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April 23, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
34:12
The War On Speech, With Guest Nico Perrino

Today's Liberty Report is joined by executive vice president of The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Nico Perrino, to discuss the threats to the First Amendment on US college campuses and elsewhere.

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Time Text
First Amendment Discussion 00:04:38
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, Daniel McAdams, our co-host, Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
We're going to work into introducing our special guests here today.
But it looks like we will have a good discussion on the issue of the, it sounds like the First Amendment.
First Amendment, absolutely.
So our special guest is Nico Perino.
And even though I have to admit, the day I first met him, I don't remember it exactly, but I do know enough about him to know that he got interested or was interested, because I don't know exactly when he got interested in libertarianism, but I know that we even made back in 2010, he was involved in the campaign.
He's done a lot of interesting things since then in promoting the issue of First Amendment.
So Nico, welcome to our program today.
Dr. Paul, Daniel, it's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Very good.
And that function that you put on way back in 2010 was at the Indiana University and the Young Americans for Liberty chapter there that you were involved in.
That was something, as I recall and reading the reports, a few people showed up.
It wasn't, you know, before I was, you know, in Congress, I was interested in the subject, and I would take little invitations for a discussion on the college campuses.
And I always thought if I got to talk to 20 people, well, 20 people, wow, that's neat.
But before I knew it, the message was interesting, and we got a lot more.
So we'll start off by having you tell us a little bit about that event.
And how big was it?
Was it more than 20 people?
It was far more than 20 people.
I think we had something like 4,000 people show up, sold out the auditorium.
And the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at Indiana University at that time was the most politically savvy, politically scrappy group of students at Indiana University.
And you even had the Indiana Daily Student, the student newspaper, saying as much in its reporting.
We did things like chalk the entire Constitution in front of the basketball auditorium.
I remember when we were promoting your event, we had this event called the Nearly Naked Mile.
People weren't actually naked.
They were nearly naked.
But me and some of my colleagues in the student group, Young Americans for Liberty, went to the nearly naked mile with the event details sharpied on our backs so that people, as they were running behind us, could see the event.
We had flyers all over campus, and it was really quite a deal.
And you might recall we had a press conference beforehand.
We had local media show up.
So that was one of our first and biggest events on campus, and the Young Americans for Liberty chapter lived on long after it.
Nico, I want to talk a little bit about exactly what you've done since then.
And one thing is you're the Executive Vice President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which means that you've been very interested in working in the First Amendment.
And I summarized my position on the First Amendment, that we have to remember the founders weren't interested in the First Amendment and freedom of speech so they could discuss the weather.
They wanted to be able to criticize the government without being imprisoned.
And it looks like a few people, American citizens, believe it or not, could possibly be in prison for speaking out and disagreeing with somebody in the government.
So tell us a little bit about that job you have now or that involvement.
Yeah, I mean, my interest in the issue really goes back to when I was in elementary school, and my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Shields, put on a play of John Peter Zinger, who was an early colonial publisher before the United States of America even existed, who published articles that were critical of then New York state's or New York's colonial governor.
And he was charged under this principle of seditious libel, which is essentially you're defaming a public official, even if that defamation is true.
And he was as guilty as anyone of criticizing the colonial governor.
He should have been convicted under seditious libel principles.
But the jury of his peers nullified the verdict and got him acquitted.
And that was really my first introduction to freedom of speech.
Freedom of Speech Awakening 00:07:34
And then, of course, there was my experience at Indiana University.
I had an event that I attended featuring a sort of evangelical pastor on campus that was getting shouted down by my peers.
And I'll never forget that his name was Douglas Wilson, stood up as he was being shouted down, blow horns, fire alarms, the whole thing.
And he said, I always think I'm right, but I don't think I'm always right.
I always think I'm right, but I don't think I'm always right.
And I'm like, this guy who I disagree with on so many different things just told me what it means to be at a college or university.
Strong opinions loosely held.
The idea that you might, when confronted with new arguments or new evidence, change your mind.
And what the students were doing was saying, no, our opinions are so rock solid, they're so infalluable, that we are not only going to prevent this speaker from speaking, we're going to prevent everyone else who might want to hear what he has to say from listening to him.
And I thought this is fundamentally at odds with what a college and university experience should be like and also the principles of this country.
And so after I graduated from college, I went to work at FHIR, thinking I'd do it for a year or two.
