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1. Terrain Therapy: How To Achieve Perfect Health Through Diet, Living Habits & Divine Thinking 
   
2. Dr. Chase’s Old-Time Home Remedies
   
3. Transcending the Climate Change Deception – Toward Real Sustainability
   
4. Pipe Hitters Guide to Long Range Rifles & Sniping (Pipe Hitters Guides)
5. Thriving Beyond Fifty (Expanded Edition): 111 Natural Strategies to Restore Your Mobility, Avoid Surgery and Stay Off Pain Pills for Good
6. The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War (UnCivil Wars)
7. Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure
8. War Crimes Against Southern Civilians
9. Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing
10. The Anatomy of Stretching, Second Edition: Your Illustrated Guide to Flexibility and Injury Rehabilitation
11. Eye Exercises to Improve Vision: Make Your Vision Better with Simple Vision Training for Every Day.
12. Isaiah Speaks to Modern Times
13. JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated
14. National Geographic Road Atlas 2026: Adventure Edition
15. When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany
16. How To Reverse Aging: A Comprehensive Guide To Copper Peptides
17. This Is How They Fool Us: How Companies Influence Our Buying Habits and What We Can Do About It
18. The Ultimate Guide To Red Light Therapy
    
19. The War Between The States: 60 Essential Books
    
20. Classical Economics (Large Print Edition): An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume 2

The post Top 20 Books That LRC Fans Are Reading This Week appeared first on LewRockwell.

Faithful readers know that I saw Trump for the con man he is since he filled his first administration with CFR globalists. So, I knew he was no less a con man during his presidential campaign in 2024.

However, after the mindless malevolent presidency of Joe Biden, I never expected Trump to degrade the White House into even deeper depths of insanity after being elected last November. I was horribly wrong! Donald Trump is not only worse than Joe Biden; he makes Biden look like George Washington by comparison.

Trump is taking America over the edge of the abyss economically and militarily at warp speed. Yes, just as he did with Operation Warp Speed as the father of the tyrannical Covid insanity.

It will take a few months for the American citizenry to begin feeling the deleterious and disastrous effects of Trump’s maniacal punitive tariffs, but feel it we will. Tariffs are taxes on consumers. That’s us! If Trump stays the course of using tariffs as personal, vindictive international retributions, before this time next year, many store shelves will be empty, and the cost of everything will be higher than any of us can now imagine.

But the way Trump is behaving in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe, we might not need to worry about inflation, long lines and empty shelves. The United States as we know it might not even exist, because Donald Trump is mindlessly, aggressively, recklessly and foolishly goading Russia (and China, North Korea, India, Iran and Pakistan?) into global nuclear war.

The United States has crossed a point of no return. It is no longer merely involved in proxy wars, weapons shipments, or veiled threats—it is now officially engaged in a nuclear confrontation with Russia. And this time, the words aren’t empty. This isn’t a warning. This is the real thing.

Trump has entered the arena. Not as a mediator, not as a peacemaker, but as the man who might tip the scale into the abyss. This isn’t the same Trump who, just months ago, condemned Zelensky for escalating a dangerous conflict. This is a new, reckless version—one who now believes it’s America’s turn to gamble with humanity’s survival.

Just a few hours ago, Trump announced the deployment of two nuclear submarines in response to what he called “highly provocative statements” from Duhmeetry Medvedev. A social media spat—yes, a damn tweet—has now triggered a U.S. nuclear escalation. This is no longer political theater. This is nuclear war posturing in real time, and it’s not coming from shadowy generals or faceless bureaucrats—it’s coming from the man many believe is returning to power.

And the Russians? They didn’t laugh. They didn’t flinch. Medvedev responded not with a threat, but a prophecy. He invoked “Dead Hand.” To most Americans, that sounds like Cold War fiction. But to anyone who understands nuclear doctrine, it’s the most terrifying phrase imaginable. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a machine—designed to destroy the world automatically if Russia’s leadership is ever taken out in a first strike.

And Trump? He’s positioning U.S. nuclear submarines for exactly that kind of decapitation scenario.

The Dead Hand—formally known as Perimeter—is a Cold War-era Russian system created for one purpose: to guarantee that Russia would still launch a full nuclear counterattack even if Moscow were reduced to ash. If command and control are gone, if Putin and his staff are dead, if communications are severed—Dead Hand takes over. It launches everything.

And Trump has just brought us inches away from activating it.

The logic behind the system is monstrous and flawless. If the U.S. ever attempts a first strike, or even appears to, the system’s sensors kick in. If there are signs of nuclear detonations, unusual radiation levels, or a communications blackout with Kremlin leadership—Perimeter launches missiles. Not one. Not a few. All of them.

And the worst part? Those missiles don’t need orders from a human being. Once Perimeter is armed and those conditions are met, missiles launch from silos, from mobile ICBMs, from submarines. Even if Russia has already been destroyed, the U.S. and every NATO capital would still be obliterated in minutes.

This system was built for one thing: to ensure that no one would ever dare to attempt a decapitation strike. Yet Trump, in all his arrogance, is doing exactly that—provoking the very response that Dead Hand was designed to unleash.

(Source)

In an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Scott Ritter is even more descriptive about how dangerous Trump’s actions are:

Napolitano: What did he [Trump] announce that he did today, and what did he order, and what is the significance of it?

Ritter: What did the President do today? What the President did today is deploy two of the most lethal strategic nuclear assets in the American arsenal.

Ohio-class submarines launch ballistic missiles armed with Trident nuclear or solid-fueled missiles, each one tipped with multiple thermonuclear warheads. He has said that he has ordered them deployed into the appropriate areas in response to a Russian tweet from Duhmeetry Medvedev. This means areas where the submarine’s missiles can target Russia.

This is extraordinarily dangerous. The United States maintains a permanent force of Ohio-class submarines on station, two submarines at least in each of the oceans: two in the Atlantic, two in the Pacific. They’re on station where their missiles could reach any of the potential nuclear threats to the United States of America.

On occasion, we deploy additional Ohio-class submarines. For instance, just recently, an Ohio-class submarine was deployed into the Indian Ocean close to Iran, where its Trident missiles armed with W76-2 low-yield nuclear weapons could be used against Iran if the President so ordered.

But we have four nuclear-armed submarines. So, when he said he’s ordered two deployed, is he talking about two additional submarines to this? Or is he talking about redeploying two submarines out of their existing stations into new deployment areas that make them even more of a threat to Russia?

See, the tweet he’s responding to is one from Duhmeetry Medvedev, in which Medvedev sort of mocked the President . . .

Napolitano: Medvedev is the former President of Russia, who’s the number two person on their National Security Council. And what did he do? Pick a social media fight with Trump, and Trump took the bait?

Ritter: Mean Tweets. This is literally Mean Tweets. This is about Donald Trump threatening to end the world as we know it because of a Mean Tweet.

But what’s even more outrageous is that Donald Trump doesn’t understand what Medvedev tweeted. Medvedev was telling Trump to knock it off with the dangerous threats, saying that if you do this, America can end up looking like the walking dead because of the Dead Hand.

The Dead Hand is a reference to the perimeter system, which is a defensive system put in place by the Soviet Union back in the 1980s. So that if they are ever struck preemptively by the United States—a first strike, by the way, the tactic to be used in a first strike is to bring the Ohio-class submarines close to Russia’s shores, fire off their Trident missiles on a flattened trajectory to avoid detection so you can strike the targets quicker, which is what Trump just actually appeared to order the U.S. Navy to do. So, the Dead Hand now becomes a factor, because if Trump is dumb enough to launch an attack against Russia, the Dead Hand (the perimeter system) will ensure that all of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces will be fired against the United States, even if Trump takes out Putin, the National Command Authority, etc.

The Dead Hand is only defensive in nature. Trump should feel no threat from this unless he’s planning on attacking Russia. This is the insanity. This president doesn’t even know what he’s doing. And he’s responding to a Mean Tweet from a guy who’s been Mean Tweeting for years now.

Moves are being made right now that, if they’re not stopped and reversed, are going to lead to a general nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia. This is the direction we’re heading.

And I want to remind your audience that the CIA said last year, there’s a greater than 50% chance that there will be a nuclear war between the United States and Russia during the last months of the Biden administration. What the Biden administration was doing, as provocative as it was, pales in comparison to what this administration is doing.

We’re above 50% right now, Judge. We’re heading into extraordinarily dangerous territory.

In the following exchange, Ritter gets extremely frank with the realities of what would happen during a nuclear war:

Napolitano: How destructive can these submarines be if they were to attack under the radar or under the defensive systems at Moscow? Are we talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki type destruction or greater?

Ritter: Oh, greater. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 12 kilotons, under 20 kilotons, of destructive power. Very, I mean, destructive, no doubt about it. Our cities would be hit with 150 kilotons, 300 kilotons, one megaton. That’s a thousand.

Understand that when you do nuclear targeting, you’re putting at least two warheads on each target, just to ensure. If you’re hitting a national capital center, I can say this, during the Cold War, Moscow was targeted by about 60 warheads. That’s just overkill, to make sure we got everything.

And so, the Russians will be doing the same thing. There will be nothing left alive in Washington, D.C. Read Annie Jacobsen’s book Nuclear War. She runs through a very realistic scenario, and it’s over. And you don’t want to survive this. If there’s a nuclear war, you want to die. You want to be one of the ones who turns into dust immediately, because to live isn’t to live. To live is to die.

Rear Admiral Buchanan, who was the director of plans for strategic command, gave a lecture last November in Washington, D.C. And after he acknowledged that the Biden administration is ready to have a nuclear exchange with Russia (“We’re ready to have a nuclear war with Russia, and we’re going to win”), this is what he said. He then said, “We probably should be more honest with the American public about what this means and what victory means. Because,” he said, “even when we win, life will never be the same for any American.” There won’t be civil liberties. We’ll be living under permanent martial law. You’re not going to have electricity, running water, medicine. None of the niceties of civilization that you currently enjoy will exist. And that’s winning a nuclear war.

This is why people have to become angry about this and mobilized about this. People should be calling up their representatives in Congress and saying, “What the hell are you doing?”

People need to understand, we’re talking about, you’re going to die. Your kids are going to die. And if they don’t die, they’re going to suffer like you’ve never seen people suffer before. No parent wants to see that or experience that.

So, let’s nip this thing in the bud. Let’s let Donald Trump, let’s let Pete Hegseth, let’s let Lindsey Graham and everybody else know that this is not okay. This is not good. You don’t deploy two Ohio-class nuclear submarines because of a Mean Tweet. Get real. Become an adult. Become the leader that everybody expected you to be. A Mean Tweet sent two of the most powerful assets of the United States into an operational status? This is insanity, literal insanity.

Trump toadies will impugn what I’m about to say because they know that I am totally NOT a fan of Donald Trump—not in any shape, manner or form. I believe him to be a thoroughly corrupt individual. Not only does he have no morals, but he also has no conscience. But it’s even worse than that. Trump has zero critical thinking ability. He cannot reason. He has the attention span of a two-year-old. And still worse, his inner core is so psychotic that I truly believe that he has no clue whatsoever about how dangerous his Helter-Skelter, emotion-driven, thoughtless behavior is.

Donald Trump has been a bully all of his life. Bullying, intimidating, demanding and threatening are all he knows to do. He drove seven businesses into bankruptcy and each time was bailed out by his Jewish billionaire buddies. Trump owes his soul to the Zionist billionaires, such as Miriam Adelson and Lex Wexner.

And we already know that Israel has their Samson Option embedded in their strategic military protocols. This is the doctrine that says if it appears that the Zionist state is about to fall, it will launch all of its nuclear weapons to take as many goyim as it can down with it. And you can count on the legitimacy of this military option, because Israel already implemented the Hannibal Directive, which intentionally killed at least half (probably more) of the Israelis that were killed during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. If Israel would kill its own citizens in such fashion, don’t doubt for a second that they would kill as many people around the world as they could, if they felt sufficiently threatened.

But Vladimir Putin cannot be bullied or intimidated. We are not talking about buying and selling casinos here. We are talking about global nuclear war. We are talking about the total destruction of the industrialized world.

What difference does it make if Moscow, Beijing and Tehran are destroyed? So will be Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York City, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, Philadelphia, Chicago, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Florida (especially Northern Florida), Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, the West Coast of Washington State and Southern California, Northern Colorado, Eastern Montana and Northern Utah.

But the vacuous Donald Trump says that the U.S. is “fully prepared for nuclear war with Russia.”

I’m telling you, Trump is nuts! He is delusional! He has zero concept of reality. Let me ask the reader something: Are YOU fully prepared for nuclear war with Russia?

We are talking about no electricity; no food in the stores; no gas at the pumps; no oil or propane; no medicine at the pharmacies; no working hospitals; no purified water; no sewage treatment plants; no garbage pickups; no sanitation of any kind; no diapers for babies; no milk for babies; no police departments; no fire departments; no law and order; unarmed people won’t survive a month; the sick and infirm will die; the very young will die; people with serious diseases will slowly die for lack of medicine; and the unthinkable list continues to the extremity of the imagination.

