Aggregatore di feed

“When your people first came to our land they were trying to get away from those people at the top. But they still thought the same, and soon there were new people at the top in the new country. It is just the way you were taught to think.” –Lakota elder Dan, to Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog, New World Library, 2002 p.156 – 157

In this three part series, we’re attempting answers to this question from Part I – – –

What changed, morphed, and/or converted our archaic ancestors who wouldn’t even stand on cue for a church service into Milgram experiment victims and authoritarian follower lemmings who will electrocute fellow humans on demand, machine-gun helpless civilians, torture prisoners, unnecessarily nuke entire cities, and allow themselves to be “locked-down” and jabbed with an untested mRNA vaccine at the direction of elected liars, bureaucrats and white-coated authority figures?

In Part II we picked the low-hanging fruit, showing how military training reveals and confronts our resistance to taking orders and even just being told what to do — and usually overcomes both that and our innate resistance to killing our own kind.

We ended that Part by asking “But how about those of us who haven’t undergone military brainwashing, and so, as Major General Smedley Butler put it, haven’t had our brains put into suspended animation? Why have so many of us also become potential Milgram experiment victims and ‘authoritarian follower’ lemmings?”

First I want to remind you of what we have almost completely lost in the modern world – – –

The Way We Were

… Annette Hamilton is an anthropologist … what she does is to examine carefully the patterns of parenting and learning among a group of people who until recently lived as gatherer-hunters. … After presenting the details of her research findings, Hamilton draws conclusions. She notes that while, for Europeans, the needs of the child are determined by “experts,” in Aboriginal society “the role of the caretaker is to pay attention to the overt demands of the infant…. The infant cries, the caretaker feeds. When it is old enough, it grabs the breast or the food for itself. If it does not grab for it, it does not want it…. The Aboriginal model trusts the child’s knowledge of its own states, both physical and emotional. When a three-year-old is tired someone will carry it. No one says ‘Three-year-olds are old enough to walk.’ In fact, no one makes generalizations about children at all. Each child is treated solely on the merits of its actual concrete situation at that moment.” This sort of treatment tends to produce confident, secure, self-motivated adults. —Nature and Nurture: Aboriginal Child-Rearing in North-Central Arnhem Land, by Annette Hamilton. (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1981) as excerpted in Liberation or Mind Control? By Richard Heinberg bolding added

From Part II of this series remember, Barbara tells of her daughter, Karen, who put this into practice as a baby. Asserting her independence at the age of four months, her first words weren’t “Mama” or “Dada,” but, resisting being fed by her mother — and insisting on feeding herself by reaching for the spoon — her first words were “Me. I do. Self.” Barbara paid attention.

And remember this from Part I – – –

Briggs (1970:55-58) tells us in detail how religious services were conducted in iglus [igloos] and how Inuttiag (in the role of religious coordinator) tried at certain points to get his tiny congregation to stand. The community initially conformed, but then more and more people began to disregard his orders until the majority were ignoring him. At that point, he simply stopped trying to command them. –Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1999) p. 54

Now let’s add this – – –

In his book, [Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter] Gray writes about a group of 13 kids who played several hours a day for four months without supervision, though they were observed by an anthropologist. “They organized activities, settled disputes, avoided danger, dealt with injuries, distributed goods… without adult intervention,” he writes.

The kids ranged in age from 3 to 5. –Source

Those kids were playing, unsupervised, in the South Pacific, not, unfortunately, in today’s USA.

As well explained by Lenore Skenazy in her Free Range Kids blog, this over-protective nonsense chills creativity and self-expression by conditioning kids — and everyone else — to think and act as if Authority figures are always surveilling them and that that’s normal. It also prevents kids from learning how to take care of themselves and deal with the experiences and problems of real-life. Worse, it steals their opportunities to discover their own abilities – – – and develop confidence in them.

Sort of suggestive of Milgram experiment victims and/or authoritarian followers maybe?

When I was a kid, we used to go on unsupervised all-day hikes into the woods, along the river, following the railroad tracks and anywhere else our imaginations suggested. Later, sometimes we camped overnight. We strolled the streets and alleys just being alive. We took long distance bike hikes and swam the river. All unsupervised. Supervision never occurred to us or our parents. We learned we could set our own itinerary, take care of ourselves and make our own decisions — and that was normal. We learned how to get along with each other and ourselves. We learned we were capable.

Christra told me that although her neighbors frowned on her twenty years ago for allowing her girls to ride their bikes in Fredericktown, when she was a girl, she used to sometimes ride all the way from Fredericktown into Pittsburgh.

