06/28/13 – Jacob Hornberger – The Scott Horton Show

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All right.
First up on the show today is our good friend Jacob Hornberger.
He's the founder and the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Welcome back, Jacob.
How are you doing?
Oh, fine.
It's always an honor and a pleasure to be with you, Scott.
Well, thank you very kindly for saying so.
It's very nice to have you here.
And it looks like you got another speaking tour in the works here and a fundraiser in order to make it happen.
So give us the lowdown, a key to the present.
Yeah.
As you know, we've been at the forefront of this battle for civil liberties for a long time and especially since 9-11.
And we had two big conferences in 2007 and 2008 where we were talking about the kind of things that are going on now.
Glenn Greenwald was one of our speakers.
He's, as you know, is the guy that has been exposing all this NSA spying surveillance schemes on the American people through this NSA former employee named Ed Snowden.
And we had people like Ron Paul, Andrew Napolitano, Ellsberg, I mean, just a whole cast.
They're all on our website of, hey, this is where America's headed.
We've got to stop this thing.
And then last year, we took our message on the road with panels to many, many college campuses.
We had a panel with Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Fine, myself, Jack Hunter, talking to students about the vital importance of civil liberties in a free society.
And Greenwald was there talking about all the surveillance schemes under which we're now operating.
And then we went to the Students for Liberty Annual Conference.
We gave them the same message.
And so here we are now with the whole thing blown up.
We now see that this is exactly what the U.S. government has been doing, spying on the American people, monitoring them, supposedly keeping them safe from the very threats that their foreign policies produce.
And so what we're doing, we're asking people for help, and we need the help.
We want to continue this message to the students that people say, oh, the students are the future.
That's where the future is.
Well, that may be true, but we say, look, they're the key to the present too.
And we're not one of these institutions that says, oh, let's work for freedom 20 years from now and 40 years from now.
We want to achieve freedom now in our lifetime.
So that's, we're asking people for help, that if you want us to continue going on the road and talking to these students and preaching about the importance of civil liberties to a free society, then please give us a hand, and that's our fundraising drive that we're doing right now.
All right.
Now, hold on a second, because I want to talk a little bit about what I see as the importance of what you're doing here with this project and of speaking to the youth.
In fact, it only was really occurring to me in this context anyway, just now as I'm listening to you, you know, as we're half a year now into the second term, the lame duck term of Barack Obama, anyone who ever believed in him, even up to and including last fall, is now, you know, completely heartbroken, right?
Other than people who are directly on his team, everyone is disappointed in this guy or worse.
And yet, and think of it like you're a college student now, and you're really, you know, forming and solidifying your most important political opinions, and you're so disappointed in liberalism and what it's got you.
But why did you believe in the first place, right?
It was because it was supposed to be the antidote to the poison of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the dark times, the empire that they brought and the era of fear and the worst kind of revolution within the forum from the top down that they perpetrated on this society.
And so you have all these students who are completely fed up with the Obamas and the Hillary Clintons of the world, but they don't want to go back to the Republicans.
They remember the Bush and Cheney years, too.
They were, you know, maybe younger teenagers then or whatever, but they remember the dark times of the Bush-Cheney.
So they don't want conservatism either.
And this is where...
Wait, who's giving a speech tonight?
Oh, it's Jacob Hornberger and the crew here to preach the plumb line libertarian message.
Who's good on war?
Who's good on civil liberties, no matter who's in power?
FFF.
Well, it's really nice to hear you say that.
I mean, I, I mean, I agree with you that, you know, this is the right opportunity.
There's that old saying, you know, about crises create danger and opportunity.
We have an opportunity.
And one thing we've noticed in these students is that there's this really burning interest in civil liberties.
I mean, we've been drawing large crowds at these college civil liberties tours, and we attract liberals, conservatives, libertarians, because we're all on the same page when we do these panels.
We're all on the same page on what's going on and what the future holds for America.
Well, wait, I got to interrupt you again to talk about you, because you can't say this part about yourself, but I can, because I've seen your speeches about civil liberties that you give to these kids.
And I think a lot of the premise is, not to put words in your mouth, but it's sort of kind of you accept that maybe some of these kids really would be Republicans, maybe would be, you know, swinging to the right because of Obama, except for maybe how bad Bush and Cheney were.
And so you're really pushing on them, these maybe young Republican lenitypes, the importance of civil liberties.
You can't have economic liberty.
You can't have any other kind of liberty unless you've got the right to a fair trial, pal.
That's right.
And conservatives have this blind spot there.
And I think these young Republicans are now starting to realize that.
In fact, I recently spoke to a young Republicans group here in Fairfax, and I'm hitting them on principles, which they don't generally get in the Republican Party, is that we're talking about what are the principles of liberty here?
What is the role of government in a free society?
And I could tell from the looks on their faces that they just had never thought about it in that sense.
