Nation of Sheep | Andrew Napolitano

from carl menger to the present-day austrian economists have favored sound money over government manipulated paper currency the very first Mises Institute conference in 1983 was on the gold standard at the time people said the idea was outmoded and that paper currency was working just fine here we are 25 years later and it is not so the dollar is in grave danger the government is growing at the expense of society and the business cycle has been unleashed with ferocity the best time for a gold standard is in calm times but only a crisis focuses the mind people are looking for answers and the misison answer is the same now as it was when Mises wrote his first book on the topic restore sound money stop the inflation and get government out of the money business ladies and gentlemen I'd like to welcome you to our Gold conference our gold standard conference this year here in Auburn Alabama we have in addition to the live audience here we have a live audience of over 70 students upstairs and we're broadcasting live on the web so I'd like to welcome everybody out there who's watching us on the computer here today as a student I actually had the opportunity to go to the first gold conference in Washington DC 25 years ago and it was a fantastic experience and I'd like to thank everybody who's who made that possible and who has made the Institute and our activities possible to this state including this conference and again to welcome everybody here today we're going to begin today's festivities I'd like to bring Ben kotha and Lew Rockwell up to the stage for the awarding of the kotha Award for right free-market writing it's great to have been Coulter here today to present the prize named in honor of his dad and his dad endowed this prize for the Institute and he would be very very pleased that the man who's gonna be receiving it today George kotha was an extraordinary guy he died at 98 in 2006 almost ninety nine he he had wanted to be a hundred that was his goal and he he he almost made it it was an extraordinary writer he worked for The Saturday Evening Post for Look magazine many other important magazines I studied economics with Ludwig von Mises and Margit and Liberty von Mises loved him and is his wife I'll oh they're very close to them George was one of the most extraordinary men I've ever met just a true tremendous reckoned tour brilliant economist and writer he later was a ghostwriter for the presidents of US Steel and many other fortune 500 companies he wrote one book in his own name the ass that went to Washington which is sort of a children's book for adults and I'm just reminded Jeff Tucker and if Ben it allows us we have to be reprinting that book it's it's it's it's quite a wonderful thing he helped market von Mises tremendously with her book my years with Ludwig von Mises everybody here loved him at the Mises Institute principled a hardcore and I after as a widower I want to mention even into his 90s he was a babe magnet I mean and I remember he told me he was dating younger ladies in their 70s at that point so he was he was quite a guy so let me turn this over to his son Ben and Ben it's great to have you here and George kotha it's great to have your spirit with us today thank you all it's a great honor to be here I don't know that I can really stand up to the history of my father just so you know I grew up with my father in Pelham New York and when I was in high school I went to the Mises seminar at NYU so rothbard Mises Leonard read Bonita B and all these were all close friends that would come to the house on the weekend so it was really heartwarming to be with you all today and I have to tell you that I read the judges book I'm a businessman so I don't have a lot of time for intellect anymore I you know I'm just grinding away trying to write computer software and make electronic gadgets but when I got the invitation I got the book and I read it and it was so wonderful it was like being right back with a Mises family again and and and it was my father speaking to me through the judge and that's really all I have to say judge except but I would tell you this when my father passed away a week or two before he passed away he bought a new car he wrote a prenuptial agreement and and he bought a ticket to Ireland to go on his honeymoon and open he wanted open an Irish bank account where there was solid money good all right I'm so anxious to start yeah this is a little awkward when you're trying to put in so much into this conference our first speaker and our Award winner Judge Andrew Napolitano received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University his doctorate in law from the University of Notre Dame he served as a Supreme Court judge in New Jersey from 1987 through 1995 and of course most of us know him as the legal consultant for Fox News and he's going to be of course talking to us today about a nation of sheep Thank You Marc Thank You Ben Ben and I just met not too long ago but I think you said about the nicest thing that anybody could possibly say that your father was speaking to you through me I obviously never met your father but I am enhanced by the comparison and I personally and publicly thank you for it god bless you and God rest his soul I am privileged because of my work at Fox to be invited to speak at a lot of gatherings all over the country some large some small some happy some hostile but being anywhere with the name von mises or Lew Rockwell means that I am home and I'm happy to be speaking here at a home which I have never visited before on this beautiful day in this beautiful town in this beautiful part of the country and I thank you for welcoming me I think I was on the bench oh maybe about two or three weeks and they give you these cases where you have about 15 minutes a case small claims cases somebody will typically come up and say the dry cleaner ruined my dress but he also tried to pick up my sister and you have to sort of resolve the case in about 15 minutes a guy comes up a lawyer and he says Your Honor we need a translator for this