And yet, even from his first day in office, he spoke to aides about his priority of going to war on Iraq, a country hardly mentioned during his first presidential campaign. Here's another example. Just after Bush took office, David Frum, then a White House speechwriter, was part of a policy meeting with the new president. They were discussing the energy policy of the new administration. Now, recall that in those days, gasoline cost less than a dollar a gallon. Frum had the idea it would be a political victory to drive down the price. He suggested that Bush use the phrase, cheap energy, to describe his goal. Frum writes in his memoirs about what happened next. Bush, he said, quote, gave me a sharp, squinting look, as if he were trying to decide whether I was the very stupidest person he had heard from all day, unquote. He might have added that profits in the oil business, which is the business this government cares about, were growing thinner. Cheap energy, Bush answered, was how we got into this mess. What mess? Bush explained to Frum that regular Americans were buying too many SUVs and pickup trucks using too much gasoline, not paying enough for it. His answer was not to make energy cheaper, but to make it more expensive. Congratulations, Mr. President. Your wars, your regulations, your disruption of the international economy, and your failure to open up the industry to anyone except your cronies, has resulted in a quadrupling of the price of gasoline. Of course, Bush's success in his energy policy comes at our expense. All of his successes have come at our expense. In fact, that light's last sentence might well be the theme of his entire presidency. Of course, he didn't campaign on the promise of making our lives more miserable. Let's take a look back and see what his slogans were. Do you remember the phrase, compassionate conservatism? He said in an early speech that the phrase came from an insight that broken lives can only be rebuilt by another caring, concerned human being. From this, he developed what he called a, quote, bold new approach. He would use government to care for us and to love us and to fix our broken lives. He alone would do this as head of state. Few knew at the time that this simple phrase, compassionate conservatism, masked a dangerous messianic ambition. Some wires had gotten crossed in his brain. He began to see himself as God's instrument on earth. Here is another phrase from early in his presidency. Bush was going to create, quote, an ownership society. Some commentators were stupid enough to believe that by this he meant he would privatize things and give control back to the people. To those who bought this line, I have only one thing to say. You got owned. Remember the phrase, humble foreign policy? Coming from Bush that sounds about as ridiculous as the phrase, peaceful war, except he seems to believe in that too. His delirium is like an infection. It spreads. After all, Bush supporters are the people who continue, even to this day, to talk about their amazing tactical successes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another former Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson, in his new book, calls Iraq a, quote, swift and humane success. If such claims do not qualify as Orwellian, I don't know the meaning of the term. Many people say the Bush administration is departed from conservative principles. There was a time when I might have said that too. If by conservatism we mean the constitutionalism of Robert Taft and Ron Paul. But consider that Ron is the only Republican in the whole Congress or anywhere inside the Beltway to stand up to Bush's attempts to create a totalitarian state. Only Ron Paul has consistently opposed Bush's wars, regulations, spying and shredding of the Constitution. And Paul alone has warned against Bush's monetary policies, his trade policies, his diplomatic misadventures and his crazed megalomaniacal arrogance. Many Republicans might say they've opposed this administration privately. You might say the same thing about the Stalin, the Hitler and the Mao administration. Those who can speak out against wickedness and do not do so are morally culpable. What does this tell us? It tells us that conservatism, as we once knew it, is hopelessly corrupted. You can detect it at cocktail parties where self-identified conservatives sneer at the very idea of liberty. Clearly, in the age of Bush, conservatism now constitutes as great or an even greater threat to American liberty than the left and left liberalism. It is long past time for every right-thinking American to reject the term conservative as a self-description. I for one no longer believe that Bush has betrayed conservatives. In fact, he has fulfilled conservatism and completed the redefinition of that term that began so many decades ago with Bill Buckley and National Review. Think of it realistically. What does conservatism stand for today? It stands for war. It stands for power. It stands for spying, jailing without trial, torture, counterfeiting without limit, and lying from morning to night. There comes a time in the life of every believer in freedom when he must declare without any hesitation to have no attachment to the idea of conservatism. After immigrating to the U.S., Ludwig von Mises was aghast to find himself described as a conservative. He denounced the term in 1956. F.A. Hayek in 1960 announced very clearly that he was not a conservative. Murray Rothbard wrote thousands of words of protest. Hey Murray! Murray Rothbard wrote thousands of words of protest against the term. Frank Chodorov went further. He said that anyone, Frank Chodorov, who called him a conservative would get a punch in the nose. Now the leaders of the Republican Party, meeting not far from here, are telling us that the only real alternative to the socialism of the Democrats is the fascism of the Republicans. They don't call it that, of course, but that's the traditional name for this combination of nationalism, militarism, and right-wing collectivism. The Republican leaders have a heritage and it dates from the interwar period in Europe when certain politicians took power amidst economic crisis. Having their confers in power in our time represents the gravest danger facing our country. Of course Ron Paul has been campaigning for liberty and against the socialist and fascist dangers since he first read Hayek and Mises in medical school, since he first encountered an immoral war's severed limbs and crippled souls as a flight surgeon in the Air Force. Since he first decided on August 15, 1971 to dedicate his life as a public intellectual and a public official to free markets and sound money against Nixonian economic controls and the unlimited money creation by the Federal Reserve that has brought us so many booms and busts into this current crisis. Indeed, since Ron Paul tells us he was born a libertarian, we can say he's been fighting for freedom his entire life. To do so, Ron Paul has had to buck Republican conservatism. But look at the peerless, shining example he set. Look at what he has done. Look at this historic event and dream of what he will achieve in the future with our help. To those who have lingering attachments to conservatism, I will close with the words that Murray Rothbard addressed to the Young Americans for Freedom in 1960. Quote, why don't you get out? Breathe the clean air of freedom and then take your stand proudly and squarely not with the despotism of the power elite and the government of the United States but with the rising movement and opposition to that government. Then you will be libertarians indeed in act as well as in theory. What hangover, what remnant of devotion to the monster state holds you back. Come join us. Come realize that to break once and for all with statism is to break once and for all with the buckliide right wing. We stand ready to welcome you, unquote. Well today, Ron Paul stands ready to welcome you. Thousands of us in this hall say to the millions who yearn to breathe free, join us, join Ron Paul. Thank you.