But here I am, 13 years later, fighting for those same principles, not just on college campuses, but in America more broadly.
I find that fascinating.
And I was interested in the fact that somebody even in your grade school could stimulate you into thinking along these lines.
But what about in family?
Families have influences too.
Sometimes they help the young people along a certain way.
And sometimes they're exactly different.
And sometimes it's an odd event.
How was it with your family?
Yeah, I mean, I grew up with two great parents and two great siblings.
They weren't really political.
They're still around, so they aren't very political.
I really discovered my interest in ideas surrounding liberty and freedom of expression.
Again, in elementary school, in high school, I had a great teacher, Michael Torney, who introduced us to 1984.
And then there was the Revolution, a Manifesto, your book, that really introduced me to a lot of these ideas as well.
But I have to say, for most of my high school experience, prior to my interest in these ideas, I was a metalhead.
I was interested in heavy metal music.
I thought I would be a rock star.
But then I had a political and philosophical awakening, so to speak.
Wonderful.
Daniel, what do you have to say?
Well, we have a lot of metalheads in our movement, so there's nothing wrong with that.
You know, thanks for reminding us, really, and our viewers of how much fun it was and can still be fighting for freedom and liberty.
You know, there was such creativity in those campaigns.
It's astonishing and it's just wonderful to see.
Now, on the topic of speech, you know, I mean, we went through the COVID years where there was a crackdown on speech, where every day that Dr. Paul and I sat down to do our show on another channel, we were worried we'd be shut down for saying the wrong things.
Those things have all now turned out to be right.
But it was really the state, as we found out later, that was pushing the social media channels to crack down on speech with regard to COVID.
And then we learned, thanks to Matt Taibbi and a few others through Twittergate, that the government was doing the same thing, pressuring the social media companies under the Biden administration more generally to crack down on speech that they didn't like that Americans were saying on social media.
And we were confident, or we felt confident, many of us felt confident that that really dark era in anti-Americanism was over with the election of this new administration.
And while there still are some bright points, FIRE, I believe, has brought to light, and we've tried to do as well on our program, some of the shortcomings, and some of them are very serious.
Now, I want to start by asking you about this new survey that your organization has done, the National Speech Index, which I believe you do quarterly.
And what's important about it, I love surveys, especially when they reinforce what I believe.
But the important thing about this is that they have identified the fact that the majority of Americans are not in step with the idea that you can be persecuted for saying things the government doesn't like.
Or you can be deported even if you're not an American citizen.
As long as you're here legally, you cannot be deported.
Tell us a little bit about the survey and the results, if you can.
Yeah, so this is our quarterly survey where we're trying to create not just longitudinal data about Americans' attitudes about free speech, but also try and understand how they feel about certain flashpoints that relate to freedom of speech that are happening now.
And in our latest survey, we found that a pretty good proportion of Americans, more than half, certainly more than half, do not like the ideological persecutions and deportations that the Trump administration is engaging in right now.
People are probably most familiar with Mahmoud Khalil, who is a Columbia University student activist.
He had recently graduated.
He's here on a green card.
His wife just had their first child.
He was arrested and detained.
And when FIIRE first heard about this, we were like, he must have been involved perhaps in some of the vandalism at Columbia, perhaps some of the building occupations that happened there.
And we were waiting for the administration and asking the administration to provide some of that evidence.
But as the days and weeks went on, it became very clear that, no, they were just targeting him because of his speech.
And they were using this super speech code, so to speak, that gives the Secretary of State almost unilateral authority to deport anyone who he or she thinks might be adverse to the United States' foreign policy.
That could have been Christopher Hitchens back in the day, for example.
And then you have the case of Ramessa Oz Turk, who has also been detained.
And it's very clear in her case, and there's been no evidence to the contrary, that she was just being detained and subject to deportation proceedings for nothing more than writing an op-ed in the tough student newspaper.
And this goes contrary to almost all principles of the United States.
And Daniel, I know you've been very eloquent in articulating and making this point, but we should be that shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan talked about in the 1980s.
We have a lot of students in this country who come from oppressive regimes, be it Turkey, be it China, be it Russia.
And we want to welcome them into the full freedom and liberty that America has to offer.
But instead, we're saying, welcome to America.
Now shut your mouth.
And that's not what we do in a country committed to principles of freedom.