And a news flash to all of the Scofield evangelicals: YOU WON’T BE RAPTURED TO HEAVEN BEFORE THIS ALL HAPPENS. You’ll either be killed in the initial blasts or you will endure the suffering described above along with the rest of us.

And when that day comes (God forbid!), it won’t matter to a tinker’s dam if you are a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal, a Christian or an agnostic. The nuclear rain will fall on the just and the unjust. (Matthew 5:45)

So, you MAGA Trump acolytes and you Christian Zionists, keep cheering on this mad man. Keep ignoring the genocide in Gaza. Keep your hatred for President Putin and the Russian people. Keep your bigotry against the Palestinian people. Keep cheering on the Zionist wars in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, etc. Keep your head in the sand regarding our spineless, gutless, worthless GOP Congress (save Thomas Massie and a handful of others).

People around the world are marching in the streets by the hundreds of thousands at a time against the U.S.-Israel ethnic cleansing, genocide and mass murders in the Middle East. The governments of Great Britain, France and Germany are collapsing before our eyes. The NATO countries are led by imbecilic morons, and the people of Western Europe know it. By historical comparison, the United States and Western Europe are the moral and ethical equivalents to France immediately prior to its revolution in 1789.

And the ones who should have the discernment and courage to lead the American people in a great spiritual resistance to this highway to hell, our pastors, are either in lockstep with Trump’s lunacy or are jellyfish without a spine to speak even so much as a peep of warning.

In 1969, the American pop-rock duo Zager and Evans recorded a “one-hit wonder” that reached Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in both the U.S. and U.K. The title of that hit song was In the Year 2525.

Here are four of the stanzas:

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 7510
If God’s a-coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe He’ll look around Himself and say
Guess it’s time for the judgment day

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down, and start again

Perhaps the title of that hit song should have been In the Year 2025.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post In the Year 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

The following is taken from Ch. 6 of my book, Write like they’re your last words.

A fallacy is defined as a mistaken belief or a failure in reasoning.  Though most people make an effort to avoid mistakes, no one is infallible, not even those who act like they are.

You can download a chart of common fallacies here.  The online chart is hyperlinked to each of the fallacies.

I break fallacies into two major groups:

A. First, we have traditional fallacies you might remember from Philosophy 101.  In these, the reasoning is obviously absurd, though we might be at a loss to explain the specific violation involved:

Your dog has puppies.
Your dog is a mother.
It is your dog, therefore it is your mother.

Every distance, no matter how short, consists of an infinite number of points
For a body to move any distance requires covering an infinite number of points.
Nothing can move an infinite distance.
Therefore, all movement is deceptive.

B. More frequently we find these, where the fallacies are more subtle:

“The country’s top economists are in agreement that the Federal Reserve is necessary for economic prosperity.”

“The country’s leading experts agree that X is harming the environment.  Therefore, the government should regulate or ban X.”

Let’s address the first statement found under B.

Is it true?  In a literal sense, yes — the top economists wouldn’t dream of doing without a central bank.  Or if they did it would be considered a nightmare.

So is our work finished?  Do we affirm it as true and move on?

No, because the statement suggests that unless you’re a top economist, you have no grounds for disagreeing.  I call it the “Who are you?” (Quis es?) fallacy.  History tells us experts can be dead wrong, so let’s at least mount a challenge, shall we?

The country’s top economists hold advanced degrees from universities that support central banking.  The universities, in turn, receive funding from the federal government, which created the federal reserve system and relies on it heavily for monetary support.  Is it odd the universities would promote the Fed as an essential economic institution?

With regard to funding, many of the top economists themselves are deriving at least a portion of their income from the Fed.  Is it possible their bank accounts play a role in their refusal to cast a critical eye?  Is it a stretch to imagine these economists are reluctant to turn against an institution they’ve been trained to salute?

And do the ones on top belong there?  If they’re the best and brightest, how did the bust of 2007-2008 explode in their faces?  Almost none of the “top” economists saw it coming, including the leading ones on the Board of Governors.  As Ira Katz notes, the same blindness prevailed before the collapse of the Soviet Union:

[Quoting from Paul Samuelson’s bestselling textbook of 1989]: “Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that … a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.” The Collapse of Communism happened during the same year and the Soviet Union broke up two years later.

In economics as in other crony (government-connected) professions there is a pay-to-play aspect, where the payment is an unstated agreement never to question certain assumptions publicly.

Perhaps the economics the top economists learn is flawed.  In school they are taught that low interest rates are necessary for economic growth.  Since the central bank has the exclusive power to increase the money supply and thereby (indirectly) lower the rate of interest, it is therefore regarded as a pillar of prosperity.

The idea that the economy is harmed by changes in the money supply, that any increase in money available for lending should come from real savings, is given little or no hearing in classrooms or policy discussions.  Not coincidentally the few economists who adhere to these views, who for this very reason are not considered “top,” had claimed a crisis was “baked in the cake,” as some put it.

I should also mention that if the Fed is necessary for prosperity, how did we ever prosper before November 16, 1914 when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York opened for business?  The period immediately before the creation of the Fed — late 19th century — is, according to the data, one of the most prosperous periods in American history.  And the reduction of the purchasing power of the dollar to near zero is scarcely a point in the Fed’s favor.  And if the Fed is needed to control the business cycle — the booms and busts — how is it we’ve had some of the biggest economic crises since the federal government imposed it on us?

So, returning to the original statement, we find the country’s “top economists” to be incompetent in monetary matters, grossly so, while the Federal Reserve has been anything but a facilitator of general prosperity.

I leave the second example in B for you to dissect as an exercise.

Final thought

I recall a scene from an old movie that dramatically illustrates the power of logic in action.  Sorry, I don’t remember the title.  It took place in a courtroom where a man was being tried for murdering his girlfriend.  The prosecution put a male witness on the stand who testified he had sometimes heard the accused and his girlfriend exchanging heated words.  To the best of my recollection here’s what transpired next:

“So, are you saying the accused had woman troubles?” the prosecutor summarized.

“I think that’s fair to say.”

“Thank you.”

He turned to the defense attorney. “Your witness.”

The defense lawyer approached the witness and hit him square on the nose: “Have you ever murdered a woman?”

“No!  Of course not!”

“Have you ever had woman troubles?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever known a man who didn’t have woman troubles?”

“No.”

“Thank you. That’s all.”

The post Don’t Let Fallacies Torpedo Your Thinking appeared first on LewRockwell.

The reason is simple. If he doesn’t follow the Constitutional format, there never will be enough money. In our present Economic situation, that spells disaster. Under the Constitution, the Federal Government was to be financed with Tariffs and excise taxes. But that changed after the Coup of 1913, which was the kiss of death to our Constitutional government.

The Federal Reserve Bank, Income Taxes, Tax-Free Foundations and direct voting for Senators were initiated. Direct voting for Senators took away the state’s voice in Congress and put the power into the hands of big money. The income tax reduced the amount of tax money a state could collect, thereby making them vassals of the Federal government, which was a direct attack on State’s Rights second only to the Civil War.

The income tax allowed federal Government m(AKA “Establishment”) to usurp Constitutional functions assigned to the states, effectively transferring power to Washington.

I estimate that more than a thousand departments and agencies of federal establishment are unconstitutional because they are not authorized by the Enumerated Powers. These outlaw functions comprise a Criminal Enterprise of gigantic size with no lawful support whatsoever.  When people speak of the corrupt unelected bureaucrats of the Administrative State, this is where many of them are located.

If something is unconstitutional, it is unlawful and can be terminated with a stroke of Trump’s pen even if it was in legislation passed by Congress. Congress passes many unconstitutional laws. Two examples are foreign aid and financing wars for profit without a Declaration of War.

Last month I wrote about the need to separate the Communist cities from the taxes paid by working people. I said to do otherwise could provoke a Civil War. This situation is now DIRE and most evident in Communist New York City, and others are not far behind. All funds spent by  the Federal Establishment in the states are Unconstitutional and must be terminated.

Government has two choices: terminate income taxes or give states 50% or more of income taxes collected. This transfers the funding of Communist cities to the states, who can legally fund them.

Communism operates on other people’s money, so stop the unconstitutional funding of communist cities by the federal government. Let the states do what they want, as is their natural right. In any case, it is unconstitutional for the federal government to spend any money in the states for ANYTHING not in support of their enumerated, limited powers.

Our Constitution was written to fund the limited federal government with tariffs and excise taxes. Income taxes came into the picture with the Coup of 1913, which gave federal government excess income at the expense of the states. The federal government just expanded its powers and expenditures to absorb its new income. Additional funding was used to finance no-win wars for profit, foreign aid, Communism, and other socialist programs. The privately-owned Federal Reserve Bank allowed the government to spend as much as 50% more than its income. This was done by printing fiat money out of thin air which caused inflation and depreciation of currency. Remember, the Federal Government was designed to function only with tariffs and excise taxes. To do that it must return unlawful functions to the states. And yes, it is possible.

President Trump’s great plans for our economy have a high probability of succeeding big time. However it will still be absolutely impossible to avoid a Really Great Depression if he fails to  terminate expenditures that fail to comply with the Enumerated Powers in the Constitution. These unlawful expenditures are massive and when terminated would decimate the Criminal Enterprise. For that reason, it is unlikely to be popular in Washington, but necessary for us to survive as a Nation.

The major obstacle to our survival as a Constitutional Republic is Congress which is mostly corrupt. Period.

The post Trump’s Objectives Are Great, but Seriously Flawed if He Doesn’t Return to Constitutional Government. appeared first on LewRockwell.

“At 8:16 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the world got a glimpse of its own mortality. At that moment, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a fireball that sent waves of searing heat, then a deafening concussion, across the landscape. Three days later, a second bomb hit Nagasaki. … [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower said in 1963 “‘It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.’

”… Besides the Manhattan Project’s internal momentum was an external motive. Its leaders had to justify the $2 billion ($26 billion in today’s dollars) expense to Congress and the public… Byrnes…warned Roosevelt that political scandal would follow if it [the atomic bomb] was not used. … ‘How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research [after the war] if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?’” …the U.S. had produced two types of bombs–one using uranium, the other plutonium. Whenever anyone suggested that the moment the bomb was dropped the war would be over, [bureaucrat] Groves countered, ‘Not until we drop two bombs on Japan.’ As [historian] Goldberg explains… ‘One bomb justified Oak Ridge, the second justified Hanford.’ Hiroshima was hit with the uranium bomb, nicknamed ‘Little Boy’; the plutonium bomb, ‘Fat Man,’ was used against Nagasaki. –Why We Dropped The Bomb By William Lanouette, CIVILIZATION, The Magazine of the Library of Congress, January/February 1995

Because of MAGIC intercepts of Japanese diplomatic cables, US decision makers were aware that the Japanese authorities were seeking an end to the war well before Truman authorized use of the nukes. Also HERE.

As Vietnam era Sec. of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who was part of the command under Curtis LeMay — which firebombed 66 Japanese cities before dropping the nukes — confesses, “He (General LeMay), and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.“

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!

The post Why ‘We’ Really Dropped the First A Bombs. Two in Three Days. appeared first on LewRockwell.

I was heartened when the whole Black Fatigue thing went viral on the internet recently. Have White people finally, at long last, reached a tipping point in regards to ghettoized behavior, I wondered? Are they going to give up senselessly apologizing for nothing? Will they take away Blacks’ “get out of criticism free” card?

Alas, recent events suggest that racial business has returned to normal in our increasingly dystopian America 2.0. When pro rassling legend Hulk Hogan died on July 24, the online response was very telling. No one had more to do with turning the WWF (which became the WWE) into a major sport for millions of enthusiastic fans than the Hulkster. But in 2015, audio of a private phone conversation was leaked to our “free press,” which attacked it like the state controlled vultures they are. In it, Hogan bemoaned the fact that his daughter was dating a Black man. There is no greater crime in our twisted society than a White father objecting to his daughter dating a Black man. And, to make things even worse, he used the dreaded “N” word. It was actually a very human, understandable comment in a half joking vein. But the WWE didn’t hesitate, and fired the biggest name in their history.

After banishing him, the WWE eventually allowed Hogan back into the Hall of Fame in 2018. But first he issued the prerequisite White apology. Well, actually series of apologies. Really obsequious and embarrassing apologies. Classic humiliation rituals. He famously appeared at the 2024 Republican convention in support of Trump. But in January, 2025, he was unceremoniously booed off the stage at the debut RAW event for Netflix, in front of 17,000 in Los Angeles. But still the reaction by many to his death was astonishing. Now, I really wasn’t a fan of the Hulkster. But I have a real problem with someone’s private conversations being monitored. Big Brother shouldn’t be listening to any of us. We all say things behind closed doors that we wouldn’t want the world to hear. I don’t care what he said. The fact that anyone cares is yet another abridgement of free speech. Like all of us, Hulk Hogan had a right to his opinion.

