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When President Trump promised us a Golden Age, I admit I was skeptical. I knew that there had to be a period of adjustment after the pedal-to-the-metal spending and the ornicide — bird-killing — of wind farms in the Biden years. And when Trump announced his tariffs on April 2, 2025 and the stock market tanked, I got worried. The Guardian was right there with the Narrative:

Trump’s promised ‘golden age’ for the US economy is off to a chaotic start

The Guardian sneered at Trump’s tweet: “Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’”

But Rule One for me is to buy on the dips. So when the stock market opened down 4 percent on April 3, I closed my eyes and bought. On April 4 the market was down again. My eyes were still closed and I bought.

But then, wonder of wonders, on April 9 the market turned, and QQQ is up 17 percent from April 8 as of May 2. Is this the dawn of the promised Golden Age? Or is it a glitch as the economy descends into a Trump underworld and liberal consumers continue their switch from buying Teslas to keying Teslas, and ordinary consumers stop buying because Tren de Aragua deportations?

That’s what the media experts proclaimed when the first quarter GDP growth came in at -0.3%. But then, the anti-experts proclaimed, the dip occurred because imports were up 41% and imports subtract from GDP, because experts. Employment was up 177,000 jobs despite a catastrophic drop of 9,000 in federal government employment.

One thing we know from experience: It will all be obvious, in hindsight.

Meanwhile both Canadian and Australian voters have voted Left, because Trump. Bless their hearts. But in Alberta they are already queueing up to become the 51st state.

Fact is, sports fans, that our liberal friends know we are entering a Dark Age, with a Golden Horde of young DOGE warriors riding in from the steppes, crushing cherished liberal NGOs and hearing the lamentation of the liberal women.

Now President Trump’s promise of a Golden Age is premised upon economic factors: lower prices, more jobs, greater wealth. But surely, we Americans yearn for more than that. Back in the day, when the politics of our lefty friends was just getting started, a famous philosopher talked about workers able “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner.”

Inconceivably, the politicians who first followed his blueprint cast their peoples into a Dark Age of famine and then fought a war against kulaks in Russia and a war against the Four Olds in China. Not much hunting and fishing and criticizing for the workers of Russia and China.

We now realize that the Age of Politics since the Dawn of Marx has been an Age of War. Of course it has, because “there is no politics without an enemy.” And so, in the last century or so, humanity has fought Class Wars against the capitalist enemy, World Wars against the Kaiser and Führer enemies, Race Wars against the white racist oppressor enemy, Sex Wars against the male patriarchy enemy, Environmental Wars against the polluting enemy, Climate Wars against the climate denier enemy.

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The post Thoughts About the Golden Age appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.” – T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

“You can’t repeat the past,” says Nick Carraway to Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which was published one hundred years ago this spring.

Gatsby responds incredulously, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”

This often quoted exchange is typically used to exhibit Gatsby’s delusions, but he may have been right, in the wrong way.

A deep reading of the book suggests it offers the perfect description of today’s political and cultural life, in Nick’s words: “a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wings.”

Commentating on the Roaring Twenties as they started to meow, Fitzgerald later wrote, “By 1927 a widespread neurosis began to be evident, faintly signaled, like a nervous beating of the feet, by the popularity of crossword puzzles.” He said that once “pretty much of anything went“ at Cap d’Antibes on the French Riviera near where he and his wife Zelda had lived for a while. It also was an apt description of New York City and other places where the wild life of the post-World War I reaction was in full force. It was not just speakeasies, jazz, and a sexual revolution, but the first full-blown phase of the technological and commercial world we know today. The 1920s’ modernism, with its ethos of the prohibition to prohibit still somewhat limited to certain cities, was the seedbed for postmodernism’s vastly expanded and deeper rooted transformation of cultural mores today where anything goes.

But by the late 1920s, tamed by political and economic world events, personal disillusionment from the war’s reality, and hangovers from unbridled excess, dispirited days followed, only to be followed by deeper depressions emanating from the stock market crash, followed by the Great Depression, and World War II.

Nevertheless, in 1934 Cole Porter wrote the song, Anything Goes, for the musical by the same name, that, despite being censored for its naughty lyrics, captured in witty words the aftereffects of a world where the old mores were dying as the world was sailing into disaster on a ship of fools.

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, God knows
Anything goes

Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose
Anything goes
………………………………………………………………………
The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today
And black’s white today
And day’s night today
………………………………………………………………………
Just think of those shocks you’ve got
And those knocks you’ve got
And those blues you’ve got
From that news you’ve got
And those pains you’ve got
If any brains you’ve got

It was also in the mid-nineteen thirties that Fitzgerald penned three essays for Esquire magazine about his personal breakdown that were posthumously collected in 1945 in The Crackup. Fitzgerald barely made it through the 1930s, dying in 1940 as WW II was underway, the confirmation that WW I was not “the war to end all wars.”

From “shell shock” to economic shock to “combat fatigue” to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the wars rolled on over millions of corpses and destroyed countries. They roll on still. The toll on the combatants and victims is obvious, but the crackups among those who danced through the carnage or sat fat and seemingly satisfied or indifferent remains unknown.

Still does, as indifference reigns with bi-partisan savagery hidden behind illusory party politics that shroud rule by the monied class via a systemic duopoly. Their elitism and materialism – for which some critics have dismissed Fitzgerald’s book because he describes and castigates its ugly characters and their careless indifference to regular people – define the lifestyles of those who today own the country yet are the envy of so many people besotted by celebrity worship and wish they too were immoral billionaires running the show.

Gatsby is set in the 1920s, but one could easily rewrite the story today – because it is a recurring American tragedy and is repeating – with some figure like Donald Trump cast as Gatsby. But Gatsby or Trump or Daisy or the racist Tom Buchanan are gross symptoms of a class system of domination. As individuals, they are replaceable, revolving characters in a structural order that repeats and repeats.