particular case and I said well what language does your client speak he said Italian I called the courthouse administrator the translator was busy in another courtroom so I said to the throng there were a couple hundred people in the room is there anybody here that speaks Italian little guy in the back raises his hand he comes up we swear him in to translate truthfully we swear in the witness here's exactly what happens lawyer - translator give the court your name translator to witness what is your name I said all right let me see where this is gonna go ask the next question lawyer - translator give the court your address translator - witness where is a house' looked at this guy i said i thought you told me that you could speak italian he said i can't your honor but my english if she's not as so good one time i was picking a jury in new jersey and in most states the judge actually picks the jury and you interrogate citizens to make sure that they have no bias no prejudice no interest in the outcome this was a drug distribution case i was very young at being a judge and a woman raised her him and says like judge i can't be on this jury because of my occupation drug distribution case i said all right lady what do you do she said i'm a soothsayer this is this is 1990 who calls themselves a soothsayer so i fall for it and i said all right madam how does that keep you from being on this jury she said judge I already know how the case ends up all right you're excused you're excused as you will hear in a few minutes and if you if you know me from fox or from any of my other works I have not hesitated to be harshly critical of the Bush administration and what it has done to the Constitution and what it has done to our natural liberties but I must publicly confess and I've done this before that I am in some unique and bizarre way even responsible for the Bush administration coming into existence it was eight years ago it was early December it was the recount we had been going 40 days straight at Fox I was an am the chief legal guy and had to become an expert and hanging chads and all those bizarre florida election laws and one night I was on the air with my colleague Brit Hume he's in Washington I'm in New York through the magic of it looks like I'm sitting next to him and you see one of those things that Fox does about 10 or 15 times every 30 minutes a swoosh fox alert so we had this swoosh box alert and britt hume says the florida supreme court has just announced that it is ordering the recounts not only resumed in the four counties that Vice President Gore has requested but in all 70 counties of the state of Florida and we understand judge that the Bush campaign is going to appeal this to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Atlanta what do you think now if you're a lawyer the rules are pretty basic I said well the Court of Appeals in Atlanta does not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal from the Florida Supreme Court he said what should they do I said well Bush's lawyers should go to Georgetown and Washington DC where Justice Anthony Kennedy lives he's the Circuit Justice he's assigned here emergency appeals from state supreme courts in the Eleventh Circuit which includes Florida they should knock on his door and they should ask him to sign an emergency stay fancy word for stop the decision of the Supreme Court of Florida so that the other eight justices can vote on this in due time now this was about 10 minutes of 7:00 at 7 o'clock that the Brit Hume show was over I went up to my office to take a nap because in those days I said we were going 24/7 and at 10 o'clock I had to be on with O'Reilly and of course you need all the energy you can get for that kind of an encounter at five after 7:00 as I'm dozing off in my office with the television on in the background my ever charming ever handsome ever garrulous Fox colleague Shepard Smith is on and another one of those swooshes comes down and the swoosh is Governor Bush's lawyers have just been cited in their cars in Georgetown in Washington DC and they're looking for the house of Justice Anthony Kennedy to ask him to sign some kind of an emergency document I don't know what it is then he looks in the camera and it goes do you know what that means that means the George W Bush is watching Fox and he's listening to Judge Napolitano the rest regrettably is history true story who knows if they where they learned their law from lawyers usually don't get a basic education the law from other lawyers on the television the Bush administration continues even up to the present moment to assault our liberties that assaults our liberties that are specifically expressly guaranteed in the bill of rights it assaults our natural liberties which Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence are ours by virtue of our birthright and it assaults liberties that are guaranteed in specific statutes some of which President Bush himself has signed into law many of you have heard me talk about the Patriot Act it is the single most abominable as in hateful as in unamerican as in anti Liberty piece of legislation enacted by the Congress of the United States since the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 which made it a crime to criticize certain members of the government remember how the government was elected in 1798 think of this happening next week whoever finishes first in the electoral college becomes president whoever finishes second becomes vice president we since I've modified that with the twelfth amendment but you had Jefferson and Adams running against each other for President Adams wins Jefferson finishes second so you have President Adams big government Hamiltonian guy versus Vice President Jefferson small government states rights natural liberties that each of us has Adams believed with Hamilton and with many of the others at the time with the people that called themselves Federalists that our rights came from the government that our rights came from the government and that the same government that turned on freedom of speech turned