The Freedom Summit

Location of the FREEDOM SUMMIT in Arizona December 4th-6th 2009
Sheraton Crescent Resort
2620 West Dunlap AvenuePhoenix, Arizona 85021
(602) 943-8200Fax: (602) 371-2857

FREEDOM SUMMIT 2009 Speakers:

Ron Paul
Rights belong to individuals, not groups.
Property should be owned by people, not government.
All voluntary associations should be permissible — economic and social.
The government’s monetary role is to maintain the integrity of the monetary unit, not participate in fraud.
Government exists to protect liberty, not to redistribute wealth or to grant special privileges.
The lives and actions of people are their own responsibility, not the government’s.

Thomas Woods
Thomas Woods (B.A., Harvard; M.A., M.Phil., Pd.D., Columbia Universety) is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Who Killed the Constitution?, and, most recently, Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse (featuring a foreword by Congressman Ron Paul). His book The Church and the Market won the $50,000 first prize in the 2006 Templeton Enterprise Awards. Woods’ books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Polish, French, German, Czech, Portuguese, Croatan, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Woods edited and wrote the introduction to several additional books, including We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now (with Murray Polner) and Murray N. Rothbard’s posthumously released The Betrayal of the American Right. A contributor to six encyclopedias, Woods is co-editor of Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877, an eleven-volume encyclopedia.
Woods has appeared on hundreds of radio programs, as well as such television programs as Glenn Beck, FOX & Friends, Scarborough Country, and C-SPAN’s Book TV. He lives in Auburn , Alabama , with his wife and three daughters.

John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto is an American retired school teacher of 29 years and 8 months and author of several books on education. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions.
John Gatto did undergraduate work at Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia, then served in the U.S. Army medical corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Following army service he did graduate work at the City University of New York, Hunter College, Yeshiva University, the University of California, and Cornell.
John Taylor Gatto is the author of great books including, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, The Exhausted School, A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, The Underground History of American Education, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling.

Judge John Buttrick
John Buttrick is currently the highest-ranking Libertarian in Arizona state government. A graduate of Harvard Law, he has been a member of the bar of Arizona, California, the federal Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court. In May of 2001, he was elevated to a judgeship on the Maricopa County Superior Court by Governor Jane Hull.
Before being appointed to the court, John litigated for Brown & Bain in a variety of areas including antitrust, product liability, contract, environmental torts and intellectual property, for clients such as IBM, Intel, Dupont, and McDonald’s.
John has campaigned in previous years for the offices of state representative and governor as a Libertarian, and has served on the Libertarian National Committee and National Platform Committee.

Charles Goyette
Conservative commentator Charles Goyette -named “Best Phoenix Talk Show Host” by the New Times and “Man of the Year” by his county Republican Party – recently caused a industry stir when he was fired for political heterodoxy. Refusing to toe the Clear Channel party line and support the war in Iraq, he was first transferred from his high-profile druve-time slot to an evening pigenhole, and then terminated by talk behemoth 550 KFYI fter his contract no longer protexted him.
Charles was quickly snapped up by maverick, eclectic news/talk 1100 KFNX during morning drive time. In May of this year he abandoned the Republican Party for the Libertarian Party, explaining that the Republicans had abandoned any pretense of principle.
In Charles Goyette’s soon to be released book, “The Dollar Meltdown,” he reveals the governmental errors that led to the current economic crisis and the bumpy road ahead. “The Dollar Meltdown” is a book about the financial future and what you can do about it. And you can do something! You don’t have to be a financial professional, expose yourself to risky leverage, or worry about every tick of the markets… Once you understand the nature of the crisis you will discover that there are common-sense steps you can take now to protect yourself and your family and even to profit from the dollar meltdown!

