tion now this island was in news because the people of this island recently voted a referendum for independence of this island from papua new guinea see currently this island is a province of papua new guinea which is one of the most popular specific island states it forms the part of Solomon islands archipelago now due to the issues such as development and redistribution of wealth the people of voyganville have a long drawn conflict with the papua new guinea therefore they voted a referendum for their independence now whether this pair is a correct pair no it is an incorrect pair because voyganville is in the solomancy of south pacific ocean as you can see in this map now additionally also remember that voyganville has large deposits of copper and the penguna mine which is also known as voyganville copper mine holds some of the world's largest reserves of copper and it is also the world's largest open cut copper mine now the first pair is incorrect and the question asks for the correctly matched pairs so you can eliminate b and d now from the remaining options you can say that pair two is correctly matched came in islands is an Atlantic ocean now this island was in news because it is one of the tax havens present in the caribbean sea a tax haven is a country that offers individuals or businesses either little tax liability or no tax liability and as you would have heard the caribbean offers some of the most popular tax havens in the world it provides benefits such as very low tax liability and financial privacy now the most used caribbean tax havens are the bahamas panama and the came in islands now as its name suggests it is an island group and it is a overseas territory of united kingdom in the caribbean sea and this island group consists of islands of grand came in little came in and came in back all the three islands are in between tropic of cancer and equator and also know that the capital of this island group is george town which is situated on the grand came in island and this pair is correct because came in islands are situated in the caribbean sea of Atlantic ocean now the third pair is coral islands pacific ocean and we have already discussed about the coral islands when we discussed about the senkaku islands in the julie target 2020 series but still recently these islands were in news because very recently in march 2020 an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 has hit the coral islands now the coral islands is a contested territory between japan and russia and the coral islands is located at a juncture of sea of a cosks and the pacific ocean so this pair is a correctly matched pair only now for your reference in this world map we have given you all the three islands which are mentioned in the question here is came in islands and here in the pacific ocean you can see the coral islands and the boigan will islands is in the south pacific ocean as you can see here so the correct answer to this question is option c 2 and 3 now this next question is about a bond challenge now know that bond is a city in germany and this challenge is a global response to the issue of land degradation as we know land degradation is the temporary or permanent decline in the productivity capacity of the land and according to certain estimates land degradation presently affects over 3 billion people globally now the first statement states it aims to bring 350 million hectares of the world's deforested degraded land into restoration by 2030 now after seeing this statement don't think it is incorrect because it is a correct statement initially the bond challenge target year was 2020 only but later the target was endorsed and extended to 2030 by the new york declaration on forests of the 2014 UN climate summit so currently bond challenge aims to bring 150 million hectares of the world's deforested and degraded land into restoration by the year 2020 and this value is 350 million hectares by the year 2030 and this challenge was launched in 2011 by the iocn and the government of germany and remember the secretary of this challenge is iocn so that means second statement is also correct the international union for conservation of nature is the secretary of the challenge now the question asks for the correct statements and if you look at the given options one two is present but one two three is not present so you can directly arrive at the correct answer now which is option c one and two now the third statement is incorrect because it mentions under the challenge india had agreed to restore 75 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 india had only agreed to restore 21 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 but later in 2019 that is last year this target was revised to 26 million hectares not 75 million hectares so that is why this statement is incorrect now with respect to this challenge we have to remember about one approach which is the forest landscape restoration approach or in short flr approach it is the ongoing process of regaining ecological functionality and enhancing the human well-being across deforested landscapes or degraded forest landscapes so this flr approach is more than just planting trees it is restoring a whole landscape to meet the present and future needs so the leaders at born vowed to promote the landscape approach to restoration and they highlighted restoration's importance across various sectors including agriculture energy water poverty elevation and climate change and particularly this global push for landscape restoration have fostered several regional initiative as well so you should know about this regional initiative from the examination point of view they are the african forest landscape restoration initiative or in short afr 100 then the initiative 20 into 20 and then ecca 30 and the agadir commitment now let us see about these initiatives in brief this afr 100 is a country led effort to bring 100 million hectares of land in africa into restoration by the year 2030 now next the initiative 20 to 20 is a country led effort seeking to bring 20 million hectares of degraded land into restoration by 2020 in latin america and the caribbean now the ecca 30 seeks to bring 30 million hectares of degraded land and deforested land in europe the caucuses and central asia into restoration by the year 2030 and then the agadir commitment is a forest and landscape restoration biodiversity conservation efforts in the mediterranean region so remember to which region these initiatives belong to well let us move on to the next question now this next question is based on national pharmaceutical pricing authority two simple statements are given and we have to choose the correct statement the first statement is it is an independent regulator for pricing of drugs and ensures the availability and accessibility of medicines at affordable prices now first know that the national pharmaceutical pricing authority or nppa is an attached office of the department of pharmaceuticals under the ministry of chemicals and fertilizers and it is an independent regulator for pricing of drugs and it ensures the availability and accessibility of medicines at affordable prices it also fixes or revises the prices of controlled bulk drugs and formulations under the drugs price control order of 1995 so that means statement one is correct but statement two is incorrect because it is not an autonomous body of ministry of health and family welfare just know we saw it is an attached office of department of pharmaceuticals under the ministry of chemicals and fertilizers now along with this this organization is also interested with the task of recovering amounts which are overcharged by the manufacturers for the controlled drugs from the consumers it also monitors the prices of decontrolled drugs in order to keep them at a reasonable level so the correct answer to this question is option a one only now this nppa was in news because it had imposed the price ceiling on stents and knee implants and thus it made the medical manufacturers including the US manufacturers very much worried so they urged for the implementation of trade margin rationalization see the trade margin rationalization is the difference between the price at which manufacturers sell to trade either indigenously or overseas and the price to the patients that is the MRP the difference between these two is trade margin rationalization and this TMR regime aims to regulate the price by capping on the trade margin in the entire chain for example say the price of a product or the device sold by manufacturer to the first point of sale is rupees 1000 and if the trade margin is about 30 percentage then the price at the last point of sale that is the retail price or the MRP will become rupees 1300 thus TMR can improve the transparency in retail chain of the medical devices but instead of this nppa placed a blanket capping over the medical devices and that is why the manufacturers are asking for this