on right to privacy turned on freedom to travel turned on freedom of religion right to think right to develop your personality could just as easily turn it off Jefferson of course argued that that's absurd that our rights come from our humanity we were made in the image and likeness of God and God is perfectly free and our freedoms are gifts from him and we can only lose those freedoms when our behavior assaults someone else's natural freedoms and then a jury with a fair judge not a political judge but a fair judge and a fair jury not the lady that thought she knew the outcome already decides that we have violated somebody else's right so that tension between the Jefferson view which lawyers today call the natural law and the Adams view which lawyers today called positivism that tension has existed in the United States from the beginning unfortunately regrettably positivism has won virtually every clash between it and the natural law in Congress and in the minds of the president the only time the natural law wins occasionally and from time to time and we saw it as recently as this past June with a couple of Supreme Court decisions occasionally because lawyers study the natural law and lawyers become supreme court justices it wasn't always the case but in the latter part of this century they've all been lawyers they show a healthy respect for the natural law and will say to the Congress thou shalt not pass because this is a right that individuals have and the government can't turn it off so that tension between positivism and natural law is is ever-present and to make matters worse here's what the positivists believe the positives at positivists believe if the government says it then it must be so now even the people who wrote the Declaration and who wrote the Constitution believed in the natural law think of the words of the First Amendment Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech what does that tell you it doesn't say Congress shall grant freedom of speech it says Congress shall not abridge it therefore it must have pre-existed Congress it must have pre-existed the Constitution it must have pre-existed the Bill of Rights of course it did because it comes to more humanity the only reason we have a bill of rights is because Jefferson and the anti-federalists would not put the Constitution to a vote in their States unless the Federalists agreed to put the Bill of Rights to a vote in their states and so the Constitution came into existence and three years later the Bill of Rights did and hence that wonderful First Amendment Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech eight years later Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts which made it a crime punishable by up to two years in jail to criticize any member of Congress any member of the cabinet any member of the Supreme Court and the president note who was missing the Vice President Thomas Jefferson who relased in the fact that he was not protected by a law that violated natural Liberty the Alien and Sedition Acts fortunately and people were prosecuted and did go to jail and did wallow in in and medieval-style American federal prisons for two years you didn't get out early in those days two years meant two years because of their words because they dared to criticize the federal government the statute expired of its own weight that is the statute had a date in it by which it would expire Jefferson when he was elected president four years after Adams's they run against each other this time Jefferson wins by that time there is a new amendment so he doesn't have John Adams as is as is vice president he has whoever his running mate was it wasn't necessary for Jefferson to refuse to enforce the Alien and Sedition Acts the time came in which they expired but he did say that he would refuse to enforce them so here's the question how come the same generation that rebelled when British soldiers knocked on the door and wrote out their own search warrants pursuant to an act of the Parliament called the writs of assistance act how can the same generation that rebelled when British soldiers knocked on the door pursuant to the Stamp Act which required that every piece of paper at your possession including a book a financial instrument a deed a poster you were gonna kneel to a tree have the Kings stamp on it how can the same generation the pledge pledged their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor 'he's to shoot against the king and to shoot against the king's soldiers how can the same generation that said we'd hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness how can the same generation that wrote the first amendment write a law making it a crime punishable in jail to criticize them when they're in the government because power is an aphrodisiac power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely this is nothing new this observation this is a truism this is isn't even something that can be debated from John Adams to George W Bush and including in every generation and virtually every presidency I would accept Jefferson I would accept some of Andrew Jackson I would object most I would accept most of growver kleavon who simply said where's this in the Constitution and vetoed law after law after law that the Congress has sent to him but with those exceptions every president and in every generation has disregarded the Constitution when Franklin Roosevelt had been in office for about a month and he proposed that the Secretary of Agriculture be allowed to engage in soviet-style central planning telling farmers what they could grow where they could grow at how much they could charge for it so rigid and so draconian that it regulated what you could grow in your own backyard for your own consumption a young Columbia Law School professor who he hired to advise him who would later achieve fame as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials by the name of Rexford Tugwell suggested that this was unconstitutional that the government could not engage in soviet-style central planning of agriculture that the