Adam Kokesh
Adam Kokesh was a Corporal in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and is a veteran of the Iraq War. He is currently an anti-U.S. occupation of Iraq activist. Adam majored in Psychology and Government at CMC.
On September 2, 2008, Kokesh spoke at Rep. Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic in St. Paul, MN, where he stated: “While it is our responsibility now to resist tyranny civily, while we still can, there may come a time when we will say to the powers that be, be it with your blood or ours we have come to water the tree of liberty … who will stand with me?”
In April 2009, Adam Kokesh supporters created a draft website to encourage Kokesh to run for United States Congress representing New Mexico’s 3rd congressional district. Soon after, Kokesh launched an exploratory committee, and on July 4, 2009, he officially announced his candidacy at a supporter rally. On the same day, supporters formed a moneybomb that raised more than $25,000 in a 24 hour period. On July 21 2009, Kokesh announced that he would be running under the Republican party ticket.

Butler Shaffer
A prolific writer and speaker, Professor Shaffer has presented several academic papers, led discussions, and written numerous books and articles on social theory, buisness and labor law. In his book, Calculated Chaos (1985(, he explores the theory that “institutions are the principle means by which conflict is produced and managed in society.” In his book, In Restraint of Trade (1995), he demonstrates how the business system endeavored to restrict competition between 1918 and 1938, and was the major factor in the creation of the New Deal’s National Industrial Recovery Act and has completed another book on The Redistribution of Authority. He has also been interviewed on these subjects on network television, cable and radio.
Professor Shaffer attended law school at the University of Nebraska and the University of Chicago. Prior to his appointment to the faculty at Southwestern University School of Law in 1977, Professor Shaffer served on the faculty at the University of Nebraska College of Business Administration where he taught courses ion business and law. Shaffer currently teaches Administrative Law, Antitrust Law, Informal Systems of Order Seminar, Labor Law, Property, and SCALE.
Butler Shaffer’s new book Boundaries of Order is scholarly, passionate, and a completely fresh look at a marvelous intellectual apparatus by a mature intellectual who has been writing on law, economics, and history for four decades. It is the treatise on liberty and property for the digital age, one written in the Rothbardian/Hayekian tradition with a consistently anti-state message but with a unique perspective on how the great struggle between state and society is playing itself out in our times.

Bud Burrell
Mr. Bud Burrell has extensive experience working with major brokerage firms on the trading desk and arbitrage desk with almost 30 years experience — Industry authority, expert, Wall Street veteran. Love him or hate him, you will always know where he stands – his no-holds-barred style and frank honesty make his blogs a must read, from one of the originals. View his landmark correspondences in The Bud Files.

Boston T. Party
Boston T. Party (aka Kenneth W. Royce, and founder of http://www.freestatewyoming.org/) is a shooting instructor, speaker, and the author of 12 books on guns, history, law, politics, privacy, and government — selling well over 100,000 copies through http://www.javelinpress.com/. His “Boston’s Gun Bible” is a classic within the shooting community, and his fiction novel Molôn Labé! has inspired a recent relocation wave to Wyoming. Boston’s newest and final title is “One Nation, Under Surveillance — Privacy From the Watchful Eye”, which will be the topic of his retirement speech to mark the close of 20 years of book writing for the cause of Liberty.

Marc Victor
Mark is a criminal defense attorney. Marc J. Victor. P.C., which often sponsors debates and presentation on freedom issues. As a former United States Marine and certified specialist in criminal law, Marc endlessly and zealously defends citizens accused of crimes against the state
Marc’s political and professional credentials can be viewed at his corporate website.

Ernest Hancock
Ernest Hancock as been a freedom fighter for two decades. Education through the use of the courts, the political process and guerilla activism have made him well known to the general public as a sincere defender of libertarian philosophy.
Ernest Hancock as hosted his own show and been a talk show producer. Over 600 of Ernest’s daily talk show in shows in Phoenix, Arizona are archived at “Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock” and his new radio show from Freedom’s Phoenix Studios, “Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock” is archived on Freedom’s Phoenix here.
Ernest is also the publisher of FreedomsPhoenix.com, a constantly updated portal to political news and information.

