Is that a miracle or what? No, It is the result of liberty.

I just stop sometimes, I just marvel, seriously marvel at what liberty has created on these shores. We have things that no civilization in the history of Earth, hell, in the known universe, going all the way back to the cantina bar on Tatooine, or Dantooine. No one has had access to the stuff that Americans take for granted. And all you have to do is go to a birthday party to see it on display. You have every manner of food that you could imagine. Every manner of it. You got chicken, you got fajitas, you got pulled pork, you got briskets, you got hot dogs, you got hamburgers. Not only do you have hotdogs and hamburgers, there are 35,000 different ways to get hotdogs and hamburgers. If you’re kosher, you can get a kosher frank. If you’re not, you can get an Oscar Mayer frank. You want hamburgers, you can make them yourself. You can buy Bubba burgers already pre-frozen. You could go to your local deli. They may be stamping them out, nice little cubed out round portions and what have you. It’s just amazing the things you can get.

Why is that? Is that because the government created a system to deliver hamburgers to birthday parties? Is it? Or is that because people had the liberty to go out there and practice this? They had the liberty to go out and make a better hamburger, to make a better hotdog, to make a better way to deliver party supplies. And it doesn’t just stop with the meats. You have all manner and every conceivable assortment of vegetable, from onions or red onions to Vidalia onions, you name it. You got white onions, all grown all over the place, some in Mississippi, some in California, some in Oklahoma, doesn’t matter where you grow them at. Potatoes, look at the potatoes that we have in this country and in this republic here. You can get Maine potatoes. You can get Idaho potatoes. You can get the little red new potatoes, as they’re known. You can get the mini potatoes. And then look what they process them into. You have the Ore-Ida factory out there cranking out all sorts of different fried potato concoctions. You got hash browns.

I mean, just think about the variety and the plentiful supply. We have – liberty on these shores has provided such an assortment and such an unbelievable supply of things we take for granted, we, most of us, don’t even consider whether or not to take that half-eaten hamburger that Steve down the street didn’t finish and throw it away. Don’t even think about it, do you. Just chunk that joker in the garbage can; right? Don’t even think about whether or not, well, there’s half a dozen chicken wings from Hooters left over from this party. Well, they’ve been sitting out for an hour or so. I think I’m going to pitch them. You don’t even think about that because there’s so much supply.

How does this happen without Obama? How does this happen without Pelosi? How do all these products make it onto our tables? How do all these foodstuffs make it into our pots and our ovens and what have you? Because we have liberty. So next time you’re at one of these parties, next time you’re at a restaurant and you’re looking at a menu that has 70 items on it, and every and all manner of concoction to prepare those items, oh, you got this with salt, without salt. You got cumin on this one. You have all sorts of spices from the orient or wherever they come from to season this one. We have this sauce and that sauce. Just think about how did that get to my table? Is that a miracle or what? No. It is the result of liberty. Yet we are constantly told that our republic sucks. We are constantly told by our President and his cabinet and anyone else that has a microphone and that’s in power, that there’s something wrong with us, and that there’s something wrong with you, and that there’s something wrong with this, and that there’s something wrong with our car companies, and there’s something wrong with our power companies, and there’s something wrong with our cow companies, and there’s something wrong with our aspirin and vitamin manufacturers and what have you. We’re constantly told that only through government could any of these things possibly get better.

Yet they get better all the time. All the time. The supply of these things is not going down. It’s increasing. The number of these things are not going down, they’re increasing. Isn’t it miraculous? Stop and think about that for a moment, just for a second. All the cheeses and variety of cheese you can get in this republic. Milk. You think your forefather ever dreamed, you think your great-grandpa ever dreamed he could have a nervous breakdown in the milk department? I don’t know what to – [silly old man with no teeth voice] “I don’t know what to buy. They got this 2 percent, they got 3 percent, they got 1 percent, they got homogenized, they got skim, I’m losing my mind here, Sonny.” That is the result of liberty. Liberty produces these things, not tyranny. Not command and control. Freedom to make individual choices.

Now, I ask you, if liberty produces all these wonderful assortments of foods and food products that we consume without batting an eye, without even thinking about whether or not there will be any more left tomorrow, why won’t that same liberty provide medical products? Doctors to administer them? Hmm? Why? Why won’t it? Because the laws and the rules of economics are the same when applied to medicine as they are to hotdogs. It is a naked economic transaction, regardless of what it is that is being transacted. This is what the Austrians teach us. The Austrians came along, von Mises and Hayek and the rest of them, and Hazlett and Rothbard and all those guys, Friedman, they came along and they said, hey, we used to know this stuff here. Apparently we’ve forgotten it. But this is the way we used to do it here. And so next time you’re presented with some idiot at a party that’s insisting that, oh, the government ought to do something about this, or the government ought to do something about that, did the government do anything about Nathan’s hotdogs? Huh? Did the government tell Chef Boyardee to make that four-cheese ravioli, or did Chef Boyardee think he could sell it? Hmm?

My pal Mike was watching the Food Network last night. They had a throwdown. Bobby Flay had a throwdown with the other Iron Chef, Chef Morimoto, Chef Cat Cora, and some other guy with a bald head. And they were having a big Thanksgiving turkey cook-off, or Thanksgiving cook-off. He said,"Did you see all the food that they were – all the stuff that they were concocting together here? did the White House order that competition? Did they? Is there a Iron Chef czar out there that I don’t know about? Is there?" My response to mike was, "of course not!"

Well, then why aren’t there all manner of automobiles for me to choose from? Now, think about the things that are hard to get and aren’t as readily available as they once may have been. And can’t be gotten and customized and what have you. What are they? They probably are automobiles, things that are large, and things that kind of lend themselves to the disastrous, despicable designs of designing men – politicians, they’re called. And they seize upon these opportunities to regulate. They seize upon these opportunities to seize power. They seize upon these opportunities to control. And then they will sell you or whoever will purchase it access to the control.