Some people might be here out of a devotion to the cause of health freedom in various forms, whether it's freedom from the so-called Obamacare. I hate that word by the way. You know, various other forms of health freedom.
There could be people who are devoted to the 10th amendment to the Constitution. There could be people who are just dedicated to the principle that it's, it's better for there to be multiple power centers in society, for people to have greater voice in the regime they live under, Whatever. There are all different reasons, but I want to spend my last few moments just sharing with you what my own are and my own basically are. These are both domestic and
foreign. Domestically, I've come to the conclusion that the federal government has sold us a bill of goods and they've brainwashed us into believing it. Ever since we were sitting in their crummy schools, they fed us this line that without them we'd be totally lost. We'd be pathetic boobs. We'd all be eating poison food. We would with all our technological advances we wouldn't have thought of any way to come up with a a non lethal sandwich. Our kids would all be working in
a mine for a dollar a day. We'd all be getting our limbs blown off because our computer monitors would be exploding. Everybody would earn $0.03 an hour. There'd be no science, there'd be no art, and on and on and on, right? Everybody would be an ignoramus and this and that, right? I mean, everybody, everybody was taught this. I understand why people believe
this. There's a superficial plausibility to it because you say, well before we had a lot of government intervention, people lived in terrible conditions. Now they live in better conditions. So the one must have caused the other. That's completely illegitimate reasoning. And I think I could I demon try to demonstrate that in my newer book rollback. But the point is that if we were educated in this is my new analogy. I I kind of like I'm kind of fond of I'm very bad at
analogies. I'm the anti Peter Schiff when it comes to analogies. I'm so bad at he he thinks of analogies in his sleep. You know, he could be drunk, you know, in car accident. He's coming up with analogies. I can't think of anything but imagine you were educated in Walmart schools. Schools run and funded by Walmart. Well, the kids now as close in
these schools. Every every day the kid goes to this classroom and the classroom up on the wall, it's all pictures of Walmart CEOs looking down upon the kids wisely. And the kids are taught to sing songs. Oh how great the Walmart CEOs are. Oh God bless the Walmart CEOs. We'd all be pathetic boobs without them. So on and on and on. They cut out little pictures of the Walmart CEOs.
And then one day a year they get to stay home from school and meditate on the great contributions of the Walmart CEOs. Whatever, wouldn't we in that situation? Wouldn't we say, now that's a little bit creepy, You know, like, I mean, come on. I mean, maybe there were a couple of good Walmart CEOs, but I mean, I, I refuse to believe that all good things of civilization came from these people.
Like we would say that yet when it's US presidents up on that wall, we accept everything they say. Oh my gosh, heaven forbid. What kind of a caveman are you? You mean you don't want the great innovations of president? So and so where would we be? We'd all be dead in a ditch and have no limbs and three cents an hour. It's like a mental disorder and like somehow it's been talked to. I don't know how it's it's an incredible racket. It is an unbelievable racket.
I mean, in a way I almost wish I was clever enough to a thought that I would loot you people. I would loot and. Expropriate you people, and then to add insult to injury, I would. Train your kids to. Cheer what I'm doing. I mean, man, I mean, that is serious, serious, sociopathic cleverness. How do they think of this stuff? So I don't believe it. I believe this institution has held back human progress.
I believe it pits us all against each other in a civil war of everybody grabbing and every one of us has been sucked into some kind of interest group, whether it's our occupation or our age or our race or our class, everybody wants to grab and grab and grab and grab. It's what Frederick Bastiat said. The state is the great fiction by which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else. And look at where it's got.
However, my last section here is something that maybe not all of you are going to receive well, but you know, I, I can't, I got to be me, you know, OK, I got to tell you. And the other thing, the other thing is so so in other words, because of this, I believe this institution is like a
decivilization agent. So at every turn I want to try and stop it. And if this is a tool for doing it, then I'm all for it. But it's worse than that because, you know, I let me start off by saying giving my my right wing credentials here. I was the vice president of the Harvard College Republicans. And I know you're all thinking, yeah, that's some right wing credentials. Wow. So you supported Walter Mondale. Great. OK, the older crowd remembers Walter Mondale. Good.
That joke wasn't lost. OK, My Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is one of the best selling books in the history of the Conservative Book Club. I mean like, so I'm not some left. I'm not a commie. I I'm not a, you know, pinko or anything like that. I'm the least commie guy you'll ever meet. Although there are a lot of pretty non common people in this room. But having said that, I also came to the conclusion that I don't believe the foreign policy either.