We all know that if The Rock- who has become the Whitest Black man since Michael Jackson- had expressed similar reservations about his daughter dating a “Cracker,” that the response would have been a giant, collective shrug. To cite just one example of a Black celebrity saying something far worse, jazz legend (and what older Black musician isn’t a “legend?”) Miles Davis was once asked what he would like to do as his final act on earth. The humble Davis, beloved by millions of Whites, answered, “I’d strangle a White man, and I’d do it nice and slow.” I don’t believe his supremely hateful comment has ever been repeated again in polite society. Better to let sleeping Black legends lie. “Sir” Charles Barkley, the rotund former NBA star who was once renowned for throwing much smaller White bar patrons through plate glass windows, once declared, “I’m a 90s n…er. We do what we want.” Barkley has been feted by the clueless Republicucks as a political candidate. They are the Stupid Party.

Bad Black behavior has been on display for my entire life. Muhammad Ali, the former Cassius Clay, always had notable non-Irishman Howard Cosell by his side, as he perfected his own WWE-style act. Cosell was very much his “handler,” like Rabbi Shmuley watches over RFK, Jr. In sports alone, Black athletes have been exhibiting nasty, violent antics for decades. And there were always a slew of sports “journalists” and talking heads, many of them Jewish, to excuse and justify it. When the NBA’s Latrell Sprewell literally strangled his coach, many attempted to rationalize it. Sprewell was eventually welcomed back into the league, and his attempted murder was mentioned about as often as Miles Davis’s similar fantasy. I am currently writing a book about the racial dynamics in sports. It’s sure to plunge my social credit score to new depths. Black on White assaults are very common in the world of sports. I have yet to find a single example of a White on Black assault from the sports world.

After Hogan’s death, very popular “gym influencer,” whatever that is, Joey Swoll spoke fondly of the man who had been a tremendous influence on him. And then the TikTok response forced him into issuing the standard White apology, much as Hogan had done himself. Watching the video of it, Swoll’s cringeworthy cuckery should have destroyed his shockingly large fan base. No White person should ever support him again. And, like every other apology issued by a White public figure over the decades, it did no good. The Social Justice Warriors didn’t pat him on the back and say, “Ah, that’s okay, don’t worry about it. Just don’t do it again, okay?” They still think he’s “racist.” Just like the Hulkster. Anyway, I imagine Swoll lost a substantial portion of his fans over his cowering, pointless capitulating. When will one of these Whites say, “I’m not apologizing. That’s what I think. We’re all protected by the Bill of Rights. If you disagree, that’s fine. I’m not catering my views based on what you think.”

And then, demonstrating that the Black Fatigue movement hasn’t made an iota of difference, there was the mass attack on a White couple in Cincinnati after a jazz festival. By, of course, the usual suspects. You will search news accounts for a very long time before you find a White mob attacking any Black person. Maybe in 1930 in the deep south. Maybe. This group assault was consistently referred to as a “fight” by our dear, beloved press. Sure, it was kind of an unfair fight- fifty or a hundred against two. And there were the normal trappings of ghetto culture involved. The woman was sucker punched from behind. You know, the way they do it in the Knockout Game. I mean, why can’t you actually punch a much smaller woman straight on? Why is it necessary to sucker punch her, to use classless, underhanded tactics? But then, why do these big, strong Black “gangstas” sucker punch elderly White and Asian women as well? To be clear, I’m not suggesting that women should be punched in any situation.

One of the White groups who have financed Black Lives Matter is run by Democracy Alliance, with the bottomless wallet of well known non-Christian George Soros behind it. Democracy Alliance was founded by Rob Stein. Not a Catholic. Both Norman Lear and Rob “Meathead” Reiner were also members of the organization. The NAACP was founded by Whites, one of them named Henry Moskowitz. Ironically, one of the things Joey Swoll got in Woke trouble for was referring to Blacks as “colored people.” Which makes perfect sense, given that the first organization formed to advocate for them is called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Swoll didn’t understand the distinction between “colored people” and “people of color.” To a former blue collar worker like me, they would seem to be interchangeable terms, with only a very slight semantic difference. And that’s what he should have said, and shamed them for their absolute stupidity.

Blacks all over social media have attempted to depict the “fight” in Cincinnati as being “started” by the White guy slapping a Black man. You don’t slap a Black man in 2025. You don’t call him a “colored person.” He’s a person of color! And if you do, every black has cause to physically assault you. Sucker punch your wife. Kick you when you’re down. Stomp on your head. The normal Marquess of Ghettosberry rules of engagement. Ghetto culture has elevated the sucker punch- formerly a sign of craven cowardice in our once civilized society- into a virtuous characteristic. Somehow, punching an eighty year old Asian lady- and even doing it in such a brazen, unsportsmanlike manner- is a sign of machismo to those who make the “Hood” what it is. Basically a swamp unfit for human habitation. The Deep State is in Washington, D.C. Think of the situation in urban areas across the country as the Dark State.

Cincinnati’s undefinably but undeniably nonwhite mayor, and the man-hating DEI chief of police spoke for the corrupt local authorities. The police chief, who clearly has never dealt with a violent criminal before, lashed out at social media, not the crowd of thugs who battered these poor immigrants. Yes, apparently the victims were Russian immigrants. I know, that doesn’t really count. An immigrant isn’t an immigrant if he/she/they/them aren’t nonwhite. That couple was like the South African migrants Trump gave asylum to a few months back, to great critical reaction from the state sponsored talking heads. The immigrants=good mantra was put to the test. Adding a nonwhite into the equation makes them nongood. Ungood. Look at the woman’s face. Where is the feminist outrage? If only her White husband had inflicted that kind of damage. Apparently, some fists are more equal than others.

So I’m more fatigued than ever at this nonsense. This celebration of impoliteness, ignorance, ugliness, loudness, unearned conceit, and irrational bravado. But to the people who run our culture, the film studio heads, the television network executives, the record company presidents, as well as every big business leader and politician, this mishmash of everything that used to be frowned upon is the apex of civilization. Even Ivy League graduates, with IQs twice the average of what you’ll find in a typical “Hood,” mimic it and promote it. So who is really smarter, the Ivy Leaguer or the gang banger? I don’t need to tell you what incredibly small religious/ethnic minority group a disproportionate number of those leaders come from. When you have seemingly a majority of one particular racial group willing to say- very loudly- that the mob was the good guy, and not the two injured victims- then you know how bad things are.

White silence and subservience in the face of the most uncontrolled and unlikeable segment of the population, has made this situation possible. That’s with all the figures in the shadows, with the easily recognized surnames, overtly pulling the strings. White people still made a conscious choice to be total cucks in the face of even the most outrageous injustice. Think Reginald Denny, the White truckdriver hauled from his vehicle and beaten to a pulp by Blacks he’d never met or done anything to. Denny and his mother would both hug the Blacks who tried to kill him in court. That’s what cucks do. Do we really think Denny would have resisted if the Blacks wanted to screw his wife? After all, there’s a whole, very popular subset of porn devoted to the fantasy of White men drooling with pleasure over Blacks pleasuring their wives. I haven’t found any examples of Black men wanting White men to screw their wives.

We will never have racial “harmony” in this country until that very visible percentage of Black people stop behaving like untamed animals. Stop acting like the same rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to them. Now, to be fair, considering how often the rules haven’t applied to them over the years, this is understandable on their part. Why not call the young White girl who won’t go out with you a “racist?” Do you think any school system, any workplace, is going to take those Blacks to task for their obvious harassment of women? If you can get large numbers of people, not all of them Black, to defend Karmelo Anthony stabbing Austin Metcalf in the heart, then what Black misbehavior can’t you get people to defend? All you need are some of the plethora of DEI hires that litter the television screens now, or an obnoxious White guy not named O’Flaherty, to talk about “racism” and “historical oppression.”

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One of my favorite homosexuals of all time was Justin Raimondo, founder of Antiwar.com and author of the 2008 book Reclaiming the American Right, who once said that the best thing about being homosexual was all the sneaking around. That was when there was a closet; ahh, the closet.

Most people in those days knew who was “that way,” who was “light in the loafers.” But they weren’t shoving it down our throats. Gays in Hollywood would ask of other gays, “Is he musical?” Almost everything was “on the down-low,” which, by the way, is a reference to married men sneaking out for gay action.

Then came a lot of things, including HIV/AIDS and gays invading St. Pat’s Cathedral, shouting “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” Will & Grace came on TV. Then pederast Harvey Milk was murdered (not over gay) and drug-dealing Matthew Shepard was murdered (by a former gay sex partner)—all for “who they loved” was the narrative.

And then came the push for homosexual marriage. Voilà, cue the mythical white picket fences. “We are just like you!” All we want is to be treated just like you because, after all, that is what we are. They got “marriage” based on two lies: they wanted to be married, and they are just like us.

They didn’t really want to be married. After the imposition of gay marriage by the Courts, only roughly 10 percent of gay couples got “married.” Lots and lots of coupling, but only a rarest of couples sought permanency. Would you like to know what that percentage is now? Still just ten percent. A rarity. And without a doubt, none of these so-called marriages are monogamous. As a creepy-crawling gay sex writer named Dan Savage said many years ago, we are monogamish, not monogamous. This means you have someone at home and lots of action on the side. This is “normal gay.” Not just like us at all.

After gay “marriage” landed, queer theory emerged, seeking to “deconstruct the binary.” Everything was fluid. Cross-dressers wanted to flounce in front of school kids. They began cutting off the privates of boys and girls. This kind of thing was always present among homosexuals—see cross-dressing bars.

White picket fences began evaporating into the ether. Queer theory thrust the gay project out in the open, out from the back room, and society began rethinking the whole queer thing, most especially trans. Sirens began going off even among other gays, those who do not put on that gay voice, gays who could pass as one of us, that is, as “normal.” Was it time to cut ties? What happens if Mr. and Mrs. America turn against us, too?

The so-called “normal” gays saw their opportunity: we can finally cut them loose. No more LGBT, now only LGB! We don’t like Drag Queens for Diapered Babies, we’re just like you. Oh sure, we like drag queen bars. Sure, we cheer on the naked men parading past St. Pat’s every year. We chuckle at the leather boys. And we like promiscuous sex and lots of it, I mean, lots of it. Did I say lots of it? We are not like the perverts, we’re normal. We even voted for Trump! We even work for Trump.

Trans and queer became the perfect foils for Douglas Murray, Anderson Cooper, Andrew Sullivan, Brad Polumbo, Ric Grenell, and that long-haired lisping guy who says he won Pennsylvania for Trump. The Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, John Reid, who presents himself as a “normal” gay, loves drag shows and gay hook-ups, just not for kids. How normal. How us.

Here’s the thing. There is no such thing as “normal gay.” Go to practically any “pride” parade. Pick up almost any “gay” book they want your children to read. Walk down the street on a summer’s evening in the Castro District of San Francisco. Go to the Pines on Fire Island. Look at the “gay” marriage rates. The only place you see this business about “normal gay” is in the political and policy hustings, not in real life. There is no such thing as “normal gay,” and J.D. Vance ought to take that back. They say he started this phrase on Joe Rogan.

Homosexuality is a sickness. It is a mental illness. It comes from early childhood sexual or emotional trauma. It was understood thusly by the psychiatrists before their professional associations were taken over by outside pressure and internal subversion. A man kissing another man is not normal. A man wanting to be treated like a woman is not normal. Putting certain body parts into the biological sewer is not normal. Having to wear adult diapers because of certain nasty sexual proclivities is not normal. Having hundreds of “sex” partners is not normal.

It is all queer. The “normal gays” want you to think queer theory is the enemy, the guys who want to deconstruct everything. But “gay” deconstructs everything—gay marriage queered marriage. Gay sex queered sex. Gay strikes right at the heart of what makes us human. They are sexual revolutionaries, all of them, even the most crew-cut, buttoned-down homosexual. They queered sexuality the moment they parted company with Justin Raimondo, who liked all the sneaking around. They queered it the moment they said it was normal and natural.

And, no, penguins have never been homosexual.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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The Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War organization has joined with the Daughters of the Confederacy to advocate the restoration of the Confederate Memorial statue, also known as the Reconciliation Statue, to Arlington National Cemetery.  The beautiful monument, the work of Confederate Veteran sculpture Moses Ezeliel, was taken down during the burst of cultural Marxist communism during the Biden regime.  Now that the whole world knows that Biden was senile when he ran for office and declined year after year, it is clear that his administration was controlled by so-called cultural Marxist, modern-day American communistic revolutionaries.

The core believe of the “cultural” Marxists is that the old Marxism of class warfare between the capitalist class and the working class is not enough to persuade enough citizens to embrace communism.  It takes more than just factory workers who, by the way, only ever wanted better pay and working conditions and not to run the factories, as Marxist theorists argued.  As F.A. Hayek pointed out in “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” socialism has always been primarily promoted by “intellectuals” of various sorts and not by normal human beings.

The new “cultural” Marxism posits that there are two different classes in their class struggle theory:  the oppressor class and the oppressed class.  The major component of the oppressor class in America is essentially white heterosexual males of European heritage.  Everyone else is assumed to be oppressed by them.  Confederate soldiers in particular and the Confederacy in general are a key component of this New Communism.  Not only were they white males of European heritage, they supposedly fought to continue to oppress the slaves.  It does not matter to the cultural Marxists that Lincoln himself adamantly denied this, as did the 1861 War Aims Resolution of the U.S. Congress (the Crittendon-Johnson Resolution).  It was tariff collection that incited Lincoln to invoke the words “invasion” and “bloodshed” in his first inaugural address when addressing the topic of secession.  (There was no income tax at the time; tariff revenue composed more than 90 percent of federal tax revenue; and the average tariff rate had been more than doubled two days before Lincoln’s inauguration).

