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Thanks. John Frahm.

The post Thomas Massie | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Hi Lew,

I’ve been to Las Vegas dozens of times, to Hollywood four times, and once, for six months to Belem, Brazil (which is named after Bethlehem), in the Amazon River delta. What truths did I find?

In Las Vegas, I found the most Libertarian city in the USA, if not the world. Anything goes in Vegas. It’s a fantasy city in the middle of the desert that relies on Hoover Dam and Lake Mead for its existence.

Hollywood is another fantasy city in a desert that also relies on water from elsewhere, like Las Vegas. Los Angeles, to me, is the most interesting city in the world.

Belem is reality. The equatorial sun, rain forest, heat and humidity, disease, poisonous this and that, nothing is man’s friend in Belem except man (they don’t even have dogs or cats).

Belem is the truth.

The post Vegas, Hollywood, and Bethlehemy appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to press reports, President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is back in touch with Iran after the ceasefire with Israel. Will a deal still be possible? Is Iran still interested?

The post After Trump’s Bombs, Is Peace With Iran Possible? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post After Trump’s Bombs, Is Peace With Iran Possible? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Synopsis:

“Cold War is a twenty-four episode television documentary series about the Cold War that aired in 1998. It features interviews and footage of the events that shaped the tense relationships between the Soviet Union and the United States.

“The series was produced by Pat Mitchell and Jeremy Isaacs, who had earlier in 1973 produced the World War II documentary series The World at War in a similar style. Ted Turner funded the series as a joint production between the Turner Broadcasting System and the BBC, and was first broadcast on CNN in the United States and BBC Two in the United Kingdom. Writers included Hella Pick, Jeremy Isaacs, Lawrence Freedman, Neal Ascherson, Hugh O’Shaughnessy and Germaine Greer. Kenneth Branagh was the narrator, and Carl Davis (who also collaborated with Isaacs with The World at War) composed the theme music. Each episode would feature historical footage and interviews from both significant figures and others who had witnessed particular events.

“For both altruistic and self-serving purposes, the United States provides massive grants of aid to the countries of Europe in the form of the Marshall Plan. Stalin, concerned that the intent of the Marshall Plan is to weaken Soviet influence in Europe, prevents countries in its orbit from participating, and establishes the rival Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Communists come to power through a coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948. Tito, while originally aligned to the Soviet Union, adopts a more independent foreign policy and eventually switches to receiving Marshall Aid Assistance. The CIA and the Catholic Church conspire to help oust the Italian Communist Party and its coalition allies in the 1948 Italian election. The Marshall Plan has the effect of modernising European economies and societies, bringing Western Europe closer together, and closer to the United States. Interviewees include Vladimir Yerofeyev, Gianni Agnelli and Giulio Andreotti. The pre-credits scene portrays the squalor in post-war Italy, and Truman delivering his Truman Doctrine speech of 1947.”

The post In The Beginning. . . Italy 1948 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/lintelligenza-artificiale-ci-rendera)

Gli aspetti dell'intelligenza artificiale sono assolutamente affascinanti, persino sorprendenti. Abbiamo a portata di mano un numero di informazioni mai visto prima e i migliori strumenti disponibili ci consentono di accedere a una vasta letteratura.

Sembra essere successo tutto all'improvviso e incredibilmente. Mi ritrovo ancora ad adattarmi a questo nuovo mondo. Non c'è dubbio che abbia migliorato la mia vita e sto sviluppando l'abitudine di “chiedere a Grok” qualsiasi cosa.

Non tutte le risposte sono perfette (a volte ho passato parecchio tempo a discutere con questo cervello finto), ma dà alla mente una spinta nella giusta direzione, fornendo suggerimenti per chiunque sia curioso su quasi ogni argomento.

Dieci anni fa avrei potuto facilmente prevedere un mondo molto più intelligente che sarebbe emerso da questa tecnologia. Mi fa davvero sentire più intelligente. Forse l'aspetto migliore dell'IA è come ha superato e probabilmente spodesterà la moltitudine di falsi esperti trincerati nel mondo accademico, nelle organizzazioni non profit e nelle aziende.

Sono stati a lungo pagati per essere depositari di informazioni. Sicuramente percepiscono che possono essere sostituiti o, quantomeno, che il loro primato nella leadership intellettuale è messo a dura prova. Prendete in considerazione anche che siamo solo all'inizio. Il divario tra la conoscenza d'élite e ciò che può essere appreso istantaneamente da chiunque si ridurrà ulteriormente.

Le implicazioni sono notevoli e porteranno sicuramente a una ristrutturazione di molti settori, tra cui quelli specializzati nella diffusione della conoscenza.

Ripenso a ciò che sappiamo di Sant'Isidoro di Siviglia del VII secolo, il quale lavorò con una numerosa squadra di amanuensi per scrivere le “Etymologiae”. Fu un tentativo di registrare tutto il sapere conosciuto, la prima vera enciclopedia. Fu un progetto che assorbì la sua vita e quella dell'intero monastero.

L'ambizione di accumulare, assemblare e diffondere il corpus della conoscenza umana è stata una delle aspirazioni trainanti di molti progetti letterari.

Dopo che la stampa e la carta divennero più accessibili, il mercato delle biblioteche domestiche si aprì negli Stati Uniti tra il 1890 e gli anni successivi. Un tempo prerogativa esclusiva dei ricchi, possedere grandi biblioteche divenne il sogno di molte famiglie della classe media.

Gli editori erano pronti a soddisfare la domanda. Nel 1917 fu pubblicata l'enciclopedia “World Book”. Nacque un'industria con vendite porta a porta e servizi di abbonamento. Innumerevoli altri editori si impegnarono nel grande compito di arricchire la base di conoscenza americana. Era una parte fondamentale del programma progressista, un mezzo per elevare la popolazione, educare le persone a valori più elevati, promuovere l'alfabetizzazione e un vivere civile.

