It used to be, you know, college is a place
for open dialogue and open debate.
But we find free speech zones, we find unconstitutional
speech policies
and that's our goal with this campaign, our national Fight for Free Speech campaign,
is how do we tackle them and how do we change them and reform them.
Hi I'm Nick Gillespie with Reason TV.
Today we're talking with Cliff Maloney Jr.
he's the executive director for Young Americans for Liberty.
Cliff, thanks for talking to us.
Nick, pleasure to be with you.
Young Americans for Liberty, YAL for short,
is an outgrowth of Ron Paul's presidential campaigns.
You try to get younger Americans for liberty
to become Libertarian and start thinking about that stuff.
What are the big things that you're working
on these days?
Sure, so, as you know, we started back in
2008-2009 outta Ron Paul's campaign.
Started about 100 chapters and today I'm happy
to say we're over 750 chapters
on college campuses nation-wide.
The two major things we're focusing on, first
being our fall recruitment drive,
our broad-stroke effort to reach as many college kids as we possibly can
with these ideas and principles of liberty.
So what does that mean?
What kind of activities do you do on campus
and where are the hot spots
where students are like 'Holy cow this, where have you been all my life? this sounds great.'
So we try to make politics sexy, that's the
best way to say it, right?
We try to reach kids on these campuses-
I think I just threw up a little bit in my
mouth, but-
We try to reach kids with these ideas and
we do that through activism, right?
So real events, what college campuses are
supposed to be all about,
taking ideas to students and having these discussions.
And so we package this, we've got 16 different
activism events
that we offer to our student chapters.
For example something like Visualize the Debt
where they'll build out,
you know right now we're about to hit 20 trillion, right?
So maybe we have 19 trillion, those numbers
across the campus quad
and they're starting discussions with students
and, you know, 'What
is this 1-9-0 what are all these zeroes?'
And they start to have questions about 'What
is the debt?' and we talk about it.
Other things we've done is an event called
Incarceration Nation
where we're really calling out this idea that we should have mandatory minimums
and just saying we need criminal justice reform, right?
So we try to find different ideas or different
events to bring people in,
introduce them to our ideas, and expand our reach on college campuses.
What are the issues that students respond
to?
What's at the top of their 'Oh my god this
is an outrage' list.
Right.
So usually current events.
Any time we can tie them in, we connect much
better.
So another major push we have right now is
something called YAL's
Fight for Free Speech Campaign.
And that is an effort,
due to all of these recent outrages over what is allowed to be said on campus,
this PC culture, and what
we're doing is we are literally going after
what these campuses call free speech zones.
So for those that haven't heard of this, you
know, free speech zone is an area,
let's say a 20 feet by 20 feet zone that a school says,
you know, they're allowed to speak freely in that zone.
This is America, right? We have the first amendment.
And so what we're doing is we're targeting these free speech zones on campuses.
These are public universities, right?
So they're bound by constitutional, you know,
rules about first amendment speech.
Correct, tax payer funded, public universities.
And what we do is, we do a specific activism
event that deals with free speech.
Let me give an example, so we'll do a YALL
Free Speech Ball event.
And what this is is a huge beach ball that
we'll blow up, let's say 6 feet, you know,
by 6 feet ball and these student leaders will
blow them up and they'll roll them around
and they'll just ask, you know, students 'Hey
come exercise your right to free speech,
use this Sharpie and share your expression.'
And we've had incidents where campuses, you
know,
will have college bureaucrats or security guards from campus come out
and tell these
students we need a permit, you know?
Or you're not allowed to do that.
And I take it you're filming that, you're
tweeting it, you're facebooking it.
Right.
The other component of this is to share it
as much as we can through media
to really call out, you know,
this facade that is free
speech on these campuses.
What are, you know, what are some of the worst
campuses that you guys encountered
for free speech?
We had an incident, University of Delaware,
last semester
where we had a student handing out pocket constitutions
and he was stopped
from campus security-
So it's a dangerous document?
I mean I guess, you know?
Just handing out pocket constitutions.
He was stopped saying he needs a permit to
do so, right?
Fairmont University just last week in West
Virginia had an incident
where students were out talking about free speech, getting students to sign up,
getting 'em interested in Young Americans For Liberty
and the school administrator
said that they were being too outgoing
with their recruitment, right?
That they need a permit or they need some
sort of permission to be out talking to people.
And so I think that all of these cases are
just flipping on it's head, it used to be,
you know, college is a place for open dialogue
and open debate.
But we find free speech zones, we find unconstitutional
speech policies
and that's our goal with this campaign,
our national Fight for Free Speech
campaign, is how do we tackle them
and how do we change them and reform them.
Who are the students you're attracting?
Is there a kind of common set of characteristics
about them,
is one part of the country kind of more interested than the other,
what- can
you give kind of a sense of that?