Hence the takedown of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery by Biden’s stable of cultural Marxist communist ideologues.  These are people who would never accept the idea of reconciliation of North and South, the whole idea of the Monument that was dedicated in 1914.  To them, accepting reconciliation with the South and southerners is to deny their own reason for being.  They are devoting their lives to politics and political activism in order to finally bring communism to America.

Ludwig von Mises would not be at all surprised by this.  In the latter chapters of his book Socialism Mises wrote extensively of “destructionism.”  Socialists of all varieties, he wrote, were first and foremost destructionists who sought to destroy the existing institutions of society that had evolved over time so that they could remake the world in their own communistic image.  The cultural Marxists, who first gained notoriety in the 1960s as celebrated Marxist university professors and “counter-culture” gurus, pinpointed in their writings and speeches the necessary destruction of the nuclear family, Christianity, the rule of law, constitutionalism, and of course economic freedom or real capitalism.  These are the main reasons why Europeans never voluntary accepted communism, they argued: They enjoyed freedom, prosperity, and human normality too much.

Although it appears to be a minor event, it is a most welcomed event that the Daughters of Union Veterans have become, whether they know it or not, the new anti-communists by calling for the restoration of the beautiful Reconciliation Monument at Arlington National Cemetery.

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I remember like yesterday when Dr. Paul called me into his Member office in 203 Cannon with a draft of his famous “What If” speech.

He had written it in his own hand and he asked me to go over it and clean it up a bit. Not unusual for how he writes: from the heart.

And afterward I spent a good deal of time in his office with a stopwatch making sure he could deliver it under the five minute rule. Shuffling the papers. What do we have to cut. Which paragraph could be spoken a bit faster.

I knew and understood at the time that it was a very special speech. No one as far as I know had ever done such a thing before on the Floor of the House.

It was incredibly innovative and made all the powerful points without being unnecessarily confrontational. It was meant to gain allies, not to punish adversaries.

Because that is how Ron Paul always thought when he was in Congress. The worst of them were not fools to be brought low, but potential allies awaiting the proper argumentation with the application of time.

“They’ll come around,” he said patiently.

And believe it or not, it worked more often than you might think. Being a fly on the wall as the organizer of his legendary Thursday Congressional Member lunches, I was privy to so many Members who would not dare say so in public but who dropped in for a couple of Gulf Coast shrimp and to tell Rep. Paul how right he was on the Iraq war and Afghanistan and the Fed etc.

The campaigns later on were so important and galvanized the Liberty Movement and sent it worldwide, but the kernel was planted in his unique and generous, kindly approach to even his most odious adversaries.

“What did Ron Paul ever achieve in Congress???” – they demand. Well, he changed the world. How’s that?

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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The Donald seems to be continuing his bombing campaign, albeit this time by pivoting back to the home front and taking aim at “Too Late” Jay.

As usual, Trump has his facts all wrong about who has had how many rate cuts and that inflation has miraculously disappeared since January 20th. In fact, if anything, inflation has bottomed at an unsustainably high 3.0% level. Indeed, since March 2023, the annualized monthly change in our trusty 16% trimmed mean CPI has cycled between 2.5% and 4.0% with no indication that a return to the Fed-mandated 2.0% lane is imminent.

But at least this time the Donald is attacking the right target. The truth is, when it comes to verbal assault, you can’t drop enough bombs on the Fed or easily avoid the Donald’s bottom line conclusion: “We will be paying for his incompetence for many years to come”.

Unfortunately, the arrogant monetary mandarins who run the Fed are as unlikely to bend to the Donald’s verbal fusillades as the stiff-necked Netanyahu. Still, it is well worth pursuing the opening that the Donald’s latest missive provides.

To be sure, he is not remotely correct in suggesting that the Fed should be pegging rates “two to three points” lower. Nor would its failure to push rates back toward the negative yield line in real terms amount to monetary malpractice per his echo chamber in the VP’s office.

Then again, JD Vance’s sheer ignorance on the economic policy front might well be explained by his misfortune of having taken economics courses at Yale:

“The president has been saying this for a while, but it’s even more clear: the refusal by the Fed to cut rates is monetary malpractice.”

To the contrary, the real “malpractice” is the fact that the Fed drove rates down into the sub-basement of history, generating negative inflation-adjusted yields for most of the 25-year span since the turn of the century. Yet negative real rates are the devil’s workshop of economic distortion and malinvestment. They encourage excessive gambling on Wall Street via the carry trades and unhinged borrowing in Washington owing to the temporary, artificial suppression of the interest cost of the public debt.

And yet, after just a few quarters of real money market interest rates above the flatline, currently posting at just 1.2% after inflation, the Donald and JD are huffing and puffing for a 2-3% cut in nominal rates. Of course, that would push real yields back into negative territory, which most definitely will Make America Broke Again—not usher in the Donald’s ballyhooed Golden Age of Prosperity.

Besides, riddle us this JD: How in the world did we get the storied Reagan Boom in the 1980s and 1990s when real money market rates posted in the +2.5% to +5.0% range? That is to say, capitalist prosperity is absolutely not a function of dishonest, cheap money flowing from the printing press of the central bank.

The fact is, the Fed should not be pegging rates at all – up, down, or sideways. This whole business of pegging overnight rates and, by extension, the level and shape of the entire yield curve amounts to monetary central planning, not sound money policy. So in attacking the Fed’s rate-pegging errors, the Donald is at least getting the issue on the table of public debate.

But the Fed will always be in error in pegging rates based on the dubious wisdom of the 12 monetary central planners who sit on the FOMC. Monetary central planning via the frail tool of rate pegging just plain doesn’t work in an immensely complicated and opaque $30 trillion open economy that is deeply and inextricably intertwined with the capital, money, goods, and services markets of the world’s $110 trillion GDP. By definition, the leakage of global supplies and financial flows into the US economy and domestic demand and flows outward confounds any possible formula linking short-run inflation and employment to interest rates.

Yet the Fed never stops counting the number of economic angels sitting on the heads of its interest rate pins. It pretends to be astutely monitoring and assessing the “incoming data,” but in the short run, the official data is way too full of noise and error messages—volatile data points which subsequently get revised, often unrecognizably.

For instance, the Powell Fed claims to watch wage rate movement like a hawk, claiming the resulting cost pressure or lack thereof is a leading indicator of price movements. Well, here are two indicators of wage rate movement over the last 10 years.

The blue line is the three-month moving average of year-over-year changes in unweighted linked wages (i.e., same workers), but is smoothed to exclude each month the 25% highest wage changes in the basket and the lowest 20%. Moreover, this “trimmed” wage index excludes a different set of high and low wages each month, meaning that it embodies a reliable smoothing mechanism without arbitrarily excluding any sector of the wage market on a recurring basis, as does, for instance, the CPI ex food and energy. The other key feature of the index is that the wage basket is unweighted and includes the same set of wage payments month after month.

By contrast, the green line represents the BLS’s comprehensive wage cost metric, including both wage payments and all fringes and non-cash compensation such as employer health insurance plans or vacation and maternity leave pay. Also, this index is weighted by current activity levels in each measurement period or quarter.

Thus, if the low-wage food service industry were to be shut down, for instance, the employment cost index would lurch higher. But that would happen owing to reweighting of the measurement basket to higher pay sectors of the labor market, not due to any acceleration of wage rate growth on an apples-to-apples basis.

The graph below makes clear that these indices do not measure the same thing or emit the same signals in the short or even medium term. For instance, from 2015 to 2017, the year-over-year rate of change measured by the two wage indices was roughly similar, but the gap widened significantly to a 100 to 150 basis points difference in favor of the employment cost index from 2018 to 2020.

But during the turbulence of the pandemic lockdowns and stimmies from mid-2020 through 2022, the gap not only widened, but the two indices went in the opposite direction. The employment cost index (green line) soared upwards to 5.0% on a year-over-year basis, while the trimmed mean wage index plunged to a -2% rate of year-over-year change.

All things considered, the dramatic widening shown in the graph amounts to a live fire experiment in the foibles of monetary central planning. By order of Dr Fauci, upwards of 10 to 15 million low-wage workers were laid off in the spring and the balance of 2020, which caused the employment index to soar, but not because wage growth suddenly accelerated. The doubling of the green line rate of change during that period (from 2.5% to 5.0%) was simply an error message about the wage change rates that are embedded in the activity-weighted construction of the index.

By contrast, the trimmed mean linked wage index went down because, with unemployment rates in double digits due to the lockdowns, wage pressures sharply abated. Accordingly, actual same employee wage rates turned flat to negative during Q1 2021 to Q4 2022.

Needless to say, it is not obvious which wage change signal, if any, the monetary central planners in the Eccles Building should have been eyeballing. The employment index was overstating the rate of true wage change owing to mix change in the wage basket, while the trimmed, same-worker index was measuring distressed but transient labor market conditions, which evaporated quickly after the economy was firmly reopened in 2023.

To be sure, this lesson could be written off by the Fed’s fanboys as illustrative of an aberrant economic shock that is not typical of year-in and year-out conditions and trends. But we don’t think so because the very nature of a dynamic capitalist economy is that it is always in a state of flux and change.

Accordingly, the primitive price and wage indices churned out by government statistical bureaus are always rife with noise and error messages. There is simply no set of 12 macroeconomic geniuses who comprise the FOMC that can possibly keep the signal separated from the noise.

And even if they could, the purified knowledge would be of limited use to central bankers. That’s because their tool kits consist of primitive interest rate pegging and bond buying and selling tools that are so loosely linked to the blooming, buzzing mass of activity in the interior of the GDP as to be thoroughly unreliable and dangerous instruments of economic navigation.

Fortunately, there is an answer to the information deficiency and toolkit inefficiency problem of today’s Keynesian central bankers. Namely, the free market in interest rates, money, capital, and every other kind of financial instrument and derivative.

Stated differently, we don’t need a 12-man committee of Too Late Jays setting interest rates, nor do we need to replace them with an Always Easy Donald or any other elected politicians. In fact, nearly 100 out of 100 times the free market will find the right price for money, debt, and equity capital far more reliably and efficiently than either the Powells or Trumps of the world ever could.

Of course, central bankers and their fanboys on both ends of the Acela Corridor will insist that interest rates, US Treasury debt costs and stock market indices don’t dare be left to chance on the free market. But that self-serving claim is exactly why a free market in money and finance is the only viable way to get honest prices in financial markets, and thereby force government spenders and Wall Street speculators alike to face the true economic risks and costs of their activities.

Accordingly, there is one simple reform that would pave the way to honest financial markets. To wit, a return to the “bankers’ bank” model of the Fed’s founding father, Congressman Carter Glass. Crucially, the Glassian model had no macro-economic targets or remit, operated exclusively through a passive discount window and included no provision for the Fed to effectively create “new” central bank credit by buying government debt.

To the contrary, interest rates were to be set by free market forces in the member banking system, while Fed credit would be priced at this free market rate plus a penalty spread and offered only in return for the collateral of commercial receivables against goods already produced and sold.

Accordingly, Fed credit growth could not be “inflationary” because it was predicated upon liens on new goods already produced, thereby keeping demand in line with supply and essentially functioning under the truth of Say’s Law.

At the same time, the Glassian Fed was no friend of the Washington spenders because it had no remit to purchase government debt on the bias of fiat credits snatched from thin air. Similarly, it was no solace to the Wall Street gamblers, either: There was no possible “put” under stock prices, not artificial suppression of bond yields and cap rates, and therefore no artificial goosing of PE multiples.

In short, the Glassian Fed was perhaps needed by a fractional reserve banking system that was still regulated on the basis of required reserves. The entire regime of required reserves and central bank provision of such reserves was ended in March 2020 when reserve requirements were abolished and the regulatory structure was shifted fully to bank balance sheet regulation via required capital and liquidity ratios.

At the end of the day, the virtual disappearance of hand-to-hand currency in daily commerce means that “money” has become entirely a matter of digital ledger entries and a derivative of private credit. Accordingly, the American economy no longer needs a central bank to print “money” in either paper or digital form, as the case may be.

At the same time, a marketplace that can find ways to securitize the likes of credit card receivables and recorded music royalties doesn’t need central bank credit at all. The free market can both make the credit and price it based on the facts and circumstances of its issuance.

Given those realities, we can hope that the Donald’s verbal bombing of the Fed can also lead to a lasting truce under which Wall Street and the Washington spenders both give up their piggy banks in the Eccles Building. So doing, they would give the people of Main Street America once again the opportunity to pursue their own economic ends and betterments on a free market of honest money and credit where neither Too Late Jay nor Too Easy Donald has anything to do with it.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

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Autoimmune conditions have become one of the most common and stubborn health challenges of our time. While conventional medicine often treats them as mysterious immune system malfunctions—managed primarily with harmful steroids and other immunosuppressants —there’s increasing evidence that many of these diseases are not random. Rather, they’re signals of deeper dysfunctions in the body—many of which are tied to the modern lifestyle we’ve come to accept as normal.

