I went to FreedomFest 2022 in Las Vegas, NV. It was held at the Mirage. It ran from July 13th through the 16th, 2022. There were a huge number of sessions. I attended several, and unlike last time, I took notes for most of the sessions I attended. I also attended two films shown as part of the Anthem Film Festival, which runs concurrently with FreedomFest.

FreedomFest 2022 set an attendance record of roughly 4400 people.

On the drive out and back, I met with several people from Glibertarians and some H&R refugees who did not come over to Glibertarians. It was great meeting everyone. The last stop on my trip was at SP’s memorial service. I’m saddened that she has passed, but it was a fitting and good service. RIP SP.

This will be the first in a series of articles. I have a lot of notes. I will break up my FreedomFest coverage into one article for each day.

I missed several of the earlier sessions on the first day. The first sessions I attended were the big talks on the main stage starting at 4:30 PM. These talks were ten to fifteen minutes each.

Spike Cohen

Spike Cohen went first at 4:30 PM. The title of his talk was “Turning the Tide Towards Liberty.” His idea is to create a culture of liberty by showing people liberty works. To do that, he started an organization called You Are The Power.

You Are The Power sounds to me like an attempt at community organizing using liberty and libertarian principles as a basis. The idea behind the group is to find problems at a local level which people across the political spectrum agree are a problem. You use that to build rapport with people and introduce liberty based solutions.

An example Spike Cohen brought up involved Joshua Rohrer and his service dog in Gastonia, NC. You Are The Power’s involvement with Rohrer is mentioned on their website under the “Accomplishments” section. Unfortunately, there is no direct link that I can find.

Gastonia, NC police arrested Rohrer on a panhandling charge. Rohrer was also charged with resisting arrest. The police tased Rohrer’s service dog. The service dog fled the scene and died when a car hit the dog.

Cohen said the first step in assisting Rohrer was to get the police’s body cam footage released to the public. Rohrer, his attorney, and a few others outside law enforcement had seen the video, but the video was not public. At the time of FreedomFest, the police had not released the body cam footage but the courts had dismissed the panhandling charge.

Since FreedomFest, in early August 2022, the police released the body cam footage after a NC state court ordered them to release the footage. The police officers involved won’t be charged.

Tuttle Twins

New Tuttle Twins Book

Connor Boyack and Daniel Harmon went next to talk about the Tuttle Twins. Connor Boyack is the author of the books. Daniel Harmon created a Tuttle Twins TV show.

Boyack told us how being mentioned on CNN led to a huge increase in book sales. He also talked about a new Tuttle Twins history book, which was available for sale at the book store in the exhibition hall. I bought a copy.

Daniel Harmon introduced the Tuttle Twins TV show. The show centers around two children learning history from their grandmother. Their grandmother owns a time travelling scooter, which she uses to take the children to various points in history. He showed part of one episode. I enjoyed the clip. You can view full episodes on Youtube.

Jenny Beth Martin

Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots spoke next. The only notes I have on her talk is that the last Supreme Court term was the topic and that she called it a huge rollback of the administrative state. I don’t remember anything else of her talk.

Magatte Wade

Magatte Wade spoke about how liberty and free market capitalism can help Africa. She opened up her talk with a dig against BLM stating they aren’t serious about Black lives because they do not care about Africa. She talked about examples of how free market and less government interface helped Africans. Rwanda has engaged in economic reform and is now one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. The Central African Republic now has Bitcoin as legal tender.

She also said the Left thinks they have a monopoly on care and they are wrong. She talked about the corrosive effects the Left’s attempts to help have on Africans. She has worked against these effects by teaching and mentoring African women. She mentioned one woman who said after a teaching and mentoring session, “I now know that I’m not inferior.”

While working on this post, I found an interview she did with Jordan Peterson. She goes more in depth about some things she brought up at her FreedomFest talk.

Jeffrey Hazlett

Jeffrey Hazlett of the C-Suite Network spoke next. I only have two things in my notes about his talk.

One is that he had to pick up Ralph Nader for some event. Hazlett, inspired by Nader’s car safety advocacy, picked Nader up in a 1976 Ford Pinto. Nader refused to get into the car.

The other story involved Hazlett meeting his boyhood hero, Jacques Cousteau. At the meeting Cousteau told him about a near-death experience while SCUBA diving. Cousteau’s diving partner saved him. Cousteau told Hazlett to not be “scared when you are in good company.”

Steve Forbes

Steve Forbes then gave a talk on inflation.

Forbes talked about causes of inflation. He talked about how increasing the money supply drives down the value of money. He also talked about non-monetary causes. He states that inflation from these non-monetary events tends to end quickly after the event ends. For inflation from non-monetary events, the best thing the government can do is to leave things alone. Otherwise, the government will drag out the inflation. He reminded the crowd that government takes wealth, it does not create wealth. Also, while the government cannot create wealth, government can create an environment conducive to creating wealth.

Forbes added that inflation does more than drive down the value of money. Inflation, according to Forbes, destroys trust and undermines social cohesion. An inflationary environment encourages speculation and short term time preference.

Forbes ended his talk with by reiterating his support for the gold standard.

Treasure Investment Corporation

Michael Shepard and Mark Russo from the Treasure Investment Corporation presented the unveiling of the world’s largest cast silver sculpture: Michelangelo’s Pieta. The sculpture contains more then 18,000 ounces of silver.

You can see the whole talk and the unveiling here.

Jeremy Cordon

I did not ask for a New Hampshire Goldback. It’s what the person at the booth gave me.

Jeremy Cordon is the founder of Goldback. He went on earlier than scheduled. Dog the Bounty Hunter was supposed to speak before Cordon, but had to cancel due to a medical emergency.

Cordon talked about sound money and a practical sound money. One of the problems with gold based currencies is that it is difficult to have coins for practical day-to-day purchases. Modern technology has a solution allowing layering tiny amounts of gold. He gave an overview of how Goldbacks are made. I didn’t take notes on these details.

He claims Goldbacks have never been counterfeited due to the technology behind Goldbacks. I suspect the real reason is that they are too small of a target.

All attendees received a coupon for a free Goldback. The coupon was redeemable at the Goldback booth in the FreedomFest exhibition hall. I redeemed the coupon.

Cordon, in his wrap-up, said that Wyoming Goldbacks are coming soon.

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald spoke on the evolution of independent journalism.

Early in his talk, Greenwald made a joke about not having gone to the Columbia School of Journalism. He was a lawyer and writing on blogspot was his hobby.

Greenwald talked about the early days of blogging. Technological changes made it easy to spread information. As blogging spread, Greenwald thinks bloggers were co-opted by existing media outlets. The outlets offered the bloggers jobs.

Now we have podcasts and Twitter. Greenwald stated he thinks Joe Rogan is the most influential media person since he was about 15 million viewers.

Greenwald also talked about the NY Post’s coverage of Hunter Biden. He said the “Russian Disinformation” story came from the CIA.

Greenwald brought up Trump and Parler. Parler was at one point of the most popular apps out there, and then not. The Democrats, according to Greenwald, leaned on Google and Apple to kill Parler.

Greenwald wrapped up by saying that the government is pushing censorship. His final point is that we need to be able to communicate freely in order to persuade others.

Fini

Those were all the first day talks that I attended. The next part will cover Day Two of FreedomFest 2022. The second day was a big day with talks on school choice, anti-aging, a film on Jimmy Lai, a short film on the Berlin Wall, and more.

My FreedomFest book haul. All except the John Cleese book were purchased over the course of the conference from the bookstore in the exhibition hall. The John Cleese book I received for attending a paid event with John Cleese.