I spent a large chunk of my time last Thur-Sat at the Conservative Political Action Committee — better known as CPAC,which claims to have crowds in excess of 7,000 — half of whom are college students. I had never been before, but it was pretty much what I expected — some good, principled people and a lot of Republican apologists clammering for a poster of Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter.

Bureaucrash shared a vendor table with our parent organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which was pushing their Enjoy Bottled Water and GlobalWarming.org campaigns.

We basically sold some swag and told folks about Bureaucrash and the ideas we proffer, and I found time to walk around and have discussions with folks manning the tables for other orgs that I thought were less-than-friendly to freedom (i.e. those seeking to turn gays straight, to use government force to legislate morality, to justify U.S. military aggression, etc). We even managed to give Tom Tancredo (dubbed “Mr. Bigotry” by Rolling Stone) an immiGREAT sticker (for more on this check out our immiGREAT overview), which he obviously thought was funny.

I told one lady, after she had handed over some coin for a couple of t-shirts, that “Basically Bureaucrash believes that individuals should be free to act so long as they don’t initiate force against another person.” She immediately stopped and asked me what our stance was on the Iraq war. I told her that I was personally opposed to it and she asked for her money back. She understood that the Iraq war involved the initiation of force by the U.S. government and was alright with that. Being a believer in voluntary transactions, I obliged her wishes.

Perhaps one of the coolest things at CPAC was the saturation (or perhaps a more-fitting synonym would be “domination”?) of Campaign for Liberty volunteers (props to Allison Gibbs, C4L’s Outreach Director, for making it happen) and their Liberty Forum, in which Judge Napolitano, historian Tom Woods, Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt, Congressman Ron Paul and others spoke to a packed room. Between some of the speeches video clips were shown, including one that featured segments of Presidents Bush and Obama — the awesome thing was that the decibel level due to people booing was equal — proof that these individuals don’t blindly follow someone simply due to the letter behind their name. And even more important — that they’re increasingly calling for politicians to get out of their lives completely. Self-government baby!

At these big events there are always tons of folks doing interviews, whether it’s for their own consumption or for a big network. Below is one such interview with yours truly:

Props to the always-awesome Crasher Chase who helped man our vendor table on Sat. and to all the true freedom fighters that braved the Statist crowds at CPAC and acted as good communiators for the ideas of liberty; for many, it very well could have been their first exposure to the idea that they think for themselves. Keep fighting the good fight! To stay in the know about future liberty-oriented shin-digs, check out the Events section of Bureaucrash Social. And if you know of something happening not already listed, add it!

And for another take on CPAC, check out Morgan Ashcom’s post “What is Conservative Foreign Policy” over at Fr33Agents.com.