Harmless Education

The one-room schoolhouse is a good place to plant the Harmless Education flag. During most of the 19th Century, our kids learned, mostly reading, writing and arithmatic, in a legendary one-room schoolhouse if and when they and their parents chose. After all, there were more interesting things to do, other ways to learn — and chores at home, on the farm, etc.

The TV series “The Waltons“does a pretty good job of representing this historical context as does “Little House on the Prairie.“

There was one adult and kids of all ages from 6 to 16. If segregated, it was mostly naturally and informally by skill-level, not primarily by age (or color, etc.) — and a child’s skill-level varied from subject to subject.

The skilled helped the less skilled learn without regard to age else it would have been simply impossible for one schoolmarm to handle so many.

Normally unrecognized and nearly completely deprecated in modern government-form schooling is that such helping — that is teaching something — is the best way to learn it.

For example, an early technique of mass education in Britain took advantage of this fact. One instructor could educate as many as 2,000 students. He’d directly teach several students who would then, in turn, each pass on the knowledge to several more who would do likewise. Etc. He’d do quality control by checking down the line to see that things were being passed on correctly and if not, follow the chain back to where it went wrong and correct the situation.

The BIG PICTURE came to me via the producer of a documentary on the Whiskey Rebellion who was giving a talk at Bowman’s Castle. He mentioned in passing that the local dirt-floor subsistance farmers of the period could almost universally read, write and cipher (do math.)

This was surprising to me and to several of my former teachers who happened to be attending the talk. An English teacher asked the producer if he had his facts straight. “We’ve been led to believe these early American folks were mostly illiterate until universal government schools caught on,” she said.

The documentary producer was correct. Research shows that in most of the American Colonies — without government interference — literacy rates were as high as 95% whereas modern literacy rates are lucky to be 75%, much of that due to the necessity of reading to use computers, although that’s decaying out as AI begins to read to us. Real education was highly valued. For example, slaves risked serious punishment for teaching their kids to read.

Through a modern window back into that era, an Amish friend, Ivan, invited me to help raise a windmill. It was to power a new telephone system to replace the buried long tubes with whistles at each end they had been using.

Folks came, put in some work as it suited them and then unceremoniously left. Everyone expressed their opinion but it seemed they were waiting for one particular fellow who, the consensus seemed to be, knew the most about such projects. They were looking forward to his arrival, his critique, and his unofficial endorsement.

Two things impressed me the most. A young boy showed up, maybe 11 or 12 years old, and, like the adults, he critically looked over the project and asked a couple of penetrating questions, which were received and answered as if he was an adult with not a hint of condescension. Then he joined in and helped fill in around one of the footers.

The second thing: I kept wondering when the expert everyone seemed to be expecting would show up. Each new arrival got my attention. I listened to their comments and questions, wondering if this was the dude.

He was way later than expected and there was much speculation as to why but no blame. When he finally showed up, I couldn’t tell the difference except by the extra attention he got. He looked things over and asked a few questions, which seemed to be standard behavior, endorsed things and then got busy filling in around the footers with the rest of us.

There was no Authority of Position here, only authority of knowledge. Co–operation in action!

These are modern-day models of Lincoln’s “mudsill” folks who support the whole edifice of civilization but usually become disrespected ignored and exploited as it develops. You know, fly-over America, “We The People,” Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables.”

But that was then.

So one-room schooling focused on read’n, writ’n, and ‘rithmetic, which, according to thrice Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto, requires only about a total of 100 hours of instruction. That’s about 17 six-hour school-days, less than one school-month. What are they doing to our kids for the other 107 modern government-form school-months – which works out to be 99.07% of the school-time remaining in that twelve-year sentence?

Here’s what we gave up — and replaced with modern government-form compulsory schooling: Voluntary and variable attendance, customer (parent) control of the curriculum, that is, of what’s taught, serious respect for student individuality and preference — and huge chunks of our irreplaceable childhood unnecessarily wasted often including school-bus travel time. But we gave up something much more important – – –

Parents give up their rights when their children cross the threshold of the public school door. This was recently made crystal clear by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

When a few parents in Palmdale, California learned that their children’s school had permitted researchers to interview first, third and fifth grade students about such things as sexual urges and fantasies, they became outraged and took the matter to court.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case and concluded that when parents place their children in a public school, they forfeit any right to determine what or how their children are taught. The school may teach anything it wishes in any way it wishes. It may allow researchers, special interests, social activists, and anyone else it chooses access to students. The court’s decision confirmed earlier court opinions.

Our society has become a slave to the state by virtue of government-controlled schools. Children suffer, parents feel helpless, and scores of good educators feel trapped in a system that never should have existed in the first place… –Is There a Problem? Separation of School and State

So “Our society has become a slave to the state by virtue of government-controlled schools.” Now THERE’S a waystone on the path to Milgram and lemminghood you may want to keep in mind.

