photo by Joe Buchman
IPR attended, recorded, and transcribed closing remarks by Craig Biddle at recent The Objective Standard Institute’s “Philosophy for Freedom and Flourishing Conference”. Craig will also be speaking at the FreedomFest in Las Vegas, NV (July 13 to 16). IPR hopes to cover his remarks (as well as those of other libertarian speakers) there as well. See IPR’s prior article about our FreedomFest coverage plans HERE.
The TOS-CON “Philosophy for Freedom and Flourishing” description states: “Sharpen your mind. Fuel your soul. Excel in life. Fight for liberty. If these are your goals, this conference is for you.”
The following is a partial transcript of the closing remarks made by Craig Biddle.
BIDDLE: “The whole idea is that we need to engage with the outside world, both bringing intellectuals in who have never heard of Objectivism (such as) Yeonmi Park, and Amala Ekpunobi; other Objectivists who are intrigued by it (such as) Peter Boghossian, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and bring Objectivist speakers in to give their views on these ideas, and bring students in so they can hear these ideas – as contrasted with some other ideas. The whole enterprise is about everyone using his or her own judgement to decide what they determine is true.
“I believe this model is the road to a future of freedom and flourishing. I think this is the only road, actually. Because if the younger generation does not take ownership of these ideas, and doesn’t understand, and doesn’t see the evidence for themselves, then they are just going to treat these ideas as if they are just another set of religious commandments.
“I am so enthusiastic about this new, burgeoning movement of integration among these organizations. If you are with Students for Liberty, please stand up.
(APPLAUSE)
“So this organization run by my friend Wolf von Laer is now the largest, international student liberty organization on the planet.
(APPLAUSE, CHEERS)
“They are working with Prometheus Foundation, of which I am the executive director, the Objective Standard Institute, where my wife and I teach courses, do podcasts, and the Objective Standard Journal, to bring not just Objectivism into Students For Liberty, but more fundamentally, and more importantly, a respect for the importance of philosophy that undergrads this effort to defend and advance liberty. If you don’t have the moral and the philosophic case for liberty, you don’t have a case for liberty. (For example) if someone is going to say, “Well, liberty might work, but it’s immoral” you’re toast. So, the idea that this libertarian element that Students For Liberty – the biggest libertarian student liberty organization on the planet – is now engaging with, and bring Ayn Rand’s ideas into the organization is so mind-blowingly beautiful to me – an optimism and inspiration that I get from this very possibility alone. And there is a whole lot more than that going on. This is an example, by the way, of what my friend Carl Barney and I call “the Symbiosis Strategy.” You find all the people who have good ideas and good intentions and want to advance flourishing and freedom on the planet and say, “Let’s work together instead of being at odds.” How good an idea is that, right?
(APPLAUSE)
“And then we put all our ideas on the table, and we learn from each other, and sometimes you go, “Okay, I was wrong about that. Now I’ve been corrected. Thanks so much.” Or, “Wow! I’ve never thought about that before. Now I’ve got something new.” Or someone says to me, “I’ve never heard that before.”
“This is the importance of free speech as well. Free speech is not important because people want to have conversations; it’s a tool for thinking. You cannot think if you cannot communicate freely, because you cannot gain from other people the wisdom that they have, and you cannot impart your wisdom to them.
“So this growing movement of the idea that we should bind together based on our similarities and then work out our differences by talking about them, rather than ignoring each other, or calling each other “immoral” for thinking this or that, is, for me, a beautiful, beautiful thing.
(APPLAUSE)
“Carl Barney said to me as I was coming up here to the stage, “I just want to tell you that I am so enthusiastic about what is going on that I want to multiply what we are doing big time.”
(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)
“I am hoping other people with resources will do the same, whether you are supporting OSI, or Students For Liberty, or the Foundation for Economic Education, or the Atlas Network, or any of these organizations that are trying to advance liberty. Choose whoever you think is worthy of your support and support them. We cannot do this without money; it just cannot be done. These kinds of conferences are very expensive. The organizations that we run are very expensive to run, training intellectuals is time intensive, and bandwidth intensive, so, obviously I would love donations to OSI, but whether you give them to OSI or other organizations in the fold, please, if you have the means and you see this as in your interest, and you want a future of freedom and flourishing, support the organizations that are helping to make that happen; we cannot do it without you.
(APPLAUSE)
. . .