government could not tell you what you could grow in your own backyard and FDR who had just taken a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution said it's quaint was written in the horse and buggy era don't worry the court and the people will agree with me he happened to be right the court and the people did agree with him but it shows the cavalier attitude that quaint horse and buggy document is the same one on which every president has taken an oath to uphold and is the same one from which all presidential powers flow emphasis on because in the Bush administration their lawyers would argue to federal judges and this has not been accepted in a single court in the land where they've argued it but they've made this argument that the president has powers that come from a source other than the Constitution well what could that be the heavens there is the scene in W the movie it's just a movie where young George Bush is not having a very good night and he says to Laura Jesus wants me to be President and she says have you lost your mind but fast forward to a time when he is the president and will dispatch very bright lawyers to argue before the highest court in the land that he has powers that come from some source other than the Constitution that come from the concept of being both the head of state and the head of government because every head of state and every head of government throughout history has been able to torture therefore this president should be able to order torture now that's not literally the argument they used because they don't use that word they George Orwell would be very happy with them because he predicted their behavior 60 years ago they say enhanced arrogation techniques but that's the type of argument that they make the government today rejects the notion of natural rights rejects the idea that life liberty and the pursuit of happiness are ours by virtue of our birthrate pull this one on your friends there's a piece of literature in our history the Declaration of Independence that says when the government ceases to recognize natural rights quote it is the duty of the people to alter and abolish it close quote now if your friends who are big government types will say well that was just the Declaration of Independence the Declaration of Independence is the law of the United States of America not only did it give birth to the country but it was adopted by the Congress if you go in the United States code you will find it there it is the law of the land that when the government ceases to recognize guaranteed actual rights it is the duty underscore duty of the people to alter or to abolish it how do you alter about it when you have a choice between John McCain and Barack Obama it is the dilemma that that we face today you will hear I think later this weekend from a giant among you who courageously battled against John McCain and the Republican primaries and who had the foresight to predict predict with uncanny accuracy the economic problems that we confront today I wonder if that jackass that used to be the governor of New York City would laugh at Ron Paul today as he left at him during one of those debates how life goes on when mm when September 11th 2001 act that happened and the government forced the patriot act on the Congress I mean literally forced it on the Congress there was zero debate in the House of Representatives there was just a few hours of meaningless debate in the floor of the Senate nobody in the House of Representatives had the opportunity to read the Patriot Act how do I know that I know it because it was placed on the house intranet that's the internal internet to which only members of the House of Representatives in their senior staff have access it was posted there for 15 minutes before they had to vote I know I've read it twice it's 315 pages long it doesn't read like a novel in order to read the Patriot Act you need to have the United States code in front of you which is all the federal statutes all 4,000 criminal statutes that the federal government is written now the United States code probably fills about a third of this long wall here so you have to have all those books in front of you because the Patriot Act basically consists of amending statutes that already exist think about it if you change or to end if you change a semicolon to a comma if you change six months to six years it can have a profound effect once you see what is being changed but if you don't read the statute on which are voting then how would you know that it assaults the Constitution by allowing FBI agents to break into your house the British soldiers went through the the farce of writing their own search warrants FBI agents don't even have to go through that they can write their own search warrants and show up while you're at a basketball game or a Friday evening football game and plant a listening device underneath your kitchen table or take your checkbook or go through wherever you keep documents that you have and you'll never even know that it was the friendly FBI because they don't have to tell local law enforcement and they don't have to tell you that it was them for 18 months they can have that kind of literature or that kind of private invasion of you this is authorized in the Patriot Act John Ashcroft who was the Attorney General of the United States at the time said the same thing that Hank Paulson did last month the sky will fall if I don't have this there isn't even enough time to debate haven't you heard all this before you got to listen to what we want because we have the only viable solution the Taliban is under every bed post and behind every refrigerator and under every kitchen table if you don't give us the means to find these people god knows what will happen and if we show up at your house or at your bankers office or at your doctor's office all right your lawyer's office or at your jewelry the jewelry store where you go we're at the place where you bought your automobile or your boat or at your real estate office or at the hospital where you just had surgery and we give them