Our humble Liberty Speaks II event is over. In our own little corner of the world we went over the parapet and joined Mises in the “intellectual battle…the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.” And as Hazlitt further tells us “The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization.”
The speakers and talks covered just about everything one needs to properly understand the vital role that liberty plays. From economics, to history, marketing freedom, CovidMania, medicine, morality, racial problems, and more.
We would like to thank Bob and Lisa Moser for donating the event venue and treating and providing for all of our speakers as if they were family. We would like to thank all of the speakers and attendees and 51 ticket purchasers. Although the turnout was considerably lower than we hoped we are immensely happy and proud of everyone’s efforts and what was accomplished.
Please see videos bellow and Hazlitt’s parting message at end.
| Saturday Oct. 8 |
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| 10:00 – 10:10 AM – Introductory Remarks – Event Themes: “Wherever there is complexity there is mythology” ‘Austrian Economics or Bust!’ – Irene Mavrakakis, M.D. and Jorge Besada. |
| 10:10 – 11:00 – Jorge Besada – “How The World Works: An Easy Yet In-depth Introduction to Carl Menger and his ‘Austrian School of Economics”
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| 11:00 – 11:10 – Bryan McCarthy, D.O.– “The Crisis In Western Healthcare”
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| 11:10 – 11:30 – Dr. Paul Isaacs -“Suffering Rejection after Serving through the Pandemic; Standing for Faith and First Amendment Religious Rights” |
| 11:30 – 12:15 – (live remote via zoom) Prof. Michael Rectenwald – The Great Reset Myth We are sorry that a last minute emergency has prevented Prof. Rectenwald from traveling to Goldsboro for in-person appearance as originally planned, but he will be able to present remotely. |
| 1:30 – 2:15 – Caryn Ann Harlos – “And having done all… to stand” : You never know when a time of severe testing will come. It may never, but ordinary people exhibiting courage can and do make a difference. And if enough of us merely stand, we will change the world.
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| 2:20- 2:25 – Cody McNutt – Candidate, U.S House of Representatives, Delaware At-Large District |
| 2:25 – 2:50 – Prof. Walter Block – pre-recorded discussion on various errors and misunderstandings leading to Jew/Gentile conflicts. Also free-market history |
| 2:50 – 3-35 – Jorge Besada – “Hitler’s intellectual errors (Socialism, racialism, antisemitism) and the vital need for Jews to properly understand them”. The Judeo-Christian world (USA/Europe) needs to properly understand the economic fallacies underpinning antisemitism. Labeling people antisemites and constant warmongering in the Middle East(Germany in past) just because some Muslims(Nazis in past) and their leaders say antisemitic things will lead to the Final World War. Anti-Semites as well as Jews need to properly understand the root causes of bad Jew/Gentile relations. Communism was not overcome by just calling Communists “bad people”, similarly, just like Mises/Hayek and other freemarketeers helped us understand the intellectual errors leading to Communism and Communists, we must likewise understand the intellectual errors leading to antisemitism instead of just vilification, censorship and wars. |
| 4:00 – 4:15 – David Lashar, Candidate for Governor Of Maryland– “Keepers of the Flame and Bearers of the Torch”
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| 4:15 – 5:15 – Antony Sammeroff – “The Emperor Wears No Scrubs” – Overview of various medical myths. Already taken down from youtube for allegedly spreading medical misinformation by the current Priesthood of Scientism! |
Sunday Oct. 9th
| 10:10 – 10:35 – Irene Mavrakakis, M.D. – “The Sovietification of American Medicine: Fauci as America’s Trofim Lysenko” |
| 10:35 – 10:45- Brittany Kosin, R.N, Emergency Room Nurse and Candidate for Pennsylvania State Representative. “The Past, The Present, and The Future of Medical Freedom and Mental Health Reform” |
| 10:45 – 10:50 – Chris Dalton, Candidate for Delaware State Senate District 21- “Serving up Liberty” |
| 10:50 – 11:50 – Celia Farber – “An Uncensored History of HIV” |
| 1:30 – 2:30 – Spike Cohen – “Cultivating a Culture of Liberty” – The need to grow the liberty movement by focusing at the local level, finding people who are being harmed by government, helping them organize to get justice, and using it as an opportunity to demonstrate to the community that statism caused this problem and liberty fixes it.
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| 2:30 – 3:00 – Mike Ter Maat, Libertarian Presidential Candidate – “A Gold New Deal: Changing the Relationship Between Us and Our Government” |
| 3:00 – 3:10 – Dan Fishman– “Liberty Listening vs Liberty Messaging” |
| 3:10 – 3:25 – Duane Lester – “What If Government Didn’t Do That?” |
| 3:25 – 3:35 – Dayl Thomas -Secretary of Rank The Vote Delaware. “Ranked Choice Voting”
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| 3:35 – 4:20 – Reed Coverdale – “Libertarian Zionism” : Reed gives a brief overview of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and also discusses the great progress that has already been made in spreading freedom with the Free State Project in New Hampshire.
