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One of my favorite sections of Ludwig von Mises’s majestic treatise Human Action (1949) is a rather short one titled “The Fight Against Error.” Its main theme is to show how mankind’s problems come down to errors arising from flawed economic ideologies. He writes: “The main objective of…economics is to substitute consistent correct ideologies for the contradictory tenets of popular eclecticism.”

In some ways, civilization can be seen as a sort of bridge which must be engineered and understood using the proper materials and methods if it is to last and lay a foundation for a more prosperous future. A faulty understanding which just patches things only delays a future calamity. Mises writes:

Logical thinking and real life are not two separate orbits. Logic is for man the only means to master the problems of reality. What is contradictory in theory, is no less contradictory in reality. No ideological inconsistency can provide a satisfactory, i.e., working, solution for the problems offered by the facts of the world. The only effect of contradictory ideologies is to conceal the real problems and thus to prevent people from finding in time an appropriate policy for solving them. Inconsistent ideologies may sometimes postpone the emergence of a manifest conflict. But they certainly aggravate the evils which they mask and render a final solution more difficult. They multiply the agonies, they intensify the hatreds, and make peaceful settlement impossible. It is a serious blunder to consider ideological contradictions harmless or even beneficial.

Thus Mises had a laser-like focus on ideas and education. Elsewhere Mises stresses what should be obvious:

It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales.

Unfortunately, the public—and even most “intellectuals”—erroneously tend to see mankind, not in “The Fight Against Error” and economic ignorance, per Mises, but in some quixotic fight against “evil”—malicious or dumb people. In just two consecutive paragraphs, like some intellectual Jedi who calmly disarms all opposition with the wave of a hand, Mises brilliantly dismantles the “they are evil” or “mad” fallacies which dominate most discourse regardless of whether the subject matter is the economy, science, history, etc., and can only lead to “irreconcilable conflict.” He writes:

The problems involved are purely intellectual and must be dealt with as such. It is disastrous to shift them to the moral sphere and to dispose of supporters of opposite ideologies by calling them villains. It is vain to insist that what we are aiming at is good and what our adversaries want is bad. The question to be solved is precisely what is to be considered as good and what as bad. The rigid dogmatism peculiar to religious groups and to Marxism results only in irreconcilable conflict. It condemns beforehand all dissenters as evildoers, it calls into question their good faith, it asks them to surrender unconditionally. No social cooperation is possible where such an attitude prevails.

No better is the propensity, very popular nowadays, to brand supporters of other ideologies as lunatics. Psychiatrists are vague in drawing a line between sanity and insanity. It would be preposterous for laymen to interfere with this fundamental issue of psychiatry. However, it is clear that if the mere fact that a man shares erroneous views and acts according to his errors qualifies him as mentally disabled, it would be very hard to discover an individual to which the epithet sane or normal could be attributed. Then we are bound to call the past generations lunatic because their ideas about the problems of the natural sciences and concomitantly their techniques differed from ours. Coming generations will call us lunatics for the same reason. Man is liable to error. If to err were the characteristic feature of mental disability, then everybody should be called mentally disabled.

If you tell “supporters of opposite ideologies,” whether they’d be socialists or capitalists, Zionists or anti-Zionists, pro- or anti-vax, etc., that—with the best of intentions—they are simply following erroneous ideas, you avoid the potential mistake of implying malice, conspiracy, or stupidity, and put the onus on them to then explain the validity of their ideas.

Mises—being a Jewish intellectual and arguably Nazism-Socialism’s greatest intellectual opponent—was almost apprehended by the Nazis as he cautiously escaped Europe in 1940 when the Nazis quickly overran France and tried to get the Swiss government to hand him over. But regardless of Nazi tyranny, Mises’s profound understanding of the world had him blaming, not Hitler, or “evil” or “antisemitism” or “madness,” but the errors and economic ignorance that inevitably led to such tyranny given Germany’s unique historical circumstances. Mises concludes:

There are psychiatrists who call the Germans who espoused the principles of Nazism lunatics and want to cure them by therapeutic procedures. Here again we are faced with the same problem. The doctrines of Nazism are vicious, but they do not essentially disagree with the ideologies of socialism and nationalism as approved by other peoples’ public opinion. What characterized the Nazis was only the consistent application of these ideologies to the special conditions of Germany….

Now, whoever accepts the ideology of nationalism and socialism as true and as the standard of his own nation’s policy, is not in a position to refute the conclusions drawn from them by the Nazis…. There is no hope of eradicating the aggression mentality if one does not explode entirely the ideological fallacies from which it stems. This is not a task for psychiatrists, but for economists….

Man has only one tool to fight error: reason.

The post Mises’s ‘Fight Against Error’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Americans watch more television than anyone else in the world, and as we watch television we are constantly being bombarded by commercials from pharmaceutical companies.  As I discussed in a previous article, pharmaceutical companies spend more than 15 billion dollars on television advertising each year.  The reason they do this is because it works.  We are the most drugged nation in the history of the world, and the pharmaceutical companies are absolutely swimming in cash.

According to polling that was conducted by KFF, a whopping 61 percent of all U.S. adults admit that they are currently taking at least one pharmaceutical drug.

That is a solid majority of the population.

And once they have you on one drug, they are much more likely to be able to get you on another.

The KFF survey found that 13 percent of U.S. adults are taking one pharmaceutical drug.

The KFF survey found that 11 percent of U.S. adults are taking two pharmaceutical drugs.

The KFF survey found that 10 percent of U.S. adults are taking three pharmaceutical drugs.

And most shocking of all, the KFF survey found that 27 percent of U.S. adults are taking at least four pharmaceutical drugs.

That means that more than a quarter of the adult population is currently on at least four  prescription medications.

That is insane!

But this is where we are at as a society.

Elderly Americans are the biggest victims.  One study found “that an estimated 89 percent of older adults” took at least one  prescription medication within the past 12 months.

Even if you aren’t sick, the system is designed to find a reason why you should become a customer of the big pharmaceutical companies.

For example, the percentage of Americans that have been diagnosed with depression has more than tripled since 2005…

Today, new CDC data showed that nearly 18 percent of Americans had depression in 2023, an all-time high. In 2005, when Cruise’s controversial interview aired, that figure was about 5.4 percent.

At this stage, it is so easy to be diagnosed with depression.

Just act a little bit sad, and they will gladly start giving you pills.

This is particularly true for women.  According to Google AI, women in the United States are using antidepressants at a rate that is more than twice as high as men…

According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted in 2015-2018, approximately 17.7% of women aged 18 and older reported using antidepressants in the past 30 days. This is significantly higher than the rate for men, which was 8.4%.

If you have been on antidepressants, you already know how they can mess with your head.

I have seen it happen to people that I know personally.

So what is going to happen to the millions of Americans that are highly dependent on these drugs if they suddenly can’t get them anymore?

Today, we import approximately 75 percent of our essential medicines, and most of those essential medicines come from either China or India…

According to Exiger, the U.S. currently imports 75% of its essential medicines, with most of them coming from China and India. While India produces about half of the generic drugs the U.S. imports, it relies heavily on China for 80% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). More than 500 generic drugs rely on one country’s APIs, including treatments for diabetes and heart conditions as well as antibiotics.