American Culture has gone to great lengths to condition you to blindly accept one-way communication, that is, usually commands from Authority figures. Government-form schools are the most glaring example.

The implausible cover story for Government schools is that you might some day need some of the massive over-provision of likely useless information they subject you to for thirteen years. The usually unstated idea is that you’ll be able to remember — in usable form — what they tried to teach you years or decades ago.

For efficient information transfer and use, that thirteen years is a monumental waste of student time and taxpayer money.<c:\usr\wp_docs\trolley\sociob~1\pseudogr.oup american=”” culture=”” has=”” gone=”” to=”” great=”” lengths=”” condition=”” you=””></c:\usr\wp_docs\trolley\sociob~1\pseudogr.oup>

Despite what we moderns accept as normal, necessary, and desirable — and while many modern government-form school teachers may have sensed things weren’t going right — one in particular figured most of it out – – –

“David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first – the five-year spread means nothing at all. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, ‘special education.’ After a few months she’ll be locked into her place forever.” –John Taylor Gatto: I Quit, I Think – Saint Kosmas Orthodox Education

“The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic – it has no conscience. …

“I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.” –John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Not surprisingly, over the years this repression, dependence and subliminal debilitation has spread from government-form schools into society in general. Could there be a connection to Milgram’s experiment victims — and authoritarian followers?

Poll: Most Americans Want to Criminalize Pre-Teens Playing Unsupervised – Reason.com

Two Maryland children are with their parents again after being held by Child Protective Services (CPS) for hours. This is the third time Danielle and Alexander Meitiv have come under fire for letting their children walk around unsupervised, reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.

Police picked up 6-year-old Dvora and her 10-year-old brother Rafi from a park near their Silver Spring home around 5 p.m. Sunday. Someone called 911 after seeing them alone. …

Montgomery County police brought them to protective services where they were held for hours.

In February, a CPS investigation found the Meitivs responsible for “unsubstantiated child neglect.” They said they’re practicing free-range parenting, a parenting style in which independence and freedom is encouraged. They claim it builds independence.

“In essence it’s like a false imprisonment, “…legal analyst Rikki Klieman said “Remember this, it’s hours where these parents don’t know where their kids are and where the kids don’t know where their parents are.”…

When the Meitivs spoke with “CBS This Morning” in January, they said they were unwilling to alter their parenting style, but now it seems they have no choice.

“They made us sign a safety plan that says that we will not leave them unattended at all until they follow up, and I’m not going to risk my kids being snatched again like this by CPS,” Danielle said. –Maryland “free range parenting” couple under fire again – CBS News

No more unsupervised hikes in the woods, along the river or the railroad tracks. No overnight camping, bike hikes or swimming the river. No more strolling the streets and alleys just being alive. No bike rides in Fredericktown. No setting our own itinerary or significant or easy way to learn we can take care of ourselves and make our own decisions — and that we’re capable.

And there’s this – – –

Marion County mother charged with neglect for making children walk to school | Times Free Press

ETC.

Even setting “playdates” for your kids may now be edgy since, compared to what’s now considered normal supervision, “playdates” are imagined to be “unstructured.”

The effects of this malarkey have gotten so far out-of-hand that, according to CNBC, it’s now necessary to coach some kids how to talk to others face-to-face — without their device as an interface.

The following high-school valedictorian testifies to the ultimate outcome – – –

“If it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is. –Erica Goldson, A Valedictorian Speech Everyone Needs to Read

The truth of the matter is – – –

“I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, anytime, that underestimates children’s abilities more than we North Americans do today.” –Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life

“Children are born geniuses. 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently, degeniused by unwitting humans.” –Buckminster Fuller

I’m old enough that I can see part of the progression that led here. When I was twenty, I was teaching Physics and working for my Private Pilot’s License on the side. The received wisdom was that you couldn’t do your own ground school training. It was necessary to take a supervised class. Everyone told me so.

That was a challenge. I was a Physics “teacher” after all. Surely I should be able to teach myself. I’d used a programmed text — sort of like a computer program in print — for my students to teach themselves the metric system. I got a programmed text for ground school and had at it. I passed with a respectable 89. I rediscovered I could learn on my own.

A main damage done to us by government-style education is it leads you to believe, mistakenly, that you need someone to tell you what to learn, when to learn, how to learn, how fast to learn, and then insisting you haven’t learned until they say so.

Have you recovered yet?