I just don't believe them. I don't believe the word is wrong. And I say this to people knowing again that some of you are going to disagree with me, but I'm telling you, I'm not a leftist in any way. And I came to the conclusion that they're lying sociopaths domestically, and they don't magically transform into angelic beings when it comes to foreign policy. They're also lying to us. Now, that's not to say that there aren't some nasty people around the world.
I mean, there's no need to caricature what I'm saying, but I think back to the 1990s when I was, you know, well, younger than I am now. And, and, and I, I basically believe that, well, I'm a good little conservative. And so, you know, when, when the authorities tell me that military action is necessary, only a pinko comedy would question that. Now that was a big, big moral
mistake. I made an intellectual mistake, and I'm sorry I made it. And I think back to the disgraceful ways I used to make up excuses to these people. They would do commit horrific atrocities, and they would do it on the most flimsy pretext. I mean, the arguments they made for some of these wars were so transparent. I thought, how could I begin to think, how can a conservative, like, who's supposed to be dedicated to Western civilization and reason and be swept up in this?
I mean, it's so beneath us to fall for some of this stuff. And yet I fell for it. And, and I would go around searching for corroborating evidence to support their lives. And if if I had seen a poor Russian in the Soviet Union doing the same thing, saying, Oh no, saying to his neighbors don't know what Prav is telling us is true. Look, I've been looking it up and I've looked at all this evidence I've found. I would have treated that person
with contempt. But for some reason, when it was my looting expropriators, it was OK for me to make excuses for them and to search out corroborating evidence for arguments that they can abandoned. They themselves said if they weren't even making these arguments anymore. And I was still looking for ways to defend them. And I finally just decided, and this was back in the early 1990s after the first Persian Gulf War. And this is a war a lot of people thought was just nothing wrong with it.
You know, Saddam's a bad guy. He's massing his troops on the Saudi border and so on and on. But I remember hearing about people, hundreds of thousands of people retreating, being incinerated. And I'm being asked to have a Bob Hope special to celebrate this some some backward country, some backwater, which actually by regional standards was relatively advanced, hardly, but relatively stupid modern healthcare system and so on and so forth. So I thought to myself, what's happening to me?
What have I allowed this institution to do to me that I could look so callously on these poor people? I don't care if they were conscripted into an army. They were conscripted, most of them. And I don't. I don't care that the sociopaths in DC have told me I'm supposed to hate these people, because I don't hate them. And when I saw that I was supposed to, If there had been an earthquake over there, we would all be tears and pity about it. But when they're incinerated alive, nothing.
These people are human guard. And I just decided at that point, I'm not doing this anymore. I don't believe what you people are telling me. I don't believe your phony baloney reasons for your war is that all you care about is democracy so that therefore you can put the Emir of Kuwait back on his throat. I mean, come on, you know I'm not 7 years old. In fact, that's an insult because my 7 year old is smarter
than that. I have sometimes said, by the way, that I, I managed to explain to my 7 year old what nullification meant and it made me conclude that a panel of seven-year olds would be better than the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board put together. So let me finish because I know I'm, I'm way, way, way over. Way, way over. But also also as the 1990s
progressed. OK, so then we put the sanctions regime on Saddam and the UN, OK, We don't, we don't like the UN, Neither do I. The UN says 500,000 children have died of malnutrition because of the the sanctions. And then the usual response is, well, that's a phony statistic. Or if Saddam had to spend all his money on palaces, the kids to the beaten or whatever. That's neither here.
The point is, U.S. officials Madeleine Albright and Bill Richardson both said they did not question that figure. They said that price was worth it. They didn't say the UN is lying. They didn't say this is awful. They said that price is worth it. Now I am sorry. There is impossible for a conservative who's supposed to lectures the world about moral relativism to say what we are better than this.
How can we allow ourselves to be so dehumanized that we sit here and allow ourselves to be called extremists when people who make excuses for, for the killing of half a million children to go about their business and, and we, we defend this, this is public policy. No, I can't do this. Now. Incidentally, incidentally, Russell Kirk is considered by some to be the founder of modern American conservatism. His classic book, The Conservative Mind is probably in like a 9th edition by now, a
very significant figure. And we look at Kirk's foreign policy. It has nothing in common with the teenage laptop bombardiers who run our foreign policy today. Has nothing to do with the neo Con Bill Kristol, nothing. You look at you look at Russell Kirk, who's a real conservative who hasn't had his brainwashed by these phonies on the radio. Kirk said that military conscription is akin to slavery. This is a this is the most significant conservative paper of the 20th century.
