The thing ive 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. Were going to leave this. As we take you life to the three day Libertarian Convention being held at the washington hilton. Independent president ial candidate robert f. Kennedy jr. Speaking to Convention Delegates today. Im going to speak about the United States constitution and particularly, the bill of rights. A lot of people dont realize at the articles of the constitution dont 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. Thats 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 couldnt exert powers that the constitution had not assigned to it. Everybody in this hall knows, governments dont 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. Thats why the delegates at the Constitution Convention bought a constitution that enumerated government powers nowhere limit them. Thats 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. Its 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 doesnt have any magical powers to force government officials to respect it. Im 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. Theres always a reason why right now, the rights are inconvenience that we cant afford. It was the red scare in the 1920s. It was John Mccarthy in the 1950s. It was the vietnam war protesters in the 1960s. Was war on drug in the 1970s. 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 dont recall any part of the United States constitution whether its an exemption for pandemics. [ applause ] in fact, theres 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 theyre 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, its 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 isnt just a legal document. Its also an inspirational document. Thats 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 ] im sorry to say, neither President Trump or President Biden pass this critical examination. Neither of them upheld the constitution when it really counted. Lets 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 governments official orthodoxy. Its 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, Americas 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. Theres no time when we look back at history and we say that the people who were censuring speech were the good guys. [ applause ] theyre always the bad guys. The framers didnt 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. Its 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 cant 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 didnt 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 sciencefree 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 ive 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 walmarts 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 50year 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 didnt 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 obamas 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 shouldnt be putting him in prison. We should have a monument to him here in washington d. C. [ applause ] its 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 hadnt told us, we wouldnt know about it. Hes a hero not a criminal. [ applause ] im going to tell you what im going to do. Im going to do what President Trump should have done. On my first day in office, im going to pardon Edward Snowden and im going to drop charges, all charges against julian assange. [ applause ] im 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 didnt 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 ] thats 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 wasnt 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 its unprecedented in the american experience. [ applause ] it started with what they called medical misinformation. It wasnt even misinformation. Theres 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 malinformation. Which is information that is factually accurate but its 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, ngos 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. Thats why you joined the Libertarian Party. [ applause ] well, i stand with you in valuing personal liberty. I promise you that when im president , im going to protect your right to peek freely. Im 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. Thats not all. Two of the most overlooked amendments in the bill of rights are 9th and 10th. [ applause ] those amendments say that just because weve listed all of those rights by name, doesnt 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. Its meant to inspire us. Its 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 selfevident. 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 its 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