Gli americani erano tutti entusiasti e i libri arrivavano per posta in continuazione. Particolarmente attraenti erano queste grandi raccolte di più volumi, non solo enciclopedie, ma anche romanzi, discorsi, documenti presidenziali, ampie cronache storiche e, naturalmente, i Grandi Libri. Ancora oggi questi libri sono meravigliosi e costituiscono la base di un'ottima istruzione. È possibile acquistarne raccolte su eBay a prezzi molto bassi.

Quando è arrivato Internet, la speranza più grande era che diventasse l'equivalente moderno di tutta la conoscenza umana. Mio padre era scettico. Fin da piccolo gli ho mostrato nuovi strumenti interessanti e lui li superava subito in astuzia grazie alle sue conoscenze altamente specializzate su una serie di argomenti specifici. Lo faceva per dimostrarmi che, sebbene questi strumenti potessero essere preziosi, non avrebbero mai potuto sostituire un serio lavoro intellettuale, la ricerca, la disciplina mentale, la concentrazione e una profonda comprensione.

All'epoca pensavo che fosse antiquato, ma eccoci qui, un quarto di secolo dopo la diffusione di massa della conoscenza via Internet attraverso ogni portale immaginabile, e dobbiamo porci una domanda fondamentale: siamo, come cultura, nazione e mondo, più intelligenti oggi di quanto lo fossimo 25 anni fa?

Ci sono molti modi per rispondere a questa domanda. Sì, abbiamo più accesso, ma questo ha anche ridotto l'incentivo ad apprendere e ricordare. Questa caratteristica agisce in modi insidiosi. Ad esempio, ho un pessimo senso dell'orientamento. È debilitante. In una nuova città sono senza speranza. L'avvento del GPS ha cambiato completamente la mia esistenza, liberandomi da una vita di ansia per l'orientamento e permettendomi di muovermi come una persona normale.

Detto questo, il GPS ha decisamente peggiorato ulteriormente il mio senso dell'orientamento. Senza, sarei più disperato di prima. È così che funziona. Più dipendiamo da fonti di informazione esterne, meno alleniamo il nostro cervello a trovare le risposte da solo.

È proprio per questo motivo che sospetto che Internet in generale non ci abbia resi più intelligenti, ma, per molti versi, esattamente il contrario. Ci fornisce più dati ma ci priva della necessità di imparare a reperire informazioni da soli.

È strano quanto io ritenga preziosi quei giorni lontani, quando trascorrevo ore infinite, giorno dopo giorno, in una biblioteca vecchio stile, rovistando tra gli scaffali, scoprendo nuove idee, leggendo incessantemente di storia, filosofia, teologia, economia o qualsiasi altra cosa riuscissi a trovare. Mi sentivo sopraffatto ed elettrizzato dalle informazioni e dalle idee a portata di mano e divoravo il più possibile nel tempo che avevo a disposizione.

Le persone lo sentono o lo sperimentano oggi? Non ne sono così sicuro. Leggo spesso di professori che si disperano anche solo per convincere i loro studenti a leggere un solo libro. Hanno inventato ogni sorta di trucchetto per incentivarli e metterli alla prova per assicurarsi che non usino scorciatoie. Sembra del tutto inutile.

È questo il mondo che Internet avrebbe dovuto costruire? Non proprio. Mi ricorda come i primi sostenitori della televisione prevedevano che la maggior parte della programmazione sarebbe stata composta da professori universitari che tenevano lezioni, perché credevano che fosse ciò che il mercato richiedeva.

Il celebre studioso della comunicazione, Wilbur Schramm, affermò nel 1964: “La televisione può portare l'istruzione a casa di ogni famiglia, e può farlo con una potenza e una vividezza che nessun libro di testo può eguagliare”.

È accaduto il contrario e molto rapidamente.

Se volete sapere come i giovani usano i loro smartphone, guardate alle spalle chiunque abbia meno di 30 anni nelle stazioni ferroviarie o negli aeroporti. Vedrete scorrere sconsolati app popolari che non offrono assolutamente nulla in termini di istruzione superiore. Davvero, è un disastro.

Spiegatelo a un membro di questo gruppo e vi risponderà tipo: perché dovrei imparare cose che sono già a mia disposizione se mai dovessi averne bisogno?

È proprio questo atteggiamento che ci ha resi molto più stupidi. Lo si può capire dal vocabolario dei podcaster e di altri commentatori su Internet oggi. Anche 30 anni fa qualsiasi lingua parlassero non sarebbe stata riconosciuta come inglese. Qualcos'altro l'ha sostituita. E non solo negli Stati Uniti, in tutto il mondo. Il francese è in declino, così come il tedesco e lo spagnolo.

Il vocabolario è un segno rivelatore: rivela ciò che abbiamo in testa, ciò che ci sta a cuore. Se quello che esce fuori è un inglese pidgin, questo vi dice tutto ciò che c'è da sapere sulla mancanza di pensiero dietro le parole.

Se questo è vero per la televisione e Internet, quanto più lo sarà per l'intelligenza artificiale e i modelli linguistici di grandi dimensioni? Come strumenti di archiviazione e recupero delle informazioni, al confronto fanno sembrare tutto ciò che c'era prima un disastro. Ho smesso di usare qualsiasi motore di ricerca, se non per compiti specifici. Tra 10 anni dubito che i motori di ricerca avranno ancora una quota di mercato significativa.

Non voglio lasciarvi alla disperazione. Ci sono modi in cui l'intelligenza artificiale è straordinaria e non tornerei mai indietro. Detto questo, ci sono valide ragioni per temere che questo nuovo strumento non farà altro che accelerare il declino del linguaggio, della cultura e dell'apprendimento in generale.

Questi sono i paradossi della tecnologia: a volte ciò che è progettato per salvarci in realtà ci distrugge.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

Andy Thomas wrote:

Great book, IMO. Highly recommended.

