UC YAL at Nullify Now! Tour in Cincinnati

On Saturday, March 5, members of the University of Cincinnati chapter of YAL attended the Nullify Now! tour as it made its latest stop in Cincinnati.

The event, hosted by the Tenth Amendment Center and sponsored by The Foundation for a Free Society, demonstrated how nullification was actually used against the institution of slavery and focused on the importance for the people and the states to resist federal tyranny by nullifying laws that violate the constitution.

Nearly 300 people crowded into The Harriet Tubman Theater at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to hear from a great line up of speakers which included Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, Jason Rink of The Foundation for a Free Society, Jacob Huebert, author of Libertarianism Today, Jim Babka of Downsize DC, Art Thompson of The John Birch Society, and Tom Woods, author of the books Meltdown, Rollback, and Nullification, along with many other great speakers.

Also, thanks to the very generous offers of Michael Boldin and Bryce Shonka of the Tenth Amendment Center, YAL enjoyed awesome tabling space (right next to Tom Woods!) and were provided with great seats to the event as well.

In all, this was a great event and I encourage anyone near the cities listed on the remainder of the Nullify Now! tour to definitely make plans to attend.

The Tale of the Slave

CPAC 2011 was awesome!  From Ron to Rand and "conservative" boos and pro-Liberty cheers, it was an experience to remember.  One part of it, however, that I think may have been the most powerful, for me at least, was Tom Woods' speech about his new book Rollback.

During his speech he made various "Tom Woodsy" jokes and gave an entertaining summary of the book (which I must say I can't wait to read), but the most notable part of the speech had to be how he did his conclusion.  Drawing upon an allegory created by Robert Nozick in which an experience of a slave is laid out in 9 parts, he literally made me jump out of my seat in applause (an action I was definitely not alone in).  After going over the story a few times I think it is so beautiful in not so much its truth, but its simplicity.  I understood the message of the story long before I ever heard it, but putting myself in the shoes of a layman, or maybe an apathetic or unsympathetic college student who happened to be walking by a table I may or may not have set up (wink wink), I believe it would do wonders to get me thinking.  It goes as such:

"The Tale of the Slave"
from Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-292.

Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.

1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master's whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.
2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.

Tom Woods at University of Wisconsin-Madison Recap

Tom Woods addressed a large audience of 150 (mostly students!) at the University of Wisconsin this past Wednesday in an event hosted by the Wisconsin-Madison chapter of YAL.  Dr. Woods spoke at length about the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, and our unsustainable entitlement programs.  A Q&A with the audience followed where Dr. Woods fielded questions, some of them addressing what young people could do to stop the coming fiscal trainwreck.  YAL Wisconsin would like to personally thank Dr. Woods for accepting the invitation to speak at our chapter.

The event was covered by both campus papers, the Badger Herald and Daily Cardinal.

Paul Krugman and Bob Murphy to Debate Business Cycle Theory?!

From an LRC blog post by Tom Woods:

Many Austrians have tried to get Krugman to debate business cycle theory.  He’s too busy and too sophisticated to debate an Austrian, of course.  Until now.

Economist Robert Murphy has come up with a clever way to make this happen.  Through a website called The Point, people can pledge an amount of money to make the debate happen.  Not one cent is charged to them until it does happen.  The money will go to a charity for the hungry in New York.  So if it hits, say, $100,000, Krugman will have to explain why getting $100,000 to New York’s hungry isn’t worth one hour of his time.  [I added the Krugman and Murphy hyperlinks.]