In his book 1954, called A Program for Conservatives, he laid out a foreign policy that bears 0 resemblance to the interventionism that we have now. And at the end of the Persian Gulf War, at the end of the Persian Gulf War, he said that George HW Bush, now this is the most significant conservative thinker of the 20th century. He said George HW Bush should be strung up on the White House lawn for war crimes. Was he a pinko commie? Russell Turner? Is that what we're going to?
Is that what we're reduced to? No. Now, finally, therefore, my conclusion is it is not enough to say that in Washington we've got some bumblers and boy, they're inefficient. And there are some libertarians who sort of take that tack that, gosh, you know, government's just full of these people who have they, they have these programs with all these crazy unintended consequences. What a bunch of jokers. I don't go for them.
It it's not that they're jokers, it's that they are raving sociopaths whom I don't want have exercise in any power over me. And if we at the state level, if we in our own communities, if we can't solve our problems face to face with each other without the intervention of these people, then heaven help us, the state, but especially these modern mega states, have been a moral and material disaster. Now. Being here and of course, you know, in this type of room, there are people of all
different points of view. And sometimes people wonder, you know, well, maybe there are some people on the left who are so disaffected on some critical issues that maybe they'll join with us and in some areas, and here I am, I'm the squariest of the square. I've never smoked pot. I've never done any of this stuff. No, I, you know, I got 4 kids. We do all, I got a minivan.
You know, I, I'm not part of this, but I feel like I have more in common with somebody like in the 60s of Carl Ogles, who said that the old right, which is the right wing that I've talked about, has been totally decimated. And the new left are in many ways morally and politically
coordinate. I'm sympathetic to the New Left historian William Appleman Williams, who said that the best approximation we ever came in this country to have in truly humane communities was under the Articles of Confederation. Now you utter these words, you say something like that to Bill Kristol. You may as well be holding a crucifix in front of directive. Now, are there alliances that are possible? Maybe.
I mean, I did a book that I've got out there with a friend, friend Murray Polner, and he and I disagree on almost everything. But on critical things, we came together and we we produced, I think, a nice little, little product. I don't know what types of alliances are possible. All we can do is to hold the law, the banner of justice and humanity and see who rallies to it. And no matter who joins us, fight we must. For as Ludwig von Mises said, everyone carries a part of
society on his shoulders. No one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others, and no one can find a Safeway out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone in his own interests must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern. The interest of everyone hangs on the result. Let's all stand together. Thank you very much.
War is a euphemism for theft, funded mass murder based on lies, often involving slaves, known as conscripts. Almost every Democrat and Republican hold 2 contradictory beliefs. 1 If our domestic government violates our freedoms, we must embrace calm disagreement, but never resist.
When officers give you an order, you must obey them lest we get killed like Ashley Babbitt 2. When any foreign politician potentially or hypothetically violates your freedom, you must go to war and advocate the mass murder of civilians. Since the costs of violence are extremely high, often immoral, and outcomes very uncertain, I suggest we take the peaceful route as often as possible regarding warfare. Here are 12 facts the fake news and fake historians have omitted
one. the US government supported al Qaeda in Syria to fight Bashar al-Assad Sea Operation Timber Sycamore 2. The US government sided with al Qaeda in Libya, the Libyan Islamic Fighting group 2 oppose Muammar Gaddafi 3 the US government fought alongside al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula against the houthi government in Yemen #4 on September 20th of 2001, President Bush said they hate us for our freedom and
democracy. Yet in Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, published by Harvard University Press, bin Laden's grievances consisted of US deadly sanctions on Iraq, US support for Israeli crimes in Palestine and Lebanon, and U.S. military occupation of Saudi Arabia. This live led to NATO's first ever declaration of war and after 20 years 10s of thousands of civilian and military deaths, the Taliban seized Kabul in 11 days #5 Page 177 of the 1946 Congressional Pearl Harbor investigation sites.
Secretary of War Henry Stimson's diary dated November 25th, 1941, saying the President brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps as soon as next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning. And the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to
ourselves. Number six in the First World War, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill said in his book The World Crisis, 1911 to 1918. The British blockade treated the whole of Germany as if it were a beleaguered fortress and avowedly sought to starve the whole population, men, women and children, old and young, wounded and sound into submission. Not Kaiser Wilhelm, but the
German civilian population. And these are the good guys #7 it was Neville Chamberlain who declared war against Germany on September 3rd, 1939, after the National Socialists invaded Danzig, Poland, a town which was roughly 95% German.
And it was Winston Churchill who initiated the terror bombings of civilians in May of 1940. Chamberlain and Churchill's war for Polish independence resulted in 7 million dead Poles and Poland occupied by the Bolshevik regime #8 Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in his book Argument without End claims the August 4th, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident never took place, meaning the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964 and mass murder campaign of Vietnam was based on a lie.
