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.