Another factor putting Americans at risk is the use of forced labor in the production of pharmaceuticals. Exiger found that multiple suppliers, including Sinopharm, Zhejiang Shindai Chemical Group and Zhejiang Chemicals Export Corp., relied on Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang. Customs and Border Patrol is supposed to block goods made with forced labor; however, some still get through.

We have got a real mess on our hands.

Many pharmaceutical drugs will soon become much more expensive, and in other cases we could witness extreme shortages.

Millions of U.S. adults are about to experience a very rude awakening.

Of course it isn’t just adults that are being drugged into oblivion.

Today, millions of American boys are being given drugs for ADHD…

More than 21% of 14-year-old boys in this country now supposedly suffer from this condition. The number goes up to 23% for 17-year-old boys. As a result, prescriptions for drugs like Ritalin and Adderall have skyrocketed. From 2012 to 2022, the total number of prescriptions for stimulants to treat ADHD increased dramatically by nearly 60%. Boys between the ages of 10 to 14 were the demographic that saw the highest increase in these prescriptions.

What we are witnessing is a national tragedy.

Most of the boys that are taking these drugs simply do not need them.

As Glenn Back has accurately pointed out, our “feminized education system” tends to punish normal male behavior…

“The truth is we’ve been told not that a feminized education system has increasingly punished normal male behavior it doesn’t understand; it’s not that schools have lost their capacity to educate male students; it’s not that smartphone use and electronics in general have become distractions teachers have been unable to control. Instead, we’re led to believe that boys have suddenly become afflicted with a severe psychological disorder,” Glenn reads from the Daily Wire piece.

He agrees that what’s being done to boys in education is a travesty.

“Everything is just push the girls, push the girls, push the girls — ‘you can be anything.’ ‘Shut up, sit down, have some Ritalin’ to the boys,” he condemns.

The boys who are being written off as distractible and out of control are really just being typical boys.

He is right.

We have been trained to think that typical male behavior is abnormal when it most certainly is not.

Sadly, an increasing percentage of U.S. adults now believe that children are such a “burden” that they don’t want to be parents at all…

A new study shows the number of U.S. adults who do not want to have children has doubled in 20 years.

“We found that the percentage of non-parents who don’t want any children rose from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023,” Jennifer Watling Neal, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Michigan State University (MSU), said.

“During the same period, the percentage of non-parents who plan to have children in the future fell from 79% to 59%,” she added.

The relentless propaganda that they have been feeding us is working.

More U.S. adults than ever before are completely rejecting parenthood.

Needless to say, this is a recipe for societal suicide.

If we do not reproduce ourselves, we can’t expect to have any sort of a positive future.

Sadly, millions of Americans simply do not care about the future at this point because they have already been drugged into oblivion.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post Drugged Into Oblivion: More Than 60 Percent of U.S. Adults Admit That They Are Taking Pharmaceutical Drugs appeared first on LewRockwell.

Now that the entire economy depends on these hyper-normalized speculative bubbles for its “growth” and “wealth,” there is a profound fear of a future based not on artifice but on the real world.

Humans are quick to habituate to current conditions, i.e. consider them normal. This rapid normalization has advantages and disadvantages.

Normalization is an adaptive strategy, enabling humans to adapt readily to conditions that are considerably different from their previous “normal” state of affairs. So those ripped out of their “normal” lives and thrown into the Gulag soon consider the wretched conditions of the prison camp “normal.”

The downside of normalization is that it erects a defensive barrier between the real world and the perceived i.e. normalized world. In systems that have failed but are incapable of real reform, normalization phase-shifts into Hyper-normalization (generally one word, Hypernormalization), a peculiar adaptative state described by Alexei Yurchak, a Russian anthropologist who used the term in his 2005 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.

Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis described Hypernormalization in this way:

“‘HyperNormalization’ is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, know that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase ‘HyperNormalisation’ to describe that feeling.”

I submit that the U.S. economy and stock market have been hypernormalized to the degree that what is now viewed as “normal” is completely detached from the real world. What we inhabit is a system that has lost all authenticity and survives entirely on the ceaseless marketing of artifice, a.k.a. narrative control that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

In effect, “normal life” is stripped of authenticity in favor of a simulacrum “normal” that supports those at the top of the status quo. This “new normal” reaches extremes of artifice, hence hyper-normalization.

As long as everyone thinks there are no alternatives to this hyper-normalized simulacrum, this artificial construct appears to be immutable–everything is forever.

But once the power structure admits, however minimally, that it no longer has the answers to the decay of the social-economic order, then the entire artificial construct collapses in a heap. This is the sociology of collapse: people accept a facade of artifice and propaganda without actually believing any of it, though they do have a limbic loyalty to the founding ideals of the nation.

What’s real is denial, repression of non-conforming realities, group-think, virtue-signaling and a profound loss of competence.

Read the Whole Article

The post What’s ‘Normal’ in a Hyper-Normalized World? appeared first on LewRockwell.

I promised, after having nearly died in a hospital the summer before last, to write the things I wanted never to write.

I’ve almost kept my promise. But there are a few stories left unspoken; that catch in my throat. This is one of them.

You, dear reader, remember our beloved little dog, the late Mushroom.

He joined our family when I had recently become a single mom with two small children — that most vulnerable, most raw, most wary of identities; that state most in need of a friend and protector. Mushroom stayed with us for eighteen years; companion, guardian; cranky black-and-white angel; fluffball, comforter; peevish, silent commentator on events.

Loki, our new pup, is a freshly-minted baby spirit. He wriggles, barely able to contain himself, and is agog with the wonder of everything on Earth.

Mushroom, on the contrary, was like an elderly Edwardian uncle who reads the paper in a dressing gown and slippers, and gazes upon the scene with a jaded eye.

You can barely escape Loki’s puppy-hugs and kisses; but one had to patiently seek out a cuddle from Mushroom. It would be a fulfilling moment when he condescended to lay his wiry head upon your knee, or, his preferred move, to curl up, lying half on your lap and half on the keyboard of the laptop, blocking the screen on which the family was trying to watch a movie.

Mushroom always had a bit of a metaphysical role, I felt, in our family’s life. He always seemed like an irascible, chunky, treats-seeking gift from God — a small warm scruffy being, whose job from the start seemed to be to make sure that no one in our household would ever be too lonely, too sad, or too overwhelmed.

You already know that when Mushroom died at last, here in the woods, something happened that we could not, still cannot, possibly explain. I described it in my essay “What is A Miracle?” A perfect, long-stemmed red rose appeared, floating in the river by our house, in the depths of winter, as Mushroom lay dying. That rose stayed, perfect, unmoving, hovering an inch or two under the surface of the ice-clear, rushing waters, for days; it remained suspended through the day that Mushroom died, and it lingered under the waters, held aloft by nothing, for days thereafter.

When the rose released its petals at last, what remained behind were two slender tree-trunks, that had caught themselves on a raised bed of sand within the torrents of the river. These had resolved into the shape of a man-sized cross; and though winter was all around us, a tangle of greenery lay at its cross-section.

Looking back, I see that I’d under-narrated the wonder of this. At the time I wrote that essay, a couple of years ago, I did not want to tackle the miraculous head-on, because — well, all of the reasons.