one of these self written search warrants they have to comply they can't call a lawyer they can't challenge it in court and they can't tell anyone that they received it in the old days if the government wanted information on you it would go to the bank and serve them with a grand jury subpoena or a search warrant you head to the bank had ten days in which to reply the bank had a duty to you the depositor to say there's an FBI agent here there's a formal piece of paper they want your records we're gonna comply with it in ten days here's a copy go hire a lawyer and challenge it you had ten days in which to challenge it and a neutral judge a federal judge who took the same oath as FDR to uphold the same Constitution what rule that the government had the right to go in or the government did not all of that changed after the Patriot Act now if the banker tells anyone you his general counsel his wife in bed his priest in confession if the banker tells anyone then the banker is told that he will be charged with violating the Patriot Act that's five years in jail if the banker is in a public federal courtroom and is asked under oath if he received one of these self written search warrants and answers truthfully yes I did he violates the Patriot Act can you imagine the conundrum that the government has visited upon us it has literally made it a crime to tell the truth under oath in a public courtroom even the great monsters throughout history haven't claimed that kind of power well the president said that he could lock anybody up throw away the key they know where to bring them Alberto Gonzalez and John Ashcroft said send them to Cuba the Constitution doesn't apply to criminal laws don't apply and best of all mr. president there are no federal courts in Cuba those pesky black robe judges can't get to you of course we all know the Supreme Court ruled one against that wherever the government goes the Constitution goes wherever the Constitution goes federal judges go was once there arguing with O'Reilly on-air about this and he said I said to him look as the days when we all thought it would be Hillary against Rudy I said if Hillary ever becomes president she will ship you to Guantanamo Bay under this very theory that you're defending and you will have no access to any lawyer and no federal judge will be able to hear your plea and he looked at me and he said will you come and visit me and I said no because they'll probably keep me there as well you know we can let we can laugh about this st. Thomas wore on his way to the scaffold told the joke to the executioner which the church teaches as a sign of sanctity that a person in the face of certain death can be humorous about the certainty and likelihood of eternal bliss so it is good always to be happy it is good always to be cheerful I'll tell you one of the reasons why it's good to be cheerful is because the people who hate our freedom are never cheerful they are never cheerful about anything that they do most of them don't recognize and after life none of them recognize that these rights and values that we have come from the God who created sustains and loves us all but unfortunately dear Lord allows these monsters to take over the government I'll just talk a few minutes about the bailout I mean I could talk about the Patriot Act and all the other indignities visited upon so many innocent human beings for a long time I will tell you this one of the clauses of Patriot Act two there are two of them one of the clauses of Patriot Act to which a unique combination of Liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans managed to get in the document was that the Justice Department had to report to the Congress from time to time how many times these self-written search warrants were used and how they were used now they're not called self written search warrants I mean the government is brilliant at naming things I mean the right to privacy Act of 1986 you can bet them fit them farm but it's not going to enhance your privacy it doesn't they're called national security letters and the statute says they are to be used in national security cases but the last report and I read these things because Fox pays me to read them the last report from the FBI on these national security letters showed thousands of them which did not have two signatures it requires two great two FBI agents to write a self written search warrant not one there were thousands that didn't have two signatures and there were thousands in cases that had nothing to do with national security look if you're an FBI agent and you're investigating a crime and there's two ways you can do it you can go out and develop evidence you can follow the Constitution you can get forensic evidence you can interview witnesses you can compile all that an affidavit and present the affidavit to a federal judge and ask the federal judge for a search warrant or you could write your own search warrant what do you think human beings will do power corrupts and of course it corrupted some very fine FBI agents none of whom has been punished for any of this the the evidence seized with the one signature self written search warrants and in areas having nothing to do with national security was not suppressed it was still used against the people from whom or about whom it was seized the report just became a joke oh well the FBI abused its power let's bring Bob Muller in and get him to agree under oath it's the director of the FBI not to do so again so we wake up one morning in September and Hank Paulson says I need a checkbook with 700 billion dollars in the checking account and give it to me right now and I wrote the law it's three pages long and if you don't give it to me the skies will fall banks will go out of business and the your credit cards won't work ATM machines won't work we'll be fighting each other like dogs after Katrina my dog that I love with all my heart I adopted from Katrina because the same government that let those poor people get on buses wouldn't let them take their dogs somebody talk ripped her tags off her and she was found