[This commencement address was originally published in 2005. We rerun it at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.]

Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends:

It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line:  college, goodbye, we're outta here.  Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end.

But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things.  So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies.  If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago.  His most famous movie was Gone With The Wind.

He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy.  It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost. 

Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs.  Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget.

Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it.  Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says:

After last week's ruling wherein a federal court failed to permanently bar the Internal Revenue Service from targeting conservative groups, there can be no doubt that liberty and the IRS are incompatible.

The IRS continues to seize bank accounts of individuals and businesses without a court determination of wrongdoing.

Officials of the Obama administration and the IRS have demonstrated time and time again that they are willing to misuse their powers for partisan political purposes.

Congress has the power to correct IRS abuses. One example: Legislation that gives the right to taxpayers to hold individuals within the IRS personally accountable for political targeting or other improper uses of power. That is, IRS employees must have their sovereign immunity protections taken away from them.

The potential problems an IRS employee might have with the loss of such protection is of far less danger to the republic than the danger that politically corrupted, irresponsible and renegade IRS employees pose to the public.   Here are other examples.

What wonderful teachable moments there were this week.  Two in particular were supreme examples of the power of affirmations.  There are two kinds: positive affirmations, like "Remember to go to the store"; and negative affirmations, like "Don't forget to go to the store." 

Any shrink will tell you the latter are dangerous, because it's the key word that sticks in your brain:  "Don't FORGET to go to the store" is really telling someone to forget, not remember.

Yesterday (11/14), the man whom every libtard in America believes is the smartest man ever to work in the Oval Office announced on national television, "I don't think I'M STUPID enough" to mislead people on Zerocare.  Great messaging, genius.  You just told the entire country you are.

That's just the start of the fun this week -- big fun, and you won't believe who the HFR Hero of the Week is. In fact, it's so much fun that I'm making, for the first time ever, this HFR a Free Access.  Enjoy!

On a late September day in 1995, I was washing the family station wagon in the driveway of our home in McLean, Virginia, when my wife called out, "Dana's on the phone for you."

Rebel brought me the phone and I heard a familiar voice.  "Hey, Wheeler, there are some Russians coming by my office around four this afternoon - the Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg and his entourage.  You need to be there."

I looked at my watch.  "Dana, it's two o'clock already.  You sure?"

"Well, I don't know anyone who's been to Russia more than you whose opinion I can really trust.  I'd really like you to be here."

How could I turn that down?

I'd known Dana Rohrabacher since we were in Youth For Reagan during Ronald Reagan's first campaign for governor of California in 1966.  Now, almost 30 years later, Dana was a Member of Congress, and on the powerful International Relations Committee.

So I finished up with the car, put on the Washington costume of dark suit and tie, and motored down the George Washington Parkway to DC and Dana's office in the House Rayburn Building.  The meeting went well.  This was the time of Good Feelings between Boris Yeltsin's Russia and America, and there was a camaraderie between us all.

So much so that Dana suggested at the meeting's close, since he had no more meetings scheduled, why don't we all have a beer together at the Irish Times pub on the other side of Capitol Hill?

Beer?  The Russians thought that was a great idea.

If you were a campaign manager for Republicans running for the Senate or House in November, what policy positions would you advise them to take?

The Republican Party has been under a lot of criticism for running a campaign of "Not Obama" rather than presenting a positive agenda -- and much of this criticism is valid. That being said, it is far easier for those of us who are with policy organizations to give advice about what a candidate ought to say -- because we don't take the direct hit if our policy ideas don't resonate with a majority of voters.

As a result, too many candidates resort to the banal -- "I am in favor of a strong national defense, lower government spending, and tax reform."

Years ago, I occasionally advised political candidates from the congressional to the presidential level, and so I have some understanding of why candidates are less policy-pure and specific than we would like them to be.

So here's how GOP candidates can run a positive issues-oriented campaign that a majority of voters can agree with, yet can substantially advance freedom and prosperity.