American Document / The Liberty Manifesto
O'Rourke, R J.
T he Cato Institute has an unusual political cause—which is no political cause whatsoever. We are here tonight to dedicate ourselves to that cause, to dedicate ourselves, in other words, to ......
...Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have...
...The Clinton administration is over there right now pulling an allnighter in the West Wing...
...We have a group of incredibly silly people in the White House right now, people who think government works...
...This is because we believe in freedom...
...It's not entitlement...
...This is what I alwaysdo when I want to spend less money—hire a lawyer from Yale...
...And that had better be clear and provable harm...
...No nonsense about second-hand smoke or hurtful, insensitive language, please...
...Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia...
...There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please...
...And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences...
...It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights—the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing...
...And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns...
...We need jail...
...You don't know what's good for me...
...Hillary, mind your own business...
...There are just two rules of governance in a free society: • Mind your own business...
...y ou know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal...
...That's not freedom, that's dependency...
...They think that, if they can just stay up late enough, they can create a healthy economy and bring peace to former Yugoslavia...
...There, ladies and gentlemen, you have the Cato Institute's program in a nutshell: government should be against the law...
...We have no "vision thing," as our ex-president would say, or, as our current president would say, we have no Hillary...
...We're being governed by dorm room bull session...
...I don't know what's good for you...
...We don't know what's good for mankind...
...Government contains impure ingredients—as anybody who's looked at Congress can tell you...
...Most folks do that when they get out of college, unless, of course, they happen to become governor of Arkansas...
...Term limits aren't enough...
...An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they...
...It may well be that, gathered right here in this room tonight, are all the people in the world who don't want to tell all the people in the world what to do...
...Government is a health hazard...
...Freedom—what this country was established upon, what the Constitution was written to defend, what the Civil War was fought to perfect...
...It's called getting a job...
...To demand nothing, that is, except the one thing which no government in history has been able to do—leave us alone...
...We have no ideology, no agenda, no catechism, no dialectic, no plan for humanity...
...But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen...
...We are part of a huge invisible picket line that circles the White House twenty-four hours a day...
...Peace Corps volunteers...
...We are participants in an enormous non-march on Washington—millions and millions of Americans not descending upon the nation's capital in order to demand nothing from the United States government...
...Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock...
...Those aren'trights, those are the rations of slavery—hay and a barn for human cattle...
...Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse...
...Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting a high-powered corporate lawyer in charge of making it cheaper...
...Bill, keep your hands to yourself...
...And the merest glance at the federal budget is enough to convict the government of perjury, extortion, and fraud...
...The Clinton administration is putting together a program so that college graduates can work to pay off their school tuition...
...Freedom is not empowerment...
...Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered...
...On the basis of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign promises, I think we can say government practices deceptive advertising...
...The Clinton administration is going to decrease government spending by increasing the amount of money we give to the government to spend...
...And it sometimes seems as though we're the only people who don't...
...All we have is the belief that people should do what people want to do, unless it causes harm to other people...
...If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free...
...Keep your hands to yourself...
...S o we are here tonight in a kind of anti-matter protest—an unpolitical undemonstration by deeply uncommitted inactivists...
...Or that government would work, if you got some real bright young kids from Yale to run it...
...Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns...
...nothing...
...As if this were some genius idea...
Vol. 26 • July 1993 • No. 7