fighting other dogs for food six weeks after the hurricane passed through Hank Paulson predicted that we would become like that when the banking system collapsed what does he think of our intelligence and our morality and he predicted that the banking system would collapse if he didn't have the checkbook by the end of the week I remember watching the roll call well it's not a roll call vote I remember watching the vote in the house the House of Representatives as Congressman Paul can tell you only too well you vote with a card you put a card in a machine and the vote is recorded and then they put up on a screen democrats yeas nays Republicans yeas nays independence yeah Independence EA's nays and we weren't on the set of Fox News watching this thing and I knew that as soon as one side had 218 that's a majority in the house that it would either pass or fail and I confess that I lost myself when I saw 218 nays and I stood up and I said yes the Beast is dead they sent the Beast over to the Senate and the Senate returned it with a hundred and fifty three billion with a B dollars of pork in it some of the pork is truly ridiculous six million dollars to study the skin of sheep in order to determine how that skin can produce more wool if they had made the six billion dollars to study to study the skin of pigs it will be a lot easier this would be figuratively and literally pork twelve million dollar tax break for people that make bow and arrows out of wood instead of out of plexiglass I mean this is just absurd and some what I thought were free-market Republicans who voted against the beast when it was only three pages long and consisted of seven hundred billion dollar bank account borrowed from the Chinese to be paid back by our children and our grandchildren they voted against it in that pure form they voted in favor of it when it was worse when it had 153 billion added to it there is a person running for president who claims that he's made his whole career by voting against pork he voted for more pork in that one single vote 153 billion that he voted against in all 24 years in the Senate I'm not taking sides in the election I'm showing you how power corrupts these guys and gals in Washington think they can get away with anything they want so Paulson says look we're not going to we're not going to own these companies we're gonna make them loans and there'll be conditions on the loans and the conditions will be when we loan you this ten billion you have to put it in the credit markets immediately you have to loan it to other banks to your commercial customers and if you're a consumer institution to consumers he wins the vote goes back to the house the Beast prevails it comes back from the dead with the 183 billion Christmas tree ornaments on it and then Hank Paulson in a secret meeting on a Saturday morning with the presidents of the ten largest banks United States two of whom said we don't even need your money we're fine told them I'm not gonna make your loans I'm gonna buy stock and when he bought the stock he forgot he's just a shareholder he can't tell management what to do so some of those tens of billions of dollars that went to the banks the banks used to pay dividends to pay creditors to pay vendors to pay officers and employees the government forgot that by giving but by buying stock it just became another shareholder and then they went back and they looked at the statute which had grown from three pages to 499 pages and there is a clause in there that says if the government buys X percent of your stock here's what you must do with the proceeds of that sale and if the government buys this is chilling X percent of your stock you cannot pay your chief executive more than five hundred thousand otherwise the tax on the payment above five hundred otherwise I'll pay a tax on on what's above five hundred thousand think of it the government gave itself authority to buy shares of stock in any corporation at once and by virtue of that acquisition tell management what to do when they IG collapsed the government didn't go in and say would you like us to buy these assets the government came in and said shares of stock are worth nothing so under the fifth amendment there is no taking because Fifth Amendment if they take property you have to pay the fair market value of the property shares of stock are worth nothing you you you and you were out we now own the business now I didn't just describe what Hugo Chavez did the Citgo I described what the United States government did to AIG whenever you think of AIG where does the government get the power to come in and decide that the government owns it nowhere in the Constitution we have created a government in which it has become fashionable standard and even relies on the precedent of prior generations poor people in the government to disregard the Constitution to call it Queen to consider it in the horse and buggy age and to aggrandize to themselves awful power I buy your stock I tell you what to do you tell the truth under oath in a court of law you commit a crime here's a doozy for you the military commissions Act of 2006 one would think that if someone were tried before a military commission and were found not guilty one would be free president has the authority under the military commissions Act of 2006 to incarcerate even an acquitted person for the rest of his life Stalin Mao Hitler the great monsters in all the time who produced show trials pollutant to convict the innocent even they never claimed that kind of power Jefferson of course obviously never lived to see these days and I often wonder what he and his colleagues those are really believed in the natural law would think if they could have anticipated what the government has become of course they would never recognize it they'd recognize all of you they'd recognize Lew Rockwell they'd recognize people who put their necks on the line who put their money where their ideology and their hearts are to stand up for human freedom in the face of an onslaught so strong so overwhelming that we don't even have an adversarial system