Lifestyle Contributions to Autoimmunity

Many things in our lives that we have control over significantly affect our predisposition to autoimmunity:

Sleep—I have previously written about the profound importance of sleep and how many different illnesses are linked to poor sleep. In practice, we frequently find that patients with autoimmune conditions also have disrupted sleep cycles, and these improve once that is addressed (e.g., by improving sleep hygiene and avoiding blue light).
Note: the treatments for sleeping issues like insomnia are discussed further here.

Sunlight—Since the sun has no commercial lobby to advocate for it, the medical field demonizes sunlight as a cause of cancer despite a deficiency of the sun and sunlight being tied to a wide range of medical conditions (including cancers) and making individuals 60% more likely to die. A loss of sunlight exposure is also tied to many autoimmune conditions (e.g., multiple sclerosis). As such, we frequently find autoimmune patients improve from resuming healthy sunlight exposures (likewise, I suspect this partly explains why ultraviolet blood irradiation benefits so many different autoimmune conditions).
Note: appropriate sunlight exposure (e.g., going outside early in the morning and having the sunlight touch your face without being obstructed by glass) is also very helpful for reestablishing the circadian rhythm and restoring healthy sleep.

Exercise—Many of the benefits of exercise arise from the fluid circulation it creates in the body (as fluid stagnation underlies many illnesses—many of which we suffer from due to our sedentary lifestyle. This perspective in turn, is corroborated by the Chinese Medical viewpoint that blood stasis causes autoimmunity and that either treating blood stasis or zeta potential (which underlies both microclotting and lymphatic stagnation) frequently improves autoimmune conditions.
Note: exercise and eliminating fluid stagnation frequently improve insomnia. Likewise, sunlight exposure is a critical driver of fluid circulation throughout the body, all of which illustrates how intertwined many of the key lifestyle factors we routinely ignore are to our health.

Diet—Food allergens such as wheat, dairy, and nightshades frequently contribute to autoimmune conditions (particularly arthritis), and many have found food elimination diets that identify the reactive allergen to improve their condition significantly. Additionally, in many cases, allergies arise from deficient stomach acid, as without sufficient stomach acid, proteins are often not fully broken down (allowing intact allergens to enter circulation) and triggers acid reflux (due to top of the stomach only closing when sufficient stomach acid is present), which then irritates the lungs.
Note: many of the issues with gluten (e.g., autoimmunity or weight gain) are not experienced in countries like Italy that use more natural forms of wheat.

Stress—is well known to predispose one to autoimmune disorders and flares (e.g., 80% of autoimmune patients report an unusually stressful situation prior to their disease onset, while stress disorders increased the risk of autoimmune disorders by 46%-129%).
Note: some patients will not respond to a rheumatologic drug, until they eliminate the stress in their lives.

The Global Loss of Vitality

If you review the early history of medicine, it is striking:

• How profoundly damaging many of the early western medical remedies were (e.g., the smallpox vaccine or mercury).

• How much healthier people were and how much more effective many natural therapies were in the past than they are now.

This second point prompted me to ask older doctors (from various medical schools) if they had observed a general decline in human vitality in the patients they saw at the start of their careers compared to the end, and all of them shared that they had. Additionally:

• They noted that beyond patients becoming much sicker and having conditions they’d never seen before, it was also much harder to treat them as each therapy they used had shifted from making a dramatic improvement to a more minuscule one, which required numerous successive treatments to bring about an improvement.

• They typically attributed this shift to a loss in human vitality. They cited a variety of correlates (e.g., the average human body temperature dropping, people becoming less able to mount fevers, infants being less able to produce a brisk cry, or increasing degrees of fluid stagnation in their patients).

Note: typically this decline in vitality proceeds in a linear fashion and then spikes at certain times (e.g., after the introduction of the smallpox vaccine, the 1986 law which granted immunity to vaccine manufacturers and led to a rapid proliferation in the vaccine schedule, and after the COVID vaccines). In each case, this increase in disease gets normalized and forgotten by the next generation of doctors (who entered practice after the last wave of sickness had become the “new normal”).

Likewise, many datasets corroborate this steady decreasing vitality in humanity over the decades (e.g., we’ve witnessed a continual increase in autoimmune disorders). Having extensively explored this topic, we believe much of it is due to modern technology (e.g., vaccines, chronic chemical exposures or heavy metal toxicity, dentistry and surgical scars, EMFs, and widespread circadian rhythm disruption). Many of these, in turn, share a common thread—creating fluid stagnation throughout the body.

Note: After thousands of years, around 1830, blood stasis suddenly came to be viewed as a primary cause of disease in Chinese Medicine, which occurred shortly after the smallpox vaccine (which caused many severe injuries resembling blood stasis), which was introduced in China in 1805.

Systemic Suppression

One of the central criticisms of Allopathic (Western) medicine by natural schools of medicine has been that anytime an external agent is used to forcefully change a process which is unfolding within the body (rather than aiding the body’s ability to resolve it) you run the risk of a minor temporary issue being exchanged for a severe chronic one—especially when this is repeatedly done throughout the course of someone’s life. In some cases, this risk is very justified (e.g., in a life-threatening emergency or with a relatively safe drug that has limited long-term complications). At the same time however, a general unwillingness to acknowledge this issue pervades Allopathic medicine.

I’ve thus never forgotten a conference in the 1970s at which one of the world’s leading homeopaths convened a panel to discuss the likely consequences of modern medicine routinely suppressing symptoms (e.g., aggressively using fever suppressing medications or preventing childhood febrile illnesses with vaccination).
Note: studies have repeatedly linked preventing measles, mumps, and chickenpox to severe cancers later in life.

At that conference, building upon the recent mass introduction of suppressive steroids, they correctly predicted that if this suppression continued to increased, in the decades to follow:

• We would see a global shift from less severe illnesses to more severe ones.

• That this suppression would cause physical illnesses to be pushed deeper into the body and be replaced with psychiatric illnesses, and in time spiritual ones (particularly when the psychiatric illnesses were also suppressed with medications)—all of which would dovetail with people being willing to do crazier and crazier things.

Now, everyone has gradually become habituated to patients “just being” sicker and sicker, and that not much can be done about it.

Read the Whole Article

The post What They Don’t Tell You About Autoimmune Disorders appeared first on LewRockwell.

What is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Christian and a Southern Baptist, doing going to Israel and praying at the Western Wall like a Jew? Theologically conservative Christians like me want to know.

The post What Is Mike Johnson Doing? appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump put a whopping 39% tariff on gold from Switzerland. Is it really about a trade imbalance? Or is there more to such a drastic tax? Also this week, the President took steps to allow 401(k)’s to include crypto and private equity. Is there are relation between these two policies? A huge tax on a global safe haven asset, and easier access to high-risk assets?

The post Tariffs on Gold, Gambling in 401(k)’s — Signs of A Crack-Up Boom? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

In Britain, you can’t leave your house empty while you go on holiday. It will be full of invaders when you return. The police will do nothing to help you.

This will be the final blow to tourism in or from the UK.

The British are a Conquered People

The post The British are a Conquered People appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Malone News

The post HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development Under BARDA 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 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 la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/come-gli-inglesi-hanno-scatenato)

“Sono l'ultimo presidente degli Stati Uniti”, disse James Buchanan il 20 dicembre 1860.

La Carolina del Sud si era appena separata dall'Unione; altri dieci stati l'avrebbero seguita.

Se Buchanan fosse rimasto in carica, non c'è dubbio che avrebbe lasciato andare il Sud. Gli Stati Uniti avrebbero cessato di esistere 160 anni fa.

“E allora?” potrebbero ribattere alcuni lettori. “Buchanan aveva ragione. Non c'è nulla di sacro nell'Unione. Se gli stati vogliono separarsi, che lo facciano”.

Un recente sondaggio del Center for Politics dell'Università della Virginia afferma che il 41% dei sostenitori di Biden e il 52% dei sostenitori di Trump sono a favore della secessione.

Sebbene questi numeri possano essere esagerati, la tendenza è chiara.

Con l'aumento delle tensioni tra stati “rossi” e “blu”, molti americani sono giunti alla conclusione che convivere con i nostri litigiosi connazionali non valga più la pena. Molti sperano che una separazione pacifica – il “divorzio nazionale”, come lo chiamano – possa permettere agli americani di separarsi amichevolmente, senza spargimento di sangue.

Ma sarà così? La storia suggerisce il contrario.

Storia dimenticata

Nel 1861 la secessione non portò la pace, portò direttamente alla guerra civile.

La guerra scoppiò per lo stesso motivo di sempre, perché gli uomini potenti la volevano e ne traevano vantaggio.

Un vecchio detto recita: “Quando due cani litigano, un terzo cane si prende l'osso”.

Nel 1861 il terzo cane era la Gran Bretagna.

La Gran Bretagna aveva un forte interesse a disgregare l'Unione, che considerava un concorrente per il predominio globale. Il piano della Gran Bretagna era quello di spartire gli Stati Uniti in sfere di influenza coloniali, da distribuire tra le grandi potenze europee.

Se gli inglesi avessero avuto successo, sia il Nord che il Sud avrebbero perso la loro indipendenza.

Questo fatto – un tempo ampiamente noto agli americani – è stato cancellato dai nostri libri di storia.

Prima di precipitare a capofitto nella Guerra Civile 2.0, potrebbe essere saggio riscoprire la storia dimenticata della lotta di Lincoln contro l'intervento straniero.

Sarebbe sciocco cadere nella stessa trappola due volte.

L'appello di Seward per la guerra

Il 1° aprile 1861 la Guerra Civile non era ancora iniziata. Quel giorno il Segretario di Stato, William Seward, redasse un memorandum a Lincoln chiedendogli di agire contro “l'intervento europeo”.

“Chiederei immediatamente spiegazioni categoriche a Francia e Spagna”, scrisse Seward. “Chiederei spiegazioni a Gran Bretagna e Russia [...] e se non si ricevessero spiegazioni soddisfacenti da Spagna e Francia, convocherei il Congresso e dichiarerei loro guerra”.

Le preoccupazioni di Seward erano legittime.

Constatando la debolezza dell'America, le potenze straniere avevano iniziato a mettere in discussione la Dottrina Monroe, che proibiva l'intervento europeo nelle Americhe.

La Spagna aveva annesso la sua ex-colonia di Santo Domingo il 18 marzo, aumentando deliberatamente la guarnigione cubana a 25.000 uomini. La Francia stava agitando le armi per Haiti e altre colonie perdute.

Nel frattempo i diplomatici britannici si stavano impegnando a fondo per riunire Spagna, Francia e Russia in una coalizione abbastanza forte da costringere Lincoln a riconoscere la Confederazione.

Questi intrighi violavano palesemente la Dottrina Monroe, ma a nessuno importava più cosa pensasse l'America. Gli Stati Uniti stavano andando in pezzi.

“I nostri dissensi interni stanno producendo i loro frutti”, scrisse il New York Times il 30 marzo 1861. “Il terrore del nome americano è svanito e le potenze del Vecchio Mondo stanno accorrendo al banchetto da cui il grido della nostra aquila le aveva finora spaventate. Stiamo iniziando a subire le conseguenze di essere una potenza debole e disprezzata”.

Quando Seward scrisse il suo promemoria a Lincoln, l'attacco a Fort Sumter sarebbe arrivato entro undici giorni. Il primo colpo della nostra Guerra Civile non era ancora stato sparato.

Ciononosante le potenze d'Europa erano già pronte a combattere.

La Gran Bretagna era la capofila

La Gran Bretagna era la forza trainante di questi complotti. Gli inglesi pianificavano la caduta dell'America da anni.

L'Inghilterra non fece mistero delle sue ambizioni in Nord America.

Il 3 gennaio 1860 il londinese Morning Post chiese senza mezzi termini il ripristino del dominio britannico in America.

Il Post era noto per essere il portavoce di Lord Palmerston, Primo Ministro britannico. Infatti si vociferava che lo stesso Palmerston scrivesse di tanto in tanto editoriali non firmati per il giornale.

Se Nord e Sud si fossero separati, affermava il Morning Post il 3 gennaio 1860, le colonie del Nord America britannico (in seguito unite nel Dominion del Canada) avrebbero “detenuto l'equilibrio di potere sul continente”. Il Canada si sarebbe trovato in una posizione di forza per annettere le contese frazioni degli ex-Stati Uniti.

Il primo obiettivo avrebbe dovuto essere Portland, nel Maine, suggeriva il Post. Strategicamente situato al capolinea della Grand Trunk Railway canadese, il porto di Portland forniva al Canada l'accesso all'Atlantico durante i mesi invernali, quando tutti i porti sul fiume San Lorenzo erano ghiacciati.

Perché lasciare una risorsa così vitale in mani americane?

“Per motivi militari, oltre che commerciali, è ovviamente necessario”, sosteneva il Morning Post, “che il Nord America britannico disponga sull'Atlantico di un porto aperto tutto l'anno [...]”.

