fighters and what is happening with hamas? there would be no hamas of israel was not so greedy and stole the palestinian land. host: houston, texas. you are next. caller: thank you for taking my call. i am calling on the yes line that it might -- that my views have changed about higher education. i have a bachelors in science of mechanical engineering from a major university in louisiana. i grew up in a time of change of civil rights and immigration and of course the vietnam war.

the thing i've noticed about all of this and the discussions -- the form of freedom of speech -- i guarantee you it was not allowed in my high school or college i went to.

>> we're going to leave this. as we take you life to the three day libertarian convention being held at the washington hilton. independent presidential candidate robert f. kennedy jr. speaking to convention delegates today. >> i'm going to speak about the united states constitution and particularly, the bill of rights. a lot of people don't realize at the articles of the constitution don't grant citizens any rights or freedoms whatsoever. that was real problem to some of the founding fathers. in particular to george mason. mason wrote a pamphlet during the convention that opposed the new government. that pamphlet was so convincing that the other framers of the constitution felt that it was too much of a hazard. that the constitution was in

danger not being ratified. that's when james madison came to the rescue, drafting the bill of rights. the first ten amendments of the united states constitution. originally, madison felt that the bill of rights was unnecessary because it was obvious to him that the government couldn't exert powers that the constitution had not assigned to it. everybody in this hall knows, governments don't like to limit themselves. instead, they are -- [ applause ] they are constantly moving to exert and appropriate new powers. the patriots in 1791 vividly remembered the british tyranny and they knew that every power that a government takes it will never voluntarily relinquish.

every power the government take it will ultimately abuse the possible. that's why the delegates at the constitution convention bought a constitution that enumerated government powers nowhere limit them. that's when george mason bill of rights of enshrined. the main articles of the constitution enumerate what the government can do, bill of rights is the opposite. it enumerates what the government cannot do. it's the bill of rights that earned america the reputation as a land of liberty. the problem is the bill of rights is only a document. it doesn't have any magical powers to force government officials to respect it. i'm sorry to say that again and again, throughout our history, our leaders have failed to respect it. again and again --

[ applause ] again and again, if cited some pretext, this has been a volunteer, violate our constitutional rights. there's always a reason why right now, the rights are inconvenience that we can't afford. it was the red scare in the 1920's. it was john mccarthy in the 1950's. it was the vietnam war protesters in the 1960's. was war on drug in the 1970's. it was the war on terror after 2001 and most recently, it was the covid pandemic. may be a brain worm ate that part of my memory. [ laughter ] i don't recall any part of the

united states constitution whether it's an exemption for pandemics. [ applause ] in fact, there's not one of the amendments of the bill of rights preamable except on officials choose to declare a public health emergency. they all say very simply, the government shall not infringe on these rights no matter what. if the government can take them away at will, then they're not rights at all. they are really just privileges that are granted revoked by an authority. is that the kind of country that you want to live in? >> no! >> every time they suspend rights, then pretend to give them back again, they establish a dangerous precedent. the rights they give back are never quite as strong as the ones that they took away.

obviously, it's not the piece of paper called the bill of rights that protects our freedoms. we have to actually believe in it. our leaders have to believe it with sufficient loyalty to counter balance the temptations of power. even more importantly our citizens have to believe that their rights so loyally, that they stand up for them even when it means taking a personal risk. after all the constitution isn't just a legal document. it's also an inspirational document. that's why if you treasure your freedom, you better elect leaders who are inspired by it who will wheeled it to inspire others. leaders who believe in freedoms and hold the bill of rights in reverence. [ applause ]

i'm sorry to say, neither president trump or president biden pass this critical examination. neither of them upheld the constitution when it really counted. let's start with president trump. i think he had the right instinct when he came into office. he was initially very reluctant to impose lockdowns. we got rolled by bureaucrats. he caved in many of the most fundamental rights disappeared overnight. it all started with the social media. the mainstream media without any government prompting, begins speech at the part of government's official orthodoxy. it's critical to the survival of

any democracy that the free press maintains a posture of fierce skepticism toward government pronouncements and towards -- [ applause ] and towards larger operations of government and political and economic and corporate power. suddenly, america's free press was no longer speaking truth to power. instead, it made itself a vessel for government propaganda. it began suppressing the voices of the dissents silencing and gaslighting the powerless. hamilton, madison and adams said they put the first amendment and put the right of free expression into the first amendment because all of the other rights dependedon it. a government that has the capacity to silence its critics