This resolution passed the US Senate 88 votes to two and passed the House 416 votes to 0 #9 Vice President said on Meet the Press. It's been pretty well confirmed that he, Muhammad Atta, did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service. Fake news #10 We're told that we must bear the costs of hundreds of thousands of lives in Ukraine for the benefit of democracy. Yet Zelensky did not hold his March 31st election of this
year. His military bombed NATO ally Poland on November 15th of 2022. He conscripts in slaves men to fight in his war just so he could stay on the throne in Kiev #11 The real aim behind our current Russia policy is the Pentagon's February 1992 Defense Planning Guidance draft stating our first objective is to prevent the re emergence of a
new rival. We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role #12 The origins of the Russia Ukraine conflict were explained by President Obama in his book A Promised Land, Reading from page 464. The US decision seven years earlier to pull out of the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty and it's plans to house missile defense systems on Russia's border continue to be a source
of strategic instability. The admission of former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO during both the Clinton and Bush administrations had steadily encroached on Russia's sphere of influence, while US support for the color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan under the specious guise of democracy promotion had turned Russia's once friendly neighbors into governments hostile to Moscow. This is isolationism. Provoking enemies is isolating, not seeking friendship and free trade.
The national security elites in every country since the beginning of time must lie and sensationalize potential foreign threats in order to get their domestic populations to surrender their freedoms and bear the high cost of dying and getting their limbs blown off. To. Secretary of State Blanken and National Security Advisor Sullivan don't just avoid war because it's the right thing to do. Do it for yourself over expansion and engagement in unnecessary wars.
Brought down Napoleon's French Empire, Czar Nicholas's Russian Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm's German Empire, the Austro Hungarian Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Hirohito's Japanese Empire, Hitler's Third Reich, the British Empire, and the Soviet Empire. Those idiots got bogged down in an unwinnable conflict in Afghanistan.
What kind of an empire would do such a thing with a state having a monopoly on the money supply, the right to take money without consent, taxation, and the right to conscript? Politicians seldom have an incentive to consider obvious peaceful alternatives to war. Consider the comment by Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts. The US should make it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we're going to blow up TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Hello Attorney General, if inciting a riot can get someone arrested, what should happen to politicians who incite war? Instead of war with China over Taiwan, Let's decriminalize all economic activity between consenting adults here and abroad to make sure our economy out competes all other countries. This is the true way to empower Americans. One question we need to ask ourselves to practice basic empathy.
When would another country be justified in invading America, killing civilians, bombing cities, blockading ports, and installing a new government? If the answer is basically never, we should reject moral double standards and have the same principle for other countries. History shows we can talk to our enemies. Eisenhower shook hands with Khrushchev in America in 1959.
Kennedy wrote letters to Khrushchev to avoid nuclear exchange over Cuba. Nixon shook hands with Mao in Beijing. Trump shook hands with Kim Jong Un in Singapore. Roosevelt and Truman had a formal alliance with Joseph Stalin. We can be friends with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin for the sake of avoiding a nuclear exchange, which would make the crimes of the Third Reich seem minuscule by comparison. My friends on the right, the pro-life pro family position is
anti war. When God says thou shalt not murder. There were no exceptions for politicians and soldiers. My friends on the left, the biggest inequality is when one person takes the life of another unjustly, which in war occurs on a massive scale. Nothing is more exploitative to the average person than watching cities which took centuries to construct be blown to bits while getting conscripted into war. Watching your loved ones get murdered by bombs. My friends in the military.
I was asked in grade school if someone told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it? The point was you are directly responsible for the actions you take. I was told so, or I was just following orders is not a valid excuse for school children or members of the military. We don't have to admire psychopaths. We can admire Cornelius Vanderbilt for lowering the cost of steamship travel from 7 dollars to six cents.
The Wright Brothers for giving the gift of flight to the common American. Henry Ford and the Ford Auto Workers for making the automobile accessible to the masses. Rosa Parks for disobeying unjust laws. Martin Luther King for holding us Americans to the very standards we claim to uphold. Steve Jobs and the Apple employees for giving people access to phones and computers on a scale never imagined.
The great crimes of history, slavery, Genghis Khan, genocide, Jim Crow, et cetera, all had one thing in common. They involved some people initiating violence against peaceful people. Americans must lead the world in rejecting war, recognizing it for what it is. Theft funded mass murder based on lies, often involving slaves known as conscripts. My name is Keith Knight, managing editor at the Libertarian Institute.