Liberty Maven

Day 2 is finished at CPAC 2010 and what an interesting day it was. Here’s a recap. It’s rather long.

We made our way to a panel discussion called “Saving Freedom: Defending the Constitution”. The panelists included Steve Bierfeldt of the Campaign For Liberty. Bierfeldt was the man who was detained by the TSA for carrying a “suspicious” amount of cash. He fought the TSA and they modified their policy. The discussion from all the panelists were interesting and educational.

Bob Levy of CATO used his time to make the distinction between a living breathing document, textualism, original intent, and strict constructionism as they apply to the Constitution. Bierfeldt gave an excellent speech that focused on historical abuses of the Constitution. This gave him an opportunity to bash Lincoln and plug Tom DiLorenzo’s work on the topic. He ended by discussing the abuses of power and the legal cover the Patriot Act provides.

The Q & A portion ended with a man holding up a Federal Reserve Note and asking if paper money is constitutional. All the panelists answered in the negative though one pointed out that there is ample Supreme Court precedent to block any kind of effort to repeal the federal legal tender laws.

After the session ended we went to the main room and listened to Michelle Bachman finish her speech. She was pretty good, mentioning the threats to our economic liberty, but she didn’t mention auditing the Federal Reserve, at least not while I was there. We then left and had lunch.

Later in the day walked into the main room to find some seats for Ron Paul’s keynote speech. There were no seats available except for a bunch of reserved seats on the far side of the room. We were able to talk to a coordinator and get him to open the reserved section for us and many others milling about looking for empty seats.

While this was going on the Young Americans for Freedom students were delivering their 2 minute speeches on freedom. Some fireworks ensued. For a bit of background, Alexander McCobin of the Students for Liberty gave the following two minute speech. He gets booed as he praises CPAC for allowing GOProud to sponsor the conference. You can’t tell from the video, but the loudest boos (and nearly the only ones) came from one man sitting on the panel right next to McCobin as he was speaking.

Later the man who booed McCobin the loudest, Ryan Sorba, author of “The Born Gay Hoax” took the podium for his anti-gay rant and for some unexplained reason chooses to call out Jeff Frazee, the head of the Young Americans for Liberty, an organization spawned from Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. Frazee said he was just sitting there and suddenly Sorba chose to call him out.

I suppose Sorba assumed that members of Young Americans for Liberty in the audience were the ones booing and heckling him so he chose to attack Frazee. This kind of reminds me of our former president attacking Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11. How fitting.

Once all of this died down, it was time for Ron Paul. He’s not a great speaker, but his message did not disappoint. Yesterday I wrote how I thought the Campaign for Liberty was almost like a subversive organization at CPAC, but today Ron Paul proved that they belong and they are here to stay.

After Ron Paul brought the house down we had dinner. Mike had to rush home to attend to a personal matter. I stayed and went to Gary Johnson’s event. Mike Church and Tim Carney spoke first, then Johnson. Johnson is a subdued speaker, but he hits on all the important points. He made it known that he will not pander to the people by saying that we must cut medicare and legalize marijuana. It was a decent talk, but I think Johnson needs some work on his delivery and pace.

Following the talk I introduced myself to Matt Hawes of the Campaign for Liberty. We regularly exchange emails and it was nice to meet him face to face for the first time.

Tomorrow is the final day of CPAC 2010. I’ll be staying until the end so I’ll write another update tomorrow evening.