has license for any kind of atrocities. the consistent theme in all of those works was the presumption that censorship of speech was always wrong. it was always the first on the slippery slope towards tyranny and totaltarianism. there's no time when we look back at history and we say that the people who were censuring speech were the good guys. [ applause ] they're always the bad guys. the framers didn't write the first amendment to protect,

convenient or desirable speech. they wrote it to protect the kind of feature that nobody wants to hear. [ applause ] they wrote it to protect incendiary speech. they wrote it to protect misinformation and disinformation and malinformation and even lies. all of those are protected by the first amendment. there were no exceptions. the constitution does have exemptions towards resurrections or financial crisis same for pandemics. the framers wrote the constitution for hard times, during the american civil war, the confederate states were sending up agents provocateurs.

this was a war that almost -- for three years out, nobody had any idea whether the united states of america would exist after the war was over. it was even money on it. there were 659,000 americans who died during that war. it's the equivalent of 7.2 million today. lincoln and northern military knew who these agents were as soon as they entered the cities. they began arresting them. before they can give these speeches. the chief justice of the supreme court said you can't do that. that is assault against free speech and habeas corpus. he said even the life the nation at stake and hundreds of thousands of lives at stake, you

cannot suppress our constitution. it is above everything. but the moment -- they wrote it for hard times. they didn't write it for easy times. they wrote it, united states bill of rights was written for the most difficult times and no matter how difficult they are, they are indomable. the moment that the white house officials satisfied themselves that the american people will accept censorship by end of february 2020, they took hammer and tongs to the rest of the constitution. president trump allowed his health regulators to mandate science-free social distancing. which undermined our first amendment rights to freedom of assembly. we could no longer peacefully gather.

[ applause ] that was the first two legs of the first amendment, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech. they went after the third leg of the first amendment. which is freedom of worship. they closed every church in this country for a year. with no due process with no scientific citation. no public hearings, no notice and comment rule making and no environmental impact statements. all of the process of democracy that i've been suing companies and governments for 40 years because they forgot to do one of those things. all of our constitutional rights were plowed under. they closed all the churches. they kept open the wal-marts and liquor stores. the fifth amendment says no one shall be deprived a life,

liberty of property unless convicted of a crime. if president trump shut down 3.3 million businesses. president trump said he was going to run america like a business. he came in and he gave the keys to all our businesses to a 50-year bureaucrat who never been elected to anything and had no accountability. he closed down 3.3 million businesses in violation of the fifth amendment. with the lockdowns, mask mandates. president trump presided over the greatest restriction on individual liberties this country has ever known. [ applause ] he didn't stand up for the constitution when it really mattered.

next, president trump beloved operation war speed shut down jury trials or any corporation that was involved in covid counter measures. the seventh amendment said no american shall be denied right of a trial for a jury of his peers in cases of controversies exceeding $25. there is no pandemic exception. by the way, the framers knew all about pandemics. there were two pandemics during the revolutionary war. one that decimated armies virginia. the other that destroyed for a long time, the army of new england at the very time when we benedict arnold army had conquered montreal. they gone in inner city and taken away from the british. they owned it. they had to withdraw because they did not have the troops to

defend it because of the smallpox. otherwise, canada today will be part of the united states. all of the framers knew that. between the end of the war the revolutionary war, the ratification of the bill of rights in 1791, there were pandemics in every city in our country. laws in philadelphia, new york, north carolina, south carolina, all the major cities had epidemics, killed tens of thousands of people. almost all of the framers had family members or friends who died in those pandemics. yet, they did not put a pandemic exemption in the united states constitution.

they can make anything they want without any accountability. the trump white house after the fourth amendment prohibition, against warrantless searches and seizures with this surveillance system obliterated our rights to privacy in this country. the only amendment that they did not come under attack during the covid pandemic was the second amendment. many americans believe that the reason for that is because we have a second amendment. [ applause ] incidentally, president trump also assaulted the first amendment, failed to defend press freedom when he continued

president obama's prosecution of julian assange. [ applause ] assange should be -- [ applause ] assange should be celebrated as a hero. [ applause ] for doing exactly what journalists are supposed to do, which is to expose government corruption. we shouldn't be putting him in prison. we should have a monument to him