Joel Skousen
Joel Skousen is an American conservative political commentator non-fiction Survivalist author, and retreat consultant that specializes in preparedness topics, particularly survival retreat and fallout shelter design and construction, as well as what he calls “strategic relocation.”Skousen is the founder and chief editor of World Affairs Brief, a weekly news analysis service. He has done architectural and retreat design consulting in both North America and Central America.
Skousen is the author of several books including Essential Principles for the Conservation of Liberty, Strategic Relocation—North American Guide to Safe Places, The Secure Home, Survival Home Manual: Architectural Design, Construction, and Remodeling Of Self-Sufficient Residences and Retreats, and How to Implement a High Security Shelter in the Home. He also published a booklet titled 10 Packs for Survival, which he has also posted to several web sites.
Skousen designs and consults on hardened retreat homes, often including fallout shelters with HEPA air filtration systems. In the book Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times by Richard G. Mitchell, Jr., (2001) Skousen was quoted: “‘You never want to make a house look like an obvious fortress. Those who want in can always move up a bigger gun. There is no way you can design a home to withstand RPG (Rocket-propelled grenade) rockets and tanks. I design these homes so you virtually cannot tell inside or out that they are any different from a conventional home.”

Stewart Rhodes is the founder and National President of Oath Keepers (http://www.oathkeepers.org/), a fast-growing non-partisan association of currently serving military, Peace Officers, Fire-Fighters and veterans – all who swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Stewart served as a U.S. Army paratrooper until disabled in a rough terrain parachuting accident during a night jump. He is a former firearms instructor and former member of Rep. Ron Paul’s DC staff. Stewart graduated from Yale Law School in 2004, where his paper “Solving the Puzzle of Enemy Combatant Status” won Yale’s Miller prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights. He assisted teaching U.S. military history at Yale, was a Yale Research Scholar, and is writing a book on the dangers of applying the laws of war to the American people.
Would-be tyrants prefer blind obedience. The Founders understood this, which is exactly why they made the oath to the Constitution, not to any man or office, and why they put the oath requirement right in the Constitution itself. The oath is like kryptonite to tyrants, as the Founders intended.. Tyranny cannot come to America if our military and police refuse unconstitutional orders. The mission of Oath Keepers is to remind them that their oath is to the Constitution, not to any politician or party, to teach them about the Constitution they swore to defend, and to steel their resolve to keep that oath. If enough of them are reached, it is game over for any attempt to destroy this Republic.

Entertainment by Jordan Page
Jordan Page is a young singer/songwriter/guitarist who uses his music to promote a message of peace while educating and mobilizing resistance to tyranny and the erosion of American civil rights. He embodies the protesting spirit of past years that is so rare in music today. He believes that armed service is not the only way to serve one’s country. Armed with the truth in song, he has raised up his voice in opposition to extreme military foreign policies, the corruption of the Federal Reserve, subversion of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, torture of prisoners, warrantless domestic surveillance, and oppression perpetrated by globalist elements in government. His songs are often stirring, and always challenging.
Jordan was a featured performer at the historic Revolution March in DC in July 08, which featured Ron Paul, Naomi Wolf, and Adam Kokesh as speakers and was attended by more than 10,000 people from across the nation. This event was proof of the gathering strength of the Freedom Movement, and the need to bring its message to the American public.

http://freedomsummit.wordpress.com/home

2009 Freedom Summit

The Freedom Summit is a regular conference dedicated to promoting and advancing human freedom. To that end, the Freedom Summit program schedules speakers who have demonstrated their effectiveness in presenting the intellectual case for freedom.