The character of Jay Gatsby and his luxurious life may be Hollywood’s focus (as are the grotesqueries of today’s celebrities and media billionaires), but the narrator of Fitzgerald’s book, Nick Carraway, who participated in WW I and who, to disguise his torment, says – that he “enjoyed the counterraid so thoroughly” – is the key. Speaking facetiously can hide a lot of pain. Fitzgerald threw a lot of his pain into The Great Gatsby. Despite its glittering surface, it is the story of lost souls, and Fitzgerald was one of them, but by writing the book he strove to find what he had lost.

If this sounds at all familiar, it may be because you are thinking of today’s focus on rich celebrities like Gatsby and Trump who pepper the news, convoluted intimations of disaster both martial and economic, and the popularity of the web based Wordle puzzle and its offshoots as well as crossword puzzles (more about pop cultural reference words these days) – among other similarities to the moribund 1920s.

What’s the right word to describe what is underway today?

Clearly there is a widespread anxiety as in the late 1920s – now a tapping of nervous fingers on billions of cells – that we are involved in a puzzle that needs solving yet are running out of chances to find the right word to characterize it, not to say solve it. For Wordle devotees, it couldn’t be “repeat” since that has six letters. How about “rerun”? That fits Wordle’s numerical format and today’s video world but leaves the question: rerun of what?

Would “havoc” work, or do we need something much stronger that doesn’t fit within the strictures of word games? Catastrophe?

WW III? A Greater Depression?

Last night I had a very disturbing dream. I am not making this up. I was in a car that was also a house with a woman I know and her mother. The woman put the car on automatic self-drive to go backwards and it was proceeding down a dark country road. I was greatly agitated as we traveled automatically backwards, “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” as Fitzgerald ends his book, and I told the woman I would ask her twenty-five times to reverse our direction or I would leave. She refused twenty-five times and I left.

I am not opposed to looking back, but not automatically. Going back by choice to come forward wiser and more enriched by all experiences – good and bad – is an essential journey.

Was my dream a premonition of what I am writing here, a prologue to my musings about The Great Gatsby, which I had been rereading for a reason unconnected to its centennial? Perhaps. For are our dreams not telling us something important, something far greater than, but not excluding, our personal lives?

When he died, Fitzgerald was working in Hollywood, the Dream Factory, where one can imagine he might still have harbored Gatsby’s “colossal vitality of his illusion,” even as his physical health deteriorated after years of very heavy drinking.

I have come back by train and choice with the woman of my dreams for a short visit to New York City where I was born and grew up. All is changed, changed utterly, yet it remains the same, filtered through memory. It is not repetition but a reminder.

The train coming into the city flashed quickly by an apartment building at 204th Street in the Bronx where I recalled hearing as a twelve year old the news that our nice neighbor’s wife, Mrs. Schwartz, had jumped to her death onto the tracks, a Bronx Anna Karenina. It was April 29th – my mother’s birthday.

After arrival at Grand Central Station, our peregrinations took us past our old railroad flat with its rascally stairwell, as our four year-old daughter used to describe it. On Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn John Curtin’s name still poses prominently for his sail making company, a reminder of a time when people as well as answers were blowing in the wind. In a park I met the white dove who might have sailed many seas and once slept in the sand but now pigeon-toes its way back and forth at my feet, cooing messages that entrance my unknowing mind. In Central Park, where as high school student I would train for basketball season by running around the reservoir track and later would wander dreamily looking for girls and watch Shakespeare plays at the Delacorte Theater, we dawdled under an avenue of cherry blossom trees whose blossoms flew like snow with the slightest breeze and little children screamed and ran in circles of delight and we silently lost ourselves in reveries of life’s ephemerality. Didn’t Eliot say that “the leaves were full of children,/Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. /Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind/Cannot bear very much reality”?

Scott Fitzgerald was right, when at the age of twenty-eight he realized through the voice of Nick Carraway that the future recedes before us year by year. It is the thought of a much older man, or a man who senses his mode of life is wrong and doomed. But he knew too that we are always “borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Dying at the age of forty-four, his past was quite brief and his future expunged.

But no matter how long or short our lifespans and no matter how fine or tragic our lives, everything and everyone who have passed through them are ours to accept or reject. One time and one time only – for every time is that one time – do we have a chance to say yes or no, to affirm or deny that everything is connected, is one. That we are who we were with all our experiences. And as Friedrich Nietzsche said, “ … if ever you wanted one thing twice, if ever you said, ‘You please me, happiness! Abide, moment!’ then you wanted all back. All anew, all eternally, all entangled, ensnared, enamored.” The good and the bad, all your life; for it is yours, no other’s.

It might sound strange that my thinking about Nietzsche brought me back to read The Great Gatsby. I first read it long ago, in high school as I recall, Regis High School, that sits on the upper east side of Manhattan between Park and Madison Avenues, a neighborhood where during four years, between my travels back and forth on the subway to and from my Bronx home, I would encounter the world of the very wealthy. Sometimes on cold evenings before basketball games, I would walk the neighborhood, mentally preparing to play my best. On Park Avenue I would watch the cabs and limousines glitter as they went back and forth, picking up and disgorging their rich passengers. Two blocks over on Fifth Avenue I would see women in mink coats walking little dogs in racoon wraps coming and going from doors opened and closed by doormen. I would often wonder what the doormen thought, having a great beloved uncle Nealy who was one. I thought that Gatsby, while wishing to also be treated with that old money obeisance, might think their wealth was also gotten by stealth, but of the legal kind. He would have been right in most cases. These thoughts that interrupted my game preparations stay with me still.

Nietzsche was always preoccupied with the connection between literature and life. He believed in making a work of art out of himself. He saw his own life as a narrative and authors’ best moments in their work. “The ‘work,’ he wrote, whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the person who has created it, who is supposed to have created it: ‘the great,’ as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction.”