here in washington d.c. [ applause ] it's the same is true for edward snowden. who exposed illegal spying by the nsa and congress went ahead and passed legislation because of the findings of edward snowden if he hadn't told us, we wouldn't know about it. he's a hero not a criminal. [ applause ] i'm going to tell you what i'm going to do. i'm going to do what president trump should have done. on my first day in office, i'm going to pardon edward snowden and i'm going to drop charges, all charges against julian assange. [ applause ]

i'm curious how president trump is going to defend his attacks on the constitution when i meet him on the debating stage. if i get to debate in front of you, he declined. at some point, i hope that he has the courage to stand up there so we can all talk about these issues to make sure that these assaults on our constitution never, ever happen again. we need to have a civics lesson or the american people to make sure this is never repeated. [ applause ]

when president trump left office, the assault on the constitution intensified. president biden violated a freedom so fundamental that james madison didn't think to put it in the bill of rights. he never imagined that the government could mandate medical procedures to unwilling americans in violation of bodily autonomy. [ applause ] that's what happened during the pandemic. a program of coercion and information chaos and information control. that prevented the public from making fully informed choices. that wasn't the worse of it. he put the power of his office behind the assault of the one freedom upon which all other freedoms rely.

the freedom of the press. we now know from the twitter files from the discovery in the murphy vs. biden case and my case kennedy vs. biden, at 37 hours, after he took the oath of office, president biden was colluding with the fbi to coerce the social media sites, google, twitter, facebook, youtube, instagram, to open portals to allow the federal agencies to sensor political speech of americans. the fbi opened this portal to the cia, and nih, i.r.s., to the cdc that the d.h.s. and about half dozen other agencies. in an obscene orgy of federal

censorship so it's unprecedented in the american experience. [ applause ] it started with what they called medical misinformation. it wasn't even misinformation. there's a dialogue between facebook and the white house at that time. in which facebook is saying a lot of this information, including for me, the stuff that they were suppressing is actually accurate. the white house coined a new name, a new word called mal-information. which is information that is factually accurate but it's nevertheless, inconvenient the government authority. pretty soon and entire censorship complex had grown up

which is billion dollars spent that involved the government agency, universities, ngo's and tech companies. they started with medical misinformation. they widen that to all kinds of political issues including censorship about criticism of war in ukraine and other government programs. going back to at least the fisa act under president george w. bush, democrats and republican administrations have taken turns assaulting our constitutional rights and freedoms. that's why you joined the libertarian party. [ applause ] well, i stand with you in valuing personal liberty. i promise you that when i'm president, i'm going to protect your right to peek freely.

i'm going to protect your right to assemble peacefully. i will protect your freedom to worship. i will protect your right to keep and bear arms. i will protect your right to a trial before jury. i will protect your privacy against unreasonable searches and seizures. i will protect your private property and your right to operate a business. that's not all. two of the most overlooked amendments in the bill of rights are 9th and 10th. [ applause ] those amendments say that just because we've listed all of those rights by name, doesn't mean that those are all the

rights that you have. that any power they say, everything else a right, any power that is explicitly given to the federal government, remains with the individual or the states. i will always protect those rights. [ applause ] as i mentioned before, the constitution is more than a legal document. it's meant to inspire us. it's the most fundamental moral truths of human conduct. it reminds us of the essential proposition that only under a system which maximize the personal freedoms that god intended for us when he gave us free will. can we achieve our potential for creativity, for prosperity, the ultimate elevation of the human spirit. the constitution embodies the very soul of our nation as first

invoked in the declaration of independence. let me read you now is most famous passage comes in the second paragraph. we hold these truths to be self-evident. all men are created equal. they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable right. among these are the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. i get goose bumps when i read those words. those words changed the world forever. [ applause ] the bill of rights endowed them with a legal existence and a legal reality. we need to take them further. some people will argue that it's fine for social media platforms to sensor speech. after all they are private companies and they can do as they please. well, that argument falls apart

when the government is bribing, threatening and controlling them to censure speech. [ applause ] it also falls apart if they have monopolistic control over the public space. aside, they do have a legal right to censure. it is legally acceptable. is it morally acceptable? is it socially acceptable? it shouldn't be. in an authoritarian country like china or iran, censorship is socially acceptable. people take it for granted. it's in the air they breathe. in this country, to the extent that we still cherish the spirit of our founders, the bill of rights, declaration of independence, we do not take it for granted.