People who have advanced degrees, I was raised to believe, are not supposed to experience miracles, let alone to narrate them.

The miraculous, I was taught, is in poor taste.

But — but — I’ve changed since then.

And that miraculous rose was not the only impossible event that we experienced in relation to Mushroom.

In about 2018, my husband Brian was working as a private investigator for a client who was the leader of a Native American tribe. His work took him to the tribe’s vast, pristine reservation, which extended for hundreds of acres over the fruit-bearing lowlands, and over the regal mountain highlands, of Yakima County, Washington State.

I visited Brian sometimes while he was working; I’d stay in chain hotels on the outer edge of the reservation, and read and write, and explore the slightly depressed, but still charming, downtown of Yakima. I would admire its 1890s train-depot-turned-cafe; the 1940s lettering describing apples and cherries that was still visible on whitewashed brick fruit-warehouse walls; the neighborhoods of run-down but still beautiful Craftsman bungalows; the town’s echoing brick saloons, left over from the boom times of the early 20th century.

Low black sand hills rise up at the far ends of long flat avenues; the jail, still in use, stands right in the center of town, almost directly across from the train tracks. Feathery cottonwoods fan a little creek that runs, beyond the Target and the Planet Fitness and the parking lots, across the flat, tawny-dirt, high-desert outskirts of the little city. Birds of prey — raptors — cougars, coyotes, and snakes, inhabit those flatlands.

The fruit in that valley was so abundant that in the summertime, gas stations sold, for pennies a pound, cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, and strawberries, all so cheap because they were on the very edge of overripeness, so un-transportable.

In July, Brian and I would buy parcels of golden, and then golden-red, and then later still, nearly black cherries, wrapped up in newspapers, enclosed in turn in plastic. We’d make a picnic table from the spread-out wrappings on the bed of our hotel room, as we had no table. We’d unveil and pile up the fruit, and admire its glowing colors; and eat it as a red sun sank slowly between the low black mountains.

On one trip, we decided to drive, rather than fly, across the country. One reason was so we could bring Mushroom with us. He was very elderly by then, and could not see well, but he was still a good traveller. Brian liked to take Mushroom out of the car at various truck stops along the way, so that our little, elderly dog could lift his head, and smell the air and dirt and grass in different states.

Read the Whole Article

The post This Really Happened appeared first on LewRockwell.

In his book the Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard sets out the links between individual liberty, property rights, and the non-aggression principle. Rothbard’s explanation of property rights as the essence of liberty has greatly influenced the libertarian understanding of the NAP, but there is often a great deal of confusion as to what amounts to an act of aggression. As David Gordon has pointed out, some libertarians have gone so far as to say that the NAP should be rejected altogether for having “morally unacceptable implications.”

One mistake many libertarians make is to suppose that theoretical principles can provide a complete resolution for difficult cases, in the sense that we should be able to ascertain—just by studying the NAP—whether it has been violated in specific cases. Gordon points out that this overlooks the role of other considerations, such as social conventions and legal norms, in resolving real world disputes. The “morally unacceptable implications” that many libertarians find disturbing are the result of theorizing about the NAP without regard to the broader ethical framework within which Rothbard defends property rights. Rothbard’s theory of liberty is not just a philosophical or academic treatise based on a set of hypothetical problems. It is also a “system of libertarian law” designed as a foundation for “the truly successful functioning of what we may hope will be the libertarian society of the future.”

Rothbard’s analysis therefore takes into account the real-world context of crime and aggression. He defines an act of aggression as a violation of another’s liberty, and, importantly, sees liberty as an emanation of self-ownership and private property. He explains how these ideas are interlinked:

The key to the theory of liberty is the establishment of the rights of private property, for each individual’s justified sphere of free action can only be set forth if his rights of property are analyzed and established. “Crime” can then be defined and properly analyzed as a violent invasion or aggression against the just property of another individual (including his property in his own person).

In this context, he defines a crime as a violation of property rights. Thus, Rothbard defines “aggressive violence” as a situation where:

…one man invades the property of another without the victim’s consent. The invasion may be against a man’s property in his person (as in the case of bodily assault), or against his property in tangible goods (as in robbery or trespass). In either case, the aggressor imposes his will over the natural property of another—he deprives the other man of his freedom of action and of the full exercise of his natural self-ownership.

Rothbard’s explanation of the NAP clearly includes invasions of both person and property. But many people struggle to apply these principles in real cases. The first practical difficulty arises in relation to “mere” threats. Rothbard sees direct, overt, threats of invasion as equivalent to invasion because—as he sees it—the NAP is about the invasion of the person or property of another and depriving another man of his freedom to exercise his self-ownership and ownership of his property.

A violation of another man’s liberty may be committed by means of intimidation, or fraud, which Rothbard sees as “equivalent to the invasion itself.” Does this mean that any time someone feels (or claims to feel) “intimidated” that is the equivalent of an invasion? Of course not. Under the NAP, violence against another is only justified in self-defense, and we must therefore have recourse to the principles of self-defense in ascertaining whether an act of violence is aggressive or defensive. Rothbard holds that “defensive violence may only be used against an actual or directly threatened invasion of a person’s property, and may not be used against any nonviolent ‘harm’ that may befall a person’s income or property value.” Further, as Rothbard explains, in cases of direct threat of invasion, self-defense may be justified even before a physical act of violence has yet occurred:

Defensive violence, therefore, must be confined to resisting invasive acts against person or property. But such invasion may include two corollaries to actual physical aggression: intimidation, or a direct threat of physical violence; and fraud, which involves the appropriation of someone else’s property without his consent, and is therefore “implicit theft.” Thus, suppose someone approaches you on the street, whips out a gun, and demands your wallet. He might not have molested you physically during this encounter, but he has extracted money from you on the basis of a direct, overt threat that he would shoot you if you disobeyed his commands. He has used the threat of invasion to obtain your obedience to his commands, and this is equivalent to the invasion itself.

Rothbard does not suppose that any “mere threat” is “equivalent to the invasion itself.” He emphasizes that: “It is important to insist, however, that the threat of aggression be palpable, immediate, and direct; in short, that it be embodied in the initiation of an overt act” (emphasis added). This is where many libertarians begin to get confused. They want to know how we would distinguish between “mere threats” and “palpable, immediate, and direct” threats. They suppose that Rothbard’s theory is somehow inadequate as it does not definitively classify direct and indirect threats. But no legal theory can determine whether an act is “palpable, immediate, and direct”—to ascertain this it is necessary to examine the facts.

This is why the outcome of real-world cases depends, not only on the applicable legal principles, but also on the relevant facts—and there is often much dispute over which facts count as relevant or how much importance ought to be attached to specific facts. For example, it is easy enough to state that invading another’s property is an act of aggression, and that invasion occurs when one intrudes upon the property of another without consent. But in practical cases what counts as an “intrusion”? What counts as “consent”? Does a stranger “intrude” when he walks up to someone’s front door without permission, and rings the doorbell? Would that depend on the time of day, the stranger’s purpose, or even his demeanor? Perhaps if he just emerged from what appears to be a delivery vehicle and has what appears to be a parcel in his hand we might “imply” consent to deliver parcels, but if he approaches under cover of darkness with a weapon in his hand we would take a different view of the matter. Moreover, to say that consent may be “implied” in appropriate circumstances does not tell us which are the circumstances in which consent ought to be implied. The theory of non-aggression, by itself, cannot conclusively answer these types of questions.

