The Tom Woods Show, episode 1166.

Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion.

Your daily dose of liberty education starts here, the Tom Woods Show.

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Hi everybody, Tom Woods here. I've got a bit of a variety show for you today. I have a couple of

clips I'm going to play for you that I hope you will enjoy. And then I have a story for you.

A story that is one for the ages, let's just say. I've got one heck of a story. It may make you

laugh. It should make you laugh. And it'll give you a nice momentum going

into this long weekend. So I'm going to start with the clips, which have nothing to do with the

story, by the way. Story is just a gift. It's my gift of happiness and joy to you. I'll just say that.

For now, let me set up what I want to play for you. First, what we're

going to hear is the opening statement I made back in 2009 at Freedom Fest, which, you know,

we've had Mark Skousen, who's the director of Freedom Fest on this show a couple of times, and that's been, I don't know how long Freedom Fest has been going on, but every year it's in Las Vegas and a lot of people, a lot of people attend, a lot of people present. And that year, I did a couple of things. And one of them was a debate on the Federal Reserve. And I'm going to play for you my opening statement in that debate. And it was a two-on-two debate, actually. It was Gene Epstein and I. Gene Epstein and I were on one side, and John Fund and Warren Coates were on the other. He was with the International Monetary Fund for quite a while. He's been an

advisor to various central banks around the world. And then John Fund, of course, wrote for the Wall Street

Journal. Gene Epstein, I think by now, a lot of listeners of this show know Gene very well.

And he spent many years as economics editor at Barron's. So it turns out that Gene and I have

had a partnership going back quite some time. So I didn't know Gene that well at that point. I knew him

a little, and I'm not sure we had ever met in person. And I wasn't sure shows how little I knew him.

I wasn't sure how feisty he'd be. I wasn't sure how much of a

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