And here's what the White House said about the arrest of Mahoud Khalid.
It's a quote from President Trump.
He said, this is the first arrest of many to come.
We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American activity.
And the Trump administration will not tolerate, well, tolerate it.
Which, of course, he was never even accused of either of any of those three things at all.
Certainly not prosecuted, certainly not convicted of any of these things.
Donald Trump, either he was told something untrue or just flat out lied.
He is, as you say, he was not even accused.
In fact, he was, I think, vocally cautioning against anti-Semitic activity and speech.
So here he is slandered.
It's a very chilling thing.
Yes, it is.
And you can see how they can throw out these words, which Americans rightfully in many ways think of as bad things, pejorative.
You're a terrorist.
You're anti-Semitic.
Power Plays and Free Speech 00:15:35
But the government needs to put forward some evidence, and it can't just lobby these words, much like they did in the 2000s surrounding the Patriot Act and in the wake of 9-11.
The government needs to show evidence if it's going to deprive people of their rights and liberties.
And Daniel, as you've made the point you've made before about these are inalienable rights.
These are not rights granted by government.
We constitute governments in order to secure our rights.
And one of the biggest pieces of pushback that we get from critics of our position, that these people have rights, is that, well, they're not citizens.
Well, there are certain things that government can't do regardless of your citizenship.
And to the extent you are subject to America's jurisdiction, then the government, in this case, America, needs to respect those rights.
You know, the goals that people have reveal a lot about what they're all about and what they will support in government.
And I try to look at people and say, what really is their goal?
And I think sometimes the people I met in Washington, and Daniel knows a lot of them, he knew what they were like.
And some of them is all power, all political power.
Some of them don't need the money, and some do, and some do maneuver to get, you know, make some money along the way, and a lot of them do that.
But there's money and power seems to motivate so many.
But it's rare.
It was rare in Washington for me to meet another member of Congress and have them as the goal is this just to reveal the truth.
This just revealed the truth about the Kennedy assassination, for instance.
And there wasn't very much of that.
But when I would meet somebody, it was such a delight.
And one was Walter Jones, because he was a supporter of the war, the Iraqi war.
And he was so embarrassed when he discovered that it was all fake and the government was lying to him.
He was outraged.
And all of a sudden, he dedicated the rest of his life.
And sadly, it was not a long life after that.
But we became close friends.
And his goal then was telling the truth.
It was completely reversed.
Before, he was representing a military district.
And I think pretty consciously, his goal was taking care of those military people and doing whatever they're seeking.
So I think there's a big division there.
So I was always delighted when I'm a Thomas Massey, people like that who's willing to stand up and take the licks that they're going to get.
And, you know, most people think, oh, I don't want to be in isolation.
They'll call me names and all that.
Matter of fact, if you want to get attention, sometimes you get more attention.
And in time, it might be the right thing to do, and they'll recognize it.
Yeah, well, a quick point on Walter Jones.
My sister-in-law worked on his staff, and my wife actually was an intern at his office.
So I'm very familiar with Walter Jones and all of his good work and appreciate that you're making the shout out to him.
But on the broader point you made about power, this is the challenge for us at a non-partisan civil liberties group, is that our fundamental point of opposition is power.
We're always trying to seek to limit and restrain political power.
And so if Republicans are in power right now and they're violating rights, we're angering all the Republicans who want to leverage that power to achieve their goals.
If Biden's in power and the Democrats are in power, we're angering the Democrats as we're calling balls and strikes about their free speech violations as well.
But what we see ourselves as standing, and it's not a great business model, by the way, there are many, many donors who get angry when you're going against their tribe.
I think people by nature are tribal.
But I think what America stands for is that we place restraints on power, recognizing that when Democratic majorities exist, they are always going to have that inclination to censor.
There was a famous writer who once said that censorship is the strongest urge in human beings, with sex being a weak second.
America is founded on principles like freedom of speech, like due process, like the rule of law.
These are all restrictions on power.
And I want to caution our conservative listeners out there who might be feeling drunk with power right now that the boot can be on the other foot, and the boot will be on the other foot at some point.
And the power that we give to Republicans and conservatives right now is the same power that can be wielded by Democrats in the future.
So I want to urge caution there.
The work of civil libertarians is for the long term.
We don't replace long-term principles with short-term expediency because we recognize that that short-term expediency can often compromise those long-term principles and values.