They tell you what to learn, when to learn, how to learn, how fast to learn, and then insist you haven’t learned until they say so– and you think that’s normal. –lrw

On the other hand – – –

[American] Indian parents often will not make decisions for their children until they have determined what the children want. Sometimes they will permit youngsters to do things which they know are not good for them simply because they believe in allowing children to make decisions for themselves. —James E. Officer, Journal of American Indian Education, October 1963

So even in the 1960s, the culture had long been set in place for habitual and unnecessary dependence on others for comprehensive supervision, surveillance, knowledge acquisition and control. The most obvious force for that was government-form schools.

Some folks might be tempted to think that – – –

“Mass schooling damages children. We don’t need any more of it. And under the guise that it is the same thing as education, it has been picking our pockets just as Socrates predicted it would thousands of years ago. One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn’t cost very much, doesn’t depend on expensive toys or gadgets. The experiences that produce it and the self-awareness that propels it are nearly free. It is hard to turn a dollar on education. But schooling is a wonderful hustle, getting sharper all the time.” –John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Read the Whole Article

The post How Do You Explain This? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Here are two personal stories about foreign aid.

Some 20 years ago when Slow Food asked me to be part of the U.S. delegation attending the International Slow Food Convivium in Turin, Italy hosted by Carlo Petrini, I went with Michael Pollan. Every time I wasn’t speaking, I attended presentations by a delegation from an African country.

Every single one started with something like this: “We have plenty of resources. We can feed ourselves. You western countries need to leave us alone. Your cheap food dumping displaces our farmers by lowering prices to the point our indigenous agriculture can’t compete. These displaced entrepreneurial farmers and food system folks then get bored and become warlords and gang leaders.”

I was stunned. It was such a blanket indictment, over and over again, that I spent the entire multi-day stay apologizing for being an American. It made me realize this “aid” was about empire-building leverage, creating dependency, and just about anything except real help. It also made me paranoid about traveling abroad to give advice. Since then, we invite folks from there to our farm and give free admission to some of our educational seminars. That way they can see it in our context and adapt it to theirs. Much better.

Story number two. After Chernobyl blew up and rained radioactivity across the dairy region of Belarus, the country faced food and economic deprivation because they couldn’t drink their milk. The radioactivity settled in the mammary glands of the cows.

The U.S. sent hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to help. How kind. A couple of months later, a delegation from Belarus came to Washington D.C. to meet with U.S. officials. A former deputy ambassador who was friendly with me asked if he could invite them to Polyface to see a non-chemical farm. A couple days later three black limousines arrived at our house bearing the three top officials from Belarus: their equivalent to our Speaker of the House, Secretary of Agriculture, and a third I can’t remember. They were all number two under the Prime Minister.

I took them on a farm tour and they were completely engaged, interested, and gob-smacked. In short, they got it. We ended on the porch with hot tea and homemade zucchini bread. Here is what they said: “The day the U.S. aid landed in our bank, every hotel in the capital filled with U.S. corporations selling equipment, seeds, chemicals and material. We spent all that money in a couple of months on equipment we didn’t need, seeds that wouldn’t grow, and material too expensive to keep up. It was a circle: all the money went straight back to U.S. companies. If we had spent that money on what we’ve seen here at Polyface, not only could we have fed our people, we would have had enough left over to export.”

I could tell more stories, but these are average. U.S. foreign aid is all about enriching big corporations with taxpayer dollars. Ultimately, it impoverishes the peasants by enriching the lords of the culture. Meanwhile, it hurts the countries getting the aid.

As I’ve traveled the world and interacted with people like this, I’ve come to the conclusion that the U.S. should not send any foreign aid to anyone anywhere anytime for anything. Period. Even to Israel? Yes, even to Israel. They can buy stuff. So can Ukraine. Bring all of these meddlesome outfits home; disband them. As Paul Harvey used to admonish, why don’t we hoe our own garden instead of hoeing others?

No military aid. No food aid. No construction aid. No nothing. Enough already. Close down all foreign military installations. Become like Switzerland. Don’t give a penny to a single NGO. Let them raise their own money. This doesn’t mean philanthropy stops; it means charity won’t come from coercion. Try not paying your taxes and see how voluntary that deal is. You can’t build charity on a foundation of coercion.

How do we stop government foreign aid?

This originally appeared on The Lunatic Farmer.

The post Foreign Aid Isn’t appeared first on LewRockwell.

At its September 2024 meeting, the Fed’s FOMC cut the target federal funds rate by a historically large 50 basis points and then justified this cut on the grounds that “The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance.”

The FOMC again cut the target rate in November and then again in December. Each time, the FOMC’s official statement said something to the effect of “[price] inflation is headed to two percent. Specifically, the November statement said “[Price inflation] has made progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective.” The December statement said exactly the same thing.