Let me bring up the current election, right?
For all that it's worth.
It's you know I came back- I just got back
to Young Americans for Liberty
and I didn't know what to expect, you know?
There's all this going on and what we're finding
is that students are that much more engaged
because you have individuals, this isn't a
Kerry and a Bush or a Gore and a Bush race,
right?
This is a Trump- you know when you look at
the two major candidates,
everybody knows who they are but they're not-
So you mean Gary Johnson and Jill Stein?
Correct, correct, of course!
But between Trump and Hillary these are oversized
mannequins, right?
Right but nobody, you know, nobody on these
campuses are excited.
And what we're finding is that's an opening
for Young Americans for Liberty,
it's an opening for us to present real solutions, real policy.
Because what we get right now is all celebrity.
It's all personality and no one's talking
about issues.
And so when you see a student on campus who's
doing activism,
who's doing fun projects to present our ideas of liberty, it's engaging.
You're like 'this is actually something that
matters, a solution!'
Is this a particularly responsive moment
that you're finding on campuses or among young people for Libertarianism?
I think that the ideas that we're presenting
we've never seen such an interest from folks
and I think that's where it's our responsibility
to step in and fill this vacuum.
And so I think the more that we do that, the
more that we take this opportunity,
this is a time to double down, right?
You've gotta have somebody step in.
And the other thing is it's time to lead and
not react, right?
We need to lead with that positive narrative
of liberty.
If you present these principles, you know,
that we all hold dear, right?
Sober foreign policy, real privacy, right?
I mean things that with this new Snowden movie
should make a very clear case
for everybody out there.
Limited government in a broad sense, how debt
is killing people,
we have college students who are making minimum wage,
they're working 20 hour weeks, right?
And they're losing 30% of what they make to
the government.
Talk a bit about, you know, it seems to me
that Hillary or certainly Bernie Sanders,
like Ron Paul, had a pretty good following,
a pretty strong following among young people
and on college campuses.
What's interesting is that Bernie Sanders
got there by saying I'm gonna give you free
healthcare, I'm gonna give you free college,
I'm gonna give you, you know, free parking,
whatever.
Ron Paul got there through a very different
set of policy concerns.
Is the Libertarian message of saying 'Let's
make government smaller and more efficient
in the places it needs to be but let's shrink
it.'
Is that enough to woo younger people who oftentimes
seem to be like 'Oh, you know,
I'm 20 thousand dollars in debt, I'm 30 thousand dollars in debt
and this old buy from Vermont not from Texas says he'll cover my bills.'
Can Libertarianism compete with that?
Yeah, I mean, I think we have to.
It's our responsibility to do that.
And one of the sayings I love is 'Freedom
not free stuff.'
But I think that, you know, as you look at
why were people attracted to Bernie, sure,
I mean I think, you know, the broad strokes
of, you know, 'hey he's honest' right?
and he's somebody who's anti-establishment and
he's, you know,
gonna be honest with people and just truthful.
I think that was what was more appealing and
then you got to some of these socialist policies
and you realize well 'Hey guys, you know,
economics teaches us that this can't happen.'
And once again it's another reason that liberty-minded
limited government individuals,
I mean we have to step forward, we have to educate people.
And this is the battle we face on campuses, you know,
are people gonna be in the Young Americans for Liberty crowd,
are you gonna
be somebody who thinks that individual liberty,
not government, can create solutions or are
you going to continue to turn to the government?
And I think that the more the people do that,
the more that we see people coming our way.
That's great to hear and talk a little bit
about, you got activated into politics
by Ron Paul, his presidential campaign in 2008.
Talk a little bit about what was his appeal
to you and how did it make you, kind of,
think different than the world in which you were
raised?
Sure, I come from a family of blue collar
democrats and a christian conservative mother.
You know, but I think that I Ron Paul and
it really opened my eyes to a different way,
right?
A way that made sense and obviously later
on realizing it was this liberty-minded Libertarian
path that said social tolerance but at the
same time, you know, limiting government
and finding ways that we can get economics in
order.
And what I realized was especially the foreign
policy end of it, right?
He was actually talking about, you know, why
do people dislike the United States, right?
And understanding what a sober foreign policy
looks like and you see people right now,
people like Rand Paul, you know, who's still leading
the crusade to say, you know
'maybe we shouldn't be giving out billions and billion dollars in foreign aid to individuals.'
We need a sane voice and I think that the
Republican party and honestly
just liberty-minded people in any way, right?
In any way we can push these ideas forward,
I think it's about finding every vehicle that we can find
and I'd love to have more college
students come over to Young Americans for Liberty
and start to share that message with
us.
Alright well we will leave it there.
We have been talking with Cliff Maloney Jr.
He's the executive director of Young Americans
for Liberty, thanks so much Cliff.
Thanks Nick.
For Reason TV, I'm Nick Gillespie.