That's a great point.
I mean, it wasn't long ago the conservatives were complaining about being signaled out, incorrectly in my view, because I think anyone who colored outside the lines was singled out for censorship under the Biden administration because there are plenty of progressives who are also singled out for censorship.
But not long ago, Republicans and conservatives were particularly complaining about it.
And now they're fine with it.
And hey, I'll do a case in point.
Marco Ruby, our Secretary of State, he bragged at the end of last month on the BBC interview about deporting more than 300 foreign students in the United States.
And as you point out, it wasn't because they were breaking things up and smacking people around.
No, it was because they were expressing a view that he personally didn't agree with.
He didn't like it.
So he deported them.
And he says, I do it every time I find one of these lunatics.
Well, you may find people who demonstrate against our Middle East policy to be lunatics.
That's perfectly your right to do so.
But using the tools of the state, I'm just preaching to the choir here, Nico, as you know, but using the power of the state to harm those people is certainly not appropriate.
Now, on the one hand, he says, I've deported 300 of these lunatics for saying things I don't like.
And here he is in an interview recently.
Let me see.
It was, I think, at the beginning of this month, middle of this month.
Here's the same Marco Rubio.
Our number one priority is Americans.
We don't want to see an American who happens to be living in London or happens to be living in Europe post something online about American politics or any politics, and all of a sudden they're facing ramifications over there.
Does this man have no shame?
I tweeted about this.
I said, is there no self-awareness of what he's doing here in the United States?
Now, when JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and called out the Europeans for their speech suppression, he was exactly right.
Yes.
But you have to have more than words.
And unfortunately, what we've seen from the Trump administration in the last three months is a scope, scale, and severity of censorship that I haven't seen in any three-month period in my career.
We've already talked about visa holders and lawful permanent residents being deported based on their speech.
You have the federal government weaponizing federal funding to target universities and condition future funding on them giving up academic freedom and free speech rights.
And I'm sure there are many of your listeners who don't think we should be funding these universities in the first place.
But to the extent we do, we cannot condition that funding on giving up First Amendment rights at private institutions like Columbia and Harvard, which have First Amendment rights and shouldn't be, and to the extent they promise their students free speech and academic freedom rights, can't be forced by the government to censor them.
But you also have the federal government targeting law firms and extorting them for money because of the cases and advocacy that they participate in.
You have the White House banning the Associated Press from the press pool based on nothing more than it not wanting to adopt Gulf of America and its editorial standards.
You have the FCC that's weaponizing itself to go after all these media companies, which maybe we don't like how they approach their coverage.
And I certainly have my own critiques of them.
But weaponizing the FCC under the mantle of news distortion, which is just another phrase, just another word for misinformation.
I thought we were done with the misinformation thing, is a problem.
And the list goes on, and we've been exceptionally busy trying to deal with it.
And unfortunately, as you say, Daniel, I've been very disappointed that the same conservatives who were rightly critical of the censorship and jawboning of social media companies under the Biden administration surrounding COVID have been largely silent or rationalized the abuses under the Trump administration.
If we want to stick to our principles and have them live for the long term, we need to stand up for those principles when it's our team that's abusing them.
Jon Stewart had this great line.
He said, if you abandon your principles when they're challenged, they're not principles, they're hobbies.
And we have far too many free speech hobbyists right now.
That's for sure.
You know, along this line, we have noticed, at least I have, that hypocrisy, when it's pointed out, is a powerful tool.
I think we witnessed that with COVID, you know, when some of the radicals who advocated all the lockdown and all the evil that they were doing, all based on lies about the vaccines and that sort of thing.
And once it was discovered that the people writing those laws and imposing those things didn't obey them themselves, people got angry and it woke people up on this.
So I think that tool is very important.
But even now, we see it, you know, when the left is expressing themselves and they're environmentalists, and then all of a sudden they don't follow their own rules.
I mean, they're the ones who do as much or more because they're usually wealthy, polluting the air, and yet they live on this.
And I often wonder whether this total hypocrisy, why do they do it?
Because eventually they get caught, but they live on a short-term span, I guess.
And they figure that, well, we'll say this and do this.
And I think it's happening with the administration, too.
That's why they're all over the place on what they say and do.
And I don't know whether they do it on purpose or they just don't have any beliefs and they're not seeking a true belief and an understanding of how the world should work.