The post Searching for Truth in Vegas, Hollywood, & Bethlehem appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/samson-option-illusion-threat-israel-us-iran/5891844 

https://x.com/AFpost/status/1936784897538187392

https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1936434968139272467

The post The Samson Option and the Illusion of Threat: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal, U.S. Complicity, and the Iran Narrative appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Zero Hedge

The post Global Fertilizer Market Thrown In Chaos After Mideast War Shutters Iran Urea Production appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Gateway Pundit

The post President Trump Unloads on Rep. Thomas Massie Over Iran Attack Opposition, Says He’ll Campaign “Very Hard” Against Him in Midterm: “MAGA Doesn’t Want Him” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-thomas-massie-criticism-us-strikes-iran-kentucky-maga-rcna214387

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1936952561489379560

and especially https://twitter.com/MassieforKY/status/1936863008174616881

The post Trump launches major offensive against America First Massie appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Gateway Pundit

The post Pope Leo Seemingly Rebukes Trump Over Strikes on Iran — Urges Leaders to Prevent ‘Bloodstained Conflicts’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

The cat is outta the bag, to coin a phrase. It’s semi-official. El Presidente is going for regime change in Iran. Just like his nincompoop predecessor, G.W. Bush, who enforced regime change in Iraq utilizing the WMD cover story. Essentially the same formula. And why would the MAGA “Peace President” go off in this direction?

Simple. That is what PM Netanyahu told Trump he wants. This is what America’s Israel Lobby wants. You see, the nuclear issue was a hoax. Iran had no nuclear weapons or a weapons program. The USG and Israel know that. Iran has or had a nuclear energy program, like many other countries who are members of the IAEA.

Of course, this does not include Israel itself, which is special. It has hundred of nuclear warheads and does not allow any inspections by the IAEA. This means that all the weapons and money Washington has sent to Israel over the years is illegal since no American aid can be sent to a nuclear weapons rogue state. It’s illegal according to U.S. Congressional law.

No matter, Trump the Chump is dancing to Bibi’s tune. That should now be obvious. Am I surprised. No. Is this MAGA or is it just the continued decades-long subordination of American foreign policy to that of Israel? It is the latter.

Of course I can understand why Bibi and his fellow war criminals would want regime change. If the Iranian regime is left intact it will continue to tell the truth about Zionism and the Palestinians. Tel Aviv does not want that.

No Arab country does that anymore, because they have learned their lesson. They will be sanctioned and/or smashed. The flunky, feckless Arabian oil princelings know they are an easy target. And Jordan and Egypt have been bought off by America.

In addition, if the Tehran regime stays in power, it will have the ability in the future, even next month, to shoot more rockets into downtown Tel Aviv in response to Tel Aviv sending rockets and jet bombers all over Iran and assassinating anybody it pleases.

Bibi & Co. would much prefer to have Iran be a free-fire zone, like Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria. Tel Aviv does not want to deal with a country that can actually fight back. Trump the Chump has his marching orders.

The post Trump the Chump goes for Regime Change In Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

It seems likely that various forms of collapse are in our near future—nuclear war, global overheating, ocean flooding, political dysfunction, civil war, pandemics, the “Great Unraveling”—and that behooves us to contemplate ways of surviving, whether as individuals, families, or groups.  Survival, of course, may not be possible, but it would seem wise to hope that it is possible and to prepare for it.

There are professional survivalists among us already, of course, those people who have laid up emergency food kits and built bunkers and such—maybe 150 million according to one survey–and as many as 74 million preppers, those who have made simple preparations to weather a storm or power outage.   Those are largely individualists, preparing for themselves and their families, and the serious ones are mostly aiming for self-sufficiency, uninterested in friends, neighbors, or what polity might surround them.

It is the rest of the world I’m concerned with.

For nearly 2 million years the human animal lived in small communities, cojoining extended families, dependent on each other for mutual survival, nomadic, scavenging and foraging, with common property and shared resources, non-hierarchical, with political and economic self-sufficiency.  Anthropological evidence suggests that the usual size of such groups—tribes we call them—was around 500, which John Feiffer in the Emergence of Man calls a “magic number” because it recurs so often in scholarly studies from around the world.

That number is important because it’s of sufficient size to provide for a modest self-sufficient economy and polity, probably self-defense.  It is larger than a commune, that would be say 20 to 50 people, larger than a “social network” as defined by Robin Dunbar as around 150 people you know well and whose addresses you have. At between  350 and 750, averaging at 500,  it lasted so long because it was an efficient size, large enough to satisfy individual and familial needs, small enough to maintain an efficient government and easy resource (food, clothing, fire) distribution.  It was, in anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’ words, “the original affluent society… in which all the people’s material wants are easily satisfied.”

A  pertinent fact about these eons of tribal existence: it has played, as Justin J. Kennedy has written, a “significant impact on brain function,” or as is fashionable to say these days, humans are “hard-wired” for tribal living.  It is a fact of our human neurology no matter how outward conditions have changed, and that inherent longing for group living continues on in that ever-present desire for community that persists in even populous cities today.

Some psychologists have narrowed this down.  There is a hormone produced by the hypothalmus in the brain that, in addition to stirring sexual functions promotes social bonding, trust, cooperation, and empathy, and these can be instigated by group conditions.  Tribal societies spur the creation of this hormone and obviously contribute to the successful operation of the group.  Our brains are specifically wired to group living.

What I am describing here is not the “tribalism” political scientists are talking about these days, by which they mean the tendency of people to prefer the opinions and politics, and media, of one party’s extreme or another.  They imply a kind of backwardness of these people, suggesting that they are like the kinds of tribes that lingered into modernity—semi-naked, impoverished, war-like, uncivilized.  It has nothing to do with the human condition I am pointing to.

Given the perils we face, then, and knowing what our human nature has fitted us for, might in not behoove us to start now to figuring out how humanity can be divided up and survive the way we once lived for so long. The 14,000 years we have been driven into cities and kingdoms and empires and global supply chains have not changed the reality of our bodies and the basic drives and pleasures that are common to all humanity.  It cannot be that hard to create what is natural to our bodies and to our multi-millennial experience.

I feel I must add a note to free-marketers.  Of course you have not had a free market for many centuries and it’s unlikely that, even with a diminished state, you would.  But it would obviously be anathema in a tribal world, for that economic system is based on mutual “ownership” of resources and unfettered distribution of resources, on a small human scale, and morally forbids individual accumulation of wealth.  There is, basically, no market, free or otherwise.

But it still would make for a delightful world.