Gordon adverts to this problem when he explains that, while Rothbard regarded pollution as an invasion of property, this principle would not, in itself, determine what types of polluting activity count as an invasion. He discusses the example of smoke: if you are smoking a cigarette as you walk down the street, does your smoke “invade” the properties you walk past thereby violating other people’s property rights? Some libertarians ran this argument during the covid outbreak, arguing that mere breathing amounted to an act of aggression against other people and therefore justified “restraining” or even attacking potential “covidiots” who ran around wantonly breathing out their germs. Attacking them would be an act of “self-defense” that would save grandma’s life, or so the reasoning went. Walter Block described that position as follows:

For anyone venturing forth onto the streets would necessarily be violating the NAP. It is as if he is automatically shooting a gun at random or swinging his fists without being able to stop. As such he constitutes a threat. The NAP proscribes not only physical invasions but also the threat thereof. Under the scenario we have depicted, this is indeed the case, only instead of bullets or punches the traveler would be hurling a deadly virus at everyone else.

That some libertarians reasoned in that way is not due to any failing of the NAP, but rather a failure to grasp accurately the facts of the case. Gordon explains that while the non-aggression principle defines acts of aggression, definitions alone do not suffice in answering practical questions. As shown by the covid example, the definition of the NAP may be correct, but the application of it to the facts may nevertheless be entirely wrong. To resolve real cases, something more than definitions and theories are needed, one of which Gordon describes as social convention: “the understanding that prevails in a society.” Recourse to matters of convention would help to resolve many problems that needlessly confuse libertarians. To illustrate this, consider Walter Block’s example in which he distinguishes analytically between a “mere” threat and “initiation of physical violence”:

A approaches B and points a gun at him. A says to B: “Give me your money or I’ll shoot you.” Surely, a rights violation has now occurred; the libertarian nonaggression principle includes “mere” threats such as these, not only the initiation of physical violence.

Although there is clearly an analytical distinction between a “mere” threat and “physical violence,” in Block’s example no reasonable person would doubt that A is a violent aggressor. The distinction between threat and violence—while analytically interesting—is moot in the fact scenario Block has presented. This is indeed the precise example Rothbard uses to illustrate that in some cases a threat is the equivalent of an invasion. In such cases, the threat is no “mere” threat—it amounts to “the initiation of physical violence.” As Rothbard explains it, the “rights violation,” namely the invasion of property rights, consists in the act of aggression itself, which in this case is the threat to shoot. To apply Rothbard’s words, in this case the “crime” is “a violent invasion or aggression against the just property of another individual [and] his property in his own person” committed by A when A pointed a gun at B and threatened to shoot. Any reasonable person would regard that as “the initiation of physical violence,” even though the trigger has not yet been pulled, and may or may not end up being pulled, for example, if A is interrupted before he has the chance to shoot.

Block is, therefore, right to observe that, “A has violated the rights of B even if he breaks off the encounter and runs away, leaving B with his wallet intact.” But in distinguishing analytically between the “threat” and the “initiation of physical violence,” Block overlooks the common sense fact that based on the facts he presented, the threat itself constitutes initiation of physical violence. Even though he argues that both violate the NAP, the point is that separating the threat from the initiation of violence—based on these facts—is an analytical distinction that serves only to confuse and not to clarify. Most people faced with a gun-wielding attacker would not have any difficulty about whether to “classify” that as a threat or as an attack. It is not just that “both” are acts of aggression, but that, based on these facts, there is no real-world distinction between the “threat” and the “violence.” The threat and the violence are “equivalent,” to use Rothbard’s word.

Common sense and close attention to the facts of the case go a long way in resolving such problems. It would be nonsensical to ask whether someone with a gun to your head threatening to shoot you has committed an act of violence. Indeed, the confused libertarian might ask, what if—unknown to the aggressor—the gun was not loaded? Should we then say there is no act of violence until the moment the bullet leaves the gun? But—the libertarian might persist—what if the bullet leaves the gun but misses the target? Should we then say there is no act of violence until the bullet hits the target? Under ordinary principles of self-defense, based on these facts, there is no need for B to wait for A to pull the trigger before taking defensive action. It is by convention—reflected in the legal norms of the traditional English common law—that we understand that an armed robber is a violent aggressor.

If the facts were different, the situation would, of course, be re-evaluated accordingly. This is precisely why resolving criminal cases involves an application of the principles to the facts. It is not merely a matter of theoretical disputation. This point is highlighted by Rothbard in his article War Guilt, which deals specifically with assigning guilt for the wars in the Middle East but also contains lessons that may be extrapolated to other cases. Rothbard reminds us that in any war, you cannot simply rely on theories of non-aggression to ascertain who is the aggressor and who is fighting defense. He criticizes the “tendency to avoid bothering about the detailed pros and cons of any given conflict” and cautions that, “Libertarians must come to realize that parroting ultimate principles is not enough for coping with the real world.” The same observation also applies to other contexts in which the non-aggression principle is applied. To ascertain whether—and, if so, by whom—an act of aggression has been committed, theoretical debates do not suffice. A close and detailed examination of the relevant facts is necessary.

The post The Non-Aggression Principle Is Realistic and Not an Abstract Concept appeared first on LewRockwell.

Read part I here.

President Donald Trump’s core agenda is to reform the Western economy by ending “American globalization,” under which the components of complex products must be manufactured in multiple countries before being assembled. He intends to bring as many factories as possible back to his country so that it becomes capable of manufacturing complex objects from A to Z.
Contrary to what we might think, the First World Trade War is not between Washington and Beijing, but rather between two forms of capitalism.

After explaining Donald Trump’s efforts against “American imperialism” and against the federal bureaucracy  [ 1 ] , I would like to turn to his economic action and particularly to his conception of customs duties.

Initially, Donald Trump was not a politician, but a business leader, and it was as an entrepreneur that he entered the political world in the 1980s. He then published a full-page advertisement in three major US newspapers to denounce the imbalance in trade between his country and China. He thus opposed American globalization, which made the United States the center of the Empire and China “the workshop of the world.”

He entered politics later, first alongside the Clintons, then supporting the Tea Party and finally taking over the Republican Party.

To understand Donald Trump, we must always keep in mind his background: he is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but a “Jacksonian”  [ 2 ] . And his hobbyhorse is to bring the production of consumer goods back to his country.
It is much easier for us to understand his adversaries in the United States because they almost all act, not from their experiences, but from their single ideology: “American imperialism.”
And we must keep in mind that, generally speaking, academics confuse economic ideologies, which they discuss, with the functioning of the real economy, which they ignore.

When Donald Trump became president and reformed the economy, he announced his intention to Make America Great Again (MAGA), that is, to make America a great power again. He specified that he did not intend to wage wars, but, like President Andrew Jackson, to replace them with international trade. We should therefore understand MAGA not as making America a great military power, but as a great economic power, that is, to make America great again.