It remains unclear what motivated the FOMC to slice the target rate so drastically in September. Was it a cynical political ploy to stimulate the economy right before an election? Or was the Fed spooked by weak economic data? We don’t know, and the Fed is a secretive organization.

But whatever the Fed actually believes, the committee’s claims about “greater confidence” in falling price inflation is now gone. The FOMC announced in January that it would not lower the target rate, and the FOMC also removed from its official statement the line about making progress “toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective.” That sentence disappeared from the written statement, although Powell, in the press conference, apparently felt the need to remind the audience that “Inflation has moved much closer to our 2 percent longer-run goal…” He nonetheless failed to mention anything about continued progress.

It looks increasingly like all that confidence about “sustainable progress” on price inflation back in September—in the heat of election season, of course—was just one of the Fed’s many bogus, politically motivated forecasts.

Even if the Fed truly is motivated by the official data, though, it’s clear that the Fed now has good reason to downplay talk of declaring victory on the Fed’s two-percent inflation goal.

Recent official data—which generally reflects the best scenario that government bean counters can muster—shows plenty of bad news in this area. According to the Fed’s preferred inflation measure—PCE inflation—year-over-year price inflation reached an eight-month high in December, at 2.6 percent. (December is the most recent available number on PCE.) If we look at January’s headline CPI inflation, released on Wednesday, the picture is even worse. Year-over-year CPI inflation hit a nine-month high in January, at 3.0 percent, and month-to-month growth was at an eighteen-month high of 0.5 percent.

Thanks to the Fed’s unrestrained embrace of monetary inflation from 2020 to 2022, American consumers are still facing the grim reality of rising prices on basic necessities. In January’s CPI report, some of the largest jumps in prices were in food (2.5 percent), energy services (2.5 percent), other services (4.3 percent) and shelter (4.4 percent).

Wholesale prices also suggested that we won’t be seeing much relief from price inflation. According to new producer price index numbers, released on Thursday, year-over-year growth in the PPI reached a 24-month high of 3.5 percent. This is bad news for those hoping that the Fed’s predictions of falling prices might somehow come true. CNN delivered the bad news on Thursday: “The stronger numbers seen in Thursday’s PPI will tend to translate into continued consumer price inflation through the middle of the year.”

So much for the Fed’s dog-and-pony show of late summer 2024 when Jerome Powell repeatedly assured the public that the economy was in great shape and that price inflation was rapidly disappearing.

What the Fed Should Do

So, what should the Fed’s FOMC do now? The answer: “nothing.” Observers of Fed policy often speak in terms of the Fed “setting” interest rates or “raising” the target rate. In truth, the Fed doesn’t set rates, and it doesn’t raise interest rates, either. The Fed can allow interest rates to rise by intervening less in debt markets.  If the Fed just backs off from its endless manipulations through its open market operations, the Fed won’t be buying assets with newly created money and directly driving more price inflation.

After so many years of forcing down interest rates, if the Fed just took a break from its constant meddling, interest rates would naturally rise. That would lead to bankruptcies among zombie companies and other enterprises that can’t survive without a constant infusion of new, cheap money. On the other hand, the bubble economy would start to heal, prices would fall, and prospective first-time home buyers might have a chance of actually buying a home. Ordinary people who can’t afford hedge fund managers might be able to actually make some money on investments again as interest rates on ordinary investments rise to more normal levels.

This is what the Fed should have been doing in September instead of manufacturing new excuses as to why it needed to cut rates again. Of course, the Fed never just sits back and lets the market function freely, because it is a political institution. It does what the regime asks of it, whether it’s for short-term stimulus, or when the federal government asks the Fed to push down interest rates to keep interest payments on the huge federal debt manageable.

With Trump in office, it looks like there’s no break in the usual politicians’ calls for easy money. Indeed, it only took six weeks in office, and Donald Trump is back to demanding that the central bank force down interest rates. According to Bloomberg on Wednesday: “President Donald Trump called for lower interest rates, seeking to raise pressure on the Federal Reserve as he moves to implement a second-term economic agenda high on tariffs and expanding tax breaks. ‘Interest Rates should be lowered, something which would go hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs,’ Trump said Wednesday in a post on social media.”

Is this a tacit admission that tariffs are a tax and will therefore slow the economy? Is Trump admitting he needs more easy money to keep up the appearance of a growing economy?

Whatever the thinking is, forcing down interest rates even further will not benefit ordinary people. They’ll just bring price inflation, malinvestment, and more of the same stagnation that that only looks like growth thanks to runaway government spending and record-breaking deficits.

