Part Two, which covers Day Two of FreedomFest 2022 and includes a pointer to coverage of Day One.

Day Three, Friday, July 15th, 2022, started out with Covid related presentations. Maj Toure had two talks. Rand Paul spoke on the main stage. It was reason day. Justin Amash and John Cleese rounded out the day.

Zuby

Zuby gave a brief presentation on the main stage about his thoughts on the Pandemic response. Zuby talked about each of his tweets. I don’t remember him elaborating on many. He elaborated a bit on his tweet about conspiracy theorists that they are often experts unlike the “experts” trying to debunk conspiracy theorists. He talked a bit about virtue signaling, which was not mentioned in his series of tweets, but I don’t have in my notes details of what he said about virtue signaling.

Del Bigtree

Del Bigtree of The HighWire explained why certain elements of the US Federal government were guilty of crimes against humanity due to their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Bigtree spoke so fast that I wondered if he thought he was trying out for an auctioneer job. I didn’t try to keep up with him and have only a few notes of what he said.

He pointed out that if HCQ was an effective treatment for COVID-19, it would push the COVID-19 vaccines aside. Bigtree said one widely quoted study used too high doses of HCQ, so it was set up to fail.

He talked about Pierre Kory’s work in coming up with treatment protocols for COVID-19.

Maj Toure

Maj Toure gave a short presentation on how to expand the liberty movement in urban areas.

Step One is Empathy. Listen and build rapport. School Choice and the War on Drugs are good areas as many people can agree that there are problems with schooling and the War on Drugs.

Toure pointed out that empathy is not pandering. Pandering is Nancy Pelosi kneeling.

Step Two is Facts. Know what is true and do not spread myths. As an example, he pointed out that Black fathers in his neighborhood in North Philly are involved in their children’s lives.

Step Three is Solutions. Education and Freedom of Choice are key.

reason Big Tech Panel

Some folks from reason had a panel on Big Tech versus Big Government. The panel members were Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Robby Soave, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman.

Robby Soave started talking about conservative concerns about a right to speak online. Soave mentioned that he had a video “moderated”. The video included footage of Donald Trump. Soave thinks that because he did not call out Donald Trump, the video was “moderated”. I do not have in my notes what platform this video was on, or what exactly “moderated” means. Soave says that companies are operating at the behest of government, and conservatives should direct their anger at government.

Nick Gillespie said that if the Biden Administration can lean on social media companies to moderate or censor content, what can the next administration do? He says government should not be involved in private companies’ speech.

Peter Suderman noted that in 2020, Facebook lost users to TikTok.

This lead to Elizabeth Nolan Brown wondering what the security concerns with TikTok are. She thinks TikTok as a security threat is overblown. The Chinese have user names, passwords, and meta data. She says, “What could China do with this?”

The woman sitting next to me said to me, “She’s a real clown isn’t she?” I said, “Yes, yes she is.”

Suderman started talking about state level laws on prohibiting social media censorship (Florida for example). Gillespie thinks these laws are Kabuki theater. Gillespie added that social media has been great for conservatives.

Suderman said something related to regulatory capture. My notes aren’t clear here. Robby Soave added that mainstream media outlets tend to hate social media because of their lower barriers to entry. I think the two points were related, but my notes aren’t clear here.

Zhittya

Dr. Jack Jacobs of Zhittya gave a brief presentation on a new treatment for Parkinson’s. Zhittya is working with a drug called FGF-1, which stimulates angiogenesis. It can restore blood vessels and thus blood flow.

Zhittya is in human trials of the drug on Parkinson’s Disease patients. It showing promise. Dr. Jacobs showed before and after videos of Parkinson’s Disease patients going through motor skills tests. All of them showed improvement.

Zhittya is in the planning stages for trials for stroke patients.

James O’Keefe

James O’Keefe gave a short talk about what has gone on over the last year at Project Veritas.

He says that the New York Times defamation case involving Minnesota ballot harvesting is in discovery.

He talked about Project Veritas’ twitter expose, and showed a video of him chasing after one of the twitter employees featured in the expose. He showed a longer version of this video. O’Keefe said that the two restaurant owners shown in the linked video are fans of Project Veritas, which is why they acted as they did.

Rand Paul

Before lunch, Mark Skousen interviewed Rand Paul. The interview was punctuated with videos of Paul confronting people. I’ll link to some videos similar to or possibly the ones shown as the only notes I have are whom Paul was grilling.

The first was Paul vs. Anthony Fauci. Paul pointed out that he has received more death threats than Anthony Fauci, and that Fauci thinks he can’t be criticized.