This years speakers will include Ron Paul, Judge John Buttrick, Charles Goyette, Sheriff Richard Mack, Butler Shaffer and many more. The event is hosted by Ernest Hancock of Freedoms Phoenix and Attorney Marc J. Victor of the law firm Attorney For Freedom ( www.attorneyforfreedom.com )

Attend the 2009 Freedom Summit- December 4 – 6, 2009 • Event Venue: Sheraton Crescent Hotel http://freedomsummit.wordpress.com

An Outbreak of Order in NYC

A few years ago, I was on an airliner about to make a landing in Denver. As any experienced flyer knows, a landing at this airport is always subject to the turbulence of air coming in over the mountains. But on this day, the turbulence was extraordinary; some of the worst I have experienced as a passenger. So troublesome was it that the pilot aborted his first landing try and went around for a second effort.
A woman sitting next to me was rather perturbed by the experience, and asked me "do you think we’ll ever get on the ground?" "I guarantee it," I responded. "I know enough about physics to be able to assure you that we will not be floating around up here forever. The forces of gravity will see to it that we will end up on the ground. What shape we will be in is another matter!" She laughed and, bumpiness and all, the pilot made a safe landing.

Read More: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer187.html

The Real World Order Is Chaotic

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. Chaos always defeats order because it is better organized. ~ Terry Pratchett

"Desperation" may well be the best word to describe our current responses to the ubiquitous malfunctioning of social systems premised on the necessity for vertically-structured, top-down, command-and-control organizational forms. Western civilization collapses all around us, and yet most of us continue to insist upon a renewed commitment to variations of the Platonic vision of a world made orderly by philosopher-kings.

Read More: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer185.html

What Is Anarchy?

I have mixed feelings about the use of labels to describe philosophical views, whether of myself or others. It is difficult to avoid doing so because our efforts to understand and communicate about the world necessarily involve the use of words and words are, as Alfred Korzybski warned us, abstractions that never equate with what they are meant to describe. His oft-quoted statement that "the map is not the territory" offers a caveat whose implications for confusion are further compounded when addressing such abstract topics as political philosophy.
One philosophical abstraction that seems to befuddle most people is "anarchy." To those challenged by complexity – such as radio talk show hosts and cable-TV "newscasters" who are convinced that all political opinions can be confined to the categories of "liberal" and "conservative" – the word anarchy evokes an unfocused fear of uncertain forces. Images of bomb-throwing thugs who smash and burn the property of others are routinely conjured up by politicians and the media to frighten people into an extension of police authority over their lives. "Disorder" and "lawless confusion" are common dictionary definitions of this word.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer60.html

The July 4th Lie

I have long been a critic of the state’s co-option of holidays to serve governmental purposes, thus negating the messages these holidays originally served. July 4th – designed to celebrate independence from the state – has been refashioned as a holiday for revelling in the state’s favorite activity, war. Television treats us to a seemingly endless supply of John Wayne films, urging us to embrace the contradictory idea that submitting ourselves to increased state power is the way to promote our liberty! It is such twisted thinking that leads those who refuse to examine the content of their minds to bleat about the soldiers who "fight for our freedom." What nonsense. Shall we next be told that Sunset Boulevard hookers are peddling virtue?

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer178.html

The Specter of Speculators

Chance is a word devoid of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.~ Voltaire

Whenever regulatory schemes of the state go awry, urgent campaigns are undertaken to find scapegoats upon whom to unload explanations for the ensuing failures. We saw this in the so-called "savings and loan scandals," when governmental restrictions on the industry combined with rapidly growing inflation that raised interest rates into double-digit numbers, produced disastrous consequences. Because the state knew that the regulatory system had to be protected at all costs, a number of S & L executives were singled out for the blame. This practice continues today, with managers of hedge funds facing criminal prosecutions for the investment decisions they made during periods of economic tumult. Someone other than government regulators must be held to account for such dislocations, and the prosecution of those who failed to respond adequately to the state-generated confusion will be used to convince Boobus that state regulation does work to instill order and protect his interests!

