From the floor of FreedomFest 2018 (Saturday morning)

This morning, I attended a panel chaired by Matt Kibbe, author of (among other things) the delightfully-titled 2014 book Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.  The panel was named “Republicans Gone Wild: Reaching the Liberty-Curious Generation,” and it included Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — of whom most Utahns, I think, would have been very, very proud today.  All three were quite willing to be critical of their fellow Republicans.  I loved it.

Next, I listened to Magatte Wade, who spoke briefly on the subject of “How Free Markets Will Allow African Entrepreneurs to Create Prosperity.”  She apparently speaks a great deal on American college campuses; I would absolutely love to have her address students at BYU who are interested in international development.

Next came a panel titled “Is Liberty on Track?  How Campaigns, Elections, and Candidates are Working toward a Big Libertarian Win.”  The two principal candidates were former Republican governors Gary Johnson (New Mexico) and Bill Weld (Massachusetts), who were, respectively, the 2016 presidential and vice presidential nominees of the Libertarian Party.  They were not quite as optimistic as the title of the panel suggested.

Such sessions get me in the mood for some quotations from the great Frédéric Bastiat, author of the small 1850 classic, The Law.  Here are three:

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” 

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

Posted from Las Vegas, Nevada