Then we saw a clip of Paul vs. Mayorkas about the proposed government misinformation board. This turned into a talk about the Covid vaccine where Paul says there is no evidence of efficacy in kids.

Next was Paul vs. Levine. Paul called transitioning children child abuse and that Paul doesn’t care what adults do.

The final part started with Paul vs. Stephanapolis. I can’t read my handwriting beyond that this part was about election fraud and that Paul thinks volunteering as a poll watcher is an easy and effective thing to do to head off fraud.

Maj Toure’s Black Guns Matter Workshop

This was the second of two gun related talks I attended Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, I have no notes on the first of the two, and this article is going to be quite long with what I do have notes on, so I’m not going to try to dredge anything out of my memory about that first one.

Maj Toure was supposed to run a workshop based on his de-escalation classes he teaches for the Solutionary Center. Unfortunately, he had forgotten his laptop with the slides for the class. So he decided to turn the workshop into a Q&A session. Here are some, but not all, of the questions and answers.

Should you order an intruder who is in your house to leave, and therefore announce your position?

Toure thinks it doesn’t matter if you announce your position or not when there is an intruder in your house. The important thing, in Toure’s mind, is that you have a plan to get you and your family into a defensible position with your weapons. Your family needs to know this plan and be able to execute it. Once you execute this plan, if you want to yell at the intruder to leave, do it. If you don’t want to, don’t. Toure says that he will shout an order to leave at the intruder.

How do you promote liberty to blacks, especially if you are white?

I think the person that asked this question was white. Toure’s response was to find a way to build rapport. His example was during the masking insanity, if you saw a person not wearing a mask, you could use this as an opening to talk to the person.

What size of gun and caliber is best?

Toure started out by describing the different factors in picking a caliber. Stopping power, cost, weight. He also talked about recoil and how the weight of a gun affects felt recoil. Toure said the best gun and caliber are a personal choice. He suggests for a gun that people try several out to see what feels best to them. For caliber, he said people should weigh the different trade-offs. Toure likes 9mm because 9mm best balances stopping power and cost for him. He emphasized that this is a personal choice one takes after weighing the different factors.

How do you tell the difference between police executing a no-knock raid and a home invasion robbery?

A man who claimed to be a retired police officer asked this question. Toure answered with, “You don’t”. Toure added that he thinks no-knock raids should be banned. The questioner agreed.

Toure added that he thinks anyone kicking in his door is a threat. The important thing is to have a plan and practice the plan.

Lily Tang Williams

In the evening, Lily Tang Williams, at the time a candidate for US Congress for New Hampshire, gave a brief talk about how America has turned into something like the Communist China that she left.

She grew up in Communist China. Williams came to the USA in 1988 with little money, a job offer, and little English. She took advantage of the opportunities and freedom in America to build up a new life.

She called the radical Left racists. She pointed out their “My body, my choice” is quite limited. She drew parallels between lockdowns in Australia and lockdowns in China.

Justin Amash

Justin Amash opened his brief talk with “Congress is a lot worse than you think it is.”

Amash said every Speaker of the House during his time in Congress was horrible, but John Boehner was the best. One of the reasons, is that Boehner would allow floor amendments to spending bills to come up for a vote before the full house. Amash and others would take advantage of this, even though many of their amendments would fail. Paul Ryan ended this practice. When Paul Ryan was Speaker, any amendment to a spending bill had to be approved by House leadership in private before coming up for a vote. This means many amendments were killed. This practice has continued.

Amash said he thinks many members of Congress are just actors playing a role.

Amash thinks tearing down the country is not a good idea as the USA not perfect but it is a miracle when compared to everything else in the world. Amash suggests that voters vet candidates by asking if the candidate will stand up to leadership.

Babylon Bee

Kyle Mann and Brendan Steinhauser were part of a panel on Babylon Bee.

The background is the Bee was founded in the 2016 because the founder saw nothing from the Right for satire. He wanted something similar to The Onion, but for the Right. The intention is to make humor palatable. It is important to make fun of the Right and libertarians, but in a light-hearted way.

The panel talked about the Babylon Bee twitter account getting blocked. The tweet which got them blocked involved Richard “Rachel” Levine being awarded “Woman of the Year”. The Babylon Bee awarded Levine the “Man of the Year” award. The tweet announcing this got their account locked. The Babylon Bee refused to do what Twitter wanted, and so their account has not been unlocked.

John Cleese

John Cleese gave a brief talk, and then was interviewed by Nick Gillespie. This article is long enough as it is, so I will just link to this video of his interview with Gillespie.

Wrap-up

I attended the FreedomFest Punching Up Comedy Festival, which was good. Saturday had more talks, which I will write about at another time.