The post The Fed Has Stopped Pretending that Price Inflation Is Going Away appeared first on LewRockwell.

February 11 would have been the 96th birthday of Burt Blumert, one of my greatest friends and a great champion of Rothbardian libertarianism. (He actually died in 2009.) Some of my readers, especially the younger generation, might not recognize his name, because Burt was a quiet man who worked to do good behind the scenes. In this week’s column, I’m going to tell you about Burt—both what he did and what he was like as a person.

Burt is an example of what Mises and Rothbard hoped for, an entrepreneur dedicated to the intellectual cause of freedom and free enterprise. That cause started to become clear for Burt when he enlisted in the Air Force to avoid being drafted into Truman’s slave army during his war on North Korea. As a member of a socialist organization, Burt saw that a society organized in that fashion would be catastrophic for humanity. After the war and NYU, Burt began his private sector experience and learned that this sector is the one and only key to social progress. It was also in this period that Burt was exposed to the writings of Ayn Rand, Mises, and Rothbard. In fact, he knew Mises, and he was later Murray’s closest friend. After managing a chain of millinery shops in the South—he has loved the region ever since for its manners and traditions— Burt was transferred to California, and then entered the coin and precious metals business, eventually establishing the Camino Coin Company and running it for almost fifty years. Burt always felt blessed to be dealing in collector coins, a hobby he had enjoyed his whole life. Camino, while always important, was central to monetary affairs in the 1960s and 1970s, decades of dramatic changes in the precious metals market. The US had abandoned the domestic gold standard and then the coinage of silver. Ever since FDR, it had been illegal for Americans to own gold. That finally changed, and people needed a reliable business to make that ownership real. Camino became the most respected name in the industry. Burt’s buy-sell spreads consistently beat the competition, his attention to the consumer was famous—his long-term customers became his friends—and he fought against unethical practices, as recognized by various industry groups. Burt was also a Silicon Valley pioneer: in 1970, he founded the first computerized price and news network that knit together dealers all over the country and made the coin market more efficient. Xerox recognized Burt’s entrepreneurial achievement when it bought the network. As a collector, Burt would use real examples of hard money and depreciated paper money for the most engaging lessons in monetary history and theory I’ve ever heard. He especially enjoyed teaching young people about inflation, and the direct connection between monetary deprecation and tyranny. Among his tools were zero-filled Yugoslavian notes, and paper currency printed and used in Nazi concentration camps. Burt helped Murray Rothbard found the Center for Libertarian Studies in 1976, later becoming its president. In this role, he was publisher of the Journal of Libertarian Studies and the Austrian Economics Newsletter, and the benefactor—materially and in friendship—to many libertarian intellectuals. His offices were a kind of home base for thinkers in the movement. He also became the chairman of the Mises Institute, succeeding Margit von Mises, and then the publisher of the Rothbard- Report and its successor, LewRockwell.com, where his funny and profound essays first appeared. Burt was always charitable, far-seeing, and steadfast in his role as Misesian-Rothbardian entrepreneur. As a man, he was funny, charming, decent, and generous. As you will see if you read him, he was a talented satirist who could teach the truths of liberty and life while making you laugh out loud. Most of all, he showed how the Mises-Rothbard dream of drawing together commerce and ideas can be achieved.