On the train back from the city, May 1, the date of my father’s death, I read this from Freddy, as I have come to call my literary friend Nietzsche, who, despite his reputation, ironically or not, took Jesus very seriously, and who in his own way repeats his teaching that the kingdom of God is here now:

And if we consider that every human action, not only a book, is in some way or other the cause of other actions, decisions, and thoughts; that everything that happens is inseparably connected with everything that is going to happen, we recognize the real immortality, that of movement – that which has once moved is enclosed and immortalized in the general union of all existence like an insect within a piece of amber.

So do you think Gatsby was right in one way and right in the wrong way – that as individuals we not only can repeat our pasts but should (as in affirm them, not redo them) – because by doing so we take full responsibility for our identities, become who we are, assert our freedom, and immortalize our lives?

I do.

I do too, she said. Celebrate “the transitory enchanted moment” and eternity recurs! The eternal return.

As for the circumstances of our lives that we were tossed into and couldn’t control, accept them also. But from this moment on, our only time, let us try to create a social order where a book like The Great Gatsby never has to be written again, to make the world it describes a bad dream, so we can say with Nick Carraway that that “party’s over.”

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Gatsby Meets Nietzsche on the Train to Town appeared first on LewRockwell.

Or: the Sacrament of the Present Moment allows us to become holy today by means of abandonment to divine Providence.

God Wills or Permits All Things

Last year I made a resolution on Byzantine New Year to try to work on the spirituality of the “sacrament of the moment.” My predominant fault is pride, and my problem is that I become too abstract in my intellect. This abstraction divorces me from reality so that I make an idol out of my ideas. This prevents me from focusing on God’s will in the present moment, especially concerning the Second Greatest Commandment.

To this end, last fall I began re-reading the spiritual classic from Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence. This appears to be the first work which coins the concept of the “sacrament of the present moment”:

What was the bread which nourished the faith of Mary and Joseph? It was the sacrament of the moment. But what did they experience beneath? An existence apparently filled with nothing but hum drum happenings? On the surface it was similar to that of everyone around them, but faith piercing the superficialities, disclose that God was accomplishing very great things.[1]

In the next chapter the good SJ explains the fundamental reality of the sacrament of the moment:

If the business of becoming holy seems to present insufferable difficulties, it is merely because we have a wrong idea about it. In reality, holiness consists of one thing only: complete loyalty to God’s will. Now everyone can practice this loyalty, whether actively or passively.

To be actively loyal means obeying the laws of God and the church and fulfilling all the duties imposed on us by our way of life. Passive loyalty means that we lovingly accept all that God sends us at each moment of the day.[2]

It seems to me that this spiritual wisdom is a great boon for us as we face a new conclave after the trauma of the Francis pontificate. We must wake up on May 7 and first abandon ourselves to the will of God 1.) in the present moment and 2.) for the conclave. Perhaps we can pray part of the prayer of our lay sodality from Bishop Schneider to this end:

The more violently the gates of hell storm against your Church and the rock of Peter in Rome, the more we believe in the indestructibility of your Church, O Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation, who do not abandon your church and the rock of Peter even in the heaviest storms!

I’m going to try, with God’s help, to wake up, abandon myself to this present moment in my Father’s arms, and then – and only then – look at the news from the conclave. I hope this will help me have a Catholic attitude towards the conclave and the new Holy Father. Pray for me and I’ll pray for you! We’re in the this together, my dear reader.

Concerning the Validity of the Present Conclave

A few voices have raised concerns about the validity of this conclave. They piously reason: if Francis was indeed a heretic, does this not make all his cardinal appointments invalid, and thus not electors, and thus – the election will be invalid?

From there, we get all of the many human institutions surrounding the papacy:

• Some Popes have been elected by the people of Rome.
• Some Pope have been deposed by emperors and then “appointed” by an army.
• Some Popes have been elected by the college of Cardinals.
• Some Popes were barely valid until the whole Church recognised them as such.
• Some Popes were not accepted as the true Pope during their entire lifetime – by a large swath of the Church, perhaps half of all the faithful!
• At least one Pope may have lost his office due to heresy – and was anathematized as a heretic post mortem.

This is the beauty of Catholicism: in the darkest of times, when the Papacy itself is obscured, the Rock of Peter and His Confession remains. This is not to concede anything to Eastern Orthodox apologists, who seek to divorce Peter as a person from his confession or – worse yet – make Our Lord contradict Himself (see Vladimir Solovyov, “Peter & Satan”).

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Not long ago, Cardinal Gerhard Müller made some comments during an interview in The Times of London which caught my attention. They echo sentiments he has repeated before but which now, with the conclave to elect a new pope upon us, struck me. “‘No Catholic is obliged to obey doctrine that is wrong,’ he said, adding: ‘Catholicism is not about blindly obeying the Pope without respecting holy scriptures, tradition and the doctrine of the Church.’”

I mention these statements because I find them to be so painfully obvious that I can scarcely conceive how anyone could disagree with them. But in practice, many do.

When news of Pope Francis’ passing broke, I posted a message on my Facebook page reminding everyone that the Holy Spirit does not directly choose popes in a conclave and quoting Joseph Ratzinger to that effect (from a 1997 interview, which I saw being posted in several places). I am aware that, in a sense, everything happens under the direction of the Holy Spirit and, in some way, guides the cardinals in their choice. But that is not what decent, pious Catholics mean when they say things like “we must pray that the Holy Spirit picks a holy pope in the conclave.” What they mean is the Holy Spirit directs which person the cardinals elect as pope. The implication of this is that every pope must, perforce, be a holy pope since the Holy Spirit cannot err.

It is just this sort of idea I wished to dispel, and the reactions to my post were mostly positive. But still, some people left comments arguing that Joseph Ratzinger changed his mind about this when he became pope, or insinuating that I called into question the Holy Spirit by suggesting such things. I wish I could say that I have grown used to these sorts of interventions from people, some of whom I know and care about, but that would not be true. I must admit, I am simply floored by them, as I am by pretty much all defenses of the record of Jorge Bergoglio I have encountered.