The post Tribalism: A Way of Life whose Time Has Come appeared first on LewRockwell.

And so the global-capitalist empire’s destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East continues.

Yes, I’m referring to Israel’s “preemptive attack” on the Islamic Republic of Iran, or “World War III,” or whatever the establishment media and social media influencers are trying to get you to call it at the moment.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t engage with either the official “Israel is defending itself from the nuclear weapon that Iran has been days away from developing for the last twenty-five years” narrative, or the unofficial “the evil Zionists who control the US government are trying to draw Trump into a war for Israel” narrative.

The global-capitalist empire, not “America” or “Israel,” has been destabilizing and restructuring the Greater Middle East since the end of the Cold War. It is going to continue to do that until every nation in the region is playing ball with the empire.

“America” is not the empire. “The Zionists” do not control the world. The USA and Israel are components of the global-capitalist empire. Israel is the empire’s Middle East HQ. The US military-industrial complex and its international partners are the empire’s muscle. The empire is conducting a global clear-and-hold op, neutralizing internal resistance, “restructuring” the territory it conquered and now occupies.

That is what is happening in the Middle East. In Gaza. In Iran. In Israel. Look at a map. Note which countries are playing ball with the global-capitalist empire. Note which ones are not playing ball. Note which ones have already been “restructured.”

Or don’t do that. Switch off your mind and consume whatever cartoonish narratives the corporate media and influencers are peddling to you. The evil Iranians and their nuclear weapons! The evil Zionists that control the world! Netanyahu duped Trump! Trump tricked MAGA! The Rothschilds! The Deep State! The Jewish Supremacists! The Return of the Neocons! World War III!

The global-capitalist empire would prefer that you do that. And it doesn’t matter to the empire which narrative you consume. The empire doesn’t care whether you’re a liberal or conservative. It could not possibly care less who you voted for. It does not care whether you’re a multi-gendered pronoun-using anti-Trump progressive or an Elon-loving MAGA conservative. It does not care whether you’re a Waymo-burning Mexican flag-flying illegal immigrant or a race-baiting crypto-fascist creep. It doesn’t care whether you’re a Zionist or an anti-Zionist. It does not give a shit what you think about vaccines.

Whoever you are, whatever “side” you are on, the empire has a readymade narrative for you. A narrative that has nothing to do with the global-capitalist empire and its global clear-and-hold op.

And that’s one big advantage the global-capitalist empire has over earlier totalitarian systems. Unlike the Communists and the National Socialists, global capitalism has no ideology, so it can morph into anything it needs to morph into, including any potential opposition to it.

Which is what it has been doing for the last few years, more or less since the end of the Covid era. Just as the Obama “Hope-and-Change” show captured and neutered the growing opposition to the War on Terror (i.e., the original version of the global-capitalist empire’s destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East), the “Make America Great Again” show (with assistance from the Musk Cult) has captured and neutralized the “populist” opposition to the New Normal Reich (i.e., the new global-capitalist form of totalitarianism that was rolled out during the “Covid pandemic”).

I explored this in the introductory essay of Fear and Loathing in the New Normal Reich, my latest book. Here’s an excerpt…

This is also a key feature of the New Normal Reich, the capture, conditioning, and commodification of opposition forces that cannot be eliminated. (Remember, this is global-capitalist totalitarianism, not the ham-fisted 20th-Century version.)

Any internal resistance to the empire that cannot be annihilated, or otherwise silenced, can be commodified, branded, and marketed back to its members as a simulacrum of itself. Ultimately, it can be instrumentalized, like ‘the Brotherhood’ in Orwell’s 1984. It can be molded into a ‘resistance movement,’ which simultaneously exists and does not exist, because it only exists as a simulacrum (i.e., a copy of a thing that no longer exists, which conceals the fact that it no longer exists), and deployed to lure political opposition into an endless war against other simulacra, a war that is itself a simulacrum (i.e., a copy of a war which is not being fought, and was never fought, and will never be fought, because it was already over before it began).

‘Free-speech X’ is a prime example.

The ease with which Elon Musk and a consortium of serious global-capitalist behemoths, Saudi royalty, and assorted other oligarchs purchased the platform formerly known as Twitter, rebranded it as ‘The Bastion of Free Speech’ (despite the fact that X continues to collaborate with the empire to censor dissent), corralled the majority of the ‘populist’ opposition to the emergence of the New Normal Reich, and transformed it into a global personality cult, is a testament to the versatility of capitalism, and to the advantage of having no official ideology. When you don’t have to conform to any specific ideology, you can wear whatever mask you need to wear. You can play whichever role is called for.

It’s all just marketing, advertising, branding. It’s about selling images. The images don’t mean anything. They’re just Pavlovian stimuli designed to trigger a reaction in the target consumer.

The transformation of Twitter/X into the Musk Cult and its merger with (or takeover of) the MAGA movement has been fascinating, if extremely depressing, to watch. At the moment, it appears to be on the verge of morphing into exactly the official enemy that the empire has been desperately simulating for years.”

I wrote that in December 2024, just after the election that ushered in a “new golden age of America,” or whatever. And now … well, here we are. The destabilization and restructuring of the Middle East is proceeding apace. Israel and Iran are officially at war. The Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble. The Assad regime is gone, replaced with a gang of global-capitalism-ball-playing Al-Qaeda thugs. The Trump regime is renditioning people with suspicious tattoos to Salvadoran gulags, arresting students for writing editorials, unleashing masked goons to round up “illegals,” and generally “making America great again.”

X is now a cesspool of algorithmically-boosted racial hatred, mindless rage, Musk and MAGA propaganda, widget ads, and miscellaneous idiocy. Palantir is assembling a master database of Americans’ personal data. People are shrieking for “mass deportation.” Stephen Miller is channeling Joseph Goebbels. Elon Musk is accusing Trump of degenerate acts on Epstein Island. No one is being prosecuted for lying to everyone about “Covid,” but Bobby Kennedy fired a bunch of bureaucrats, and Trump’s military birthday parade … and so on.