And so what we're trying to do is say, look, the solution isn't trying to get better people in public office to manage this system.
What is the role of government in a free society?
And so it's a systemic problem.
We're trying to change the system, replace it with a system that's based on the principles of a free society, where the government doesn't have the power to go abroad and wage wars of aggression and do all these things that the founding fathers did not want the federal government to be doing.
And that's, of course, on the civil liberties side, foreign policy side, doesn't have the power to spy on and monitor us like they do in communist countries and Cuba and North Korea and China and so forth.
And then, of course, there's the economic side, which whenever we go to these things, we always pass out our monthly journal samples of a future of freedom and my essay, Economic Liberty and the Constitution.
So we're exposing kids to the principles of economic liberty too.
But as you know, Scott, all too many libertarians, everybody understands in the libertarian movement the importance of economic liberty.
But even some libertarians are a little weak on why civil liberties are absolutely essential to a free society.
That's what we're doing here at FFF.
All right.
And so now, was it earlier this year, late last year that you did this tour with Greenwald and Bruce Fine?
Yeah, we did two tours.
We did one on the on the East Coast, which took us to about four or five colleges on the East Coast.
And then we later did one both in the same year, 2012.
We went out to the West Coast and did five schools out there.
And then all the videos are on our Web site so people can access them.
That was part of the idea of the tour, is that not only would we reach people there in the audiences, but we would videotape these things so that other people could do them.
And then since then, I personally have gone to four or five colleges on their invitation, University of North Carolina, University of Albany, Slippery Rock State University, University, I think, of Wisconsin, not sure, that I did by Skype.
These kids, they really have this burning interest in this subject.
And now that this whole surveillance scheme has come out, now's the time for us to go to battle here.
I mean, the battle lines are being drawn.
There are some liberals, principal liberals like Greenwald.
There are some principal conservatives like Bruce Fine and so forth.
But clearly, this is a libertarian battle.
And we need support.
And that's what we're asking people with this fundraising letter is, give us a hand.
You give us the resources, we'll get out there and fight.
Right.
Yeah, it's a key to the present.
And I'm sure people can find this video message, yeah, they can at fff.org.
It's on YouTube at the Future Freedom Foundation's YouTube channel as well.
But you just heard the audio version.
Go ahead and give us this pitch.
How much money do you need to raise to do this thing right?
Well, it depends.
You know, the ones with the outside speakers are very, very costly.
I mean, they were costing us, oh, neighborhood $30,000 to $50,000 in some of these instances where we have outside speakers, speaker fees and so forth.
But if we do it where we're, and this is what we're thinking in terms of doing is to keep things efficient because these local chapters of these student groups, they just don't have a lot of money.
So what we're trying to do is raise the funds to subsidize the travel.
We don't need, we're not even worrying about speaker fees here.
You know, generally we charge speaker fees as sort of a way to filter out where we're going to go speak.
With these college groups, we are waiving speaker fees and we're just going.
We're going where they want to hear it, so we'll go.
And so we're, we're hoping somewhere in the round, $30,000, $40,000 that'll fund a speaker fee.
I mean, not fees, speaker travel, hotels and so forth for Sheldon Richman, myself and any other outside speakers that are willing to do it without, without the speaker fees involved.
I know a guy who's really good at complaining about foreign policy and works real cheap.
I don't know if you can hear my hand raised from Virginia.
Oh, we will certainly keep it in mind.
That's awesome.
That is absolutely awesome.
And I know that there, that guy that's that you can see raising his hand is very, very good at this.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
And man, I'll work for a pack of cigarettes and I quit smoking, so.
That's awesome.
Wow.
I'm glad we talked today.
Yeah.
There you go.
I'll be, I'll do the intro.
I'll be, I'll be your warmup guy, like the comedian at a death metal show.
That's fantastic.
We will certainly keep that in mind.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I'm not trying to put you on the spot.
Anyway.
So how can people help out?
Let's get serious.
Everybody listening to this show.
They should know if they don't know the Future Freedom Foundation.
This is the best of the libertarian movement.
This is Hornberger, Anthony Gregory, Sheldon Richman, James Bovard, and the rest of them too.
Tim Kelly and Wendy McElroy and Richard Ebeling and Bart Frazier and all these guys that write for FFF.org.
It's the best.
You're not going to get better than this.
This is the vanguard of the libertarian movement.
They're doing a speaking tour and they need your funds to do it right.
So help out.
How do they help out, Jacob?
Well, they can come to our website and make a donation there with a credit card.
Just, you know, standard kind of donation, PayPal as well.
Or they could just send us a check and, you know, we'll, they'll get a letter back acknowledging and thanking them for their donation.
And we will put their money to good use.
And that is in the advancement of liberty now, I mean, in not 20 years from now, that we're going out and talking to these young people now and saying, you have a right to a free society.
