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SyndicateReflections on New Orleans
By Robert Ringer - Thursday, October 15, 2009
By Robert Ringer
I just returned from a five-day trip to New Orleans where I addressed the New Orleans Investment Conference. Following in the late and legendary Jim Blanchard’s footsteps, President/Producer Brien Lundin succeeded in putting together yet another first-class event for attendees.
In addition to my speech to the general assembly, I served as a panelist on the “Summit on America’s Future” discussion along with Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, and Rick Santelli. It’s always an exhilarating experience to interact with people who are knowledgeable, well spoken, and agree that smaller government is the solution to most of our nation’s ills.
As always, the roster of impressive speakers provided attendees with a plethora of technical, as well as practical, information. Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, and other superstars who have spoken at the New Orleans Investment Conference in years past would have been proud to know that so many high-quality thinkers are carrying on the generational battle to defend freedom and free markets.
Howard Dean was the token liberal at the event, and, to my surprise, he came across as reasonable and civil in defending his progressive view of the world. I had two brief chats with Dean, and found him to be quite cordial and relaxed — not at all like the Howard Dean I’ve seen on television. Maybe the moral is that if you want liberals to be civil, always be sure to have them vastly outnumbered.
Though there were many excellent speakers sharing invaluable knowledge with attendees, Brien Lundin demonstrated a flair for the dramatic by having Congressman Ron Paul give the closing speech on Sunday evening. The reception Paul received from the audience was remarkable — a long, standing ovation before he began to speak! He truly has achieved rock star status at an age when most people spend their time playing golf and hanging around the Metamucil section of their neighborhood pharmacy.
Whether you love Ron Paul or strongly disagree with some of his more controversial stances, you have to respect him for remaining true to his beliefs for decades. Rarely looking at his notes during his speech, his message was delightfully familiar: Most politicians (1) have no interest in the Constitution and (2) are robbing the average taxpayer blind. And, like William Simon before him, he says these things from the perspective of someone who works inside the inter sanctum.
I’ve known Ron Paul for thirty years, and I can tell you that he is one of the few individuals I can think of who comes across exactly the same on television, at the podium, or when having a private chat with someone. He is the ultimate unassuming, unpretentious human being. What you see is truly what you get.
About two weeks before the New Orleans event, I met with Ron Paul at his office. After an hour or so, he had to go across the street to the Capitol Building to vote on a bill, so we concluded our meeting and walked out of the Cannon Building together.
As we were saying our goodbyes outside, I caught a glimpse of a nice looking young man whose facial expression might have led one to believe that he had just seen a ghost. He quickly approached us and said, “Congressman Paul, I can’t believe it’s you. You’re my idol.”
Though he was in a hurry, Ron Paul shook hands with the excited young man, and the three of us chatted for a few minutes. He said that his name was Lafayette Newsome, and that he was a student at Arizona State University. He told us that his major was political science and that he was planning on attending law school.
But what really took me aback was when this young college student began talking about the details of various Congressional bills and expressed his frustration over the left-wing bias of many of his professors. Congressman Paul’s eyes lit up with excitement as he listened, and before departing for the Capitol Building he told Lafayette that it’s young people like him who keep him motivated.
It’s especially uplifting when the young person is African-American, because it’s the young blacks who understand and believe in liberty and the capitalist system who provide the best hope for putting an end to what Star Parker has referred to as “Uncle Sam’s Plantation” — the servitude that millions of blacks have suffered through as a courtesy of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
Segue back to New Orleans …
As I walked around the French Quarter on Sunday and watched some of the great street acts, I thought about Lafayette Newsome. Why? Because the people who put on those street acts, much like ticket scalpers at sporting events, are engaged in unfettered capitalism — and most of them are black.
On one street corner we came to a somewhat rotund, middle-aged woman by the name of Doreen Ketchens, who was alternately playing the clarinet and singing. Her talent at both skills was as good as any I have ever seen either on stage or television. Her rendition of “Stormy Weather” sent chills up my spine.
When listeners were so inclined, they put money in her basket to show their appreciation. As I watched cash flowing into the basket, it occurred to me that the sick mind of a liberal might be inclined to see it as a degrading way to make a living. But I saw it as very dignified work, and I viewed her demeanor as proud and individualistic. Plain and simple, Doreen engages in free-market transactions with consenting adults. No government bureaucrats need intervene, thank you.
It boggles the imagination to think about how the marketplace would explode with economic activity if the government would stop regulating, taxing, and giving people incentives not to work — in short, if government would just get out of the way!
The irony to all this, of course, is that ACORN is headquartered in New Orleans. Do you really believe that Doreen would be happier and better off financially if she were a community organizer rather than a street singer and musician who answers to no one? Ditto for the many other remarkably talented acrobats, comedians, singers, and musicians — most of them black — who prefer entrepreneurship in the French Quarter to government handouts as a way to get what they want in life.
I could write twenty pages on all of the fascinating street acts I saw in the French Quarter, but if you’ve ever been to New Orleans, you know precisely what I’m talking about. My advice to you is that if you missed this year’s New Orleans Investment Conference, you should start saving up and make plans to attend the granddaddy of all investment conferences in 2010.
And be sure to give yourself at least one extra day to enjoy the street acts in the French Quarter and witness capitalism in its purist form.
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Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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It was a pleasure to read this blog. It was infused with a positive tone, something a deeply jaded thinker like me needs now and then to counter balance my pessimistic mental posture. It didn’t completely cure me, however, of all the negative vibes that course through my brain; quickly jumping from one neuron to the next, until I draw numerous conclusions that, often, are completely saturated by an acidic negative-perspective that I inherited from my forefathers.
Mr. Nobody (aka me) thinks that it’s great that the street performers do what they do. But lets not kid ourselves; many of those street performers are just as talented at collecting a government welfare or SSI check as they are at entertaining the public. Some have learned from both their parents and grandparents how to get more than their share of the redistributed largess that’s doled out en masse by the federal, state, and local government.
When Mr. Nobody walks down the street, any street, in any city or town—even a one-horse-town— and I interact with people on the street; then I quickly find that socialism is so deeply rooted in America that rarely, very rarely, do I meet someone who is an unsubsidized free-market-capitalist.
Mr. Nobody can play a mean guitar, and this skill has afforded him the opportunity to meet individuals from all walks of life. I see what I see and this is the way I view it: Most of us, from the paved streets of D.C. to the dirt streets of small-town Alaska, stink with the smell of socialism. And the men like Ron Paul, refreshing exceptions to the rule, are not adequately equipped to fundamentally change the course of America. If great educators, like Milton Friedman, could not change, but only slow the socialization of America and Americans, then Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santelli and all the other well intentioned—but inadequately equipped— individuals that I’ve seen; they all don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of reversing the two-step-forward-and-one-step-back advances of socialism.
When are we going to wake up and learn that education is not enough to de-socialize America. Love is not enough. Jesus is not enough. Gandism is not enough. Praying is not enough. Tea Parties are not enough. Voting is not enough. Mad as hell is not enough. All these things make a big difference, but in the end they will never be enough.
Unfortunately, for America, blood may even not be enough. It all depends on if the forces of freedom can find a lionhearted leader before the forces of socialism do.
And when I say leader, I mean a real lionhearted man of violence. If the forces of socialism find a modern day Teddy Roosevelt to lead them, then the socialists will rip men like Robert Ringer, Glenn Beck, and Ron Paul, right out of their green tortoise shells—squash them like bugs—and use their shells as hockey pucks.