Basically, the global-capitalist empire has morphed into the opposition to itself, or a simulacrum of the opposition to itself, and is now simultaneously instrumentalizing and disassembling the opposition to itself (as it markets itself and the opposition to itself to itself and the opposition to itself).

The global capitalist empire is able to do this because it has no ideology or values to uphold. It doesn’t need to make sense or be consistent. It can wear whatever mask it needs to wear because there is no face behind the mask. There is nothing, no values, no ideology, no beliefs, no principles, nothing to defend or betray, nothing to stop it from becoming anything … and then becoming the exact opposite a moment later.

Sorry, I went all philosophical there, and probably bored a lot of my readers to death. Forget about the global-capitalist empire, and the nothing behind the masks, and all that.

I’m pretty sure I’m overthinking this stuff, and it’s really just that the Jews own everything, or that the Muslims hate us for our freedom, or that we’re being replaced by illegal Mexicans, or Trump is Hitler, or Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, or, I don’t know … I’m sure there’s a corporate-media pundit or a dissident podcaster who can explain what’s really happening and tell us who we’re supposed to root for.

This article was originally published on OffGuardian.

The post World War III and Other Simulacra appeared first on LewRockwell.

Any moment now I am expecting John Cleese (a veteran of Monty Python) to jump out of the bushes and announce the creation of the Ministry of Silly Wars, with Donald Trump as the deranged leader. For you youngsters out there, Monty Python’s skit, The Ministry of Silly Walks, helped make the members of MP legends. I had to reference Monty Python because the line of bullshit the Trump administration is feeding the American people and the world about the amazing, obliterating US attack on Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday morning, is more ridiculous than all of the silly walks pictured in this video.

My hopes that Donald Trump would finally act like a responsible adult are dashed. He’s a dangerous buffoon. While the team around him are working frantically to maintain the fiction that Trump has a vision and is calling the shots on the foreign policy front, he is careening around the globe like an out-of-control cue ball on a billiards table. It started a week ago… first, he claimed to know everything about the timing of the Israeli decapitation attack, and then, within 48 hours, denied knowing anything. He insists he wants peace but did nothing to stop Israel from launching an unprovoked attack on Iran on the eve of negotiations in Oman between the US and Iran.

Now comes the Sunday morning bombings of Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The White House insists that all were obliterated and that Iran’s nuclear program waswiped out. Only one teeny, tiny problem… none of the satellite imagery supports that claim. Before Sunday, we knew where Iran’s enriched uranium was located and IAEA inspectors had access to the three sites. Now? Iran removed the enriched uranium to a classified site and is moving to end IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear program.

The national security committee of Iran’s parliament approved the general outline of a bill meant to fully suspend Tehran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on, citing committee spokesperson Ebrahim Rezaei.

Rezaei said that according to the bill, installing surveillance cameras, allowing inspections, and submitting reports to the IAEA would be suspended as long as the security of nuclear facilities is not guaranteed. Parliament still has to approve the bill in a plenary.

Way to go Trump!! Instead of ending Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon — which Iran shelved 22 years ago — Donald Trump has given Iranian hardliners more proof that the only way Iran can be secure in the future is to manufacture nuclear warheads.

Then, today in Washington, DC around 6 pm, Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Following his meeting in Moscow with Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, issued the following statement:

The military operations of our powerful Armed Forces to punish Israel for its aggression continued until the very last minute, until 4 am.

Together with all Iranians, I thank our brave Armed Forces, who remain ready to defend our dear country until the last drop of blood and who responded to any enemy attacks until the very last minute.

Israel launched a flurry of final attacks on Tehran immediately prior to the 4 am (Tehran time) deadline for the ceasefire to go into effect. Meanwhile, in Iraq, there were several attacks on US bases prior to 4 am by Iraqi groups aligned with Iran:

In central Iraq, a suicide drone struck (https://t.me/PalestineResist/79412) the military airport in Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, targeting a radar unit and fuel tanks (Media 1, 4). No casualties were reported. West of Baghdad, an explosion was reported near the American Victoria base, with reports of power outages. American drones were reported flying over Baghdad.

In northern Iraq, two explosions were heard at the Balad Air Base (Bakr Air Base) in Salah Al-Din Governorate, with flames seem rising from the base.

In southern Iraq, a drone attack targeted the air radar systems at Imam Ali Base (Talil Air Base) in Nasiriyah (Media 2). Moments ago, air defenses also activated at the American Ain Al-Assad Air Base in Anbar in western Iraq, following a reported targeting by one drone.

While Trump is desperately trying to take credit for these developments, the ceasefire happened in spite of him, not because of his actions. I suspect that Russia, with an assist from China, made this happen. The real story is that Israel caved. Notwithstanding the massive pro-Israel propaganda campaign claiming that Iran was crumpling under Israel’s assault, Iran’s bevy of ballistic and cruise missiles wreaked havoc on Israel and caused significant damage. This is a major defeat for Netanyahu. Let’s hope he is quickly ushered out of office.

This article was originally published on Sonar21.

The post Iran vs the US and Israel — Kabuki Theater on Steroids appeared first on LewRockwell.

Decades of ‘The Fog Machine of War’ have jaded the public’s appetite for ‘Narrative Control’.

The Fog of War is perhaps better described as The Fog Machine of War, for everything presented to the public is some version of Narrative Control, the purpose of which is to establish a context and story that’s beneficial to whomever is presenting “facts,” “news,” “information” and “commentary.”

The other motivation for flooding global media with “news,” “information” and “commentary” is to maximize profits via serving the insatiable appetite for “what’s really going on.” What’s really going on is of course a closely held state secret, the very last thing that would ever be released to the public.

Since everything is Narrative Control and exploiting crisis for profit, there’s little value in any of what’s presented to the public other than what it suggests on a meta-level, that is, what isn’t being revealed and promoted as “what’s really going on.”

It seems to me there is only one way to assemble a jigsaw that approaches the goal of discovering “what’s really going on.” The first step would be to obtain fly on the wall unfiltered intelligence summaries (unfiltered meaning not yet massaged for the political leadership) from the intelligence agencies of the three combatants: Iran, Israel and the United States. This is of course impossible.