This is especially true of Francis’ doctrinal adventures. The past twelve years have felt like being forced to read a Jack Chick comic, ghostwritten by publicists for the Human Rights Campaign. When I sometimes point out that popes can err, these types of people will agree; but then when I point out this or that defect on the part of Francis, they will deny any such thing has taken place.

Amoris Laetitia? It was a “nuanced” document that doesn’t give license to people in adulterous relationships to take Communion. That’s a misinterpretation. The Abu Dhabi Statement? The pope didn’t mean to suggest that God directly willed all religions, just that He permissively allowed them. To suggest otherwise is ill will on your part. Fiducia Supplicans? It merely says the Church can bless individuals not couples. Why do you hate the pope and/or gay people?

No matter what the subject may be, there is always some excuse that exonerates the pope, and if you object, then the problem is with you. No facts or patterns of behavior make any difference.

Things are even worse when we come to Pope Francis as person. When I came into the Church, I read and was told that the pope was infallible but not impeccable. Popes can and often do sin. Again, you might get agreement from some of his defenders on this, but the moment you descend to specifics of his reign, the refusal to countenance the idea that Francis committed any but the most venial of sins kicks into high gear. It is as if these defenders have a syllogism wired into their brains, which they cannot turn off: the Holy Spirit picks the pope; the pope cannot commit serious sin because the Holy Spirit chose him; if the pope appears to do anything bad, it must be a mistake, a media distortion, or a malicious lie.

I am simply gobsmacked whenever I see, even in “conservative” Catholic periodicals, articles with titles such as “Pope Francis’ Grandfatherly advice on venial sin” or “Pope Francis on how gossip can harm you.” When I think about all the sexual predators Pope Francis promoted and protected (the list is long), I cannot fathom anyone seeking Jorge Bergoglio as a moral guide of any kind.

When an Argentinian court convicted Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta of abusing his seminarians, Pope Francis brought him to Rome so he could avoid prison. Francis restored Mauro Inzoli to the priestly state after Benedict XVI had laicized him; and he only removed him from that state after an Italian court convicted Inzoli of molesting minors. The accusations against Marko Rupnik, whose excommunication Francis lifted, are too disgusting to relate.

These are not isolated incidents, and they are not the actions of a good person. No, Francis was not as awful as the people he protected. And yes, he did some good things as supreme pontiff. But none of this made him a good person worthy of trust, which he never was.

It is hard for many Catholics to face the fact that a pope has erred in his teaching or that he has done terrible things. Many tend to think the “bad popes” are something from the past, safely tucked away in the pages of a history book where they can no longer harm us. In recent times, the Church has exalted the authority of the pope so much that, for some, it is the center of the Faith itself.

During the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, many seemed to understand the papacy this way and defended those pontiffs when many criticized them for upholding unpopular teaching such as that on contraception. But I get the impression the same people felt they could not criticize the obvious problems with the Franciscan pontificate because they had defended those pontiffs not because what they said was true but merely because it was the pope who said it.

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The post The Papacy and the ‘Sacrifice of the Intellect’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Some Russian journalists, such as the astute Ekaterina Blinova, are wondering about the reality of the Ukraine “peace negotiations.”  Trump’s promised peace in 24 hours has been replaced with Trump sending more weapons to Ukraine and more threats to the Kremlin.  Journalist Blinova notes that two US Patriot air defense systems, one from Israel, are on the way to Ukraine along with US $310 million for support of the US F-16s sent to Ukraine, and another $50 million in arms.  How, Blinova asks, is this in support of peace negotiations? Isn’t it instead encouragement to Zelensky to continue the conflict? See here. 

In this way Blinova raises the question whether Trump’s “peace negotiations” are intended to fail so that war can continue.  

Previously, Blinova had raised the question:  “Did US Deep State Allow Trump to Win?”  See here.

Blinova noted that the institutionalized American establishment preferred Trump to Kamala, because Trump has the pro-American image, unlike Kamala, and Trump can marshal support for America’s profitable wars for hegemony. Blinova wrote:  

“Some commentators presume that the US establishment sees Trump and his popularity as a convenient vehicle for new overseas campaigns as part of his efforts to ‘make America great again’. Patriots often think of greatness in terms of military dominance, they say.”

One doesn’t get this kind of reality analysis in the American or Western media where the presstitutes conform to the official narrative.  

My question is whether Russian journalists, such as Ekaterina Blinova, can succeed in penetrating the Kremlin’s consciousness where to be included in the Western world sometimes seems to be a greater achievement than the defense of Russian sovereignty. 

For more than three years Putin has steadfastly refused to fight a war in order to win it.  I have suggested that he hoped to use the war for negotiations that would deliver his goal of a new Yalta, a mutual understanding with the West.  I have said that, if this is Putin’s goal, it is a delusion that ignores Washington’s doctrine of hegemony.

If Putin has such a fixed idea, it will serve him and Russia badly.  Perhaps Putin should listen to Russian journalists instead of to his advisors.

In the digital world in which we live, reality continues to slip away from us. If we are not more careful our life will also slip away from us.

The post Are the Peace Deals Real? appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1977, East Germany ransomed hundreds of its leading intellectuals and artists to West Germany, partly because it did not wish to endure public criticism by its own citizens during an International Rights Conference. In spite of the human sale, there was no general revulsion against the East German government in the international community. The East German regime was considered by many social scientists to have more legitimacy than the West German government because of its more expansive social welfare system and its grandiose paternalist pretensions. Romania engaged in similar sales during the 1980s with its Jewish and ethnic-German subjects.

How many of its citizens does a government have to sell before it loses legitimacy? How many of its subjects does a government have to sell “on the world market” before all subjects of that government are recognized as essentially slaves? The fact that socialist governments treated their citizens as disposable pawns did not spur any type of backlash from American political scientists against them.