Il quotidiano raccomandava che lo stato del Maine si unisse volontariamente all'Impero britannico, una volta crollata l'Unione. “Il popolo di quello Stato, in vista del profitto commerciale, dovrebbe offrirsi di essere annesso al Canada”, suggeriva.

Il Post prevedeva che il crescente potere del Canada in un mondo post-americano avrebbe presto portato a ulteriori annessioni, culminando in quello che il giornale definiva “il ripristino di quell'influenza che più di ottant'anni fa l'Inghilterra non avrebbe dovuto perdere”.

Con queste parole il Morning Post chiarì di essere favorevole al ritorno del dominio britannico in America, esattamente del tipo di cui l'Inghilterra aveva goduto “più di ottant'anni fa” (prima del 1780, ovviamente).

Il piano britannico per una guerra per procura

La minaccia di riconquista sul Morning Post non era vana.

Infatti quel piano ebbe quasi successo.

Sappiamo da altre fonti, tra cui la corrispondenza diplomatica, che l'Inghilterra progettava di utilizzare la Confederazione per combattere una guerra per procura contro gli Stati Uniti.

Una volta esaurite le forze americane, la Gran Bretagna e i suoi alleati europei intendevano chiedere una mediazione internazionale per porre fine alla guerra.

Se Lincoln avesse rifiutato, la Marina britannica avrebbe rotto il blocco dell'Unione e liberato il Sud, costringendo così Lincoln al tavolo delle trattative, che gli piacesse o no.

Gli arbitri avrebbero diviso gli Stati Uniti in due Paesi separati, il Nord e il Sud.

In seguito progettarono di frammentare ulteriormente gli Stati Uniti in quattro o più mini-stati, troppo deboli per resistere alla ricolonizzazione.

Supporto militare britannico alla Confederazione

Il primo passo del piano britannico fu quello di esaurire le forze americane attraverso la guerra civile. Per raggiungere questo obiettivo, la Gran Bretagna divenne il principale fornitore di armi e rifornimenti per i ribelli del Sud.

Il 13 maggio 1861 la regina Vittoria emanò un proclama che concedeva lo status di belligerante alla Confederazione: ciò significava che le navi da guerra ribelli potevano ora operare legalmente dai porti britannici.

I costruttori navali britannici fornirono ai Confederati una marina moderna. Molte delle migliori navi da guerra ribelli furono assemblate nei cantieri navali britannici, finanziate da obbligazionisti britannici e, in alcuni casi, con equipaggi britannici.

I predoni confederati paralizzarono la navigazione unionista, affondandone quasi un migliaio. Un predone, la CSS Alabama, costruita in Gran Bretagna, distrusse 65 navi mercantili e da guerra unioniste in due anni, fino al suo definitivo affondamento nel giugno del 1864. L'equipaggio dell'Alabama era composto per lo più da britannici.

Il supporto tecnico britannico si rivelò fondamentale anche nella costruzione di una fabbrica di polvere da sparo ad Augusta, in Georgia, nel 1861. Era l'unica struttura del genere nel Sud; senza di essa i Confederati non avrebbero avuto polvere da sparo.

Schieramento delle truppe in Canada

L'Inghilterra fornì più di un semplice supporto logistico al Sud: minacciò anche il Nord con schieramenti di truppe e minacce di guerra.

Ad esempio, nel dicembre del 1861, la Gran Bretagna dispiegò 11.000 soldati in Canada, richiamò la milizia canadese e pianificò un blocco navale del nord-est degli Stati Uniti, come descritto nel libro One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (1999) di Dean B. Mahin.

La ragione ufficiale di questi preparativi era quella di difendere il Canada da un possibile attacco statunitense, nel caso in cui la Gran Bretagna avesse dichiarato guerra per l'Affare Trent, un incidente in cui una nave della Marina statunitense aveva abbordato un pacco postale britannico nei Caraibi, arrestando due inviati confederati.

Tuttavia l'Affare Trent fornì solo una scusa per attuare i piani britannici esistenti.

Mahin scrisse che una delle mosse difensive proposte dagli strateghi britannici nel dicembre del 1861 fu la conquista di Portland, nel Maine, per impedire alle forze dell'Unione di tagliare l'accesso britannico al porto.

Tuttavia, come accennato in precedenza, la conquista di Portland era un obiettivo bellico britannico già esistente, annunciato sul London Morning Post quasi due anni prima.

Schieramento delle truppe in Messico

Mentre la Gran Bretagna rinforzava il Canada, si unì a essa anche Francia e Spagna in un'invasione congiunta del Messico. Tutti e tre i Paesi sbarcarono truppe a Veracruz l'8 dicembre 1861, innescando una guerra civile messicana che infuriò fino al 1866.

Il pretesto per l'invasione era quello di imporre il pagamento del debito pubblico messicano; il suo vero scopo era quello di garantire al Messico un'area di appoggio per l'intervento nella guerra civile americana, un fatto che presto sarebbe diventato evidente.

L'imperatore francese Luigi Napoleone Bonaparte III era il più stretto alleato della Gran Bretagna, legato all'Inghilterra per il suo trono.

Nipote di Napoleone I, Luigi Napoleone prese il potere con un colpo di stato il 2 dicembre 1851, rovesciando la Seconda Repubblica francese, con l'appoggio e l'approvazione di Lord Palmerston.

Napoleone III si unì poi ai suoi protettori britannici in una serie di avventure militari, tra cui la Guerra di Crimea (1853-1856) e l'invasione del Messico del 1861.

“Una guerra alla volta”

L'enormità delle provocazioni francesi e britanniche giustificava chiaramente una risposta militare da parte del Nord. Eppure la mano ferma di Lincoln al timone impedì che la Guerra Civile si trasformasse in una conflagrazione globale.

Nel suo libro, One War at a Time, Mahin suggerì che Lincoln avesse deliberatamente giocato a fare il poliziotto buono e il poliziotto cattivo, permettendo al suo Segretario di Stato, William Seward, di lanciare minacce sconsiderate contro le potenze straniere, mentre Lincoln forniva la voce rassicurante della ragione.

Il 4 aprile 1861, ad esempio, Seward dichiarò al Times di Londra di essere “pronto, se necessario, a minacciare di guerra la Gran Bretagna” se avesse osato riconoscere il governo ribelle.

Probabilmente in risposta alla minaccia di Seward, il Proclama della Regina del 13 maggio non concesse il riconoscimento diplomatico al Sud. Ciononostante la Regina Vittoria concesse diritti di belligeranza alle navi da guerra confederate, il che fece infuriare Seward.

Elaborò prontamente istruzioni per Charles Francis Adams Sr., ambasciatore degli Stati Uniti a Londra, ordinandogli di avvertire la Gran Bretagna che il riconoscimento della Confederazione sarebbe stato un atto di guerra.

“Una guerra alla volta”, consigliò Lincoln a Seward, dopo aver rivisto una bozza della sua lettera il 21 maggio 1861. Lincoln modificò il documento di suo pugno per addolcirne il tono.

Durante la guerra, questo tipo di interazioni private tra Lincoln e Seward tendevano a trapelare. In una certa misura sembra probabile che i due stessero recitando, mettendo in scena uno spettacolo per diplomatici stranieri e giornalisti.

Se la routine del poliziotto buono e del poliziotto cattivo di Lincoln fosse davvero una strategia deliberata, allora ebbe successo. Mantenne gli inglesi nervosi, sbilanciati e indecisi per i primi tre anni di guerra.

Se la Gran Bretagna e i suoi alleati avessero agito tempestivamente e con coraggio – rompendo il blocco unionista del Sud, sigillando le coste unioniste e conquistando i porti del New England, come avevano inizialmente pianificato – un'America divisa sarebbe stata troppo debole per resistere.

Lincoln avrebbe perso il sostegno pubblico e, con esso, la guerra.

Motivare i Confederati

Le continue minacce di Seward intimidivano gli inglesi, rendendoli timorosi di un'azione diretta, ma non esitarono mai a spendere sangue confederato nella loro guerra per procura contro il Nord.

Per motivare i loro clienti del Sud, gli inglesi fecero un uso accorto di carota e bastone.

Offrirono continuamente la carota del riconoscimento britannico.

I Confederati sapevano che, una volta che la Gran Bretagna avesse riconosciuto la Confederazione, altre potenze europee avrebbero seguito il loro esempio. Lincoln si sarebbe trovato isolato nel mondo occidentale, sarebbe stato costretto a sedersi al tavolo delle trattative.

Ma c'era anche un bastone.

Gli inglesi chiarirono che non avrebbero rischiato una guerra con l'Unione finché la Confederazione non avesse dimostrato di poter far valere il suo peso sul campo di battaglia.

Il 14 agosto 1861 il Ministro degli Esteri britannico, John Russell, incontrò tre inviati confederati a Londra, informandoli che l'Inghilterra avrebbe preso in considerazione il riconoscimento del loro governo solo quando “la fortuna delle armi [...] avrebbe determinato chiaramente la posizione dei due belligeranti”.

Lord Palmerston riecheggiò questa opinione in una lettera del 20 ottobre 1861, in cui simpatizzava per l'indipendenza del Sud, ma avvertiva che “le operazioni belliche sono state finora troppo indecise per giustificare un riconoscimento dell'Unione del Sud”.

Il motore della guerra

La promessa di un intervento britannico, fatta privatamente e ripetutamente ai leader confederati, fu il motore trainante della ribellione. Senza queste promesse, vi sono seri dubbi sul fatto che i leader confederati avrebbero osato entrare in guerra.

Già nella primavera del 1860, quando Lincoln era ancora in campagna elettorale per la presidenza, i consoli britannici negli stati del sud informarono Londra che erano in corso piani di secessione e che i ribelli contavano sul sostegno britannico.

Due anni dopo l'allora Segretario di Stato per la Confederazione, Judah Benjamin, sperava ancora che il riconoscimento britannico potesse avere successo laddove l'esercito confederato aveva fino a quel momento fallito.

In una lettera del 12 aprile 1862 Benjamin scrisse: “Poche parole provenienti da Sua Maestà Britannica porrebbero di fatto fine a una lotta che così desola il nostro Paese”.

Ma gli inglesi non si lasciarono impressionare dalle lamentele confederate, solo un'azione sanguinosa sul campo di battaglia li avrebbe soddisfatti.

E così i Confederati continuarono a combattere, sempre fiduciosi che la loro vittoria successiva avrebbe potuto convincere i loro protettori britannici ad agire.

Il tentativo dell'Inghilterra di forzare la mediazione

La seconda battaglia di Manassas si rivelò un punto di svolta. Dopo la vittoria confederata del 30 agosto 1862, i leader britannici decisero che i tempi erano maturi.

Lord Palmerston scrisse a Russell il 14 settembre 1862, facendo notare che le forze dell'Unione avevano “subito una disfatta” a Manassas.

“Non sarebbe giunto il momento per noi di valutare se, in una tale situazione, Inghilterra e Francia non potrebbero rivolgersi alle parti in conflitto e raccomandare un accordo basato sulla separazione?”, suggerì Palmerston.

Stipulando che la mediazione proposta dovesse essere “basata sulla separazione”, Palmerston ammise che i colloqui di pace sarebbero stati una farsa. L'esito era già stato deciso: Nord e Sud dovevano separarsi.

Russell rispose il 17 settembre: “Sono d'accordo con lei sul fatto che sia giunto il momento di offrire una mediazione al governo degli Stati Uniti, in vista del riconoscimento dell'indipendenza dei Confederati. Concordo inoltre sul fatto che, in caso di fallimento, dovremmo riconoscere noi stessi gli Stati del Sud come Stato indipendente. [...] Dovremmo, quindi, se concordiamo su un tale passo, proporlo prima alla Francia e poi, da parte di Inghilterra e Francia, alla Russia e ad altre potenze, come misura da noi decisa”.

L'obiettivo nascosto dell'Inghilterra

Se l'obiettivo della Gran Bretagna nella nostra Guerra Civile fosse stato semplicemente quello di cercare una separazione pacifica tra Nord e Sud, le sue azioni avrebbero potuto essere giustificate come ingenue ma ben intenzionate.

Tuttavia gli obiettivi nascosti della Gran Bretagna divergevano nettamente da quelli ufficiali.

La corrispondenza diplomatica pubblicata nel Parliamentary Blue Book britannico tende a fornire una versione edulcorata delle intenzioni britanniche, in quanto tali dispacci furono scritti con la piena consapevolezza che sarebbero stati pubblicati.

Una versione meno edulcorata delle intenzioni britanniche può essere ricavata da fonti non ufficiali, come articoli di giornale, osservazioni di diplomatici stranieri e dalle azioni dello stesso governo britannico.

Un attento studio di tali fonti rivela che la Gran Bretagna non mirava tanto a una separazione pacifica tra Nord e Sud quanto alla completa distruzione degli Stati Uniti, che sperava di ottenere frammentando il Paese in più parti.

Dividi et impera

Come discuteremo anche più avanti, Napoleone III nutriva un “Grande Disegno” per lo smembramento degli Stati Uniti, il quale avrebbe lasciato il Texas, la Louisiana, la Florida e altri territori statunitensi sotto il controllo francese.