The second step would be to obtain the unfiltered intelligence summaries from regional players, for example, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc., who have their own sources.

The third step would be to obtain the unfiltered intelligence summaries from Major Power players with a keen interest in figuring out “what’s really going on,” for example, China, Russia and the European Union intel agencies.

The fourth step would be to survey mid-level officers conducting actual operations. It would also be helpful to have access to those actually conducting post-operation damage assessments.

You discern the meta-thinking here: valuable information tends to get filtered out (or lost) between each level of information gathering, summary and presentation to the next level of the hierarchy.

At the highest level, the military leadership tends to be under pressure to control the narrative of what’s presented to the political leadership. This can play out in any number of ways: the military leadership might exaggerate the direness of the situation to obtain permission for a risky operation, or it may gloss over the situation to avoid being sacked.

What strikes me as interesting is how long this situation has been brewing. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been front and center for a great many years, and so intelligence and operational planning have been going on for many years.

In other words, this isn’t a flash-bang crisis that suddenly erupted from conditions that were unstable beneath the surface but superficially stable, for example, a coup d’etat in a resource-rich nation few people can locate on a map.

What’s unknown for obvious reasons is the capabilities in play. In the aftermath of the intelligence agencies scandals of the 1970s, various tell-all books were published, revealing technical abilities long kept secret.

For example, it was revealed that the U.S. intercepted communications between doomed cosmonauts drifting in a failed Soviet space mission and the tearful Soviet political leadership.

We have no way of knowing if this “tell-all” is true or just another subtle form of Narrative Control. But given that the U.S. spends more on signal intelligence, space-based assets, and other information gathering than other nations spend on their entire militaries, it’s plausible.

As for what capabilities are in play today: the public has no idea. We can have fun guessing, but it’s all guessing.

Decades of The Fog Machine of War have jaded the public’s appetite for Narrative Control. Few believe the “official version” of anything, for good reasons. Public trust has eroded, and so the meta-thought here is the Narrative Control has shifted to insiders’ “tell-all” accounts and leaked accounts of “what’s really going on.”

So the dirt revealed by opponents of the conflict–well, perhaps all that should be taken with a hefty grain of salt, too. The truth–if we dare even using that word–is we collectively know next to nothing about “what’s really going on”, and so profitably chasing speculation is all that’s left.

This article was originally published on OfTwoMinds.com.

The post Meta-Thoughts on the War appeared first on LewRockwell.

I was on R.B. Ham’s “Beyond the Pale” podcast recently, when I said that it looked like Donald Trump was giving us another of his ingenious head fakes, and was pulling back from Iran. Literally at that moment, R.B. put the breaking news up on the screen. It brought back memories of Syria, when Israel ordered Trump to attack them.

That’s why I don’t make predictions. There I was, left looking like Nellie Connally, after she told JFK, “Well, Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” seconds before shots were fired by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. I don’t know if this means we will become truly involved, but I hope Trump will replay his actions on Syria, when it was a one and done thing. Well, one and done two times. That’s the thing about Trumpenstein; he plays the part of an effective bully, but when Israel talks, he listens. Supposedly, the bombs eviscerated four well known nuclear sites in Iran. Except that many of us, including our own intelligence agencies just a few months ago, don’t believe there are any nuclear sites in Iran. For all we know, our big, beautiful bombs killed a bunch of civilians. It’s not like we haven’t slaughtered civilians countless times, dating back to 1846, in the Mexican-American War.

As Marjorie Taylor Greene pointed out, no one voted for Trump so that he could attack Iran. No MAGA voter wanted to make Iran obsolete. Tulsi Gabbard embarrassed herself by backtracking her earlier, accurate comments on Iran’s nuclear capability. Maybe RFK, Jr. can give her Rabbi Shmuley’s phone number. We knew Trump would do whatever Israel said- the guy has streets named after him there. But at the heart of MAGA is an America First philosophy. No more “senseless wars,” as Trump has called them. Becoming entangled in Iran, or anywhere else, completely discredits the blustery leader of that movement. Trump is in his fifth year as president. Where’s that infrastructure upgrade? And what is DOGE auditing now? When will Kash Patel make his first arrest? Karoline Leavitt is lovely, and Pam Bondi looks great for her age. That may enough for Trumpenstein, but not for his voters.

Well, I suppose we have to show off all that artillery sometimes. When you have a trillion dollar defense budget, people expect you to drop a few bombs here and there. Collateral damage- lots of collateral damage- is baked into the equation. We mastered the art of destroy and rebuild during WWII, the “good” war that so many Americans wax nostalgic about. That’s why they’re so anxious for WWIII- look at how cool the last World War was! Maybe that will cause an uptick in the marriage rates. Soft soy boys marrying their tough, tattooed gender fluids right before they’re shipped off to battle. Bruce Springsteen seems really sold on the Deep State now, so maybe he can play the part of Glenn Miller, and write the soundtrack to the new world conflict. Lots of elderly rock stars would sign on as well. Our view of “patriotism” was born with the first two world wars. Uncle Sam says loose lips sink ships!

WWII was the last war that was declared by Congress. They haven’t followed their constitutional obligation since then, despite all the nonstop forever interventions and occupations in far flung, much smaller lands. Jeannette Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war against Japan. She had to have a police escort out of the Capitol, for her own protection. ‘Murricans don’t take kindly to those who don’t vote for war. Rankin was a real Lefty, an early feminist. But they stopped inviting her to all the best cocktail parties after she held fast to her principles. You have to love a woman who said “you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake; it’s a stupid way of resolving things.” And we wonder why they picked Harriett Tubman instead of Jeannette to be on our counterfeit, fiat currency. Jeannette is more forgotten now than the great antiwar activist General Smedley Butler.

So what lifelong “journalist” for the state Tom Brokaw called the “greatest generation” did their thing. Raped enough women in Japan and Germany that they had to build special brothels to accommodate their illegal migrant-like “sexual emergencies.” Dropped enough firepower on Dresden- one of the world’s most beautiful cities, full of ancient churches, priceless artwork, but of no military significance- to kill 39,000 toddlers alone. If it hadn’t been done by the “good guys,” you might even call it a war crime. After the war, there was Operation Keelhaul, over seen by Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. Lots of innocent Germans died, but Ike had to start his political career somehow. You can read more about under reported Allied atrocities, in my books Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963, and American Memory Hole: How the Court Historians Promote Disinformation. And then we spent a bunch more money on the Marshall Plan, to repair the damage.