During the 1980–1988 Iraq-Iran war, the Iranian government used thousands of children to clear minefields for its precious tanks. Children were rounded up, given small silver keys to assure them that they would quickly enter Paradise, chained together, and sent to clear minefields in front of Iranian tanks. Older draftees were used in human wave attacks explicitly designed to exhaust the ammunition of Iraqi defenders. If the government possesses the right to throw children into a minefield for the convenience of its military operations, then are not all children slaves of the political rulers?

American conscripts as cannon fodder

American draftees during the Vietnam War were not as damned, but was their fate a difference in degree more than a difference in principle? American politicians claimed that the goal of the U.S. involvement was to prevent the people of South Vietnam from falling under communist tyranny. But politicians relied on conscription — which effectively gave them almost boundless power over the lives of millions of young American males. Had it not been for the military draft — and perennial government lies — presidents Johnson and Nixon and the U.S. Congress could not have squandered the lives of tens of thousands of Americans in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara described Vietnam as a “social scientists’ war” — and apparently the scientists had a right to deceive the students and send them to their deaths. In his 1995 book, McNamara announced: “Underlying many of these errors [in how the United States conducted the war] lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues … associated with the application of military force under substantial constraints over a long period of time.”

But as army major and Gulf War veteran H. R. McMaster, author of the 1997 book Dereliction of Duty, argued, “This [failed war strategy] was not due just to overconfidence, not due just to arrogance, this was due to deliberate deception of the American public and Congress based on the president’s short-term political goals.” McMaster also observed, “The Great Society, the dominant political determinant of Johnson’s military strategy, had nothing to do with the war itself.”

McNamara, in a 1995 interview, justified not being honest with both Congress and the American people regarding the winnability of the war: “I was a servant of our president. He appointed me; he was elected by the people. My obligation to our people was to do what their elected representative wanted.” McNamara also insisted that citizens must obey: “Where you’re asked to follow instructions by an elected representative of your government, follow them…. I believe that we all have an obligation to serve our government or take the penalty, take a jail sentence, if we violate the law.” Apparently, no amount of government lies can reduce the citizens’ obligation to follow government orders.

It was politically cheaper to send tens of thousands of young people to die in vain than to risk being called soft on communism. According to a December 21, 1970, entry in the diary of Nixon White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman:

K [Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser] came in and the discussion covered some of the general thinking about Vietnam and the [president’s] big peace plan for next year, which K later told me he does not favor. He thinks that any pullout next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the ’72 elections. He favors instead a continued winding down and then a pullout right at the fall of ’72 so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election.

When Haldeman’s diary was published posthumously in 1996, Kissinger hotly denied making such comments. The peace treaty was signed in early 1973; South Vietnam was conquered two years later when the North Vietnamese government ignored the treaty and sent its army directly into Saigon.

Politicians frittered away the lives of American soldiers in order to make political statements to the North Vietnamese government and the American people. This illustrates how political slavery differs from economic slavery: few private slaveowners would have cast off their prized possessions in the same cavalier way that American politicians disposed of the lives of conscripts.

Forgotten leashes

Over 400 years ago, French philosopher Etienne de la Boetie observed, “It is fruitless to argue whether or not liberty is natural, since none can be held in slavery without being wronged.” Similar sentiments spurred English thinkers from the 1600s onward, especially equating boundless government power with slavery. John Locke wrote: “Nobody can desire to have me in his Absolute Power, unless it be to compel me by force to that, which is against the Right of my Freedom, i.e., make me a slave.” John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, in Cato’s Letters in 1721, wrote: “Liberty is, to live upon one’s own terms; slavery is, to live at the mere mercy of another.” William Pitt declared that if Americans had submitted to the Stamp Act, they would “as voluntarily to submit to be slaves.” When the Continental Congress issued its formal Appeal to Arms in 1775, it declared, “We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.” Historian John Phillip Reid wrote, “The word ‘slavery’ did outstanding service during the revolutionary controversy, not only because it summarized so many political, legal and constitutional ideas and was charged with such content. It was also of value because it permitted a writer to say so much about liberty.” Though some of the rhetoric of the 1760s and 1770s is overheated by modern standards, those thinkers recognized what unlimited government power meant to the lives of citizens.

Early Americans had a vivid concept of governmental authorities “going too far.” The early state constitutions and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights sought to craft institutions to keep government forever humbled to the citizenry. When governments were less powerful in this country, most controversies regarding sovereignty occurred over whether state or federal governments had supreme jurisdiction within their domains. But as government power mushroomed, the issue of sovereignty became far more important. In the same way that every military invasion raises questions of national sovereignty, every regulatory invasion by politicians and bureaucrats must raise questions about the sovereignty of individuals over their own lives. What pretexts justify government massively transgressing the border of the individual’s own life?

In ancient Rome, philosophers debated whether a citizen was still free after he voluntarily sold himself into slavery. Are today’s citizens still free after they effectively vote to make themselves wards of the state? Proliferating paternalistic policies make a mockery of democracy; citizens who cannot choose their own toilets are supposedly free because they may cast ballots for politicians with authority over the appointment of the agency director who is supposed to oversee the bureaucrats who dictate what toilets citizens may buy. Supposedly, as long as the citizens are permitted to push the first domino, they are still self-governing, regardless of how many other government dominos subsequently fall on their heads.

Modern-day slavery

Have we transferred to government the authority that we previously condemned in slaveowners? As Lysander Spooner warned in 1867, “A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years…. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible.”

Political slavery is revealed at those moments when the path of the citizen and the state cross — when the citizen suddenly becomes aware of his complete legal insignificance.

Slavery is not a question of political intent. The greater the state’s legal superiority over the citizen, the closer the citizen becomes to a slave. Modern political slavery means politicians having absolute power over citizens — the transformation of individual citizens with inviolable rights into mere social, economic, and cannon fodder — disposable building blocks for their ruler’s fame and glory. The question of whether people are essentially political slaves does not turn on how often government agents beat them but rather on whether government agents possess the prerogatives and immunities that allow such beatings at their discretion. The measure of slavery was the extent of the slaveowners’ power, not the number of lash marks on the slave’s back. Slavery is not an all-or-nothing condition. There are different gradations of slavery, as there are different gradations of freedom.