You don't have to wait till you're 40 to achieve freedom.
You can do it now.
Help us now.
And if we keep working on this, this route, then we reach a critical mass that can shift society.
I mean, that's, that's why there's, there's advocates for liberty like us at FFF and all the others.
And I think John Greenwald's doing what he's doing because we all have the confidence that ideas can shift a society.
And by the way, that's what our FFF daily is about.
You know, we compile every single day, six days a week, the best libertarian type articles on the internet.
And we, we hope people will look at those articles and share them with their friends because we're doing the hard work of getting those, the best articles.
Then you share it with your friends.
This is what transforms a society.
This is where the power of ideas come in.
Absolutely.
And sign up for that email list.
I get the freedom daily every morning.
I don't even have to do the work.
It just shows up for me there every morning in my email account.
So, um, all right.
So that's what you do.
Go to FFF.org and then at the top of the page, there's a big red, all capitals donate.
Just click right there.
Yeah.
We're, we're very appreciative.
Scott.
Thanks.
Thanks you so much for, for letting your listeners know about this and, and just thank you for all the great work you do.
I think that, I think we are going to achieve a free society.
I think a lot of people are waking up.
I think this current controversy is causing people to wake up and it's exciting because you see people, mainstream people joining our side like John Cusack and when a guy Woldniak or Woldniak or some of the co-founder of Apple, he's just come out in favor of, uh, of strong civil liberties and against all this surveillance scheme.
And this is an exciting movement and this is an exciting time for us to be involved in this thing.
We are participating in one of the greatest movements in the history of man.
And that's exciting.
Yeah, it is.
We just need support.
You know what?
See, here's the thing, man.
You always talk like this so people get used to it and whatever, and you know, it just sounds like, okay, well that's the way Jacob Hornberger talks or something, but no, wait a minute.
I mean, that really is true.
I don't think you could overstate that, that you know what, if you just look at, if you remove yourself from this era for just a second and you look at, well, you have your, your eras of hardcore, you know, religious fundamentalism, and then you have your eras of kind of Renaissance and enlightenment, and then you kind of swing back and forth and whatever.
This is the era of the enlightenment again.
And you know, we got to mention Ron Paul cause he did so much to give our movement that swift kick in the rear end that we needed, uh, in 2007 through right now in, in making us all making the whole movement that much more famous and accessible to the people of the world.
But you know, I don't think that you could even compare the founding era of the United States of America to the current era in terms of the ideas of liberty being spread around the world.
I mean, what's happening right now is comparable to the, the printing and the distribution of the declaration of independence.
You know, there's a libertarian institutions of all different descriptions popping up all over the world and, and we're right.
So it's not just like, well, there's some ideology spreading all over the world.
It's individualism and, you know, real Sheldon Richman in libertarianism, the good kind, the good stuff.
And um, so anyway, it is exciting.
I'm too pessimistic and I'm just, I'm trying to absorb a little of that optimism.
You have good reason to sound the way you sound about this, I think.
Well, I, I totally agree with you about the founding fathers era.
You know, they were just regular people and, and we can, we can accomplish what they accomplished.
I mean, as you know, you know, the whole welfare warfare state has rejected everything that the declaration of independence stood for the, the principles of the constitution and so forth.
But we have an opportunity to do exactly what those guys, Jefferson and Adams and, and Madison, we can do what they did.
And we have the people.
I mean, you, you mentioned Ron Paul, he's, he's a hero of our time and, and he's just a regular person, just like Jefferson was a regular person.
And what we can do now, not 20 years from now, what we can do now is transform the society by building on what they were doing and expanding it so that we get not only civil liberties, not only a limited government republic and dismantle all this empire stuff, but we also achieve economic liberty, which is, as you know, the, the real driving force behind a prosperous growing dynamic society, especially for the poor people.
So we got it all.
And so this is an opportunity for us.
It's a challenge.
Sure.
It's a challenge, but I mean, you know, if every, if freedom were easy, everyone in history would have achieved it and it's not easy, but I agree with you.
There are so many great proponents of liberty right now, eloquent, knowledgeable, understanding.
Now's the time to strike.
And I think that's happening right now.
Yep.
Absolutely.
All right.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Appreciate it, Jacob.
Thank you, Scott.
Bye-bye.
All right, everybody.
That's the great Jacob Horner.
He's the founder and the president of the Future Freedom Foundation.
And they're doing a fundraiser right now for the speaking tour.
So they can go talk to the students.
So count those gray hairs on your head, audience, and then send that many dollars to Jacob Horner at FFF.org.
It's the big red donate button at the top of the page, FFF.org.
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Okay.
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There for exposing the TSA as a bunch of liberty destroying goons who've never protected anyone from anything.
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Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for the Future of Freedom.
The Journal of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
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