instead, we greet censorship outrage. we greet it with indignation. we greet it with contempt. we fiercely reject it. if the day comes when we do not our dissent into tyranny is inevitable. [ applause ] what disturbed me most during the pandemic was not what the government was trying to do what it succeeded in doing, it was really how the public complied. now, except the people in this room. [ applause ] i got to tell you something. when i was researching

dr. fauci, i did a chapter on these old cia programs at mk ultra. these were the mk stands for mind control. they were series of experiments that the cia did through operation blue bird and operation artichoke. designed to manipulate human behavior, individual behavior through the use of hypnosis through psychiatric drugs, through noise, torture, through information, confusion. experiments how to manipulate entire societies in order to impose control from above. i think we're doing all these weird experiments and all came out in 1973, between 1973 and

1977. one of the famous experiments that i was able to connect to was the [ indiscernible ] experiment. it was part of this program. it was conducted by a young associate professor at yale university who recruited about 70 people from every walk of life, blacks, whites, teachers, students, business, people, labors. he would put the subjects on a chair in one room. they had a dial on the table in front of them. they were told that dial was applying a shock an electric shock to a subject who sat in the other room who was a confederate. he was an actor. he pretend to be tied to a chair. when the electricity went off, he would scream. he would see what level it was and scream appropriately and

struggle and plead and beg and cry. many of the subjects when they were told to do it, the doctor would stand behind them with the white lab uniform on. he'd say turn it off, down and higher and turn it down and turn it higher. many of the subjects were weeping. they were pleading with him. don't make me turn it up more. when he told them to turn it up, they did so anyway. the subjects who he recruited, turned it up to 250 volts where it was marked potentially fatal. what millgram concluded, most people, 60% of people would allow people in authority to overwhelm and subvert their most

closely held values. they all knew it was wrong. they did it because they were told to do it. the good news is that 33% of us people stood up and walked out the room. [ applause ] i think that those with libertarians. those are the people in this room. most americans accepted the orthodoxy and we watched this happening with this may. we saw families separated and fighting with each other. you all knew people who's relationships changed because of your skepticism and their feeling of safety when they were consumed in that orthodoxy. now things are changing. tens of millions of americans

are waking up to the fact that they were lied to. to the fact that they were manipulated and they were gaslit. except for a narrow elite still promoting it. main in the media. americans have lost all trust in our public institutions. about two months ago, the cdc made an official recommendation for the ninth covid booster. 90% of americans are saying we're not going to do it. do you want a government that is telling you can't go to work unless you submit to that? that's what they did to us two years ago. now, most americans are

realizing are losing their faith in those institutions and with good reason. i'm going to restore faith in those institutions. i'm not going to do it by telling people you ought to be censored, you ought to believe in. i'm going to do it by making them tell the truth and giving us good signs and changing the corrupt cultures that have put them under the control of corporations. the president of the united states is more than just a legal authority. occupying the bully pulpit. he sets an example for the nation. i want to tell you the kind of example that i'm going to set for america. yes, i'm going to uphold the constitution and protect every freedom in the bill of rights. i will strive to represent the principle that animates those freedoms. i believe it's the same principle that lies at the heart of libertarian philosophy. it's a principle of respect. it is the respect for each

individual at the full and sovereign being. [ applause ] think about it. censorship, for example, is just another form of disrespect. i'm going to decide which kind of information you should and shouldn't hear. i'm going to protect you from dangerous thoughts. i'm going to protect you from subversion of information. it's patronizing. all of our cherished rights and respect for the individual, that's why we uphold equality under the law. no one is to be locked up arbitrarily. no one needs to be deprived. i'm happy to talk afterwards. no one is to be deprived of their property. no one should be subjected to

humiliating searches without reasonable suspicion of having committed a crime. no one should be prevented from worshiping god and the matter that they believe. why is that? i respect your right to explore and define your own relationship with god. no one is coerced into submitting to unwanted medical procedures. no one is required to participate against their will in scientific experiments. each person is trusted with the responsibility to bear arms. this is the spiritual principle. prior to the constitution. all men are created equal. it originally applied just to property owners and to white men

and to all men and to women. today we understand that right to include every human being. my promise to you is that as president, i will uphold the principle and respect for each human being as an equal before god an equal before the law. that's why my campaign, never paints the opponents as monsters. i will never weaponize the justice system. the federal agencies like the i.r.s., fbi, or the cia or the secret service. against my political adversaries. everyone is equal under the law. no special favors for the big banks, corporations. no more regulations to destroy small businesses. no more subsidies.