Because they had experienced oppression by the tools of a government an ocean away, the Founding Fathers sought to craft a government that would be forever subservient to the law. If the rulers are above the law, then law becomes merely a tool of oppression. If rulers are above the law, citizens have the same type of freedom that slaves had on days when their masters chose not to beat them.

“Virtues” of slavery

While average folks still intuitively recognize the value of freedom in their own lives, there are plenty of poohbahs promoting slavery. Almost 50 years after the East German regime pawned its intellectuals, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is championing serfdom — at least for the mass of humanity. The WEF promised young people that by the year 2030, “you will own nothing and be happy.” Recent political reforms in many nations have furthered the first promise, ravaging private-property rights and subverting individual independence. Australian senator Malcolm Roberts warned: “The plan of the Great Reset is that you will die with nothing. Klaus Schwab’s ‘life by subscription’ is really serfdom. It’s slavery. Billionaire, globalist corporations will own everything — homes, factories, farms, cars, furniture — and everyday citizens will rent what they need, if their social credit score allows.”

The world’s kingpins will need to tighten all the mental thumbscrews for propertyless serfs to “be happy.” Euphoria could be in especially short supply considering other policies championed at the WEF. “Individual carbon footprint trackers” are a popular panacea at Davos, and the WEF has proposed the “setting of acceptable limits for personal emissions.” How many burps will it take to get sent to reeducation camp? To ensure the accuracy of personal emissions tracking, digital identification will be necessary —perhaps with an RFID chip where the sun doesn’t shine? And don’t forget another WEF pet project —Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), which will empower officialdom to financially destroy uppity citizens whenever they choose. WEF is also a leading cheerleader for censorship — the only way to stop hecklers from referring to it as the “World Enslavement Forum.”

Have the globe’s elite politicians and Lear Jet schemers gone too far? Have the bitter memories of Covid lockdowns and senseless mandates fortified the resistance against further aggrandizement by governments? Can the onslaught of a new slavery be rebuffed while plenty of private citizens still have their own property, free speech, firearms, and the will to resist at any price?

This article was originally published in the April 2025 issue of Future of Freedom.

The post Political Slavery in Our Times appeared first on LewRockwell.

In his latest podcast, Peter reviews April’s surprising turnaround in the stock market, explores the myths of tariff-driven economic patriotism, and exposes the contradictions in US currency policies. He also shares his skepticism about the delayed economic impacts of tariffs and comments on the intersection of political influence and wealth in Washington’s culture.

Peter starts by describing last week’s dramatic reversal in the stock market, with particular focus on the technology-heavy Nasdaq index:

Well, you know, when the month of April started out, we were on track for probably one of the worst Aprils in the stock market. Certainly the worst since 2020, the COVID April, but it may have been worse than that. You know, following liberation day on April, April 2nd. But over the past two weeks or so, we’ve had a complete reversal of that decline. And in fact, the Nasdaq, which I think was down the most other than the Russell 2000, since I think post liberation day during the month of April, the Nasdaq was down more during that month, the Nasdaq actually recovered all of its losses and closed positive on the month.

Despite this rebound, Peter urges listeners to remain cautious. He suggests that investors may want to seek opportunities elsewhere—especially given the false optimism driving recent gains:

But maybe there’ll be some selling in May. And if you’re smart, you’ll go away. Or at least go to foreign markets, go to other investments that have a lot more potential than the stock market. But I think what really powered the gains was the appearance of a de-escalation of the trade war, and some optimism that maybe it’s not going to be as bad as we thought. When of course, it’s actually going to be worse than they thought. They didn’t realize how bad it was going to be. But now they think it’s not going to be as bad as they thought because of a lot of the rhetoric coming mostly from the Trump administration.

He then highlights the hypocrisy surrounding the US’s stance on currency values—a policy area where double standards seem almost the norm. Peter finds it illogical that US officials simultaneously complain about foreign currency “manipulation” while touting a strong dollar policy at home:

Bessent keeps talking about foreign exchange, which is also one of the hypocrisies, because I saw him interviewed. He specifically said, ‘One of the ways that the world is cheating us is by undervaluing their currency, that their currencies are too low.’ So in other words, they’re helping to make the dollar stronger, and that’s how they’re cheating. But in the same interview, almost like one sentence away, he was asked about the strong dollar policy, and he said, ‘Oh, absolutely, we have a strong dollar policy.’ Okay, well, if we have a strong dollar policy, and he not only said that we have a strong dollar policy, he said he wants the strong dollar.

According to Peter, the genuine economic effects of tariffs are still waiting in the wings. Businesses stocked up on goods before new tariffs were implemented, muting the pain for now—but the tidal wave is coming:

So all of this is going to have an impact. I mean, right now, I remember a lot of businesses were front running these tariffs, so they still have inventory to sell, because they ordered this stuff before the tariffs hit. Now they’re not ordering it now, so the economic data that we’re getting now hasn’t been impacted. … But so we haven’t really seen the impact. I mean, we initially saw some impact in the stock market and maybe in consumer confidence, but the real economy hasn’t really felt the sting of these tariffs.

To close, Peter turns to the issue of political access and the price tag attached to it in today’s Washington, commenting on the President’s son opening a private club to cater to Washington elites:

The cost to join this club is half a million dollars. That’s the entry ticket. And it’s basically, you know, I don’t know, it’s like a restaurant, you know, you go for lunch, you go have a drink. I’m not sure if they have some tennis courts in the back or a gym or something. I’m not really sure what you get for your 500 grand. … They’re saying the way they’re advertising this is, ‘Hey, this is a way to get access to the Trump cabinet because the cabinet members–  they’re going to hang out at this club.’

This article was originally published on SchiffGold.com.