trade margin rationalization now let us move on to the next question this question is about global refugee forum three statements are given and we have to choose the correct statements see the first global refugee forum or the GRF took place in December 2019 in Geneva Switzerland that is why it was in news this forum was jointly hosted by the united nations high commissioner for refugees and the government of Switzerland and five countries where co-conveners of this forum they are Costa Rica Ethiopia Germany Pakistan and Turkey so this global refugee forum brought the international community together to demonstrate solidarity with the world's refugees and the countries and communities which host those refugees and these are the several key areas of focus of this global refugee forum as you can see it covers burden and responsibility sharing education jobs and livelihood energy and infrastructure solutions and protection capacity so from this you can say that statement one is correct it brought the international community together to demonstrate solidarity with the world's refugees and the countries and communities that host them but statement two is incorrect because even though it was hosted by UNHCR India was not a co-convener of this forum so that is where the statement is incorrect and here the question asks for the correct statements so easily you can arrive at the answer if you eliminate two from the given options so you can eliminate b c and d and hence the correct answer is a one only now the third statement is incorrect it mentions the new york declaration for refugees and migrants is an outcome of the forum it was not an outcome of this forum rather it was unanimously adopted by the united nation general assembly in 2016 itself this new york declaration reaffirms the importance of the international refugee regime it also contains a wide range of commitments by the member states to strengthen and enhance mechanism protect people who are on the move and it has also paved the way for the adoption of global compact on refugees in 2018 now this global compact on refugees is important because this first global refugee forum was an historic opportunity to strengthen the collective response to forced displacement and it was also an opportunity to translate the principles of global compact on refugees into a concrete action so what is this global compact on refugees it provides a blueprint for governments international organizations and other stakeholders to ensure that host communities get the support that they need and based on which the refugees can lead a productive life this global compact on refugees was affirmed by the united nations general assembly in december 2018 and these are the key objectives of this global compact now what are the outcomes of this first global refugee forum the states and other stakeholders have underlined the need to address the root causes of refugee situations they have also urged for accelerated global efforts to prevent and resolve conflicts apart from this jrf also provided a platform to demonstrate leadership vision and ambition to share the burdens and responsibilities by announcing pledges and by making contributions to improve the refugee protection and also to find the solutions so these are some of the outcomes of jrf now let us move on to the next question now this next question is regarding the national ganga council now this topic was the news in december because the indian prime minister chaired the first meeting of national ganga council in kanpur earlier in the place of national ganga council the national ganga river basin authority was present and even there was a question in 2016 prelims on this authority but remember that after the constitution of this national ganga council in october 2016 the national ganga river basin authority was dissolved see we have a five tire structure for prevention control and abatement of environmental pollution in the river ganga and in this structure national ganga council comes at the top it is followed by empower task force chaired by union minister of jalsakhi then we have national mission for clean ganga then we have state ganga committees and then district ganga committees so that is why this topic is important now remember national ganga council is the shorter form for national council for rejuvenation protection and management of river ganga this council is overall responsible for the superintendents direction development and control of river ganga in the entire river basin of ganga it is overall responsible for the protection prevention control and abatement of environmental pollution in the river ganga and it is also responsible for its rejuvenation and at the apex level this council also ensures continuous adequate flow of water in the river ganga as well so that means first statement is correct it is overall responsible for this superintendents direction development and control of river ganga in the entire river basin now the second statement is the chairman of national ganga council is the union minister of jalsakhi it is incorrect because the council is chaired by the prime minister of india and the union minister of jalsakhi is the vice chairperson so you can eliminate two from the given options because the question asks for the correct statements so eliminate option a c and d so the correct answer to this question is option b 1 and 3 the third statement is correct because it shall meet at least once every year or more as it may be necessary or as it requires now also remember that the empowered task force which is part of the five tier structure is chaired by the union minister of jalsakhi its function is to coordinate among concern ministries departments and state governments it also advises on matters relating to rejuvenation protection and management of river ganga and its tributaries now the next important part of the structure is nmcg that is national mission for clean ganga and the chairman to this nmcg is an officer in the rank of director general this nmcg has to comply with the decisions and directions of the national ganga council and thus implement the ganga basin management plan and also nmcg determines the magnitude of ecological flows in river ganga and its tributaries it identifies specific threats to river ganga and its tributaries and these threats include the threats from commercial activities recreational activities and religious activities then nmcg also identifies the type of measures that is required to address these threats and further it identifies the specific areas where remedial actions are required to be taken for the rejuvenation and protection of river ganga and its tributaries and finally the state ganga committees are chaired by the chief secretaries of concern state and the district ganga committees are chaired by the concerned district collectors now let us move on to the next question this next question is about central repository of information on large credits or in short crlc now the crlc was a news because the reserve bank of india has directed the large cooperative banks that is the primary urban cooperative banks or ucbs to report all the exposures of rupees five crore and more to the crlc and this decision was taken during the bi-monthly monetary policy meeting which was held on december 2019 see currently the credit information of the banking sector is available across multiple systems in bits and pieces and it is not available in one single window so many a times lenders are dependent upon the borrower for providing key information because there is a lack of credit registry and this is where crlc comes into play it was set up by rbi in 2014 to 15 it is a database which contains credit information from all scheduled commercial banks excluding the regional rural banks it contains credit information of four all india financial institutions they are nabard exim bank national housing bank and sid b and it also has credit information from nbfcs as well now under this crlc reporting framework lenders need to report credit information including the classification of an account as special mention account and this credit information has to be reported on all borrowers who are having aggregate exposure of rupees five crore and above and the crlc is maintained by rbi so we can say crlc data is simply a database which includes details of special mention account zero one and two or the defaulters along with the borrowers details the crlc gives a larger picture of the borrower's liabilities across the banking system so this facilitates early identification of stress in the account and hence it enables the banks to take pre-emptive steps to safeguard their interests now if you look at the first statement it mentions it is an extensive database which has comprehensive information on bank credit loads from nbfcs debentures bonds ecbs that is external commercial borrowings utility payments etc it is incorrect because this statement talks