The schedule for our big upcoming conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties on June 1-4 at the Hyatt Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia, is now online. The updated schedule contains the titles of all the talks by our 24 speakers. This stands to be one of the most exciting and important conferences in the history of the libertarian movement.
Your $495 registration fee includes all ten Hyatt Regency meals at the conference plus 24 of the greatest speeches youll ever hear in your life.
Chalmers Johnsons newest article Why Nemesis Is at the USs Door could easily be the theme of our conference. Johnson is a retired professor of Asian studies at the University of California, San Diego. From 1968 until 1972 he served as a consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. His newest book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the final volume in his Blowback trilogy, is being released this week.
Here are pertinent excerpts from Johnsons article:
Whether Americans intended it or not, we are now seen around the world as approving the torture of captives at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at a global network of secret CIA prisons, as well as having endorsed Bush’s claim that, as commander-in-chief in ‘wartime’, he is beyond all constraints of the U.S. constitution or international law. We are now saddled with a rigged economy based on record-setting trade and fiscal deficits, the most secretive and intrusive government in our country’s memory, and the pursuit of ‘preventive’ war as a basis for foreign policy. Don’t forget as well the potential epidemic of nuclear proliferation as other nations attempt to adjust to and defend themselves against Bush’s preventive wars, while our own already staggering nuclear arsenal expands toward first-strike primacy and we expend unimaginable billions of dollars on futuristic ideas for warfare in outer space.
The combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, an ever growing economic dependence on the military-industrial complex and the making of weaponry, and ruinous military expenses as well as a vast, bloated ‘defense’ budget, not to speak of the creation of a whole second Defense Department (known as the Department of Homeland Security) has been destroying our republican structure of governing in favor of an imperial presidency.
We Americans are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.
History is instructive on this dilemma. If we choose to keep our empire, as the Roman republic did, we will certainly lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates. There is an alternative, however.
We could, like the British Empire after World War II, keep our democracy by giving up our empire.
From the present vantage point, it certainly seems a daunting challenge for any president (or Congress) from either party even to begin the task of dismantling the military-industrial complex, ending the pall of ‘national security’ secrecy and the ‘black budgets’ that make public oversight of what the government does impossible, and bringing the president’s secret army, the CIA, under democratic control. It’s evident that Nemesis in Greek mythology the goddess of vengeance, the punisher of hubris and arrogance is already a visitor in the United States, simply biding her time before she makes her presence known.
The stakes are enormous. Our rights, freedoms, and well-being depend on the outcome. We must restore a Republic to our land before it is too late. We must lead our nation in a better, freer, more prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious direction. Thats why 24 of the best speakers youll ever hear are coming to Reston, Virginia, to share their perspectives at our conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. We hope you will join us at this seminal event.
As Ludwig von Mises once stated,
No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result.
To register online: https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/TheFutureofFreedom/OnlineRegistration.html.
To register by phone: (703) 934-6101.