I mentioned Burt’s sense of humor, and what better person to discuss this than Burt himself? To understand what he is saying, you need to know some background. Burt was a strong supporter of Pat Buchanan, and he was outraged by a campaign spearheaded by CIA agent William F. Buckley to smear Pat for opposing the invasion of Iraq by calling him an “anti-Semite.” Burt, who was Jewish himself, would have none of it. Now, here is what he says about humor: “Anna Marie Robertson, ‘Grandma’ Moses, lived 101 years and was recognized as one of America’s great Folk artists in the twentieth century. Her work continues to be exhibited in fine galleries throughout Europe and the US. Amazingly, she had never painted a stroke until her early 70s! Well, move over, Grandma. Here comes Blumert. In my first seventy years I had written letters, a handful of articles for trade publications, and my share of angry missives to the Editorial Page. I had composed subscription pleas for the old Rothbard-Rockwell Report (RRR) newsletter and proudly produced fund raisers for lewrockwell.com (LRC). All good stuff, I must admit, but not exactly creative writing. And then a fateful day. I was complaining bitterly to Lew Rockwell how shabbily the media was dealing with Pat Buchanan.  ‘They’re playing the anti-Semitism card against poor Pat, and it makes me mad AS hell.’ Lew’s response was typically terse. ‘Write it up,’ he grumbled. On November 1st, 1999, my first article appeared on LRC, followed by more than a hundred others. I’ll not earn any literary awards, blue ribbons, or Pulitzer Prizes, but that doesn’t mean a twit. It’s the rush you experience when editor Rockwell advises that your submission meets his demanding standards, and that you’ve made the LRC page. Keep in mind that most LRC authors are amateurs who earn their livelihood in other venues. (I should add that Lew pays his writers nothing, zero, bupkis.) Sure, they glow when receiving friendly e-mails from appreciative readers, but winning approval from editor Rockwell is their true reward. ‘Gee, Blumert,’ a pal observed, ‘you see things through a warped lens.’ ‘Listen, Buster,’ I replied.  ‘The only thing funny about you was when you came home from school to find that your parents had changed the lock on the front door.’ What is humor? Why do we laugh? Steve Allen, the late, great humorist, answers the question as follows; Humor is the social lubricant that helps us get over the bad spots’ Steve’s right. In most jokes the victim has been betrayed, robbed, maimed, or even killed. He is often stupid and always ridiculous. Just like the fellow who arrives home early one day to find his wife in bed with his best friend. Our fool runs to another room, returns with a gun and proceeds to point the pistol to his own head. Waves of laughter come from the bed. ‘What are you laughing about?,’ he shouts. ‘You’re next! Political humor takes a different twist. The satirist studies these ‘oft-dangerous politicians/bureaucrats, extends their cruel and calloused behavior to the absurd, and we laugh. If the satirist is too good at what he does, he may wind up with his head in a noose. The ‘loveable’ Transportation Security Administration (TSA) provides us with overwhelming evidence of such behavior every day at every airport, and we laugh through our tears. Here is a snippet of pure satire from my essay ‘Revisiting The Friendly Skies:’ Blumert is at the Security Check Point and the young TSA agent is about to use the electronic wand on him. ‘I hope you’re in good health,’ she said. ‘Earlier today I short circuited an old dude’s pacemaker.’ ‘Good Lord,’ I stammered. ‘What happened to him?’ ‘Well, after a few scary moments we finally revived him. It was nice that they gave him a free upgrade to first class.’ If you’re going to write political satire, you had better be funny. Not necessarily, ‘falling off your chair, gasping for air, funny,’ but the bulk of your readers better, at minimum, be breaking a smile or two. “Blumert, your last article was not funny. In fact, it was over the line and tasteless,” wrote the e-mailer. His outrage was directed at my article, ‘Blumert Almost Qualifies As A Suicide Bomber.’ I knew I was treading on hazardous ice with this piece. After all, nothing is conceptually more horrible than the image of innocent people being blown to bits. I wrestled with the dilemma of submitting, or not and decided, Yes, that there was no better way to express my abhorrence of this dastardly act. Dear reader, if you are troubled by anything in this volume, that’s okay. I can handle it. But, if you don’t laugh out loud at Bagels, Barry Bonds, and Rotten Politicians least ten times, I will be devastated. You wouldn’t disappoint me, would you?”

Let’s do everything we can to carry on the fight for Rothbardian liberty. That’s what Burt would want.

The post The Great Burt Blumert appeared first on LewRockwell.

Celebrated Attorneys Robert Barnes and Viva Frei are on fire on an assortment of heated topics – Canada vs. the US; the heroic Brook Jackson whistleblower lawsuit against the phony, duplicitous, dangerous Pfizer Covid-19 “vaccine” which was deceitfully sold to President Trump as “safe,” “effective,” and a “vaccine” but was none of those but instead left a malicious legacy of injury, death, and destruction in its satanic wake.

The post VivaBarnesLaw: Law for the People – Ep. 251: Bogus Social Security Payments? DOGE Lawsuit W’s! Maddow Defamation! & MORE! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

TASS Agency

The post EU replaces U.S. as Russia’s main adversary appeared first on LewRockwell.

Jesse Trentadue writes:

I am a civil trial lawyer and have been for 50 years.  My brother, Kenneth Michael Trentadue, was murdered in 1995 shortly after the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Kenney was tortured and murdered by the FBI under the mistaken belief that he was John Doe 2, a suspect in the Bombing, which I subsequently discovered was a failed sting operation connected to a wide-ranging FBI undercover operation directed at the political right known as “PATCON,” an acronym for Patriot Conspiracy.  PATCON is perhaps the earliest example of the Department of Justice’s weaponization of the FBI which, in 1995, had embedded informants in several plots to bomb a federal building.  The other plots were shut down and the conspirators apparently arrested, but for some unexplained reason Oklahoma City was not.

I have devoted almost 30-years of my life pursuing some measure of justice for Kenney’s death. It has not been an easy task.  My adversaries, the FBI, and the Department of Justice, contrived to conceal both Kenney’s murder and the United States Government’s involvement in the Bombing, including having made multiple attempts to indict me.  