about the public credit registry see this public credit registry is an extensive database of credit information of individuals and businesses and it is accessible to all stakeholders and this pcr has comprehensive information not just on bank credit like the crlc rather it has information on all these and it provides a holistic picture of the borrower's credit history and currently if you see it has not been established in lindia establishing a pcr is at a proposal stage and the proposed pcr will also include data from entities like market regulator sebi then the corporate affairs ministry goods and services tax network that is gstn and the ibba which is insolvency and bankruptcy board of india this is to enable banks and financial institutions to get a 360 degree profile of the existing as well as prospective borrowers on a real-time basis now if you see such kind of public credit registry exists in other countries and it is generally managed by a public authority like the central bank of the country or the banking supervisor and wherever it exists the reporting of loan details to the pcr by lenders and borrowers is mandated by law now knowing about this is important because recently rb released a document named national strategy for financial inclusion for india 2019 to 2024 and it highlighted the making of public credit registry fully operational by march 2022 and establishing pcr is seen as one of the major objectives for achieving financial inclusion so here the first statement is incorrect and the second statement is correct because this was the reason it was in news in december the ucbs which are having total assets of 500 crore and above and which are having aggregate exposure of five crore are mandated to report to crlc from december 2019 so the correct answer to this question is option b to only because the question asks for the correct statements now this question is based on gaganyan mission we have many times discussed about gaganyan mission in our hindi news analysis as you know gagan means space and yarn means vehicle and gaganyan is the first human space mission of isro so the statement one is obviously correct but here the question asks for the not correct statements so you have to eliminate option a and this mission is to be implemented by the human space flight center of isro this center was inaugurated in january 2019 now even though it is a human space mission prior to the manned mission isro plans to carry out the unmanned test missions and isro plans to fly this first unmanned test mission by the end of 2020 and this unmanned flight will carry a humanoid humanoid is a robot with human features that will have sensors attached to it so the scientists will monitor the activities of the humanoid in order to prepare for the manned mission and these unmanned test missions will also be launched by gsl v mark 3 and the second unmanned mission will be launched in july 2021 and is for plans for the human spaceflight mission in december 2021 and in this mission three indian astronauts will be sent to space for a period of five to seven days for research they will be carrying out experiments at the microgravity conditions in space and the spacecraft will be placed in a low earth orbit of 300 to 400 kilometers so that means second statement is correct and third statement is incorrect because as we just saw the mission will be launched by gsl v mark 3 launch vehicle it is not launched by the workhorse of isro which is bsl v and as we always say if this gaganian program becomes successful then india will be one of the countries in the list of few countries which have launched a human spaceflight mission and here the question asks for the not correct statement so statement 3 is the only incorrect statement here so the correct answer is option c 3 only now this next question is with reference to global forest watch two statements are given and we have to choose the correct statement the first statement is it is an initiative of unep that is united nations environment program it is incorrect because global forest watch is an initiative launched in 1997 by the world resources institute the world resources institute is a global research organization and its presence can be seen in more than 60 countries including india and the mission of this organization is to protect natural resources for sustainable living and this global forest watch was launched by this institute as a part of its forest frontier initiative program this watch was started as a network of NGOs whose task is to produce up-to-date reports about these state of forests in four pilot countries and these pilot countries were cameroon canada gabon and indonesia so this watch also acts as a global forest monitoring network now in 2014 the second edition of global forest watch was launched and it is called as global forest watch 2.0 now by using the forest monitoring technology it created a fully interactive online platform with forest monitoring data for the whole world and it gives annual data on forests and from the year 2016 it started to give weekly and monthly deforestation alerts also then in 2017 the gfw 2.0 launched a mobile application to connect with people who are working on forest protection and to give them the required forest information and this app is called as forest watcher so that means second statement is correct forest watcher is a popular mobile application developed and launched as a part of gfw so the correct answer to this question is option b 2 only now last year there is in 2019 the world resources institute was in news because it launched what is informally called as the third edition of global forest watch and this is formally called as gfw pro this gsw pro helps companies to manage geospatial data so that they can manage the progress on meeting deforestation commitments so remember gfw pro was launched very recently in 2019 now let us move on to the next question the second last question of the series is based on an art form known as kalari payat the question asks which among the following statements about kalari payat is not correct the first statement is it is a traditional martial art form of asam yes it is a traditional martial art form but it does not belong to asam rather it is from kerala so that means option a is the correct answer to this question if you see in malayalam kalari means open space or gymnasium or battleground and payat means exercise in arms practice to become trained to become accustomed and this martial art form is a scientific heritage of kerala it is also considered among the oldest and most scientific martial arts in the world so it is lauded as the pride of kerala and it is acknowledged and respected across the world we are saying this because according to the japanese experts kalari payat is the mother of all martial arts like karate judo kung fu and even thail leg boxing that is my second statement is correct and there are different styles like northern styles and southern styles in kalari payat but the kalari payat tradition of north malabar of kerala is the most renowned one and according to the government sources kalari payat is mainly practiced by the members of nair and illa vakas in kerala and the primary aim of this martial art is the ultimate coordination between mind and body now apart from the martial art there is another focus of this art form which is specialization in indigenous medicinal practices so that is why option c is correct it is said that the kalari payat warriors long ago had amazing control over their bodies and they were skilled in armed and unarmed combat as well as in traditional health care they have to undergo physical training and along with this medicinal oil massage is also an integral part of kalari payat and its system of treatment has close links with ayurveda which is known as kalari treatment now this martial art form features feats or stunts like jumping running somersault and they also include the use of weapons like swords daggers spears maces bows and arrows now from examination point of you have to remember another point it is that kalari payat is chosen as one of the disciplines to provide regular training to the talented sports person under the indigenous games in martial arts scheme this scheme is a subscheme of national sports talent contest now as the name suggests the scheme aims to preserve and promote indigenous sports in the country apart from this this martial art form is also supported under the promotion of rural and indigenous or tribal games this promotion of rural and indigenous or tribal games comes under the calo india scheme it has been implemented by the government of india for promoting the rural and indigenous or tribal sports through identification of talent through provision of grant to meet the expenditure on equipment apparel and through infrastructure development and also for providing salary for national sports federation appointed coaches and it is also for