The post Don’t Trust the Rebound Yet appeared first on LewRockwell.

The man gets more farcical every day. In advance of his meeting with Canada’s newly reelected prime minster, the Donald literally jumped the shark, letting loose a fusillade of outright lunacy that would ordinarily raise questions about his compos mentis. But blithering idiocy like the following has become so commonplace from Trump that it’s apparently being taken for granted.

I look forward to meeting the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH – Why ismAmerica subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year, in addition to giving them FREE Military Protection, and many other things?”

“We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain.

They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us!

While this is obviously pure gibberish in its own right, we can’t even say that it was deliberate over-the-top bombast designed to warm-up his guest for a “full and frank exchange” in the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon. The chances are, in fact, that the Donald actually believes this stuff because his economic framework is an utterly primitive zero-sum construct in which all exchanges produce a “winner” and a “loser” and, furthermore, if his side is losing it’s because the other side is comprised of nefarious cheaters and thieves.

Then again, in the case of Canada even the gross trade numbers do not bear him out— since the $200 billion subsidy number is purely from Mars. The actual US trade deficit with

Canada in 2024 was just $63.3 billion, if that’s what he is referring to as the “subsidy”, but even that doesn’t mean all that much.

As it happened, two-way goods trade between our highly integrated economies was $762 billion ($412 billion of US imports and $350 billion of US exports), meaning that the residual balance in Canada’s favor was a modest 8.3% of total turnover. Even then, two-way services trade between the two countries totaled $150 billion, wherein the $30 billion surplus in the US favor amounted to 20% of total turnover.

So when it comes to exchange of goods and services across the 5,500 mile US/Canadian border total trade amounted to a hefty $911 billion or more than 3% of the combined GDP of the two countries. Yet the net balance was just $33 billion in favor of Canada or a mere 3.6% of total commerce.

Needless to say, that marginal imbalance had nothing to do with cheating by Canada. After all, owing to the Donald’s own pride and joy—the NAFTA redo he christened as the USMCA—there were zero tariffs on all of the $911 billion of two-way trade. And even Canada’s notorious dairy tariffs were subject to a Trump Administration inspired workaround that keeps Canada’s 150% tariffs on butter, cheese and milk at zero in US/Canada trade, as long as imports from the US are below some very high volume thresholds, which US dairy exporters have never reached.

Yes, Canada may be a tad more “socialist” than the US but its trade balances with the rest of the world shows clear as day that it provides no advantage on the bottom line. To wit, in 2024 Canadian exports to the rest of the world were $144 billion, while its imports were $212 billion. So it had a $69 billion trade deficit with the rest of the world, amounting to 19% of its two-way trade.

Now, if the Canadian economy is rigged in some mysterious way so as to cheat in its trade practices, it becomes a bit hard to explain how this purported rigged system results in an 8.3% surplus with the US, but simultaneously a 19% deficit with the rest of the world.

Further compounding the issue is the fact that on services trade, Canada had a $26 billion surplus with the balance of the world, representing a robust 17% of two-way services trade. Thus, on the overall goods and services balance with the rest of the world, Canada posted $232 billion of exports and $275 billion of imports for a negative balance of $43 billion.

Perhaps a pattern is already evident here. On total goods and services in 2024, Canada had a $33 billion surplus with the US and a $43 billion deficit with the rest of the world. Overall, therefore Canada did $1.42 trillion of two-way business with the world and ended up with a de minimis $10 billion deficit. That is to say, if the Canadians are actually systemic and notorious cheaters, a 0.7% deficit with the world isn’t much to write home about.

In short, what in the hell is the Donald talking about? Plain and simple, there is not an iota of evidence that Canada is an unfair trader—to say nothing of the preposterous charge that we subsidize our neighbor to the north by $200 billion per year.

Actually, what is likely going on with Trump’s utterly pointless campaign against Canada on trade is that he was given some “gotcha” numbers and ran with them without any knowledge or comprehension of their context and causes.

Thus, in the quote above he singled out energy, autos and lumber as stuff we get from Canada that in his judgement we don’t need, which is to say we could likely make in the US at a higher cost. Of course, opting for higher cost made in the USA supplies of these products would likely reduce US GDP, not enhance it, but then the essential genius of comparative advantage the Donald stubbornly refuses to understand.

However, when you look at the actual data for the commodities that seem to have put a bee in the Donald’s bonnet the silliness of his trade notions become all the more apparent. As it happens, in fact, the US buys $150 billion of energy (petroleum, natural gas and coal) from Canada every year, but exports only $23 billion back. So the energy trade deficit alone is a whopping $127 billion or more than twice the overall US goods deficit with Canada of $63 billion.

But one look at the US data tells you that the Canadian energy export surplus to the US signifies a globally operative win/win for both countries. That’s because in a figurative but partially literal sense, energy flows south on the North American continent. Canada’s heavy crude is exported to the upper Midwest tier of refineries and industrial users, along with substantial pipelines deliveries of natural gas and liquids to these same areas.

At the same time, the massive US production of shale-based crude oil, natural gas and liquids is concentrated in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and the Gulf, where it is refined and partially shipped into the export trade to the rest of the world. Thus, in 2024, the US exported $212 billion of energy products to the rest of the world (excluding Canada) but imported only $43 billion from world suppliers outside of Canada.

In short, the US had a $169 billion energy surplus with the rest of the world, which more than off-set the $127 billion energy deficit with Canada. What this means, of course, is that the US had an overall $42 billion energy trade surplus with the entire world— notwithstanding the Donald misbegotten ragging about energy imports from Canada. The fact is, economic efficiency is being served all around as available supplies are matched up with end-demand on a least-cost of delivery basis across the North American continent and beyond. That’s free markets 101.

Likewise, the Donald has undoubtedly heard that the US has a small auto trade deficit of $15 billion in parts and $11 billion in finished vehicles. Yet that’s not a nefarious unfair trade doing, either. To the contrary, it’s purely a product of the historical evolution of the industry from Detroit eastward into Ontario and outward into Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and beyond.

