I borrowed this photo from Chetly Zarko from OutsideLansing.com.
I received the Modern Day Sam Adams award April 18 in Chicago. Following is a transcript of my speech.
I am deeply honored, and indeed deeply humbled, to be with the other award winners this evening, and to be introduced by Paul Jacob, a true hero of liberty.
I’m also very grateful to the Sam Adams Alliance for recognizing the sort of regional activism where the crucial battles for liberty are fought.
If you look at Congress, you’ll notice that practically every member of Congress and practically all of their staffers came up the ranks in state and local politics. And the ideas that they reflect in Washington are to a large degree the ideas that they learned back in their home towns.
The regional level is where we can go to events, attend meetings, make phone calls, develop long-term relationships with real people, not just policy wonks, and build a movement for liberty.
So I do think that we as a freedom movement need to do more to support this sort of free market activism as illustrated by my fellow award winners.
The sort of work done by people in my home state like Jon Caldara and Dave Kopel and the Independence Institute.
Paul Hsieh of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine.
Amanda Teresi and the whole crew of Liberty On the Rocks.
Joe Weaver who provides many of us technical support, who is sitting at this table, or at the back at the technical desk, in this very room.
People like Dave Williams and the Gadsden Society.
People like Michael Sandoval and Thomas James and the entire crew of the People’s Press Collective.
People like Betty Evans and Diana Hsieh of Front Range Objectivism.
Individuals who speak and write, such as Brian Schwartz, Linda Gorman, Earl Allen, and my own father, Linn.
People who are concerned with free-market economics, like Ken Riggs, Penn Pfiffner, and Paul Prentice.
And of course my ever-supportive wife, Jennifer.
I am here largely because of the support of their shoulders.
So together we can Free Colorado, and we can free our great nation. Thank you.