providing scholarship for military trainees recommended by the national sports federation so in this way option d is correct and that is why this martial art form is also important now let us move on to the last question of this series the last question is based on an index which is the climate change performance index of 2020 three statements are given and we have to choose the correct statements now this index was in use because it was released in december 2019 and it was released at the cop 25 which happened in madrid now the first statement is it is an independent monitoring tool for tracking countries climate protection and performance now this statement is correct this is the objective of this index it tracks the climate protection performance of 57 countries and also the european union it aims to enhance transparency in international climate politics and it enables comparison of climate protection efforts and the progress made by individual countries now the second statement is it is released by intergovernmental panel on climate change that is ipcc this statement is incorrect because this ccpi index is published annually by german watch the new climate institute and the climate action network together and this ccpi assesses each country's performance in four categories they are given here ghg emissions renewable energy energy use climate policy now based on the performance of countries they are rated very high high medium low and very low and if you see the results of ccpi 2020 still there is no country which has performed well enough in all the index categories to achieve an overall very high rating in the index therefore once again the first three ranks in this index remain empty so the top rank is achieved by sweden it has been ranked at rank four it is followed by danmark and marco and as you can see these are the least ranked countries and us is the worst performing state now coming to india india has ranked at the ninth position and it is listed under the category along with sweden danmark and marco not only that among the g20 countries india along with united kingdom are the only countries of g20 which are ranked in the high category of this index in addition to this there is also one more appraise for india that is for the first time india has ranked among the top 10 countries in the ccpi so that means statement three is correct and hence the correct answer to this question is option d one and three now also knows some other important facts about india which has been mentioned in this index report it has mentioned that the current levels of per capita emissions and energy use are still comparatively low in our country and we have an ambitious 2030 targets and thus all these have resulted in high ratings for india in the ghg emissions and energy use categories and if you see the renewable energy category india has received an overall medium rating and even the national experts commend the government for strong policies to support the expansion of renewable energy and these policies are needed to meet the ambitious targets as recent renewable energy capacity additions are below the required level now even though indias in the high category rating experts have pointed out in this report that the government has to develop a roadmap for the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies that would consequently reduce the country's high dependence on coal we saw this fact in our productions gap report question also where we saw that india has a high reliance on coal so this index report also calls to develop for a roadmap to phase out the fossil fuel subsidies that is all about this question with this question we have completed the target 2020 december series if you like the video don't forget to like comment and share and do subscribe to shankar is academy youtube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation we will meet you again with the seventh part of target 2020 series until then stay tuned


Well, I knew they would come for me, and they did. I did so well on the job at NASA, not just at the Royal NASA, but their Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in Manhattan. There I was assigned the data reduction of the world's first weather satellite, Tyrus. And that's also where I first learned that there is a thing called computer security, because they were terrified that the Russians or the Chinese would get access to the data, because no one else had any weather satellites at all, and it had been transmitted for years in the catalog form. And so they said, how do you deal with this?  But, you know, I was 25 at the time, and 25 wouldn't take on any budget. And after a year, I had designed a system to reduce the data into a not just a manageable form, but to an intelligible form that NASA, I understood. Oh, people are concerned about other people accessing data. Well, how interesting. I got a degree in mathematics of a graduate bachelor's. I went to Louisiana State, then moved to Virginia Ball technique, working on a master's. I decided to take the summer off, but I got a job at General Electric. I didn't know what it was about. I was looking for mathematicians. I went to a training program for three months. I didn't tell them I was going to go back to school. And it was the most technical and still the most technologically complex and intense of all computer disciplines. That means that you have a computer control, a moving system in real time. If you're off by a fraction of a millisecond, you might destroy a $2 million steel mill roll. However, after three months, I realized, Jesus, this is what I want to do. That's where I really learned what computers really were. People know me from McAfee, but no, that was not my greatest success. That was some trivial thing. It was my future things, which I did not attach my name to, that taught me and made me all of my money. I got into it in 2011 by peer pressure of my friends. It literally forced me to read the Satoshi's white paper. And when I had done that, I saw immediately the beauty and the power of the mathematics. And I saw that this was potentially world changing. And it just turned out to be. When I started, I was the chairman of the CEO of MGT, the world's sixth largest Bitcoin miner company, 800 million volume evaluation. What happened is Bitcoin went sky high. And after the quartering, it sank to the next level. The New York Stock Exchange, the following day, de-missed us. That's what they do. We had to fold the company I left. That was their shot over the bell to the warning.  Well, that just made me mad.  Many of them are just like me. They take more drugs than necessary, and they drink themselves into a stupor. Listen, I mean, I'm wanted by five world governments, including the United States, the most horrific of them. First of all, they tried to flake me in America when they've, you know, contained a grand jury. I found out about it beforehand. So we left the following day at the Florida. We picked up our yacht with Janice, myself, four large dogs and seven of my staff and sailed away, went to the Bahamas. We were thumbing up our nose, 90 miles from America, sunning on the beach, just having fun. I knew they would come for me, and they did. We went to Cuba. We were in Cuba for two months. Then the Cuban government said, listen, Ms. McFee, we regret, but the US government has requested that we return you to America. However, we were disinclined to do so. But, Ms. McFee, you understand, you are now a serious problem to us if you remain in this country. You have 72 hours to get out of the country. Now, we decided to go to the Dominican Republic. We told no one about it. We got to the Dominican Republic, pulled into the dock, and we were arrested before we could get off the boat. They said, Ms. McFee, I'm sorry, but we have to ship you back to America. I said, well, that's not legal. I didn't come from America. I came from Cuba. The people who cooperated illegally was the head of the police force and the head of the armed forces. So I outed those people. They both had secret bank accounts. The deposits that came in to these accounts, the dates, the amount, and from whom, and the withdrawals in cash, totaling many times their annual salary. And believe me, I could bring down the US government. I haven't released anything. However, if anything happens to me, absolutely. I've got dead men's switches everywhere within a day if my disappearance or untimely death, there will be every newspaper in the world pouring through more documents that they could have 100 people pour through in 100 years. So no, it will be chaos. But right now, I just want to be able to live happily, try to make a better world for my children and grandchildren, and fish from time to time. And I would not change a single second because I would not change my jail time. I would not change hiding in the jungles of the police while bullets were flying over my head. I would not change a single thing.