But I do know that pointing out and observing it, and it doesn't have to be ugly or not, but people, we can't put this stuff out and say, it makes no sense.
They say this and do this.
How can they be trusted?
Yeah, that's such a good question.
And I have a couple of answers.
I think the problem for most people is that free speech and these values of individual rights aren't often front of mind until they see those values being attacked for people and causes that they care about.
This is why you had a tremendous amount of support for free speech and the First Amendment during the civil rights era, during the McCarthy era and during the Vietnam War, from the political left.
And free speech was often seen as a left-leaning value because the violations of those rights was happening in that context.
Fast forward, and you get the era of political correctness on college campuses and cancel culture, and free speech was seen as a conservative cause.
Fire was often aligned as a conservative organization.
We're not.
We have staff from across the political and ideological spectrum here.
And then now, in the last three months, you have the attacks on free speech coming from the right.
And I wouldn't be surprised if free speech is starting to be seen as a left-wing value.
I think part of the problem for many people is that they have an instrumentalist view and appreciation for free speech.
They see it as essential to democracy.
And to the extent free speech is allowing quote-unquote misinformation or disinformation to proliferate, people are going to be opposed to it because it's the democracy thing that they're more concerned about.
For me personally, I support freedom of speech because I support natural rights, because I support individual autonomy.
And even if freedom of speech had deleterious effects for democracy, which I do not concede, I would still support freedom of speech just because I believe in these sort of inalienable rights.
So I think that's part of the reason that you get this free speech hypocrisy, that you get this free speech hobbyism.
It's not front of mind.
And people also just don't understand free speech.
You have a lot of pro-Palestinian activists, for example, who are vandalizing buildings or taking over buildings who think that's an exercise of free speech, not understanding the distinction between civil disobedience and free speech.
So there's some education that needs to do, that needs to happen.
And also, I do have concerns by blowing that line between unlawful conduct on the one hand and speech on the other hand, that it gives free speech a bad name and that people start to turn against free speech because people don't like building occupations and vandalism, for example.
Yeah, that's a good point.
That's an excellent point.
I mean, you have to make a conscious decision if you go into the area of civil disobedience, and it was very useful during the civil rights movement.
But that is very different from free speech.
You have to realize that there are going to be, you know, could be problems.
I just want to have one last comment because, in my opinion, someone who's a hero to me in terms of free speech, standing up for free speech no matter what, is Glenn Greenwald.
I came from the progressive left.
I don't know where he is now, and I don't really care, and I don't think he cares either, but I know that he's always been a consistent proponent of free speech.
Now, he put out something on X yesterday that was pretty chilling.
He put out a paper from the National Institutes for Health, Guidelines for Grants.
And this is what Glenn said: Under new guidelines released by the National Institutes of Health, any medical researchers will have all funds terminated if they support a boycott of Israel.
Glenn continued, you can support a boycott of any other country or even other U.S. states, just not Israel.
We're getting to the point where the government itself is getting in the business of trying to, I mean, directly get into the business.
And Glenn continued by saying a research institute could be close to developing treatments or cures for cancer or Alzheimer's, but will lose NIH grants unless they certify they don't support a boycott of Israel.
I was happy Jay Battacharia was made NIH director given his free speech advocacy, and yet, dot, dot, dot.
Very troubling to see the government moving in this direction.
Regardless of how you feel about Israel, it doesn't matter.
No, of course.
I thought we've started to come to a national consensus that we didn't want to politicize science or do any censorship around science.
But here we are with the Trump administration now in power and other interests at play where they're trying to politicize science, where they're censoring scientists who are maybe conducting life-changing, life-affecting research because of their positions on Israel.
And we've seen this across the board within the administration.
The administration adopted and is trying to force colleges and universities to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism, which doesn't track federal anti-discrimination law and its stringent requirements as required by the Supreme Court, but says rather that things like drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis can be considered anti-Semitic under certain conditions or applying double standards of Israel by requiring it of behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Let Us Step Back 00:06:12
Now, you might think these are offensive ideas.
You might reject them wholeheartedly.
But the idea that you could be found to have violated federal civil rights law for making those arguments on a college or university campus, for example, is deeply chilling and strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.
So I would caution everyone: let's step back from the breach.
Let's step back from the breach.
We didn't like the censorship under the Biden and Obama administration.