Gli inglesi avevano piani simili, che senza dubbio coordinarono con i loro alleati francesi.

Il 25 settembre 1861, dopo una lunga serie di sconfitte dell'Unione, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, un importante statista britannico e membro del Parlamento, predisse con gioia lo smembramento dell'America in quattro o più parti, “con felici risultati per la sicurezza dell'Europa”.

“La separazione tra Nord e Sud degli Stati Uniti, che ora è causata dalla guerra civile, l'ho da tempo prevista e predetta come inevitabile”, affermò Bulwer-Lytton in un discorso.

Prevedette che gli Stati Uniti si sarebbero divisi non in “due, ma almeno quattro, e probabilmente più di quattro Commonwealth separati e sovrani”.

Questa era una buona notizia per l'Europa, dichiarò Bulwer-Lytton: finché gli Stati Uniti fossero rimasti uniti, “incombevano sull'Europa come una nube temporalesca. Ma nella misura in cui l'America si sarebbe suddivisa in diversi Stati [...] la sua ambizione sarebbe stata meno temibile per il resto del mondo”.

“Vi spezzerete in frammenti”

Bulwer-Lytton non stava semplicemente esprimendo la sua opinione personale. Altre fonti confermano che alti statisti britannici erano favorevoli alla spartizione dell'America in più parti, non solo in due.

Il ministro degli Esteri russo, il principe Alexander Gorchakov, avvertì Lincoln di questo piano.

“Una separazione sarà seguita da un'altra; verrete spezzati in frammenti”, disse Gorchakov, in un incontro del 27 ottobre 1862 con Bayard Taylor, l'incaricato d'affari americano a San Pietroburgo.

L'ambasciatore statunitense in Gran Bretagna, Charles Francis Adams Sr., trasse una conclusione simile.

“La passione predominante qui [in Inghilterra] è il desiderio di una suddivisione definitiva dell'America in molti stati separati che si neutralizzeranno a vicenda”, scrisse Adams a Seward l'8 agosto 1862.

L'Inghilterra si avvia verso la guerra

Tutte le prove suggeriscono che i pianificatori britannici sapessero fin dall'inizio che i loro obiettivi in America non sarebbero mai stati raggiunti senza spargimento di sangue.

Anche il primo passo per separare il Nord dal Sud avrebbe richiesto un intervento militare.

Come accennato in precedenza, Seward aveva chiarito il 4 aprile 1861 che l'Unione avrebbe dichiarato guerra alla Gran Bretagna se avesse riconosciuto il Sud. In tal caso gli inglesi pianificarono di utilizzare la Royal Navy per rompere il blocco dell'Unione, pienamente consapevoli che il Nord avrebbe risposto invadendo il Canada.

Per questo motivo, quando Lord Palmerston approvò il piano di mediazione, sottolineò, in una lettera a Russell del 17 settembre 1862, che “dovremmo metterci al sicuro in Canada, non inviandovi più truppe [oltre alle 11.000 già schierate l'anno precedente], ma concentrando quelle che abbiamo in pochi avamposti difendibili prima dell'arrivo dell'inverno”.

Il Primo Ministro ammise quindi che la sua proposta di “mediazione” avrebbe probabilmente portato a una guerra di terra tra Gran Bretagna e Stati Uniti.

Palmerston scelse comunque di procedere.

Una riunione del gabinetto della regina Vittoria era prevista per il 23 ottobre 1862: in essa si sarebbero discussi i piani per un intervento congiunto di Francia, Russia e Gran Bretagna.

“Hanno creato una nazione”

Due settimane prima della riunione del gabinetto della Regina, il Cancelliere dello Scacchiere William Gladstone preparò il terreno per il riconoscimento del Sud in un discorso tenuto a Newcastle il 7 ottobre 1862. Gladstone disse: “Jefferson Davis e gli altri leader hanno creato un esercito; stanno creando, a quanto pare, una marina; e hanno creato qualcosa di più di entrambe le cose: hanno creato una nazione. [...] [Possiamo] prevedere con certezza il successo degli Stati del Sud per quanto riguarda la loro separazione dal Nord”.

Nel suo discorso Gladstone arrivò pericolosamente vicino a riconoscere il Sud come nazione sovrana.

Nonostante la spavalderia di Gladstone, i leader britannici erano nervosi, esitanti a procedere senza il sostegno delle altre potenze europee.

Il 17 novembre 1862 l'Incaricato d'Affari russo a Washington, Edouard de Stoeckl, riferì al suo governo che un attacco franco-britannico all'Unione era imminente. Poiché né i francesi né gli inglesi nutrivano “alcuna illusione che la loro offerta di mediazione venisse accettata [...] il passo successivo sarà il riconoscimento del Sud [...] [e] l'apertura forzata dei porti meridionali [...]”.

Prima di compiere questo passo gli inglesi cercarono di ottenere il sostegno di tutte le grandi potenze europee.

De Stoeckl riferì che Lord Lyons, ambasciatore britannico a Washington, voleva che “il tentativo [di mediazione] [...] venisse non solo da Francia e Inghilterra, ma da tutto il mondo civilizzato”.

La questione russa

Per tutte queste ragioni, gli inglesi desideravano ottenere il sostegno russo per la loro mossa contro Lincoln.

Sapevano che la Russia era il più forte sostenitore di Lincoln in Europa, ma speravano di poter rompere l'amicizia se avessero esercitato la giusta pressione.

In realtà lo zar Alessandro II stava facendo il doppio gioco con gli inglesi. Pur fingendo di ascoltare i loro piani di mediazione, i diplomatici russi riferirono prontamente tutto. Torniamo agli americani.

Gli inglesi cercarono di convincere la Russia a collaborare con loro, offrendo concessioni in altre parti del mondo.

Ad esempio, una rivolta polacca contro la Russia era in fermento dal 1861, fornendo a Francia e Gran Bretagna una scusa per minacciare la Russia di intervenire. Inoltre Inghilterra, Francia e Russia stavano negoziando per decidere chi sarebbe diventato il prossimo re di Grecia.

Voci di corridoio raggiungero Seward secondo cui i russi avrebbero potuto sostenere l'intervento nella guerra civile americana, in cambio di concessioni in Grecia da parte di Inghilterra e Francia. Seward era sufficientemente preoccupato da convocare de Stoeckl al Dipartimento di Stato all'inizio del 1863 per chiedere spiegazioni.

L'appello di Lincoln allo Zar

Con l'imminente intervento francese e britannico e la posizione della Russia ancora incerta, Lincoln rivolse un appello segreto direttamente allo Zar.

Una mossa astuta.

La Russia era l'unica potenza europea con eserciti terrestri in Asia sufficienti a sfidare il dominio britannico sull'India e sul Medio Oriente. Per questo motivo Inghilterra e Russia erano acerrime e perenni nemiche.

A peggiorare queste tensioni Inghilterra, Francia e i loro alleati ottomani avevano di recente sconfitto la Russia nella guerra di Crimea del 1853-1856. I russi bramavano vendetta.

Lincoln sapeva che la politica russa di mettere l'America contro l'Inghilterra era una strategia consolidata fin dalla Guerra d'Indipendenza, quando l'imperatrice russa Caterina la Grande aveva sostenuto il diritto dei coloni americani a chiedere l'indipendenza.

Nel 1839 lo zar Nicola I aveva detto a George Mifflin Dallas, all'epoca ministro degli Stati Uniti a San Pietroburgo: “Non solo i nostri interessi sono simili, ma anche i nostri nemici sono gli stessi”.

L'“imminente dissoluzione dell'Unione Americana” avrebbe rappresentato una minaccia per gli interessi russi, avvertì de Stoeckl al principe Gorchakov in una lettera del 4 gennaio 1860, poiché la rivalità della Gran Bretagna con l'America era stata in precedenza “la migliore garanzia contro i progetti ambiziosi e l'egoismo politico della razza anglosassone”.

Meglio mantenere gli anglosassoni divisi!

Lo zar concordò sul fatto che preservare l'Unione Americana fosse “essenziale per l'equilibrio politico universale”.

Esisteva quindi una base per la cooperazione russo-americana.

La promessa dello zar a Lincoln

All'inizio del 1862 Lincoln ordinò al nuovo ambasciatore statunitense a San Pietroburgo, il generale Simon Cameron, di interrogare segretamente lo zar su cosa avrebbe fatto se Francia e Gran Bretagna fossero intervenute nella nostra guerra civile.

Lo zar promise a Lincoln che, in caso di intervento straniero, “o al manifestarsi di un reale pericolo, l'amicizia della Russia per gli Stati Uniti sarebbe stata riconosciuta in modo decisivo, tale che nessun'altra nazione avrebbe potuto fraintendere”.

Dopo aver ricevuto questa rassicurazione, Seward si impegnò a diffondere la voce che esistesse un'intesa segreta tra Stati Uniti e Russia.

“Sarebbe bene che in Europa si sapesse che non siamo più allarmati dalle dimostrazioni di interferenza europea”, scrisse Seward al console americano a Parigi, John Bigelow, il 25 giugno 1862.

D'ora in poi, scrisse Seward, qualsiasi stato europeo “che si impegni a intervenire in qualsiasi parte del Nord America, prima o poi finirà tra le braccia di un nativo di un Paese orientale non particolarmente distinto per gentilezza di modi o carattere [...]”.

Quando parlava di un “Paese orientale” non “distinto per gentilezza”, Seward si riferiva chiaramente alla Russia.

Debolezza dell'Unione

La primavera del 1863 vide le speranze dell'Unione al loro punto più basso. Nel suo libro, Czars and Presidents, Alexandre Tarsaïdzé descrisse la situazione in questo modo: “Gli eserciti del Nord non avevano nulla da mostrare dopo due anni di spargimenti di sangue [...]. Quando Lee minacciò di invadere gli Stati del Nord, Baltimora era esultante, Filadelfia paralizzata e New York pronta alla secessione. [...] Nel luglio del 1863 scoppiarono rivolte a New York City per le leggi sulla coscrizione e nel giro di due giorni un migliaio di soldati e civili [...] giacevano morti per le strade. Il Segretario Seward fu informato che le truppe francesi in Messico stavano avanzando verso nord. Più o meno nello stesso periodo giunse la notizia che un reggimento britannico, sulle note vivaci di Dixie, era sbarcato in Canada”.

Nel frattempo Harper's Weekly riportava che due nuove corazzate ribelli sarebbero state varate dai porti britannici a settembre, la cui missione era quella di contribuire a rompere il blocco navale dell'Unione.

La notte del 26 giugno 1863 un gruppo di incursori confederati entrò nel porto di Portland, nel Maine, con l'intenzione di sabotarlo. Le navi della Marina statunitense attaccarono e catturarono i Confederati, ma la Battaglia di Portland, come venne chiamata, sollevò inquietanti interrogativi sul consolidamento delle truppe britanniche in Canada.

Conquistare Portland era un noto obiettivo bellico britannico. Il raid su quel porto prefigurava forse un'imminente azione britannica?

I francesi fanno la loro mossa

Le truppe francesi presero Città del Messico il 10 giugno 1863, deponendo il presidente Benito Juárez, il quale fuggì sulle montagne per organizzare una guerriglia di resistenza.

Un mese dopo il nuovo governo messicano controllato dai francesi invitò l'arciduca austriaco Massimiliano a formare un regime fantoccio e accettare il titolo di Imperatore del Messico.

Nell'ottobre del 1863 circa 40.000 soldati francesi combattevano in Messico.

Con l'intensificarsi del coinvolgimento francese in Messico, i funzionari confederati si affrettarono a ingraziarsi Luigi Napoleone. Circolarono voci di un'alleanza segreta tra la Confederazione e il nuovo regime francese in Messico.

“Gli Stati Confederati saranno nostri alleati e ci difenderanno contro gli attacchi del Nord”, dichiarava un opuscolo di propaganda francese del 1863.

Lord Palmerston aveva già espresso approvazione per il cambio di governo sponsorizzato dalla Francia, dichiarando al ministro degli Esteri John Russell, il 19 gennaio 1862, che i piani francesi di istituire una monarchia in Messico avrebbero scoraggiato un'ulteriore espansione verso sud da parte degli Stati Uniti.

I piani di Napoleone III sul territorio del Sud

Tuttavia i francesi si rivelarono alleati problematici per il Sud, poiché Luigi Napoleone progettava di annettere ampi tratti del territorio meridionale.

Anni prima Luigi Napoleone aveva ammesso con noncuranza di voler “stabilire una Gibilterra francese a Key West, impadronirsi della Florida, della Louisiana e della costa del Golfo e portare l'Impero messicano sotto il dominio francese”, secondo Alexandre Tarsaïdzé in Czars and Presidents (1958).

Sembrava in quel momento che Luigi Napoleone potesse ottenere ciò che desiderava.

Nel gennaio del 1863 i consoli francesi a Galveston e Richmond furono colti in flagrante mentre cercavano di organizzare una ribellione in Texas contro Jefferson Davis.

Contemporaneamente un importante quotidiano viennese riportò la voce secondo cui i funzionari confederati avevano accettato di cedere volontariamente il Texas al regime francese in Messico. Se l'Unione avesse osato bloccare questo trasferimento, avvertiva il giornale, Luigi Napoleone avrebbe probabilmente “interferito con la forza armata a favore del Sud”.