in the Congress anymore when the executive branch scares the legislative branch into taking away our liberties Jefferson argued that human freedom comes from the heart and when it lives there nobody can take it away but when it dies there look at the government that we get does the government recognize any restraint on its ability to enact any statute for any purpose yes its own perception of whatever it can get away with I am sorry to bring you such an unhappy tale in such a happy and wonderful place here in the middle of America and a beautiful town at a beautiful college campus a wonderful human being operates a magnificent entity devoted to human freedom can you think of anything greater than that thank you and God sixteen years aft after its enactment sir that's a very good question and I don't know the answer to that III believe that I know who wrote the Patriot Act I believe it was written by Michael Chertoff who's the Secretary of Homeland Security even though that's not the public story they put out now I've known Michael since we were young lawyers practicing in Newark New Jersey they will tell you that it was written by Viet Dinh who's a professor at Georgetown Law School and was one of the scholars the so-called scholars in the Justice Department at the time the reason your question is so intriguing is because it is so long and so arcane and so complex it is hard to believe that it could have been compiled by any amount of bright lawyers in such a short period of time so I don't know when I shouldn't speculate because it might scare you even more yes oh listen I could talk all day about Pfizer there's a there's a lawsuit in the Northern District of California in San Francisco in which people who were spied upon by the National Security Agency without a warrant that violated the FISA laws they didn't even go to the FISA Court to get a FISA warrant they spied on Americans communicating among themselves and with foreigners and these Americans have sued all the telephone companies that went along with the government and that's all of them except quest the chairman of quest told the government to go take a hike when it showed up and said we want to use your equipment to spy and we don't have a warrant unfortunately he was indicted for insider trading about two months later was convicted and the Tenth Circuit overturned the conviction after two years of aggressive litigation by the Justice Department another story by itself so the litigation is going on in California the defendants are the telephone companies the plaintiffs are the people that we know for that we know had their phone calls listened to the telephone companies we know spied on Americans when there was no authority to do it in the midst of the lawsuit presided over by a wonderful freedom-loving judge by the name of Vaughn Walker a reagan appointee in San Francisco of all places who basically says the Constitution means what it says and throughout all the motions to dismiss the Congress enacts the new FISA statute and the new FISA statute says Judge Walker shall dismiss the lawsuit against the telephone companies because we're giving them immunity now all is not lost Judge Walker is a giant if you are a federal judge and on the middle of a trial there shows up on your desk a document signed by the president saying dismiss what you're doing you can take that document and throw it in the garbage because the branches of government are equal prediction judge Walker will find the FISA statute constitutional and keep the telephone companies and the government's feet to the fire the briefs are due on December 2nd oral argument will be right before Christmas we may have a nice Christmas Eve gift for those of us who love freedom young man yeah this is another kids a good question the question is there are some cases in which federal judges have told it's always defense counsel's never the government that they can't make certain arguments before a jury yes it's another canard called the state secrets doctrine the government will persuade judges that it can't give all of the information it has about the defendant to the defendants lawyers or if the defendants lawyers got it through some other means they can't say it in a public courtroom because it would violate the state secrets doctrine this is a trick which was used by the Soviets many many times when they wanted to prosecute people haha we have this with this evidence against you but you can't you can't see it unfortunately some judges have gone along with it and fortunately some judges have not the issue has not yet reached the Supreme Court but no Justice Department has used the state secrets doctrine as aggressively as this present one yes sir Wow I will I will tell you that I I think one of the brightest people that I know is Tom DiLorenzo who's an expert on on what Abraham Lincoln has done and I used to say that George Bush was the worst president since FDR and now say was the worst president since Abraham Lincoln then which there has never been a human being with less respect for the Constitution or human liberty in all of our in all of our history the Civil War destroyed the nature of state sovereignty and the relay ship of the states to the federal government and established a bizarre relationship between the federal government and individual persons something that Jefferson and even some of Jefferson's opponents could never have imagined would happen I also never thought that our liberties would be saved by my black-robed brethren and sisters but they're the only ones that seem to be doing it today who can't be cowed by threats whether they come from John Ashcroft or Hank Paulson enjoy your weekend if you get the shake ron paul's hand he's a great human being in american history do so thank you

Channel: misesmedia

Views: 40,052

Rating: 4.9213586 out of 5

Keywords: Napolitano, Mises, Institute, Ludwig, Rothbard, Gold, Standard, Rockwell, Thornton, Liberty, Property, Peace, Auburn, Freedom

Id: oJhkJVH13bE

Length: 53min 48sec (3228 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 08 2008