Andrew Jackson was neither a free trader nor a protectionist. He saw tariffs as a means not to protect American products from international competitors, but as the only way to finance the federal government. This is exactly Donald Trump’s position today: he intends to eliminate all federal taxes and finance his administration solely through tariffs. However, he allows each state to levy the taxes it deems essential.

With this framework established, Donald Trump is organizing the transition from the old system to the new one according to his method, which he described in his book, The Art of the Deal  : destabilizing his interlocutors. He began by announcing widespread and prohibitive customs duties, then agreed to reduce them to 10% for three months, except for China.

Everyone then rushed to his feet, both to thank our good “master of the world” for these taxes and to ask him not to increase them too much. The absolute example of this approach of submission was given by Giorgia Meloni’s Italy. The Prime Minister displayed herself as a groupie of the ogre who imposed everything on her  [ 3 ] . On the contrary, the opposite example was provided by China, which first reacted by taking reciprocal customs duties, then changed its mind. It then chose to respond “in the Chinese way”, that is to say in an area where it was not expected: it interrupted its collaboration with the two global semiconductor giants, ASML and TSMC, considerably slowed down the export of “rare earths” used in hi-tech equipment, both civil and military, and banned the import of Boeings.

Without stockpiles, in a few weeks the United States will run out of semiconductors and spare parts for its missile engines, radar systems, guidance sensors, anti-corrosion coatings, target designation lasers, seeker heads, tactical drones, fighter jet engines, and electronic warfare systems.

Without further ado, President Donald Trump exempted high-tech consumer products from taxes: personal computers, cell phones, etc., but not the raw materials and components essential to the military-industrial complex.
That’s where we are. In a few weeks, the military-industrial complex, not just in the United States, but also in the West (including Italy), will have to declare a lockout of its factories.

From Donald Trump’s point of view, the United States is no longer a successful economy because it no longer produces consumer goods, but mainly weapons and “financial products.” It has, in practice, a war economy. He therefore intends to tighten the belt of the military-industrial complex and develop local production, in particular that of “rare earths” and fossil fuels essential to modern industry. Contrary to popular belief, rare earths are not rare in themselves. They exist everywhere; it is the filtering capacities of these minerals that are rare. Today, 90% of them are in China. President Trump therefore finds, on the occasion of the current standoff, the argument for exploiting American “rare earths,” to which environmentalists of all stripes are opposed  [ 4 ] . Indeed, it is difficult to extract them without exhausting water reserves and polluting the surrounding regions.

Just as the libertarianism of DOGE leader Elon Musk masks Donald Trump’s desire to restore to the federated states functions exercised by the federal government, outside the Constitution, so the positions of his Trade Advisor, Peter Navarro, mask his own economic conceptions. Navarro, a former professor of Economics at Harvard, is a polemicist, known for having warned – by exaggerating – about the imbalance in relations with China. He declared on “Meet the Press” (NBC)  [ 5 ] on April 13 that the Trump team is not surprised by the reactions, including those from China, to the increase in customs duties. But this does not mean that President Trump is anti-Chinese.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who fails to understand her political opponents and dismisses them as unscrupulous, money-hungry billionaires, accused President Trump and his entourage of imposing tariffs solely so they could enrich themselves through insider trading. She therefore urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to open an investigation into the personal fortunes of Trump and Musk. She told CNN’s “State of the Union”  [ 6 ] on April 13 that the Trump administration’s recent exemption for cell phones, personal computers, and other electronic devices was a “special deal” with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who donated $1 million to her at his inauguration. “As if the chaos wasn’t enough, he’s adding a layer of corruption that’s very visible! ”  [ 7 ]

With all due respect to former Harvard Economics professor Ms. Warren, what is happening is neither a matter of corruption nor a desire to enrich oneself at the expense of the poorest, but a war. Not a war between the United States and China, but between two forms of capitalism on a global scale: that of producers against that of assemblers  [ 8 ] .

—

[ 1 ]  “  Donald Trump’s projects (1/2)  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , April 15, 2025.

[ 2 ]  “  Donald Trump, an Andrew Jackson 2.0?  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , November 19, 2024.

[ 3 ]  “  Zero taxes at the price of zero sovereignty!  ”, by Manlio Dinucci, Translation M.-A., Voltaire Network , April 19, 2025.

[ 4 ]  “  Trump Administration Advances First Wave of Critical Mineral Production Projects  ”, White House, April 18, 2025.

[ 5 ]  “  Peter Navarro says US ‘has no defense other than tariffs’: Full interview  ”, Meet the Press , NBC, April 13, 2025.

[ 6 ]  “  Warren explains why she called on the SEC to investigate Trump  ”, State of the Union, (CNN), April 13, 2025.

[ 7 ]  “3273 Howard Lutnick and Peter Navarro assure that the First World Trade War is proceeding as planned”, Voltaire, international news – No. 129 – April 18, 2025.

[ 8 ]  “  The War of the Billionaires  ”, by Manlio Dinucci, Translation M.-A., Voltaire Network , April 14, 2025.

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National Security Council chairman Mike Waltz is setting up the ballroom, and calling the music.  The big question is, for whom is he calling it?

America Seconders swiftly cut in to eliminate the possibility that US combat vet Lt Col Dan Davis would become a member of the President’s national security council.  The incomparably qualified Davis was shot down in a flurry of AIPAC phone calls to all the right people, and Americans were deprived of the deep background, exceptional experience and patriotic clear-headedness that is so badly needed in Trump’s executive suite.  His X account “4x combat vet (Desert Storm, OIF, Afghan x2). Author: Eleventh Hour in 2020 America. Host of Daniel Davis Deep Dive on YouTube” doesn’t really provide the entire picture.  He is a calm, detail-oriented, wise man who would have been a true America First asset to this country.  All of us can still learn from Col Davis’s media presence, which stands out for its even-handed analysis of a world on fire.

America Seconders, America Lasters, and America Enders have no place in Trump’s Cabinet, or his advisory councils – especially his National Security Council.

It’s not about loyalty to Trump as President, or loyalty to the Office of the Presidency, or even the Constitution.  Loyalty to a person fades, faith in a corrupted office in an old building is misplaced.   Fealty to a document – when those whose one and only job is to uphold it in their legislation have no idea what it says, or what it means – is useless.

Real patriotism is demonstrated by a long list of brave and bold US National Security whistleblowers, like Ed Snowden and Chelsea Manning, Coleen Rowley, Bill Binney, John Kiriakou, and Sibel Edmonds, Sam Provance, Russ Tice, Tom Drake, and thousands of others who stand up for truth and light, and peace.  These people put America first – and like all of us, were angered that our Constitution and the fundamental meaning of America was, and is, ignored, trampled, and disposed of on a daily basis by people in positions of power throughout the state kleptocracy. Despite the insane amount of federal rage they ignited, hundreds of millions of Americans are better for it.  Government was chastened for a moment and put on its heels – reminded of the real boss, those of us who pay its bills, and are sent to fight its wars.