The resulting happenstance of plant locations on either side of the border and the labyrinthine flow of materials, parts and sub-assemblies back and forth is just Mr. Market at work. As it happens, labor costs and other other production expenses are virtually the same on both sides of an integrated auto production ecosystem where the national border is essentially invisible.

Likewise, the US imports $36 billion of lumber from Canada versus exports of only $18 billion, but that’s pretty explainable, too. The Canadian northwest produces 2.4X more forestry products and lumber than the US northwest, while the US market for these products is far bigger.

More importantly, when you set aside the Donald’s three hobby horses with respect to the bilateral trade with Canada—energy, autos and lumber—-you find that the rest of the trade accounts stack up massively in favor of US exporters. That is, when it comes to machinery, computers, electronics, pumps, valves, trucks, locomotives and many other industrial product lines, the US exported $247 billion of stuff to Canada in 2024 while importing only $140 billion of the same products from Canadian suppliers.

That is to say, there was a $107 billion US surplus with Canada on some of these less visible products, which amounted to 28% of two-way trade in these items. These were “wins”, of course, in the Donald’s formulation of the trade game, but, obviously, the Donald is looking for “losses” and therefore purported reasons to “tariff”.

At the end of the day, the US/Canada trade in goods and services represents a free trade environment functioning at an extremely high level of efficiency on nearly $1 trillion of two-way commerce. That fact that Trump can’t resist tilting at windmills vis a vis Canada tells you all you need to know: When it comes to the vast, intricate facts and economics of global trade, the Donald is a complete ignoramus and bull-in-a-china-shop who has not yet begun to fully execute the sheer Demolition Derby that his crackpot theories and factoids constantly churn out.

If there was ever any doubt, Trump’s latest threat to tariff the intangible product called foreign-made movies surely resolves it. Then again, as far as the Donald is concerned MAMGA (Making American Movies Great Again) is all part of his Oval Office gig.

The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!

Now how in the hell could you collect a 100% tariff on a movie shot on location in the Australian outback, but put through post-production in Hollywood: That is, picture editing, sound editing, Foley editing, sound mixing, visual effects, color correction, titles, credits and graphics etc. And, for crying out loud, how would you determine the customs value for a digitized mass of raw film not yet put through post-production?

The point is, the whole idea is from wack-a-do land and it surely was not even vetted by the crackpot protectionists who surround the Donald in the White House. So whether MAGA fanboys want to admit it or not, we are further off the beaten path of rational economic policy than Richard Nixon was at Camp David when he shit-canned the gold-anchored dollar and imposed a jerry-built disaster of wage, price, profit, rent and interest controls on the entire US economy in August 1971.

Needless to say, if the POTUS plans to wield the blunderbuss tool of huge tariffs to counteract every stupid move of governments around the world to subsidize or advantage domestic economic activity, such as tax credits for movie production, there is no end to the insanity that is yet in store. And if foreign production of movies is a threat to National Security per the POTUS quote above, then surely every jot and tittle of the $29 trillion US economy is fair game for presidential meddling, as well.

As one wag noted this AM, Trump is essentially placing tariffs on the idea of filming on location — and, in so doing, telling Hollywood what kinds of stories it is now allowed to tell. Well, unless it wants to start paying impossible amounts for the privilege of doing otherwise:

Did you like Raiders of the Lost Ark? Steven Spielberg had to film the desert sequences of that film in Tunisia, because no place in America looked remotely plausible as a stand-in for Egypt”.

In short, the Donald is heading so deep into a rabbit hole of trade policy madness that there is no telling where we will come out. But it will surely not be a golden age of prosperity.

Indeed, just a few more weeks of this nonsense and both main street and Wall Street will begin to buckle under the sheer uncertainty and madness the Donald is unleashing. Butnthat will bring about its own cure—an economic crisis, a mid-term GOP wipe-out in 2026 and a Trump presidency that might not make the full eight years.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

The post Now Comes MAMGA (Make American Movies Great Again!) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Truly a thing of beauty. Have you ever seen something so ridiculously beautiful that it makes you laugh?

An Olympian skater performing a perfect triple axel. A Spacex rocket grabbed by mechanical arms and landing perfectly on its launch pad? The finale of a spectacular fireworks display? Moran, on CBS  asking whether Trump could trust Putin and Trump’s reply,” I don’t trust YOU”.. beautiful. Cutting UN funding by 87% is gorgeous. Hilarious.

Only a meteor striking the UN during full session would be more beautiful- and hysterically funny.

See here.

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Click Here:

Mondoweiss

The post Israel is creating a power vacuum in Gaza by backing armed looters — and killing anyone who tries to stop them appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

John Leake

The post China Runs With Thorium Nuclear Tech appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Eugyppius

The post New Merz government orders the pushback of all illegal migrants at the German borders, effectively abolishes asylum as a path into Germany appeared first on LewRockwell.

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Writes Patrick Foy:

The FT editorial board stepped up to the plate yesterday to proclaim the obvious. But with leaders of “the West” like creepy UK Premier Sir Keir Starmer and the President of the European Commission, the equally creepy Ursula von der Leyen, what do you expect? As for America’s leaders, the less said the better. They are beyond hopeless. 

See here.

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Thanks, David Martin.

The post Tucker Carlson Undresses Ben Shapiro on Israel-Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

CNN News

The post USS Harry S. Truman: Second US Navy jet is lost at sea from aircraft carrier appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com

The post Smotrich: Gaza Will Be ‘Totally Destroyed,’ Population Will Be ‘Concentrated’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Haaretz.com

The post Hasbara Delusions: When Gaza’s Hungry Children Are a ‘PR Failure’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

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FOX News

The post Catholic Church to excommunicate priests for following WA law requiring child abuse confessions to be reported appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Reagan knew Biden was an imbecile 45 years ago

See here.

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