And that reminds me that I need to take down the button advertising it. But I’ll write my blog post first.
The Tea Party Townhall on Saturday, September 25th. It was an interesting day. One of the best parts? Discovering there is an Austrian economist teaching at ISU, Bloomington. I couldn’t see that he was an adjunct scholar for the Mises Institute, so I was rather skeptical. Very skeptical. I was even expecting perhaps a Milton Friedmanite monetarist. Hey, one never knows quite what to expect. Come to find out, he’s an Austrian. He had an amazing presentation on the history of real money, where fiat money came from, what our’s is, and what that means for our economic future (hyperinflation, in case you’re wondering) and as if that wasn’t quite enough…he also explained what fractional reserve banking really is! So I enjoyed talking to him…he became an “Austrian” after discovering that they were the only ones who truly integrated the role of the entrepreneur into the market analysis. Oh, his name is Terry Noel and you can see his website here.
And perhaps you’re wondering what I spoke about? Well, I started out by talking about how futile it is for us to expect to actually change things by electing politicians. And no matter how “normal” a candidate is–once they get to Washington they are sucked into the system and there is no longer any hope for us. So to “win” or achieve more freedom we must embrace a comprehensive system of liberty. We can’t pick or choose where we’ll have freedom. Quote from me: “Unless we allow all people to consume whatever substances they want [reference to legalizing drugs] the government will come after us and make it illegal for us to grow tomatoes in our backyard.” And another, “either we refuse to let the government indefinitely detain suspected terrorists or the government will come for us and indefinitely detain us. No fair and speedy trial. We might be in prison for 5 months or 5 years or 50 years. And you know, the government has already started hinting that some right-wingers are a little extreme, so this isn’t entirely crazy.”
Then I summed it up with my all-time favorite quote, “Tyranny ends when we cease to support voluntarily our own serfdom” from Helio Beltrao. Another quote from me: “Once we realize that the government has no right to control our lives or the fruit of our labor, the chains of evil will start slipping. And once they start slipping and we experience true liberty, there will be no going back. We will be free.”
I’m not sure how much people appreciated it, but I had fun just giving it, that was enough reward.
I must go now…agenda for today:
– Help a friend set up his website
– Check out some possibilities for software to use in online class
– Prepare history lesson for this week (Articles of Confederation and pre-Constitution times in America)
– Work on preparing lessons for the Economic Workshop
– Many more thing which are too numerous to list.
Have a great day! 🙂
Yes, it was a wonderful day, and Professor Terry Noel’s lecture was one I was most anxious to hear. He counts himself a libertarian, as well as an Austrian, and has such a sense of humor you can bear to hear painful truths. We enjoyed your presentation, Savannah, and I know you spared us your full face-slapping treatment (“I’m doing this for your own sake!”), but we are open to your views, even if we don’t embrace them all. I see a good deal of conservative exchange of ideas in our futures.
I think this is a Barry Goldwater Jr. quote, and sums it up quite well, “We need not agree on everything, we need only agree that we should be free.” Thank you for inviting me to the Townhall, you did a great job organizing it, a very enjoyable day for all, I think.