The people always end up holding the bag, suffering the bad decisions, and being punished for the mountain of lies we believed. We the people will ultimately get the precise government we deserve.  It could be one that reflects our domestic ignorance, our grifting stupidity, our European-rooted shadenfreude.  Our government might also reflect our native love for and natural expectation of liberty, our American generosity of spirit, and our fundamental sensitivity to and rejection of classism and elite domination.  Like the story of the two wolves, it depends on which one we feed.  It depends on which waltz we are dancing, and with which partner.  It depends on who is calling the tune.

Should we be paying closer attention to the people being put in positions of national power, unelected, and unvetted by actual Americans?  Should Americans – responsible for Trump’s massive popular support last November – actually expect the Executive Branch to put America first, make peace at home and end wars abroad?

Damn straight we ought to!  And yet, Trump faces a coterie of Israel-firsters and beyond that, hard-core Zionists, who infest Washington – recycling our $4 Billion in money and aid and military gifts each year into ownership of the Congress, the national media, and into orchestrating the predicable puppet-show whenever when Prime Minister Netanyahu graces the US Congress as its lord and savior.  Who can forget our genuflecting and obsequious Congress, worshipping under the self-satisfied gaze of this corrupt secular Polish Zionist and war criminal?  Mr. Meleikowsky knows who owns the US government: the topic is discussed openly in the Israeli media, and by Israeli politicians and intelligence operatives.  Israel owns Washington, it owns the US Congress, and it owns the Presidency.

It may be counter-intuitive, but Trump has the power to do something about the dirty secret about our entangling alliance with Israel.  Why?  Because Washington no longer matters in a global world. The US Congress – wholly controlled and easily manipulated by AIPAC today – is living proof, not of AIPAC power, but of Congressional degradation and weakness. In our modern, shame-free, interconnected world, AIPAC can be now be outplayed by a President with a fraction of the gamesmanship of Donald Trump. What Truman, JFK and Nixon, (with Kissinger and Clark Clifford in place) could not do with regards to putting Israel in its natural place of simply one small country among many small countries, Trump can do, and he can do it with ease, if he chooses.

So far, Trump has established a delicate and uncertain executive “balance” between those who put America First, and those who put it last. The latter demand US obedience to Tel Aviv, whether in genocide, an undeclared war with Yemen to defend Israeli shipping, or by launching and fighting an unprovoked and possibly nuclear war on a non-nuclear Iran – all because Netanyahu prefers the Hillary Clinton “Libyan Model” for dealing with its problems.  What does that mean for Americans?

For now, what it means is that the newest member of the NSC – Merav Ceren – was hired by Mike Waltz to run the NSC desk for Israel and Iran.  Unlike the potential appointment of Dan Davis, Ceren’s appointment was under the radar.  No mainstream media reporting, no outcry from Congress, and no slimy attacks on her reputation or obvious bias in her newly assigned position on the “Israel-Iran desk.”

Imagine if you will, the dangers of have a loyal Ukrainian working in the NSC on the Ukraine desk?  I mean, that might be problematic, right? Imagine if you will, Chinese nationals advising or sleeping with key policy makers?  Well, that’s also an ongoing concern for a guy like Mr. Trump.

The dance of US foreign policy may seem frenetic, but it is a dance and it has rules.  America Seconders can rest assured that key Israel Firsters are in key positions, whether as favors to Israeli’s lobby and donors, or because Trump likes to have certain lackeys under his thumb.  Zionist Mike Waltz was a big beneficiary of AIPAC cash when he was in Congress. So far, he got a Trumpian pat on the head for adding the editor of an Israel First, Trump-hating rag to a NSC Signal chat group about an imminent attack on behalf of Israeli interests.  Was Waltz – clearly not too bright – simply trying to build a bridge to those in DC and Tel Aviv who worried that Trump wasn’t doing enough for Israel?

George Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned,

[P]assionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. … concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions….And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country.”

Given Trump’s first term experience with dual loyalties in the NSC, Waltz’s Israeli choreographed appointment of Merav Ceren should be cause for his immediate removal from the administration.  Mr. President, put America First!

The post Does America Lead, or Follow, in This Dance? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Some of you may have seen this. But if I didn’t share it, after everything you and I went through, I’d be guilty of some sort of malpractice.

The page at Covid.gov, which redirects to a page on the White House website, now argues that the Covid “mitigation” efforts were useless and based more on superstition than science.

(I know I have subscribers who will say the “lab leak” controversy, prominently featured on the page, is a red herring. If you don’t like that part of the page, you can skip it. The rest is still worthwhile.)

Thus we read, for example:

The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation — which shut down schools and small business across the country — was arbitrary and not based on science. During closed door testimony, Dr. Fauci testified that the guidance “sort of just appeared.”

There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19. Public health officials flipped-flopped on the efficacy of masks without providing Americans scientific data — causing a massive uptick in public distrust.

Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy, but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on younger citizens. Rather than prioritizing the protection of the most vulnerable populations, federal and state government policies forced millions of Americans to forgo crucial elements of a healthy and financially sound life.

Naturally this doesn’t make up for the outrages and irrationalities that we normal people had to endure during those years.

But I want future historians to be aware that another perspective existed apart from the official line, and anything that helps that cause along is to be celebrated.

There are three lines the regime chooses from when it comes to crises:

— If you’d only listened to our wise management, things wouldn’t have turned out as they did.
— (For foreign policy crises) The U.S. government was just standing there, minding its own business, when it was attacked for no reason.
— If we hadn’t given you dolts so much freedom, this crisis wouldn’t have occurred.

Since our IQs are well above 80, you and I fall for none of these.

My own contribution to the cause of assisting whatever honest historians we may have in the future is of course my book Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania.

I happen to think the book has many merits, but one that will be especially helpful to historians is this: unlike other studies of this topic (and there are numerous good ones), mine has its origins in a day-by-day chronicling of the madness.

That means I recorded for posterity a huge number of oddball daily goings-on that a historian looking only at the big picture is sure to miss.

The full story can’t be told without those daily doses of madness, because they recall what it was really like to live through those years.

If you still don’t have it, treat yourself to the audiobook version, in which you’ll hear my voice reading it — which means you’ll be treated to just that combination of sarcasm and contempt that the perpetrators of this horror deserve (and it features a foreword by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health):

https://www.tomwoods.com/diaryaudiobook

—

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

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In today’s world we need to be vigilant and prepared for sudden changes in our environment which may be brought on by Mother Nature or Political Activities. We all want to protect our family from harm, and preparedness for disaster emergencies should be one of our top priorities. I’m not advocating that you pack up your family and move to some isolated location to hide from the world, but I am offering simple preparations for ice storms, floods, hurricanes, or terrorist activities will make your existence much more palatable during the disaster.

1. Be prepared

Yes, the first thing on the list is to use the list to be prepared. It is one thing to take a glance at the list, but unless you actually put this list into a workable plan for your family, then reading this is just wasted time on your part. Just making the preparations will give you a sense of calm when faced with the disaster.

This sense of calm will work in your favor because you will be less likely to be one of the hordes of people acting in a reactionary, fear driven, panic when the reality of the disaster is recognized (usually when the news anchors start saying things like “This is going to be bad.”… or… “We can’t stress enough the dangerous nature of this storm.”… or… “Here is video of people fighting over the last of the bread at this grocery store.”… or… “The police have lost control of this area of town.” While the crowds are rushing to the grocery store and emptying the aisles of bread and milk, you will be safely at home making last minute preparations to keep yourself and your family safe.