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Thank you all very much. It's just occurred to me that with this blistering weather maybe I could do something that might set a style you'd appreciate. It does feel better, doesn't it? Well, I'm delighted to be here. There, I started it out again. I was just with Richard Little last night, and here I am again saying, well, to start things out. In his imitations of me, he says that's a characteristic. But I'm delighted to be here today. This is a great day for each one of you, and I hope you will treasure this day all through your lives. As you know, this is the 20th anniversary of the Presidential Scholars Program, a program that has done much to reward initiative and encourage excellence in America's schools. It's also the second opportunity that I've had to host a gathering like this, and I have to confess I'm always a bit uneasy in the midst of all this scholarly achievement. I guess it's because I start thinking back to my own days as a student. In fact, some time ago, my alma mater, Eureka College, gave me an honorary degree, and I thanked them profusely. But I had to admit that they had compounded a sense of guilt I'd nursed for about 25 years because I always thought the first one they gave me was honorary. So I congratulate all of you. I congratulate all of you today on taking advantage of the tremendous educational opportunities you've been offered and encourage you to keep up the good work. I don't think it's too optimistic to say that you can look forward to an age where a great value will be placed on your obvious capacity for achievement and excellence, an age that will be rife with opportunity. In many ways, the things that we've been doing here in Washington the last few years have been part of this effort to open up new opportunities for all Americans. And as you know, that means cutting back on the size and scope of government, reducing its drag on the private economy. You know, it's one of the oldest lessons of history, but one that mankind always seems to forget. Too much government has always meant the oppression of the human spirit and the stultification of human progress. As Jefferson once said, I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. Now, you think about that sometimes when you read some of those hostile columnists that say I spend a lot of time napping. I really don't. But I think that our own time is increasingly going to realize this truth. Repelled by the suffering caused by aggressive totalitarianism, our century seems to be awakening to the great prospects of human freedom and the democratic way of life. That's why I've always believed a truly American foreign policy means more than the pragmatic business of getting along with other nations. It also means standing up for values like human freedom and our own obligation to see that freedom is spread someday to all the nations of the earth. In a few short years, this will be the task before you and I think you're preparing yourself well for it. I'm especially encouraged by some of the fundamental changes that we see in American education today. We are beginning to realize once again that education at its core is more than just teaching our youngness skills that are needed for a job. However important that is, it's also about passing on to each new generation the values that serve as the foundation and cornerstone of our free democratic society. Patriotism, loyalty, faithfulness, courage, the ability to make the crucial moral distinctions between right and wrong, the maturity to understand that all that we have and achieve in this world comes first from a beneficent and loving God. So we're gathered here to congratulate all of you on your success, on the credit that you've brought to yourselves, to your schools, and to your communities. We're here too to congratulate teachers for the enormous and unselfish dedication that they've shown to your welfare and to the highest standards of their own profession. I had a teacher one day in a high school and on a visit to the principal's office. He is also the principal. Make a very wise remark. He said, it isn't very important what you think of me now. He said, what I'm concerned with is what you're going to think of me for 15 years from now. And even before 15 years was up, I knew I'd been in the hands of a very good friend and a very fine teacher. But I think we also do well today to reflect on the fact that education and learning, success and power, are only relative values that they must be grounded first in the higher values of right and morality if they're to have any meaning at all. You know, being president and there's a word here for someone in their 70s but I'm not sure that I can pronounce it. So anyway, being in that range, I've discovered, for example, that people do tend to let you get away with giving them some advice. So while I want to extend my congratulations to all of you, I hope you'll also permit me a few words of counsel and advice. Thomas Jefferson, whom I mentioned a few minutes ago on the business of governing, also had some wise things to say about the business of living. When he was advising his nephew what path he should follow to find success, he reminded him that he must pursue his own and his country's best efforts with what he called the purest integrity, the most chaste honor. Well, make these, then he said, your first object. Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act and never suppose that in any possible situation or under any circumstances that it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you. Well, I think that's good advice for all of us. And once again, congratulations to all our presidential scholars, their families and our distinguished teachers who are here today. And now Secretary Bell is going to do the honors for me and distribute these awards and I'm going back to the awful office and do what a little girl told me to do who wrote me a letter one day and told me all the problems that she thought I should solve and then said, now get back to the oval office and go to work. And I'll do just that. Thank you all and God bless you all. Thank you Mr. President if you'll all be seated. One of the lucky breaks of the president coming here and taking off his coat is that my speech is in the coat that I just handed out here. An honor today the most distinguished students that we have in America. We set out through this program to pick the very top and the most outstanding students and what a great honor it is for you to be here. And the chairman of the commission Mrs. White told me that this is the greatest group ever. Of course she's told me that each year. So each year the group gets more outstanding even than those before.  Congratulations again on behalf and the scholars commission and behalf of your teachers that you honored by asking them to be here. It's now more word. Chuck Karen K. Abel and David Emerson from Arkansas Leslie McKenzie and David R. Tressel California and I think it's very interesting that we have nine from California this year that is the most ever in the history of this program that we have had that many from any state and it has nothing to do with the fact that our president is from California. Jonathan Alphong Todd Christopher Flynn Lisa M. Gortis Eric A. Grant Daniel L. Hurwitz Nicole McCullough Valerie Roy Jeffrey Rollins Catherine Saucer Colorado John Stephen Garrity Paula Wagenbach Connecticut Jack Shin Ramona Duté Rachel Sexton Delaware Jeffrey Lu Karen McGinley District of Columbia Julia Glade Christine Pavlovich Florida Jennifer Lee Linda Levitt and Manuel Lopez Georgia Jill A. Hodges and Johnny Worth Hawaii David L. Bloom and Janice R. Mitchell Idaho Julia Fulweiler Catherine Ring from Illinois Michael Beck Daniel Hickman and Matthew Parr Indiana Sarah Randall Andrew Smith from Iowa Eric Brown and Emeline Tai Kansas Maryland Rich Derrick and Andrew Thomas Stephen S. Taylor and Paige G. Wilhite Louisiana