We shouldn't like it under the Trump administration.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
So let's stop doing it altogether and let's let scientists do their work.
Let's question it.
Let's not have the federal government come in and stop us from questioning it.
Remember, science is the systematized form of skepticism.
And let's get back to free speech principles.
That's what this country is all about.
Amen.
I want to close with a statement about empire and give you a chance to let all our viewers know how they can stay in touch with you and follow all of what you're doing.
But I believe that we have a modern-day type of empire, a little bit different than the old empires.
But we were, you know, I was going to say blessed or provided with.
At least we ended up with a powerful weapon of the reserve currency of the world and a lot of wealth and a still a very strong country.
And we throw our weight around and we get away with it.
And so we go to people and we are always involved with coups and having troops in all these countries.
So we get cooperation because we're in charge of the bank.
So we tell them, you do what we tell you, and we won't bomb you.
So, oh, we better do it.
We better do what you say.
So now they've changed.
They don't say they'll bomb them.
We own them already because they have our dollars.
They depend on our money.
So we tell them what to do.
And if they don't, or if they don't even say the things that we just talked about, that we want them to say, we're going to take your money away.
And of course, the money should have never been sent.
But then, so it's a threat.
And it goes on, but they're guided by speech in doing this, but it's maintained, which I think is short-lived.
The financial part of this is short-lived.
All empires end.
And I think we're living in an age of early, total disruption of a system that has been around for 100 years at least.
And I think that for that reason, the things that we have been talking about today are so important.
And I'll tell you what, that your efforts, Nico, I think are fantastic.
And I love the story that you say somebody in grade school influenced you.
And this to me is the way ideas, a good idea can't be stopped.
You know, Hugo said, Victor Hugo said, it can't even be stopped by the military.
And that's why I think it's wonderful.
I think once we arrive at a point where we think we're understanding this and we'd like to spread the message, I feel like personally, people have an obligation, you know, to spread the message because it's worthwhile.
And it should be worthwhile for the person getting satisfaction from doing it, other than the fact that it might help the entire system.
And I think another thing that you seem to have told us about, especially when you were in college and doing everything, you have some fun doing it.
Because, you know, if we talk only about the negative about big government, that's all we'll ever talk about.
But there's a lot of good things going on now.
I marvel at, you know, the unpredictable, from my point of view, of reaching people.
said we had 20 at the beginning now we have 25 and 30 people show up at our function so and And the technology, I think, is so fantastic.
I complain all the time about the crazy stuff on the internet.
But we live with the internet.
We get information with it.
We use it all the time.
And I think that has helped.
You know, when the campaigns were going on, they had a group called, I think it was Meetup Groups.
And it was practically our campaign.
Oh, you have a meetup group in your time.
So I think that's all wonderful.
So I want to congratulate you on what's a wonderful thing to do and let the viewers know how they can stay in touch with you.
Yeah, I know we're wrapping up here, but I do just want to respond to what you said.
Yeah, we must be warriors for liberty, but there's nothing stopping us from being happy warriors for liberty.
And so I'd urge all the listeners to be happy warriors for liberty.
And I'd also say, you know, this American experiment can, and I hope will, continue.
This is an American experiment, as Abraham Lincoln said, that was dedicated to a proposition, to a set of ideas.
We're the first nation in the world to be dedicated to a proposition, to a set of ideas, and not just based on sort of shared ethnicity or race or some other artificial geographic boundary.
And our co-founder, Alan Charles Kors, a brilliant professor of the Enlightenment at the University of Pennsylvania for many years, said that a nation that does not educate in liberty will not long endure in liberty and will not even know that it is lost.
So my implortation to these listeners here is to continue educating in liberty, to continue to stick to these values, even when they are tested.
And I'd urge folks to join us at FHIR.
You can learn more about our organization at thefire.org.
You can follow me on X at at Nico Perino.
And you can also consider becoming a FIRE member.
$25, you join monthly webinars where we just take your questions.
Whatever you come with, we answer them.
We also have events across the country and a quarterly publication.
So I thank you, Dr. Paul, for having me.
It's an honor and a privilege to talk to you again after all these so many years.
And Daniel, thank you again for having me as well.
I really appreciate it.
Very good.
And we were delighted to have you with us today.
And I am delighted that we had our viewers tuned in.
And I want to thank them for tuning in.
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