We’ve done that a lot ever since then, in all those undeclared wars we’ve fought. For absolutely no logical reason, of course. It’s a “national security” thing, you wouldn’t understand. So, to be fair, bombing Iran for no reason is not any more ridiculous than fighting “contained” wars in Korea and Vietnam, with “demarcation” zones, and no goals or strategy. The Right used to call them “no win” wars. With the first Gulf War, we established a continuing presence in the Middle East. Sure, burying surrendering soldiers alive by plowing them over in their trenches seems harsh, but “war is hell,” as the satanic would-be serial killer William T. Sherman once said. If we have to bury you alive to make you stop “hating our freedom,” we’ll do it! And then, of course, there were the ugly videos from then Bradley Manning, published by Wikileaks. Bombing civilians for sport, playing soccer with decapitated heads. Support the Troops!

Iran represents no less a threat to us than Iraq or Afghanistan did. Or Syria. Or poor Yemen. An entire wedding party in Yemen was murdered during the administration of the beloved Barack Obama. That probably sealed the Nobel Peace Prize for him. Assassinating American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with a drone strike, and then following that up with the drone killing of his sixteen year old son, was just icing on the cake. So if our troops do become involved, and start shoving things up the asses of male Iranian prisoners, as they did so prolifically during our struggles with Iraq, it’s in keeping with our military strategy. Seymour Hersh claims there are videos of U.S. troops raping Iraqi boys, in front of their screaming mothers. Now that tape would probably awaken at least some of the sheeple. But it remains as missing as the Epstein files. Trump has some tough acts to follow. Will he prove up to the task?

I have to try and find humor in this. How can I write seriously about the situation? Iran hasn’t invaded anyone in 300 years. Or maybe it’s 3000. At any rate, it’s been a very long time. They don’t represent the slightest threat to the United States. If those “sleeper cells” really existed, they would have taken down our laughably outdated power grids after some 1.5 million Iraqis- including an estimated 565,000 children- died as a result of our embargo. You’d think that any self-respecting “terrorist” would be compelled to act in such a case. But not a single “suicide bomber” has done anything in order to seek vengeance. America has shown that it can fight any tiny country in the Middle East to a stalemate. Well, except for Israel. That’s who we’re fighting for, after all. And when we back a country by proxy, like Ukraine, we’ll work on their infrastructure for them. And help secure their border. We just won’t upgrade our own infrastructure, or secure our own southern border.

So, here we are, with a world class Military Industrial Complex. Lots of shiny planes, tanks, and bombs. But we meet every definition of a Third World country here at home. Infrastructure neglected for more than sixty years? Check. Massive and widening disparity of wealth? Check. Homeless people camped out in tents and shitting in the streets? Check. Massive corruption at all levels- from school boards to federal “representatives?” Check. Untrustworthy electoral process? Check. State controlled mass media? Check. Public officials never held accountable for their actions? Check. Fraud and money laundering revealed, but ignored? Check. Fractional reserve banking system that creates money out of thin air, and charges imaginary interest on it? Check. Court historians, who lie about our history? Check. Public education system that has produced untold numbers of illiterates? Check.

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In recent years I have often wondered if the constant drama—often deliberately produced and amplified by corrupt and inept governments—is a means of distracting our attention from the fact that those who work in the financial industry have become astronomically wealthy since the Financial Crisis of 2009, while the middle and working classes have struggled to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Especially suspicious in this regard have been the endless ravings about Racism and Russia that have been broadcast for the last several years.

Talking about Racists and Russians behind every bush was an easy way to distract attention from the fact that the Obama administration didn’t prosecute a single major Wall Street executive for fraud, even as solid evidence of vast Wall Street fraud emerged during the first years of his administration.

The same guys who were chiefly responsible for the financial crisis were then bailed out by the Federal Reserve’s “Quantitative Easing” program. This backdoor bailout was so brazen that the man who was tasked with running the program—Andrew Huszar—ultimately felt compelled to write a mea culpa about it in the Wall Street Journal (see “Confessions of a Quantitative Easer,” Andrew Huszar, WSJ, Nov. 11, 2013.)

At this exact same time, we were relentlessly flogged with “America is Racist” propaganda, conditioning us not to notice that we—the people who work in the real, main street economy—had just been looted. Instead of thinking about institutional banditry, we were trained to loath ourselves for our “institutional racism.”

Few Americans are aware that, in October 2008, a Citibank executive named Michael Froman presented a list of candidates for Obama’s first cabinet—including individuals who were subsequently instrumental in bailing out Citibank—to campaign manager John Podesta.

As David Dayen at the New Republic noted:

It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more.”

For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.”

Geithner ended up as Obama’s treasury secretary, while Summers was a key author of the response to the 2008 recession as director of Obama’s National Economic Council. And these men ensured that Froman’s Citigroup continued to benefit from the largest bailout the federal government gave during the financial crisis.

Froman’s email was published as part of Wikileaks disclosures in the summer and autumn of 2016. Many of the Clinton and Podesta e-mails revealed such shocking corruption that the Democrat Party machine HAD to change the subject.

And so, like a magician doing a misdirection trick, the Party supplied their lackeys at the news agencies with the fabricated story of Trump-Russian Collusion. The totality of circumstances strongly suggests that, because DNC staff Seth Rich knew that the e-mails were leaked by a DNC insider and not hacked by Russians, he could not be allowed to live to tell the tale.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I was, at the time, astonished that so many Americans fell for this trick. Surely, I thought, this was the ultimate expression of the childish gullibility of the American people.

Four years later, the same cohort that fell for the Trump-Russian Collusion Hoax embraced the COVID-19 Vaccine Religion with equal fervor.