Souven Bernofsky Nicole Cooley Stephen Thomas and Sue Young Key Maine Joseph Faber Laura J. McLean Maryland Mary Cavender Jan Rivkin Massachusetts Keith R. Barnett Ingrid Booth Ian H. Gershin-Gorn Next is Leigh-Aum Harney Michigan Richard Couchman Julie Hesler Scott Van Ornam Alicia R. Washington also Jeffrey Wessler Minnesota Nadia Anderson David M. Caffeine Mississippi Eric C. Banks Pamela Kola Missouri David Van George Bradley Louis Freedman Elba E. Young Montana Steven Louriston and Jennifer J. Trosh Nebraska Carla Cloninger Nathan Hunt Lada Robert S. Mitcher-Raren and Susanna Yee-Yung Shin Boy y'all have really done it to me this year New Hampshire Thomas E. Laveraire Christine L. Thieberg New Jersey Jeffrey Butler Scott Lichman Mary Sarah McPeak Andre Shin New Mexico Gal Tim Pley and Diane Schaefer New York Sarah Myers Robert C. Rudnitsky Catherine Snyder Eileen Stremple Beyond Yu Ting Sang Erica Yoder North Carolina Don Cho Trisha Francesca Lee White North Dakota Karen Olson and Richard Couchman Ohio Jean-Paul Beck Redonda Miller Howard Peter Steves Oklahoma Granger B. Matter Kelsen Michelle Walters Oregon Heidi Prichard and Donald Wright Pennsylvania Donna M. Kuttner Thomas Tael Ming Lee Jayce M. Wittman William M. Lee Jason T. McNichol Jonel M. Mallott Mimi Yum Puerto Rico Ivan Sunyer Ry Eidza M. Torres Rhode Island Stephen Bland Lori L. May South Carolina David N. Kuhlman Jocelyn K. Tirras South Dakota Miaz Friesen and Mark Summer Tennessee Mark Levine Susan Stewart Texas Louis David Cardenas Jennifer Cook Desiree Doyne and Gloria Justin Utah Bridget Condi and Darren Hawkins Vermont Ethan Knapp Karen Schlemmer Virginia Heather Hadlock and Maury Schenck Washington David W. Launberg Seon Osburn Sirre and Wilbur West Virginia Harold Neil Jr. Valerie S. Steele Wisconsin Mary O'Human David A. Zagorski Wyoming John Brandner Anastasia Kelly Ladies and gentlemen your 1984 Presidential Scholars


I always feel that we should take a moment of silence to think back to the people that we knew and the activists that we knew and the people who really made it possible for us to be here today. I mean, that's really true that those people who fought in the streets and who gave their lives enabled in a way there to be a Hormel Center and for us to be in our palmy place today. And I know that we don't, I think, remember those people enough. So I would invite you to take a moment to think of someone, either an activist or someone who died or just someone in your life who you'd like to recall to and we can double their numbers in this room. See, we have more people in the room. A lot more people. I can also thank Kathy Seligman and Barry Owen, who is here somewhere. There's Barry. Both these essays go back a long way. The essays in Everywhere Home and Kathy and Barry and Melanie Bean have been at various points really great readers for whom, without whom I could not have written these essays. So it's nice to be able to thank them in person and of course to the Hormel Center for having us here. I'm going to read a fun piece and then a little bit about San Francisco because there's a whole section of this book which is called Journal of the Plague Years, which are the essays that are collected that I wrote during approximately 1988 to 1996 and then finish up with a sort of everywhere piece. So this is from my first home, Kentucky. It's called On Fire. I ordered my first drink at the Club 68 in Lebanon, Kentucky, 13 winding country miles east of my childhood home. It was owned by Lebanese Christians, a long story, but the short version is that prosperous Anglos have always farmed out what they call vice to black people and rural people and newly arrived immigrants. People the Anglos can trash and persecute and imprison after they service the Anglo obsession with sin. The Irish, the Jews, the dark skinned people, the hillbillies and of course the queers selling hooch or pot or heroin or meth or sex to the prosperous or our trouble thrown in the slammer after the goods are passed but before the money changes hands. Fleeing violence abroad, these Lebanese Christians settled in Lebanon, a town of 5,000 which some two centuries earlier Presbyterian Scots had named after the Middle Eastern homeland of the Club 68's owners. An exile and an outlier, Hylene George, patriarch of the family, situated his nightclubs on the Chitlin circuit, an assemblage of road houses scattered throughout the then segregated south where African American musicians en route from winters in New Orleans to summers in Chicago performed in exchange for a room and a meal and a percentage of the door. Fresh from the multicultural patchwork of the Middle East, unburdened by the south's crushing obsession with race, Hylene George understood that white audiences would pay to see and hear black artists. He hired a black manager, this is in Lebanon, Kentucky, nowhere, 5,000 people. He hired a black manager, Obi Slater, and if you're interested you can find it via interlibrary loan, Obi Slater wrote this fantastic self published memoir of his being the manager of these clubs. He hired a black manager and cross-programmed acts among his clubs, one all black, the club cherry, one all white, the Club 68, and the all white one was across the street, across the road I forgot the name. And the third mix, that was the Club 68, and the list of musicians he hired to play this town is a roll call of mid-century American blues and jazz and rock and roll. B.B. King, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix en route from military service at Fort Campbell in western Kentucky to the formation of his own band in Cincinnati. Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jackie Wilson, The Supremes, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Etta James, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Eddie Floyd, Hank Ballard in the Midnighters, Junior Parker, Joe Tex, Laverne Baker, The Coasters, The Charelles, The Platters, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, not to mention a few white boys tagging along for the ride, among them Creighton's Clearwater Revival, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and Steppenwolf. I had a friend who was 16 and thus possessed of a driver's license and his parents' car, Billy Frank Carded actually to give him a name. I had no idea who was playing that night on my first purchased drink and didn't much care. My friend and I were only looking to get drunk and, as was widely known, the clubs in Lebanon served alcohol to anyone tall enough to push a bill across the bar. The club legally held maybe 300 people. That night there were easily 500 under a ceiling 20 feet high. Most of us were male, all of us were white. This was 1968 at the club 68 on US Highway 68. I was 15 years old. On stage, I can Tina Turner and the IKETS. I do not recall what I can Tina sang. What I recall is the discovery of desire. What Tina Turner did with her body I hadn't conceived that anybody could do with a body. As a gay boy, I'm aware that there were words to name what I was. I wasn't in heat in the manner of most of the men around me. Nonetheless, Ms. Turner taught me that evening that the body was something more than a suitcase for transporting the brain. Almost 50 years later, I of the two vivid imagination have to work to imagine how she could strut an entice and seduce 500 screaming drunk Anglo country boys. That is what we call art, and she a true artist. Though as I write that sentence, I speculate that she must have reveled in asserting her power, her black woman artist's power, in one of the few ways and places available to her. And so I encountered in art, her art, the catalyst for my lifelong project of dismantling western civilization, separation of body from mind, heart from soul, and what was shown, not told that evening at the club 68 by Anna Mae Bullock, former Nutbush Tennessee Baptist Church choir girl. No duality, no separation. Love your neighbor as yourself. We are all