Because I realize that there is a definite cost factor in making these preparations, I will try to prioritize the items on the list as to which are absolutely necessary and which ones can be added as funds are available. Any item with an * next to it is a priority item and needs to be included from the beginning. To my Prepper Friends, I do realize that this list will not satisfy your need to prepare for any and all situations and it is only a short term duration solution, so don’t pounce on me with a long list of items that you think I have left off. It is intentionally a short, condensed list which is meant to help an average family through a short term disaster situation, not a nuclear holocaust. I also have not addressed any need for firearms or ammunition.

A big part of the preparation is being organized. There will be enough things to be concerned with when the situation presents itself, trying to remember where all of your supplies might be stored should not be one of them. Buy one of the following. We will be storing everything possible in them, so your preparedness items will be readily available to you when you need them.

a. Storage Locker* – Find a well built, heavy plastic storage locker that is large enough to hold a lot of gear, but still small enough to fit in the trunk of your car or the bed of your truck. This is not one of those plastic storage bins that people use to store winter clothes in during the summer, this thing needs to be a bit more durable than that. Find one with handles to make it easier to move into and out of your vehicle. Most stores like Academy will have them starting at about $20.

b. Backpack* – This is not a child’s school backpack. Go to the camping section and find one that is well made, durable, and large enough to hold lots of stuff. Don’t worry about it being too big, we are not going to have to backpack across the Grand Canyon with it, and my experience is that you ALWAYS need more space to store stuff. The starting price for a good one will be around $39, but if you can only afford a back-to-school type backpack, go ahead and get it, we can always upgrade later.

2. Shelter from the weather

Unexpected disasters will likely subject you to the elements. This could be due to a fast developing situation where you are caught away from home when the disaster strikes, or it could result from a storm that has caused widespread power outages, broken windows in your home, or taken off a portion of your roof. Exposure to the weather is not just annoying, it can be dangerous. The combination of being wet and cold is deadly.

a. Polyethylene tarp – These come in a variety of sizes and are quite inexpensive. (a 6×8 tarp is only about $5 if you check some camping supply stores). These are great for keeping out the weather if windows are broken during a storm. They can also be used for a makeshift tent if you happen to be caught out of your home when the disaster strikes. They will be great for keeping you dry and holding off the wind. Get 3-4 of them. Put them in your storage locker.

b. Plastic rain poncho* – One for every member of your family, plus a few extra (they are cheap (as little as $1) and will get torn when being worn for any length of time). Get the kind that fold up into a small pouch. Put into your backpack.

c. Quart – ½ Gallon sized plastic zip-lock bags* – These will be used to store some of the items on this list as well as storage of food and medicines. These are important, but cheap. Put in the storage locker.

d. Wool, Cotton, Fleece pullover or Hoodie – One for every member of the family. My preference would be wool, but anything is better than nothing. They are about $12 each for Haynes brand at most stores. If the power goes out, or if you are caught away from home, the cooler temps at night are deceptively dangerous. One main goal is to stay dry and warm. Roll up and place into a zip-lock bag and then put in your backpack.

e. Extra wool or cotton socks* – Two or three pair for every member of the family. Style is not important here, regular white tube socks are just fine (about $8 for a pack of 3). Cheap, but a fresh change of socks can do wonders, and will help keep your feet more healthy and comfortable during the disaster situation and can act as emergency mittens if needed. I can’t say enough about taking care of your feet. I know it sounds trivial, but it is not. Put unopened packs into zip-lock bags and then into your backpack (keeping them dry is key).

f. Change of clothes* – A complete change of clothes for each member of the family. This is not time for a fashion statement, we are after durability and function here. Long pants (blue jeans) and a long sleeve shirt. Don’t forget a change of underwear. Also include a pair of shoes that you would be comfortable wearing for long periods of time. An old pair of tennis shoes might be the answer. Really no costs here, we are going to use clothes we already have in the closet, but probably don’t wear because it has a stain on it, or it is not a color we wear often. Put in the storage locker.

g. Sleeping Bag – One for each member of the family. In this case, I am recommending a specific product, SOL Emergency Bivvy Bag* (do a Google search for stores selling it). Sells for about $17 each but packs up very small and will save your life. Much smaller than a standard sleeping bag (starting price, around $20). If you have the room for a sleeping bag for each person, by all means get them. Store the SOL Emergency Bivvy Bag in your backpack, and the Sleeping bags in a single location near where you will store the backpack and storage locker.

3. Safety and Security

There are several items that you will need to make sure that you and your family remain healthy and safe.

a. Medical Kit – You should get two kits.- Watch- The Home Doctor – Practical Medicine for Every Household.

I. The first is a small, compact first aid kit* that can easily be stored in a zip-lock bag and placed in your backpack and are designed to take care of minor medial issues like blisters, splinters, sprains, etc. They sell for less than $20.

ii. The next is a more complete kit, sometimes called a trauma kit. It contains more supplies and tools and is usually marketed as a Sportsman’s First Aid Kit, or an Outdoors Adventure Medical Kit (starting price is about $49). Store this in your storage locker.

b. CPR Training* – At least one person in your family needs to be CPR certified. The Red Cross and American Heart Association offer classes on a regular basis, but usually charge for the certification class ($70-$110). Most fire departments also offer classes but these classes do not provide a certification needed to fulfill any job requirements (usually free).

c. Know your evacuation routes* – Think about where you could go if you had to quickly leave your home due to the disaster. Keep in mind the destinations that would be appropriate for the situation (going to stay with your Uncle on the coast may work well if your home is threatened by a fire, but is not a good idea if you are fleeing a hurricane). Get an old fashioned paper map ($5-$10) and learn how to read it, don’t rely on your navigation app to get you anywhere, the system could be down due to the disaster. Have more than one route mapped out for each destination, roads may be impassable and you may need to find a secondary route. Keep the map in your vehicle.

d. Make a list of contacts* – Everyone in the family should have a list of important contacts they carry with them. Make sure you include numbers for your office, your partner’s office, your children’s schools, day care, doctors, and close family members. Include the numbers of your health and home owner’s insurance companies, as well as your policy numbers. On this list include information of any medical condition and medications needed for all family members (for young children, also include the date of birth). Also designate a family member or friend that will serve as the point-of-contact if your family is separated. Choosing someone out of town is a good idea because they may be less likely to be experiencing the same issues in their area as you are experiencing in yours. Put this list inside of a zip-lock bag and place in your backpack (and an emergency contact list in your child’s school backpack).

e. Money – In disaster situations, ATM’s, credit cards and debit cards may not work or may not be accepted by merchants. Have a stash of emergency funds available in cash. It doesn’t need to be lots of money, but make sure that you have both small bills and some change (probably quarters) already packed in your backpack. The amount that you choose is up to you, but I suggest that it is enough to get a tank of gas, a few meals for the family while on the road, or buy some last minute item needed for the situation at hand.

Read the Whole Article

The post First Things You Need to do Right Now To Be Prepared For a Natural or Man-Made Disaster! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Not even months into his new pontificate, Pope Francis declared, to a group of young people in Paraguay, “Go out and make a mess.” A puzzling remark from the Successor of St. Peter. As the years of his papacy went on, we witnessed what he meant. Year after year, he kept his promise.

