Any news from Freedom Fest 2012?

[Bastiat's The Law]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q2STsisBy8

Haven't heard a peep about it, except Tom Woods posted something about being interviewed by C-SPAN BookTV on his facebook page. The Judge was also supposed to speak and notable others.

[Bastiat's The Law]

Nothing?

[Pisces]

The only thing I've heard is that the Judge basically endorsed Gary Johnson in his speech and that Rand Paul and Tom Woods were interviewed separately for C-Span's BookTV channel.

[Bastiat's The Law]

The only thing I've heard is that the Judge basically endorsed Gary Johnson in his speech and that Rand Paul and Tom Woods were interviewed separately for C-Span's BookTV channel.
Hmm, I wonder when BookTV will run those interviews? BookTV is a great show btw!

[Lucille]

I like McElroy (http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php)'s speech:

Two Attitudes Toward the State (http://lfb.org/today/two-attitudes-toward-the-state/)


I am an optimist about freedom…and not just the abstract concept but living freedom in my own time. It is not that I’m mentally deficient…and it is not because I haven’t been paying attention.

Every morning I wake up and browse about 20 newspaper or media sites in order to stock the two daily newsfeeds I maintain. So I have no illusion about the condition of the world or about the immediate future. It is dismal.

I expect the worst of the economic, the political turmoil we are all going to have to deal with will hit in 2013 or, perhaps, the last months of this year. I expect the hard times to last for at least several years.

And, yet, I’m an optimist. As bizarre as it may sound, my current attitude arose as a result of my turning 9/11 over and over in my mind. I gave a lot of thought to what my relationship to the state was and what it should be. Nothing has politically shocked as much as the 9/11 experience.

I call it an experience because, for me, 9/11 was far more than the terrorist acts that occurred on one day. For me, it was and is primarily America’s reaction in 9/11′s wake. The entire nation seemed to give up on freedom. America seemed almost eager to surrender every freedom on which it was built. And the police state came into being so fast.

To me, the symbol of 9/11 and the legacy it left America – or, rather, the legacy America chose to embrace – can be seen at the airports where the Bill of Rights has been obliterated. Customers line up like criminals to permit uniformed agents of the state sexually assault them and their children, they allow their possessions to be pawed through. More than allow it…many people demand it in the name of security and then turn angrily on anyone who even raises the question of civil liberties.

I have been involved in libertarianism or Objectivism since I was 15 years old but after 9/11, after seeing the ease with which a police state established itself, I wondered if I had wasted my life.

The title of my presentation this morning is “Two Attitudes Toward the State” and I want to explain two attitudes between which I’ve swung for many years and are still present within me today...