The website attached below presents overwhelming and powerful evidence gathered by me these part 30-years, largely through multiple lawsuits against the Government, that exposesthe FBI and the Department of Justice’s involvement in both Kenney’s murder and the Bombing, including the cover-up of those crimes.  I am doing so in hopes that the current Department of Justice will pursue justice both for my Brother and the victims of the Bombing. 

Towards that end, please share this e-mail, and website with others who may be interested or can perhaps help me continue this fight, especially anyone who may have contacts with officials in the current Department of Justice. The website contains photographs that show in shocking detail the brutal death that my brother suffered at the hands of the FBI, a crime that, along with the Government’s involvement in involvement in the Oklahoma City Bombing, was covered up by the Clinton Justice Department. www.kennethtrentadue.com

Finally, unless scuttled by the Department of Justice which has happened before in attempts by others to expose the FBI, in July of this year Simon & Schuster will release a book by investigative journalist, Margaret Roberts, tiled “Blowback.”  It is about the FBI’s heretofore undisclosed role in my Brother’s murder and the Bombing.  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blowback/Margaret-Roberts/9798888458426

The post Hold FBI Accountable For The Murder Of Kenneth Michael Trentadue And The Oklahoma City Bombing! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Andy Thomas:

Was “The Village” the first 15 Minute City?

See here.

The post The Prisoner: Arrival appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Wayne Goodfellow:

We are at peak in Wanity and peak tyranny now.

See this.

The post NDP bill prescribes jail time for anyone speaking well of fossil fuels appeared first on LewRockwell.

The following books will provide a deep understanding of how Louis Pasteur fraudulently began Germ Theory, the concept of Contagion and the field of Virology – all of which led to the promotion of Vaccines which, in turn, allowed the World Wide COVID-19 Tyranny:

• The Blood And Its Third Element, Antoine Bechamp
• Bechamp or Pasteur? A Lost Chapter In The History Of Biology, Ethel D. Hume
• Pasteur: Plagiarist, Imposter – The Germ Theory Exploded, R. B. Pearson
• The Private Science Of Louis Pasteur, Gerald L. Geiser
• The Curse of Louis Pasteur, Nancy Appleton, Phd.
• The Contagion Myth, Thomas Cowan & Sally Fallon Morell.

PLEASE NOTE: These books provide extensive foundational knowledge and some can be rather technical. Also, some of the above books may be harder to find but all are worth the effort.

For those with limited time I’d suggest the following books FIRST:

• The Final Pandemic, An Antidote to Medical Tyranny, Drs Sam & Mark Bailey
• Can You Catch A Cold?: Untold History & Human Experiments, Daniel Roytas

To deepen your study, I highly recommend watching the scores of videos and papers by Drs Sam and Mark Bailey, HERE, as well as the extraordinary scholarship of Mike Stone at ViroLIEgy.com

The post Louis Pasteur: Where The Virus Myth Began appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

The post Last refuge of a scoundrel: Dems revive “Russian conspiracy” provocations appeared first on LewRockwell.

And thanks, Tom Woods.

The post Scott Horton appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ptrick Foy:

What to watch this weekend. Judge Napolitano and Professor Mearsheimer attempt to get their heads around President Trump’s contradictory foreign policy moves. On the one hand, continued green light for genocide and Nakba in Palestine versus, on the other hand, a peace agreement for Ukraine with Russia.

As for Europe’s leaders, the real rupture will come it seems to me if Trump decides at some point to expose Germany’s culpability in allowing Biden to blow up the Nord Stream II pipeline. The facts must be there in the files at the Pentagon and State Department. One NATO member attacks another!

See this.

The post “The Israel Lobby’s Awesome Power” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Gail Appel.

The post Huxley warned of hybrid chimeric research! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Warren White.

The post Oh noooo! It’s Bird Flu! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

https://nypost.com/2025/02/13/us-news/hhs-splurged-more-than-22b-on-grants-for-migrants-including-cash-for-cars-home-loans-and-startup-businesses/ 

https://archive.is/ccJjG

The post HHS spent $22B on grants for migrants — including cash for cars, home loans and startups appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Disswire.com.

The post Calls for Bill Gates and George Soros Arrest For Defrauding Taxpayer of Billions Through USAID appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm:

The Blaze

The post Did Fauci orchestrate the pandemic? New documentary EXPOSES ALL appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Beyond Pesticides

The post Pesticides that Adversely Affect Cell Function Linked to Brain Cancer appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Lifesite News

The post Christian leaders in the Holy Land rebuke Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians appeared first on LewRockwell.