That was when my circle of friends pared down to a handful of guys and girls who had somehow retained their critical thinking ability. As far as I could see, much of the country was suffering the induced STUPIDITY that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about in his 1943 essay.

With all of the drama we’ve experienced since 2009—and the inexorable rise of the stock market, buoyed by an ocean of central bank liquidity—most have forgotten about the systemic risk in the derivatives market that resulted in the Financial Crisis of 2008.

Recently I had a conversation with documentary filmmaker James Patrick about his new film STOP IT!: The Great Taking. According to James:

Little did you know, your life savings have been posted as collateral on speculative bets made up line in the system.

In the next financial collapse, the “Too Big To Fail” Banks have priority to your stocks and bonds ahead of you.

Direct ownership of a security was substituted with a contractual claim on a security in the 1994 Revision of Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The secured creditors to the derivatives contracts were given legal priority to your assets ahead of you, in the event those contracts go insolvent.

States across the USA are amending Article 8 of the UCC to restore property rights to securities BEFORE the next collapse.

If you enjoyed listening to our conversation, check out the film trailer and consider making a donation to James’s production company, BIG PICTURE, so that he can continue his reporting, unencumbered by commercial interests.

Visit BIG PICTURE website to learn more about filmmaker James Patrick and his other pictures.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post ‘The Great Taking’: Vast Systemic Risk in the Financial System? appeared first on LewRockwell.

In April 2025, Tucker Carlson invited Matt Walsh onto his podcast. The conversation covered everything from same-sex adoption and surrogacy to foreign policy isolationism. It is well worth listening to. But beyond the substance of the conversation, there was simply something powerful about a discussion between two men with such influence on the American Right—each man has an audience of several million subscribers on YouTube alone. In the age of digital media, each man far surpasses the reach of any legacy-news media personality. Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson could be fairly described as two of the most influential men in conservative media.

Yet, in one of the most striking parts of the conversation, both of these “conservative influencers” questioned whether the term “conservative” has value any longer. Both seem to think it does not:

Walsh: The definition of conservatism…it has no definition, I think. We talk about the words that don’t mean anything anymore, words that used to be useful and maybe used to mean something and they just don’t anymore because of how they’ve been used and abused and overused. And I just think conservatism is one of those words. When you tell me now that someone is conservative, that doesn’t tell me a lot about them. I don’t know what you mean. 

Carlson: It generally means I’m not going to like them. They’re going to be some kind of fraud on the internet…that’s my gut reaction, so discredited has that word become.

For decades, the American Right embraced conservatism—from William F. Buckley to Russell Kirk, the Right was decidedly “conservative.” Sure, there were always dissenters, those who were part of the “big tent” Republican Party but identified as liberal Republicans or libertarians or something that was decidedly not conservative. But Tucker Carlson and especially Matt Walsh are not non-conservative Republicans; both men are social conservatives on most/all issues. These are men we would expect to embrace the “conservative” label. Yet they both seem to dismiss the word as virtually meaningless in today’s political culture. What happened?

While dictionary definitions can make for boring essays, it is hard to diagnose why the label “conservative” seems to be losing favor without figuring out what the term actually means.

The root of conservatism must be in the concept of conserving something. But what, precisely, a conservative is trying to conserve is not always clear. We see this in the clear division between two types of people on the Right who each claim the title of conservative. One group argues that what modern conservatism is meant to conserve is classical liberalism—the liberalism of the Enlightenment, of Locke and Montesquieu—which primarily exists to uphold the liberty of the individual person against the state. It sounds convincing; many on the Right still hold to this. But it is not conservatism.

Yoram Hazoni argues vigorously against this notion of classical liberalism as conservatism, articulating a conservatism that is adamantly opposed to the classical liberal tradition:

In the political arena, conservatism refers to a standpoint that regards the recovery, restoration, elaboration, and repair of national and religious traditions as the key to maintaining a nation and strengthening it through time…This is a tradition already powerfully described by John Fortescue in the fifteenth century, by Richard Hooker in the sixteenth century…by statesmen such as Edmund Burke in Britain and by the Federalist Party of George Washington, John Jay, John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, and Alexander Hamilton in America.

Hazony is adamant that this tradition of conservatism is distinct from, even antagonistic to, classical liberalism. The modern right suffers from

an extraordinary confusion over what distinguishes Anglo-American conservatism from Enlightenment liberalism…the liberty of the individual is a fine thing, both good in itself and worthwhile for its beneficial effects, when taken in the right proportion…But under the present conditions of permanent revolution and cultural devastation, the most important thing to remember about individual liberties is that, in and of themselves, they have no power to make anything stable or permanent.

What is conservatism conserving? Individual liberties and the Enlightenment tradition? Stability and order? Tradition? Religious faith? This confusion, if it is not solved, justifies the frustration and dismissiveness of men on the Right like Carlson and Walsh: Why use the word “conservative” to define a political movement if we can’t agree fundamentally on what we are trying to conserve? Is it liberty for its own sake? Is it tradition and religion and the natural order? These are not the same thing. If conservatism cannot clarify what it is, there is indeed nothing to be gained from using the word.

So, can conservatism be clarified and used in a useful way or has the term outlived its usefulness? On one hand, it may be politically and culturally expedient to discard the term altogether. The rise of President Trump has brought together a coalition of conservatives, center-left liberals alienated by the radically progressive Democratic Party, and normal people who simply want law and order, a country with physical borders, or schools where kids learn reading and math rather than a litany of sexual expressions and gender pronouns. So, it makes sense that those interested in solidifying the realigned coalition that is today’s Republican Party may simply wish to shy away from the term “conservative” altogether. Why not move on from the tired conservative-liberal paradigm and bring the party into the postmodern world?

On the other hand, simply being “a Republican” or “right-wing” doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. One can be pro-Israel or anti-Israel, in favor of robust government spending for the common good or of cutting government spending down to the bone, an isolationist or Bush-era neoconservative, traditionally Catholic or totally secular, and still validly claim to be a Republican or “on the Right.” It seems worthwhile to actually have useful terms to describe the political principles that animate policy positions.

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The post Has Conservatism Outlived Its Usefulness? appeared first on LewRockwell.