“It’s amazing the clarity you get at a conference like this; clarity is actually far more important than truth – because if an idea is not clear, you cannot determine whether it is true or not. Clarity is a precursor to understanding whether or not something is true. You need clarity first, then you can access the ideas to determine what is true. Ayn Rand famously said, “In fiction the most important elements are plot, plot, and plot; and in non-fiction the most important elements are clarity, clarity, and clarity.”
“I think when you come to this kind of conference and you hear a Timothy Sandefur or an Amala Ekpunobi, or an Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whether you agree with their ideas or not, you get clarity. So you can decide what to think about their ideas because you know what their ideas are. That is so incredibly valuable, so massive kudos to our speakers.
(APPLAUSE)
. . .
(Note: multiple individual staff acknowledgements were not transcribed.)
“The Atlases, the people who register for this conference at premium – they pay over three thousand dollars – where many of you students pay about forty-five dollars, or maybe ninety, just in terms of registration. The reason that the young adult tickets were in the neighborhood of $195, the student tickets were in the neighborhood of $95, or something like that, or if you got it on a discount they were really low. The reason we can do that is because some of you successful adults who are willing to support and want to advance these ideas were willing to pay that premium. We could not bring this number of students in here if we had to charge them four hundred dollars for a ticket – which just would not happen; they don’t have that kind of money, especially when they are coming from foreign places where their currency is not strong.
“So, huge kudos to all the Atlases who made that possible.
(APPLAUSE)
“On top of the Atlases there are the regular major contributors, and minor contributors to OSI. We are only two-years-old and we’ve got some serious funding coming in; we need a lot more. But people who have stepped up and said, “Yes! We love what you are doing; we want to support this.” They have enabled us to make major strides, while otherwise, we could only have made minor strides. You know who you are. Thank you. . . .
(APPLAUSE)
“They have really stepped up with monthly donations that enable us to do what we do and we could not do it without them.
. . .
“They have really stepped up with major, regular, monthly donations to enable us to do what we do. . . (For example) I don’t think we are the longest-standing publication, but I do think we have published (in The Objective Standard Journal) the most pages, to date, of any Objectivist publication, and certainly have published the widest variety of articles. . . . and placing these funds in various hands of individuals and organizations all over the planet who have great ideas and good character who have demonstrated to us that they are able to promote Ayn Rand and advance Objectivism in their neck of the woods. Something came of this development that we did not fully anticipate . . . in retrospect it seems kind of obvious, but here is what happened. You start funding a bunch of individuals and organizations all over the planet who love Ayn Rand and want to advance her ideas and who are super bright and super enthusiastic, and they start to work together, they start to integrate, they start to learn from each other, they start to leverage off of each other’s strengths. What happened is, this thing that we now call the Prometheus Network, developed. Anyone in the Prometheus Network in any way, shape, or form; please stand up.
(APPLAUSE)
“So these people, are advancing Ayn Rand’s ideas working together, and these include individuals and organizations such as: Students for Liberty, Foundation for Economic Education, Prager University. Through the funding from the Prometheus Foundation we produce videos with the help of OSI. We have produced three videos, one with Gloria Alverez on Ayn Rand’s philosophy (available HERE), one with Eric Daniels doing a book club episode with Michael Knowles on Atlas Shrugged (available HERE), and one with me doing a fireside chat with Dennis Prager on God and Ayn Rand (available HERE). Collectively these three videos now have over 9.7 million views.
(APPLAUSE)
“Ten years ago, this would have seemed an impossibility, but here we are. I wanted to give you all an indication of why this conference, this company, and the other things going on that are related to this, render me so optimistic that I am practically bursting, and that is in the face of, probably, the worst political situation we have seen in some time. In the political arena things are pretty bad, but culturally, things are getting better. But you cannot see it if you are thinking of the culture en masse. Masses do not change the future; masses are not the things that matter. What matters, and has always mattered, are minorities – politically and intellectually active-minded minorities, that make a decision to make change and to work together to do that. We do not need to change the whole culture; we need for a relatively small group of active-minded people to agree on the fundamental ideas we need to embrace to move forward, and then do that.
(APPLAUSE)
“Politics, as Andrew Breitbart said, is downstream from culture, and I will add that culture is downstream from philosophy. We are bringing rational philosophy to the world like it has never been done before.”
IPR will provide links to videos of conference speakers, as they are made available by TOS for public viewing, in the comments below.
More information can be found at the TOS website HERE
More information about Prager University can be found HERE
Prior conference videos are available HERE
IPR’s prior article about TOS CON is HERE
Thanks for posting this article so we can learn about what is going on in the liberty movement.