one in Christ Jesus. We are all one in desire. Driving home, my drunk friend got us lost and didn't get me to my parents house until four o'clock in the morning. For the first and last time, my mother was waiting up, and her expression I understood that she thought that I, her youngest son, was not going to be a hellraiser like her three previous sons, and she was sorely disappointed. Soon thereafter, segregation ended, at least officially, and doors opened for black artists to perform in first class venues, even in the south. The Chitlin circuit faded into history. A few years after that, Tina left Ike. I doubt she ever again performed in a venue so humble. But she had awakened a force that was not to be denied, and though I am not condoning that drunk drive home, and though I mourn all those fine men and women lost to AIDS, I have no regrets about my forays into the demi-monde, the days and nights given over to seeking connection, communion with the gods with God. Not long afterward, I graduated from high school and went wandering, an ancient and exacting and honorable calling. Later in these pages, I will confess that I do not believe in time, that I do not believe in death. Looking out the window on a chill December day in my beloved Kentucky, my left ankle broken in a cast from an accident involving a hibernating groundhog's hole in the woods surrounding the hermitage of the trappist, monk, mystic and writer Thomas Merton, I find the sources of that observation so obvious as to need no explanation. The bare trees raised limbs etch lines against the pale blue winter sky. Another six months in these same trees will present a curtain of green. Only the smallest liberation of consciousness is required to understand me, the groundhog, the trees and you as seamlessly unified and continuous elements of that same cycle of life, of birth, death and rebirth. Nothing is absolute. Everything changes. Everything moves. Everything revolves. Everything flies and goes away. That's Frida Kahlo, who knew whereof she spoke. Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence. Our intelligence, yours and mine. The smallest sprout, Walt Whitman writes, proves that there is no death. Eternal life, a process some call desire and some call God and some have the wisdom to respect in silence. From sayings of the Desert Fathers translated by Sister Benedicta Ward, Abbalot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office. I fast a little. I pray and meditate. I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, If you will, you can become all flame. In fiction and nonfiction, my lifelong subject has been the reintegration of desire and the sacred, a lifelong becoming of the flame. So that's the introductory essay. This is the opening paragraph. I'm going to read just a few passages, a couple of paragraphs of the introductory essay of the section called Journals of the Plague Gears. In my late 20s and throughout my 30s, fate placed me in the midst of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, arguably the world's hardest hit city in those first years because of its compact size, its relatively large gay population and its history of sexual liberation.  I was born to the generation in between, the generation that made that change possible, though to give fate its due, AIDS gave us little choice. Silence equal death. And I read that to remind us that someone like Edmund White, for example, who is 10 years older than I could not publish in mainstream publications because he was gay man. He was publishing in places like Christopher Street and those kinds of magazines. And then you get a generation of men who are 10 years and women who are 10 years younger than I who kind of took for granted, I have to say, their access to mainstream publications. And then there was this bridge of people that was in between and that's where I happened to be. I tell the history of all that. And now a little bit about San Francisco in an essay called City of Innocence and Plague. But before I tell that I want to tell a story that's not in this collection, maybe it'll be in the next collection. But we're all, most of us, all of us maybe, San Francisco, San Franciscans Bay Area residents. And I want to give you something to take away other than our reading. So I was sitting in Kentucky with my then 100, now 101 year old mother. And she kind of goes in and out of what we call reality. But she was kind of there that day. It was last October. It was a beautiful day. Sonny and we were sitting outside and she said, kind of an old trope of a conversation with her. She said, so Fenton, of all the places that you've been, which do you like the best? And I thought I might sort of stimulate her thinking to turn the question around. So I don't know, mother, what all the places you've been, which do you like the best? And she said, oh, I haven't really traveled that much. And I said, yes, you have. After Father died, we took you to a lot of places. You went to Athens, you went to Rome, you went to Paris, you went to London. I took you to New York a couple of times. And I let her think about that for a little bit. And kind of as an afterthought, because I didn't think of it as being in a sort of class of those cities, I said, and you know, you came to visit me in San Francisco many times. And she said, oh, San Francisco. And I said, really? Why do you like San Francisco the best? And she said, because everybody there is so accepting. Isn't that great? That's us. City of Innocence and Plague. The epigraph is a poem by Andrew Jakes, who was writing from prison. At the time, still is in prison, so far as I know. Let history lie and lie light as the ashes surrendered to the air off the Golden Gate Bridge. I never knew a city before San Francisco. At 17 years, not knowing how to take a bus or use a paid telephone or order from a menu, clutching a scholarship underwritten by a bourbon distiller, I came directly from the Kentucky Hills to the Bay Area. I was drawn by the hippies, whose images and stories had made their ways into my childhood. I was drawn by the hope that someone would help me avoid the war in Vietnam. I was drawn by the photographs in the Stanford University catalog of hunky guys in Speedos, lounging under the palm trees by Lake Lagunita, and by the temptations of a culture where people, men, so effortlessly inhabited their beautiful flesh. It was 1971, a peculiar moment in transition when the most powerful empire in history was in the midst of being shown the fallibility and impermanence of all human creations, most especially empires. The nation was on the verge of anarchy. My father kept a loaded handgun in his nightstand to shoot the riders when, not if, they rampaged out of the city and into our tiny remote village.  I saw the place and the waning moments of its glory before the onslaught of real estate madness. Every drive from Palo Alto to the beach was a mystical journey, climbing mountains higher than I had ever seen, on a road more crooked than any I had ever driven, to enter a forest taller and deeper than any I'd ever known. And then, at the roads in, the cold and restless Pacific, free for all, where on a crowded day, I might encounter four or five people on a beach strewn with exotica, kelp and driftwood and anemones and starfish, and from which I caught a split second glimpse of a whale hurling its serially vast self completely out of the water to fall back with a thwack audible above the crashing surf. And I'll skip a little bit too. Some years I wrote, places shape people rather than the other way around. With moderation born of experience, I amend that sentence to read, places shape people as well as the other way around. The steep hills divide the city into neighborhoods isolated from one another so that each develops its peculiar character. The vast supply of redwood that lay within a stone's throw, the relative posity of brick and stone, and construction techniques arising from technological innovations contributed to our ensuring a new and different kind of city from those of the east end of Europe. After the invention of the balloon frame house and the coping saw, could drag queens be far behind, from permanence to transience, from stone and brick to insubstantial wood from reality to illusion. Boston sits ponderous on the earth, San Francisco is poised to rise with its famously steep hills into its airy-fairy fogs. The city is the synecdoche of the west, the expression in gingerbread bedecked wood of people who came here because they wanted to leave reality behind to create and inhabit a myth. Inspect the backside of a Boston Victorian and you find patterned brick and filigreed stone that complement the building's public face. Inspect the backside of a San Francisco Victorian and you find a plain wooden box. The frills and gughaws are so much makeup applied to a stage set city. Did gay people, of necessity students of deception, settle here because it is a fantasy city? Or has it become a fantasy city because we settled here? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The fantasy city or the dragon, leather queens and dykes who call it home? And I'll finish with a piece. That's kind of an ending piece. Let's see. Yeah. Oops. Thank you. This piece is called Light in August. Every summer around the beginning of August, today arrives when I'm walking along in mid-afternoon and I realize the light has slipped. Its angle is no longer that of high summer, high in hammering, light that for the past couple of months I've come to take for granted in my too human fashion as the way things will always be. Summer will never end. No one I love will ever die. Now the angling light signals that the endless summer is ending. In fact, I and everyone I love will die. The question is only who will be the first to reach the finish line? And yet I see I've indulged in a commonplace misperception. Since properly understood, there is no finish line. We are creatures of light, sentient bundles of energy moving through the universe. It is of us as we are of it. There is no death. There is only process changing from one form to another. Through some cartesian sleight of hand, the brain refuses to perceive this. Instead, it cunningly divides the world into dualities. There's a little dab of brain, I'm told, given over to setting boundaries. This is where I end. This is where you begin. Me, you, us, them. Male, female, light, dark. Beginning end, life, death. No doubt these illusions are or were necessary for our survival, no matter that the basis for murder and mayhem and our self-centered understanding of death as, now you see us, now you don't. In fact, death is only another milepost in the never-ending becoming of what it is. Ask your dog. She'll agree. Look to the wagon, her tail. You don't see her moping about in pending doom. In this particular early August, I noticed a slipping light on a walk rendered poignant by the tension of unrequited love. Denied an outlet for my passion, I offered my companion the observation that if I believed in death, I'd kill myself. What do you mean, he asked? No doubt casting an uneasy glance at the pen knife dangling from my knapsack. All that loss, I answered, all that grief.  Not me. I take great affirmation and good cheer knowing that we're light from light, true God from true gods, one form of energy changing into another until billions of years hence when in the entropy of time all our colors will merge and melt into a uniformly still gray, the gray of the paintings that hang in the Rothko Chapel in Houston. Under the auspices of Harper's Magazine, I once moderated a debate held in that chapel. The subject of tan was faith and reason, as false a duality is light and dark or male and female are life and death, but one thing had led to another where we were, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilyn Robinson representing faith and the Nobel-winning physicist Stephen Weinberg representing reason and me wondering how I had gotten myself from my childhood in the Kentucky knobs into refereeing such August company. I chose the Rothko Chapel as our venue, a mistake. I actually chose it because Stephen Weinberg refused to change planes, but I chose the Rothko Chapel as a venue, as our venue, a mistake. It features works by Mark Rothko, painted in the decade before he took his life in 1970. Fast lozenges of a smooth, even gray, surrounded by halos of an almost indiscernible darker gray, hung against the lighter gray of the walls. They're enveloping gray stillness prompts not debate but contemplation.  Robinson burned with quiet passion. Weinberg might be the most articulate man with whom I have had the honor of conversing, as was evidenced in that day's debate in which he, the combative atheist, set forth the case for faith, then argued with himself while the contemplative Robinson listened. But we're not yet at the debate. We've just walked in the chapel and are spending a moment looking at Rothko's paintings. Weinberg shook his head. I love abstract art, he said. I collect abstract art, but I just don't get Rothko. What is it with these great blobs of gray? The most delicate of pauses ensued before Robinson said quietly, it's the moment before creation. I would have been happy to have ended the debate right there. To my mind, the exchange said all that needed to be said about the debaters' different understandings and the way things are. In the first three minutes, Weinberg wrote, even when physicists have gone as far as they can go, there seems to be an irreducible mystery that science will not eliminate. Robinson, the contemplative, grasped what he, the scientist, had not perceived. Stories and art are our means of putting our hearts around the irreducible mystery. Rothko had painted that mystery a few years before he plunged in. To reunify the parts of our broken selves, it seems to me, is to make the commitment to become a whole person, a holy person. A vocation that each of us must discern and fulfill in our particular ways. The good news is that as Rabbi Menachem of Kotzk wrote, there is nothing so whole as a broken heart. Reading and writing are or can be the glue. One means we use to patch ourselves together. They have served that purpose for me. Among the most brilliant of book titles is William Faulkner's Light in August, a novel contained in a phrase. Memory believes before knowing remembers, Faulkner wrote, believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. To read or write poetry or prose is to lay claim to your citizenship among the people of faith. Everything is always, as my friend Barry says, most especially us and most especially memory. And before you ask what he'd been smoking, take a walk in even tide in the light in August, the month of abundance and of loss. Thank you.


The philosopher Robert Nozick in the final chapter of his classic work, Anarchy, State and Utopia, argued that libertarianism is not itself a vision of utopia, but is instead a utopia of utopias, a framework for utopias. What he meant by that is that the minimal state, by limiting itself to protecting our basic rights, provides a framework in which all of us as individuals and in groups can pursue the kinds of lives that we find meaningful. So if the kind of life that I find meaningful as a socialist life is one where my property is shared communally and the community decides economic choices for all of us, then I'm free to go and pursue that as long as it's voluntary. Under socialism, on the other hand, where this one economic system, communal ownership of property, is imposed from the top down, no one has a choice. And so those of us who are free marketers under socialism can't go and start a free market community within that state. Those of us who disagree with socialism are stuck. So when a state founded on principles of liberty under libertarianism, you can have voluntary socialism, but under socialism you cannot have liberty.