no more corporate welfare. no more surveillance of private citizens. no more propaganda. no more secrecy and no more lies. my first day of office after pardoning snowden and assange, i'm going to issue an executive order forbidding the national security agency or any of the intelligence agencies from propagandizing the american people. i'm going to issue an executive order against any federal employee from collaborating with media or social media to sensor americans. i'm going to issue an executive order that any federal official who lies to the american people in conjunction with its official

duties will immediately be fired. [ applause ] let me add that respect for the sanctity of the sovereign individual knows national boundaries. murder is not okay anywhere, any form. that is why i will end the forever wars. i will end the regime change wars the wars that are bankrupted our nation and ruined our reputation abroad. finally, i want to say one about authority. i don't know what libertarian philosophy says about it p i believe in a healthy respect for authority. however, authority must be earned. not forced. we must not confuse respect for fear. this has been the mistake of american foreign policy.

i grew up in an era when people around the world were hungry for american leadership. they understood the difference between leadership and bullying. that's what republicans and democrats forgotten. other nations may fear us today. but they no longer respect us. why is that? because we've violented our own principles of freedom and democracy. we have forbidded our moral authority because we have supported dictators and corrupt regimes and subverted democracy around the globe. just as we have lost respect globally, we've also lost our own. we lost respect for ourselves. american children overwhelmingly say they are not proud to be americans. it was a poll that came out in 2013 in which americans under

the age of 35 were asked are you proud of the united states of america. 85% said no. the same poll taken five months ago, 18% said yes. somehow, in the administration last two presidents, this young generation has completely lost faith in our country and they lost hope in their own futures. now is the time to restore that hope, that admiration, that pride and respect. the only way to do that is to return to the founding spirit of air country. to return to the spirit that animated the declaration of independence and the bill of rights. if we're faithful to those, we will regain our pride as a nation. regain our prosperity. we'll regain the respect to the world and we'll regain our self-respect. we gain self-esteem by doing esteemable things.

that means complying with our own constitution above all. in the summer of 2020, i traveled -- this was at the height of the pandemic -- i traveled to berlin to speak a group of about 1.3 million people from all over europe in a peaceful demonstration. nbc film crew came up to me during that convocation. they asked me why i wasn't wearing a mask. which nobody was except for the nbc film crew. they said wasn't i scared of dying of covid? i said to them, there's a lot worse things than dying. they said to me, like what? like living like a slave. [ applause ] like having my children grow up

in an america where the bill of rights is just an empty piece of paper. in 1776 it was a generation of americans that were willing to sacrifice their lives, their jobs, their property, their fortunes to give us this bill of rights. upwards of 20,000 of them died to give us this gift. we managed to keep it for two centuries. then, in eight short years, during the administration of two presidents, we gave it all away without putting up a fight. thomas jefferson said that the tree of liberty has to be awarded with the blood of every generation. we don't have to die to preserve our bill of rights. we have to be willing to make sacrifices. the sacrifices were being asked to make -- compared what they

made in 1776. we're being asked to endure the scolding of the public, the defamation of the press, the antipathy of our government. we all need to be able to put self-interest aside if we're going to maintain these rights for future generations. all of you who come here for the libertarian party. you disagree with many things. many of you don't agree with me on a lot of stuff, we all agree on one thing. we have to fight without the bill of rights. we have nothing in this country. we all need to be united because there are a lot of people out there that don't understand what america supposed to look like. the people in this convocation do. our public officials have forgotten.

it's time that we remind them. we can only do that by electing leaders who understand the necessity, personal sacrifices to preserve the bill of rights. that's the path restoring our national greatness. that will be my promise to you as president of the united states. thank you very much. god bless you. [ applause ]

>> our live coverage of the libertarian party natial convention in washington d.c. continues later today at 6:30 p.m. eastern. libertarian party vice presidential candidates will mt. at 8:00 p.m., the winning libertarian p vice presidential wl participate in the debate. watch live coverage here on c-span. >> tune into the 2024 national political convention. starting with the republican event in milwaukee. next up, catch the democrats as they convene in chicago. stay connected to c-span for uninterrupted of democracy at work. watch the republican and democratic national conventions

live this summer on c-span. c-span now and free mobile video app and online c-span.org. powered by cable. >> on saturday president biden will be in new york to give the commencement address at west point. it will be third address at the academy. his first as commander-in-chief. watch live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. or online at c-span.org. c-span is yo unfiltered view of government. including media com. >> at media com, we believe that what you see here or way out in the middle of anyway, you should have access to fast, reliable