Read more: http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Find-Freedom.htm?At=035027

George Carlin: A Four-Letter Threat to Authority

Political systems, advertising, organized religions, corporate practices, school systems, ideologies, political and social fashions of all sorts, came in for well-deserved skewering. Prior to 9/11, he did a routine on airport security which, if performed more recently, would doubtless have earned him a visit from Michael Chertoff and his thugs. And what devotee of the new religion of environmentalism – and its global-warming sect – could withstand Carlin’s treatment of this latest racket for subjecting humanity to the control of those who fashioned themselves fit to run a planet? Before the day is over, I will get out and play part of my collection of George Carlin DVDs as a reminder of the state of mind he helped all of us to develop as an antidote for the insanities perpetrated by institutionalized thinking.
The last comment I heard George Carlin make was in a video of a book-signing, in which a young man asked him if he believed that 9/11 was an "inside job." Carlin did not offer an opinion on the matter, but only replied – in words I do not recall precisely – that it was a mistake to ever accept consensus-based definitions of reality. What better words to inscribe upon a tombstone or other memorial to this remarkable man!

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer176.html

The Shared Faith of an Unfree Society

Wilt Alston on what we can do about it.

As I read Butler Shaffer’s outstanding piece "The Messenger is the Message," which was ostensibly about Tim Russert, but was actually about so much more, several things occurred to me. First, Dr. Shaffer almost always seems to cover the concepts I’ve been considering better than I would have. Secondly, the timing of his essay was ironic given that I had recently been pondering something: would the State "work" if the population didn’t "believe" in it? The coercive apparatus of the State, fine-tuned in the U.S. since the time of Washington and Jefferson, has risen to a level of fine art as it generates a belief in its necessity while simultaneously remaining just out of view.
Given that we are both anarchists, it is no surprise that I have enjoyed Dr. Shaffer’s essays, most recently citing him in my "Anarchy, Anarchy – Wherefore Art Thou?" piece. That the solid logic that undergirds market anarchism – or whatever you want to call it – remains somehow in doubt is one of the most troubling and fascinating subjects to which I apply my available skills of analysis and modest writing talents. Why is it that almost any suggestion of even the possibility of a peaceful, anarchistic society is so often met with pseudo-intellectual derision or worse yet, insulting, pat-on-the-head "utopian dreamer" condescension? Excluding the corruption of those who enrich themselves from the State, it is met with these responses because honest people have been conditioned over years and years of public (Read: statist propaganda-laden) schooling.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston44.html

The Messenger Is the Message

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
~ Thomas Pynchon

It is representative of the sharp division that exists between establishment, mainstream media journalists, and those who have opted for the joy and integrity that accompanies the hard work of digging out truth. The likes of H.L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock have their modern counterparts in a number of journalists and commentators who insist upon working outside the towers and chambers they are to investigate. Such people would consider it a slur upon a noble profession to be "embedded" with generals and admirals or Daddy Warbucks as sources upon which to depend for their writings. Just a few of such people include (in alphabetical order) Becky Akers, Jim Bovard, Alexander Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Seymour Hersh, Bob Higgs, Chalmers Johnson, Karen Kwiatkowski, John Pilger, Justin Raimondo, Paul Craig Roberts, and Lew Rockwell. Please let me know the next time you see any of these persons interviewed on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, or elsewhere in the mainstream media!

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer175.html

Calculated Chaos

Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival, by Butler D. Shaffer

If we wish to understand the nature of political institutions, we must be able to observe them with minds that are willing to abandon many of their most cherished illusions. In so doing, we will discover that we have been sanctioning the greatest of irrationalities: placing our lives and well-being at the disposal of men and women with appetites for power over other people, and who amuse themselves and gratify their egos while others suffer and die. .... The political State represents nothing more than the institutionalization of unprincipled power and naked force. Though we delude ourselves with trying to measure differences between fascism and communism, democracies and dictatorships, conservatism and liberalism, moderates and extremists, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, the fact remains that every form of government is a police-State, every political system is tyrannical.
More here: http://www.endervidualism.com/salon/books/shaffer.htm

Words Scribbled on Parchment

"My hope is that in the future, people will stop putting their faith in words scribbled on parchment. The Constitution will not save us, nor will the Bill of Rights. If you must put your faith in something, put it in a Glock or a nice AR-15. At least with these, you have a fighting chance in defending your property, freedom and life, unlike mere words scribbled on parchment." Column by Mike Wasdin.
Read more:
http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/wasdin/wasdin2.html