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| The Israeli/Palestinian conflict radiates simplistic and naïve ‘good vs. evil’ type thinking throughout the world. All acts of coercion and violence are ultimately rooted in economic ignorance. With the various discussions on economics and history above we can then proceed to pitching a Free-market solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The same mindset/solutions can be applied to the Russia-Ukraine war. Global conflicts are an opportunity for fellow free-marketeers to loudly become beacons of economic education and resulting peace and prosperity. |
| 4:20 – 4:50 – Jorge Besada – “Economic Ignorance as the Source of Racial Problems and the Nonsense of Critical Race Theory” |
| Closing Remarks – Mises Quotes |
Henry Hazlitt’s inspirational words
The following is the last third of a speech given by author of ‘Economics In One Lesson’, Henry Hazlitt on his 70th birthday, November 29th, 1964. He gave this speech in front of many of his friends including the great Ludwig von Mises. The entire speech can be found in Chapter 4, “Reflections at 70”, of a great book titled “The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt”. Whenever I get a little discouraged, this is what I read. As one reads it, it is important to keep in mind that his words were spoken in the middle of the Cold War, when Communism was spreading and liberty declining.
We Haven’t Been Good Enough
“…the hard thing must be said that, collectively, we just haven’t been good enough. We haven’t convinced the majority. Is this because the majority just won’t listen to reason? I am enough of an optimist, and I have enough faith in human nature, to believe that people will listen to reason if they are convinced that it is reason. Somewhere, there must be some missing argument, something that we haven’t seen clearly enough, or said clearly enough, or, perhaps, just not said often enough.
A minority is in a very awkward position. The individuals in it can’t afford to be just as good as the individuals in the majority. If they hope to convert the majority they have to be much better; and the smaller the minority, the better they have to be. They have to think better. They have to know more. They have to write better. They have to have better controversial manners. Above all, they have to have far more courage. And they have to be infinitely patient.
…I figure I must have written in total some 10,000 editorials, articles, and columns; some 10,000,000 words! And in print! The verbal equivalent of about 150 average-length books! And yet, what have I accomplished? I will confess in the confidence of these four walls that I have sometimes repeated myself. In fact, there may be some people unkind enough to say I haven’t been saying anything new for fifty years! And in a sense they would be right. I have been preaching essentially the same thing. I’ve been preaching liberty as against coercion; I’ve been preaching capitalism as against socialism; and I’ve been preaching this doctrine in every form and with any excuse. And yet the world is enormously more socialized than when I began.
……Yet, in spite of this, I am hopeful. After all, I’m still in good health, I’m still free to write, I’m still free to write unpopular opinions, and I’m keeping at it. And so are many of you. So I bring you this message: Be of good heart: be of good spirit. If the battle is not yet won, it is not yet lost either.
Our Continuing Duty
I suppose most of you in this room have read that powerful book, George Orwell’s 1984. On the surface it is a profoundly depressing novel, but I was surprised to find myself strangely encouraged by it. I finally decided that this encouragement arose from one of the final scenes in it. The hero, Winston Smith, is presented as a rather ordinary man, an intelligent but not a brilliant man, and certainly not a courageous one. Winston Smith has been keeping a secret diary, in which he wrote: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two and two makes four.” Now this diary has been discovered by the Party. O’Brien, his inquisitor, is asking him questions. Winston Smith is strapped to a board or a wheel, in such a way that O’Brien, by merely moving a lever, can inflict any amount of excruciating pain upon him (and explains to him just how much pain he can inflict upon him and just how easy it would be to break Smith’s backbone). O’Brien first inflicts a certain amount of not quite intolerable pain on Winston Smith. Then he holds up the four fingers of his left hand, and says, “How many fingers am I holding up? Winston knows that the required answer is five. That’s the Party answer. But Winston can’t say anything else but four. So O’Brien moves the lever again, and inflicts still more agonizing pain upon him, and says, “Think again. How many fingers am I holding up?” Winston Smith says, “Four. Four. Four fingers.” Well, he finally capitulates, as you know, but not until he has put up a magnificent battle.
None of us is yet on the torture rack; we are not yet in jail; we’re getting various harassments and annoyances, but what we mainly risk is merely our popularity, the danger that we will be called nasty names. So, before we are in the position of Winston Smith, we can surely have enough courage to keep saying that two plus two equals four.
This is the duty that is laid upon us. We have a duty to speak even more clearly and courageously, to work harder, and to keep fighting this battle while the strength is still in us. But I can’t do better than to read the words of the great economist, the great thinker, the great writer, who honors me more than I can say by his presence here tonight, Ludwig von Mises. This is what he wrote in the final paragraph of his great book on socialism 40 years ago:
“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 safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”
Those words - uncannily prophetic words - were written in the early 1920’s. Well, I haven’t any new message, any better message than that. Even those of us who have reached and passed our 70th birthdays cannot afford to rest on our oars and spend the rest of our lives dozing in the Florida sun. The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization.