And the Church descended into an unprecedented chaos.

Recall St. Augustine’s classic definition of peace: the tranquillitas ordinis (the tranquility of order). During Pope Francis’ reign, there was nothing of order and certainly no tranquility. Upheaval followed upheaval; shock gave way to more shock; ambiguity was compounded by ambiguity. Each episode met by the cri de coeur of faithful Catholics. More than a few prestigious theologians otherwise known for their bookish detachment and academic reserve were signing onto international statements fearful that Pope Francis had fallen into heresy.

Good Catholics were confused.

Promulgation of his first encyclical, Amoris Laetitia, sent a chill through the Church universal. The Guardian of the Deposit appeared to be changing the immemorial teaching of the Church by permitting divorced remarried Catholics to Holy Communion.

Good Catholics were confused.

Papal apologists twisted and turned in their attempt to fit the square peg of rupture into the round hole of orthodoxy. Nothing worked. The words meant what the words said. Nor was there any backtracking on the part of Pope Francis.

Good Catholics were confused.

No reconsiderations for Pope Francis. He dug in his heels and published a reiteration in the official Acta Apostolicae Sedis granting the questionable departure from traditional doctrine on Marriage a quasi-magisterial approval. This perilous admission precipitated the now historically famous intervention of the so-called Dubia Cardinals: Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner. Such a careful request for doctrinal clarification—from not one but four prominent cardinals—was extraordinary. It seemed the worry of Catholics was justified. And they waited. And waited. Many months later, the pontiff granted a reply, but it was as muddled as the concerning encyclical. This was puzzling given the pope’s appetite for transactional governance.

Good Catholics were confused.

Then there was Pope Francis’ penchant for draconian disciplines. Even his apologists became embarrassed. Clerics of a more progressive bent long thought these instruments unfashionable in a “dialogical” Church. Especially one marked by the laissez-faire air of synodality. Yet he punished, silenced, and sacked bishops and clerics with abandon. It seemed curious that a pope of such purported non-judgmentalism should behave as one of the most judgmental. His modus operandi appeared like that of medieval popes. Odd, to say the least.

Good Catholics were confused.

Even the most unbiased observer could see that Pope Francis enjoyed an appetite for the de rigueur ideological fashions of the day rather than the unfashionable rigors of the Deposit of Faith. Even that anointed Pauline phrase was mocked and proscribed by the papal nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, in a discussion with the then-deposed Bishop Strickland.

Good Catholics were confused.

No pope in recent memory removed as many bishops from their dioceses, even excommunicating seemingly innocent priests. It appeared as though only those upholding Revealed teachings were in his crosshairs. This was hard to justify given his passivity in the face of the significant apostasy of the German bishops and other such prelates throughout the world.

Good Catholics were confused.

Catholics scratched their heads as he brought pagan idols into St. Peter’s Basilica. He happily welcomed known enemies of the Church into his audiences, and he promoted du jour Progressive causes such as eco-justice and transsexual rights. Yes, let us engage the Church’s enemies. But what of the optics? Everyone knows that a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

Perplexity settled upon Catholics as he exhibited an unusual passion for tiny, sexual niche minorities while being utterly indifferent to faithful Catholics suffering the whiplash of ecclesial tremors. One dramatic example comes to mind: Chinese Catholics, among them cardinals, bishops, and laity who presently suffer persecution and rot in dungeons.

Good Catholics were confused.

Bewilderment settled upon Catholics as he promoted equality of religions and misrepresentation of the rights of nations to defend their borders from aliens. He trumpeted assorted causes dear to the Left and often scolded Catholics for excessive “proselytization,” leaving them in a dazed wonderment. Whose mandate should they follow, Christ’s or his?

Again, it seemed as if dissent was rewarded and fidelity penalized. Like Sherman’s March to the Sea, Pope Francis seemed intent upon crushing any growth of the authentic Faith.

Good Catholics were confused.

Most disconcerting was his unrelenting attack upon the Traditional Mass. This is a mushrooming movement in the Church. In surprisingly large numbers, it is becoming the home of large families, robust fidelity to the Faith, and scores of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Sincere Catholics were baffled as Pope Francis mounted a pogrom of complete exclusion to a group of Catholics who showed the greatest respect to his Office as well as perfect loyalty to the articles of the Faith.

This program of abolition represented a determined and pronounced rupture with both Ecclesia Dei Adflicta and Summorum Pontificum, his predecessors’ corrective to the Montini/Bugnini prohibitions of the ancient Traditional Mass.

He was clearly wedded to a liturgically discredited paradigm which had acted as a vehicle for the wildly secularist motifs of the first half of the 20th century. Just as the Johann-Pauline/Benedictine liturgical recalibrations were taking form, Pope Francis chose to bury them.

Good Catholics were confused.

Read the Whole Article

The post May Pope Francis Rest in Peace. And May Peace Return to Mother Church. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  John Smith. 

Open Doors

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Thanks, John Smith. 

GreekReporter.com

The post Why Muslim Families Hold the Keys to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Eldiariodemadrid.es

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The Failed JFK Assassination Attempts They Don’t Teach in School — In this gripping episode of America’s Untold Stories, hosts Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley sit down with JFK researcher Paul Bleau to uncover the chilling history of failed or alternate plots to assassinate President John F. Kennedy—before Dallas.

From Thomas Arthur Vallee in Chicago, to Gilberto Policarpo Lopez in Florida, and the eerily accurate prediction by James Milteer, this discussion peels back the layers of orchestrated chaos leading up to November 22, 1963. Were these men just “lone nuts,” or were they patsies prepared in case the main plot failed?

Paul Bleau, author and assassination researcher, reveals a web of disturbing connections, warnings ignored, and eerily similar “dry runs” that suggest the Dallas hit may not have been the only plan in motion. This episode explores the broader conspiracy timeline, showing that JFK’s life was in danger long before Dealey Plaza—and the real story is even darker than we thought.

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Thanks, John Smith. 

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Click here:

Eugyppius

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Thanks, John Frahm.

USA Today

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Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

Natalie Winters and Steve Bannon discuss how the Biden regime were consulting with foreign governments and institutions (gee, Israel maybe?) to suppress the liberties of US citizens by targeting right-wing extremists. Remember when Biden called Trump supporters domestic terrorists and white supremacists? Bannon and Winters refer to the Strategic Implementation Plan DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard has declassified. A key strategy is to zero in on screening for hiring virtually everyone – federal, state and county governments and the private sector. A key goal appears to be keeping these “right-wing extremists” from making a living.

Bannon calls for a special prosecutor and grand jury to subpoena witnesses, then indictments of the suspected guilty parties to be put on trial for treason and then imprisoned. The Winters and Bannon discussion:

https://rumble.com/v6sdrzl-censorship-tulsi-gabbard-dni-report-reveals-vast-biden-operation-to-counter.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp

The declassified Strategic Implementation Plan. Link 

https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-Strategic-Implementation-Plan-for-CT-April2025.pdf

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Writes Gail Appel:

Gaffney’s takedown might even top Vigano’s. The upside is he made it past Easter. He won’t be rising.

See here.

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