Acceptance of the Town Hall Award at the 2010 Sammies - April 16, 2010

I don’t want to correct you, but it’s Keli. Well I just want to say thank you so much to Sam Adams Alliance for putting this on. I think it really is important to incentivize people to become active in civics and in politics, and as my loving, very loving, and supportive fiancé said, what better way to incentivize capitalists than to reward them.

I guess I just wanted to make a few remarks about coming out of the conservative closet or libertarian closet or right of center closet, whatever closet we live in. Because living in Seattle, obviously, it is not the most popular point of view to come from that side or from that closet. And for I don’t know how many years, 10 years or so, I did improve theater, so all of my friends are actors and theater people and I used to sit there and listen to the really horrible things they would say like we’re racist and all the things that they would say.

Now I sat there and I took it, and I took it, and I took it. And it wasn’t until 2008 but I just- I had to start saying something, I had to start fighting back because they are slandering us, they are maligning us. And our silence vindicates what they’re saying. By staying quiet about it, we-we’re-we’re saying yeah, you’re right that is what we are and we should be ashamed of ourselves. Well, forget that.

I am so sick of it. I am so sick of being quiet about it. I’m so sick of someone making me feel ashamed because I want the government to stay out of my life, or because I want to keep what I’ve earned, or because I look at my-my family and my mom grew up in a little adobe house in New Mexico that her father built with his own two hands and my grandparents had no more than a 3rd grade education and my grandpa blew up tunnels in the mountains in New Mexico and broke his back doing it. To me, going to Oxford, getting my graduate degree, that happened in the span of three generations and that only happens in America, and I’m not ashamed to say that that’s an awesome thing.

And I think that what I wanted to do when I went to Norm Dicks town hall, it’s such a great name, what I wanted to do was to bring the debate out of the practicalities of the healthcare bill because by debating the practicalities we are already giving ground to them. We are already saying well then maybe if it were done this other way then it would work. We’re already giving into their side of the argument. They win the debate already when we only argue the practicalities. And I wanted to bring the philosophical views home and I wanted them to be a man about it. And I think that’s where we need to go is really forcing these people to have these philosophical debates because the left, the Marxists, the Socialists, the social democrats, whatever name they want to give themselves, the progressives, whatever label they choose that’s least offensive to the majority of Americans, they believe in these really cockeyed philosophies and when you try to pin them down, they can’t defend themselves. And we have the philosophy that works because liberty- individual liberty always works. And I’ll just close with this. When in history did anyone ever fight and die to become a slave? When? Think about it. People fight and die across history across history and across geography in every single country, in every single culture, people fight for freedom. And I dare you, I dare you to ask, when you go back in time to when America had slaves, if you could ask them- if you could ask a slave, would you rather be free or have someone- have someone give you a doctor’s appointment? I’m sorry but freedom takes it every single day and that is what we are fighting for and that is why I’m so honored to be here among so many awesome people who won this and thank you so much Sam Adams Alliance for doing this and thank you to my fiancé, my family and my parents, and go freedom.