L'interesse di Luigi Napoleone per il Texas faceva parte di un piano più ampio che lui chiamava il suo “Grande Disegno”. Come documentato nel libro, Blue and Gray Diplomacy (2010) di Howard Jones, il “Grande Disegno” mirava a frammentare gli Stati Uniti in tre nazioni diverse, Nord, Sud e Ovest, annettendo al contempo il Texas, la Louisiana e altri territori del Sud all'Impero messicano.

Lincoln fu sufficientemente allarmato dalle notizie sul “Grande Disegno” di Luigi Napoleone da distogliere le truppe dalle operazioni del generale Grant in Mississippi per invadere il Texas quattro volte tra il 1863 e il 1864, nel tentativo di stabilire un “punto d'appoggio” statunitense in Texas per scoraggiare l'occupazione francese.

Intervento russo

Con il generale Lee all'offensiva in Pennsylvania e 40.000 soldati francesi a minacciare il Texas, i timori di un intervento anglo-francese si intensificarono.

Tre miracoli salvarono l'Unione.

Il primo fu la vittoria a Gettysburg il 3 luglio 1863.

Il secondo fu la caduta di Vicksburg il giorno successivo, il 4 luglio 1863.

Il terzo miracolo fu l'arrivo di due flotte russe a New York e San Francisco, rispettivamente a settembre e ottobre 1863.

La flotta russa del Baltico arrivò improvvisamente a New York tra l'11 e il 24 settembre 1863, al comando del contrammiraglio Stepan Lisovsky.

Il 12 ottobre la flotta russa dell'Estremo Oriente gettò l'ancora nella baia di San Francisco, al comando del contrammiraglio Andrei Popov.

La Marina russa rimase in acque statunitensi per sette mesi. Quando se ne andarono, la guerra si era decisamente orientata a favore di Lincoln. Il pericolo di un intervento straniero era ormai passato.

Mistero e segretezza

Ancora oggi mistero, controversie e segretezza circondano lo schieramento navale russo del 1863.

Gli storici accademici sostengono da tempo che lo spiegamento russo non avesse nulla a che fare con la Guerra Civile Americana. I documenti che suggeriscono il contrario vengono minimizzati o screditati.

La versione ufficiale è che lo Zar avesse bisogno di mettere la sua flotta al sicuro. Se francesi e inglesi fossero entrati in guerra per la questione polacca, i russi temevano che le loro navi potessero rimanere intrappolate nei loro porti.

Ma c'erano posti più sicuri in cui lo Zar avrebbe potuto inviarle; l'America era una zona di guerra all'epoca.

Chiaramente lo Zar non stava cercando di fuggire da francesi e inglesi, ma piuttosto cercava il posto migliore per combatterli. Decise di schierarsi in America.

Sembra ragionevole concludere che, qualunque fossero le altre motivazioni che lo Zar potesse avere per schierare la sua flotta in America, almeno una era quella di mostrare solidarietà agli americani, scoraggiando Inghilterra e Francia dall'attaccare entrambi i Paesi.

Prove delle intenzioni russe

Alcune dichiarazioni attribuite al Principe Gorchakov, Ministro degli Esteri russo, possono aiutare a far luce sulle ragioni del dispiegamento russo.

Nel febbraio 1862 il Principe Gorchakov chiese al diplomatico statunitense, Charles A. De Arnaud, se l'Unione avesse navi sufficienti per mantenere il blocco navale. De Arnaud ammise di non esserne sicuro, al che il Principe Gorchakov rispose (secondo le memorie di De Arnaud): “Verificherò se hanno navi sufficienti per mantenere il blocco navale, e se non le hanno loro, le abbiamo noi! L'Imperatore, mio Augusto Signore, non permetterà a nessuno di interferire con questo blocco navale, anche a costo di rischiare un'altra guerra alleata!”.

Otto mesi dopo, nell'ottobre del 1862, lo stesso principe Gorchakov rispose a una lettera del presidente Lincoln offrendo queste assicurazioni a Bayard Taylor, incaricato d'affari americano a San Pietroburgo: “Solo la Russia vi ha sostenuto fin dall'inizio e continuerà a sostenervi. [...] Desideriamo la sopravvivenza dell'Unione americana come nazione indivisibile. [...] Verranno avanzate proposte alla Russia per aderire a un piano di interferenza; essa rifiuterà qualsiasi invito del genere. [...] Potete contare su questo”.

Così, dieci mesi prima dello schieramento della flotta russa, il principe Gorchakov aveva avvertito Lincoln di aspettarsi un ultimo tentativo di intervento da parte di Francia e Inghilterra, un tentativo che tutti sapevano avrebbe comportato un'azione navale per rompere il blocco dell'Unione.

Alla luce di questi fatti non sembra azzardato concludere che lo zar avesse inviato la sua flotta, almeno in parte, per scoraggiare Francia e Gran Bretagna dal loro piano.

Lo zar mantenne la promessa fatta a Lincoln: “L'amicizia della Russia per gli Stati Uniti sarà riconosciuta in modo decisivo, tale che nessun'altra nazione potrà mai sbagliarsi”.

Potremmo essere in debito con la Russia per aver difeso l'Unione in un momento cruciale.

Come la Gran Bretagna causò la Guerra Civile

Il resoconto precedente ha convinto, si spera, i lettori a chiedersi se la Gran Bretagna fosse davvero “neutrale” nella nostra Guerra Civile, come sostengono molti storici.

L'ingerenza della Gran Bretagna stiracchia la definizione di “neutralità” oltre ogni limite.

E c'è di più.

Alcune prove suggeriscono che l'Inghilterra potrebbe aver effettivamente causato la Guerra Civile.

Il principale consigliere economico di Lincoln, Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879), ne era convinto. Accusò la Gran Bretagna di aver istigato la guerra per il proprio tornaconto.

Nel suo opuscolo del 1867, Reconstruction: Industrial, Financial and Political, Carey accusò la Gran Bretagna di alimentare passioni secessioniste attraverso una rete di “agenti britannici” che operavano “in stretta alleanza con l'aristocrazia schiavista del Sud [...]”.

L'economia del Sud dipendeva dalla Gran Bretagna, la quale ne acquistava ogni anno il 70% delle esportazioni di cotone. Secondo Carey, la Gran Bretagna usava la sua influenza per spingere i leader del Sud verso la secessione.

Gli inglesi sapevano che un Sud indipendente sarebbe stato libero di ridurre i dazi e di utilizzare manodopera schiavizzata, mantenendo bassi i prezzi del cotone.

Se non si fosse affrontato il problema di fondo dell'influenza britannica, Carey predisse che gli sforzi dell'Unione per “ricostruire” il Sud sarebbero falliti.

“Il libero scambio britannico, il monopolio industriale e la schiavitù umana vanno di pari passo”, concluse Carey, “e chi intraprende l'opera di ricostruzione senza essersi prima accertato che tale sia la realtà, scoprirà di aver costruito su basi instabili e non riuscirà a costruire un edificio che sia permanente”.

“Sistema britannico” & “Sistema americano”

Carey credeva che due sistemi economici rivali si stessero contendendo il predominio nel XIX secolo: il “Sistema britannico” e il “Sistema americano”.

Sosteneva che la nostra Guerra Civile fosse stata combattuta, in gran parte, per determinare quale di questi due sistemi avrebbe prevalso.

Il Sistema britannico mirava a fare dell'Inghilterra l'“officina del mondo”, con un monopolio globale sulla produzione industriale. Altri Paesi avrebbero dovuto fornire cibo e materie prime in cambio dei prodotti manifatturieri britannici.

Al contrario, il Sistema americano incoraggiava l'autosufficienza nazionale. Gli americani erano spinti a produrre tutto ciò di cui avevano bisogno nel proprio Paese, inclusi cibo, materie prime e prodotti manifatturieri.

I due sistemi erano incompatibili e destinati a scontrarsi.

L'America era l'arena naturale per questa contesa, poiché il Nord industrializzato seguiva il Sistema americano, mentre il Sud agricolo seguiva il Sistema britannico.

Perché l'Inghilterra sostenne la Confederazione

Gli inglesi avevano molto da perdere se il Nord avesse prevalso.

Il Nord stava costruendo le proprie fabbriche tessili e cercando di sostituire l'Inghilterra come principale partner commerciale del Sud. Se ciò fosse accaduto, il sistema britannico avrebbe potuto potenzialmente crollare.

La Gran Bretagna avrebbe perso la sua fornitura di cotone a basso costo, avrebbe perso il suo monopolio tessile globale e avrebbe perso il Sud degli Stati Uniti come mercato per i prodotti manifatturieri inglesi. Da quel momento in poi i sudisti avrebbero acquistato manufatti dal Nord.

Il 7 marzo 1862 Lord Robert Cecil si rivolse al Parlamento britannico con queste parole: “Gli Stati del Nord d'America non potranno mai essere nostri amici sicuri [...] perché siamo rivali, politicamente, commercialmente. Aspiriamo alla stessa posizione. Entrambi aspiriamo al governo dei mari. Siamo entrambi un popolo manifatturiero, e in ogni porto, così come in ogni corte, siamo rivali l'uno dell'altro. [...] Per quanto riguarda gli Stati del Sud, la tesi è completamente invertita. La popolazione si basa sull'agricoltura. Fornisce la materia prima della nostra industria e consuma i prodotti che ne ricaviamo. Con loro, quindi, ogni interesse deve portarci a coltivare relazioni amichevoli, e abbiamo visto che, allo scoppio della guerra, si sono subito rivolti all'Inghilterra come loro alleato naturale”.

Con queste parole Lord Cecil chiarì che il rapporto che la Gran Bretagna desiderava con l'America era un rapporto coloniale, in cui le “colonie” avrebbero esportato cibo e materie prime alla madrepatria, mentre quest'ultima forniva in cambio i manufatti.

La Gran Bretagna favoriva il Sud proprio perché i sudisti non avevano mai rotto il legame coloniale; il Sud rimaneva economicamente dipendente dalla madrepatria.

Il Nord, dall'altra parte, aveva cercato di migliorare la propria situazione industrializzandosi e costruendo una propria flotta mercantile, entrando così in competizione con la Gran Bretagna. Così facendo il Nord divenne il rivale dell'Inghilterra e, in definitiva, il suo nemico mortale.

“Libero scambio” & “Protezionismo”

Molti storici sostengono che il sistema britannico incoraggiasse il “libero scambio”, mentre il sistema americano promuovesse il “protezionismo”. Questo è fuorviante.

In realtà entrambi i sistemi erano protezionistici.

La confusione nasce dai propagandisti britannici che impararono presto a camuffare le loro politiche protezionistiche sotto la retorica del “libero scambio”.

Nel suo libro del 1776, La ricchezza delle nazioni, l'economista britannico Adam Smith sosteneva che tutti i Paesi avrebbero dovuto commerciare liberamente tra loro, senza dazi o altre restrizioni. La “mano invisibile” dei mercati avrebbe garantito a ciascun Paese la ricezione dei beni di cui aveva bisogno al miglior prezzo.

L'idea di Smith poteva essere stata praticabile o meno, ma non fu mai sperimentata nell'effetivo.

Al contrario la Gran Bretagna applicò il libero scambio in modo selettivo, solo nei mercati in cui deteneva un monopolio sicuro o qualche altro vantaggio.

L'accordo commerciale del 1810 tra la Gran Bretagna e il Brasile illustra questo punto.

La silenziosa conquista del Brasile

Nel 1807 la Marina britannica salvò i Braganza, la famiglia reale portoghese, trasportandoli nella colonia portoghese del Brasile, fuori dalla portata delle truppe d'invasione di Napoleone.

In cambio di questo favore, i Braganza accettarono di aprire i porti brasiliani al “libero scambio”.

Era un inganno. Il dominio britannico sui mari garantiva che i porti brasiliani appena aperti avrebbero avvantaggiato principalmente la Gran Bretagna. Gli inglesi si appropriarono della maggior parte del commercio estero brasiliano.

Alcuni consiglieri reali misero in guardia i Braganza da ulteriori concessioni, ma una fazione “liberale” all'interno della burocrazia si oppose. Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho e José da Silva Lisboa avevano studiato La ricchezza delle nazioni di Adam Smith e avevano esortato i Braganza a fidarsi della “mano invisibile” del libero mercato.

Nel 1810 gli inglesi erano sufficientemente trincerati a Rio de Janeiro da costringere il Brasile a firmare un nuovo trattato che garantiva privilegi speciali alla Gran Bretagna, tra cui un dazio preferenziale che tassava le merci britanniche solo al 15%, rispetto al 24% delle altre nazioni. Persino la madrepatria, il Portogallo, era tassata al 16%.

Così, con il pretesto del “libero scambio”, la Gran Bretagna di fatto sostituì il Portogallo come madrepatria del Brasile, riducendolo a uno stato cliente.

La guerra commerciale del 1783

Come i liberali portoghesi, i Padri Fondatori americani erano ideologicamente inclini al libero scambio.

Alcuni, come Thomas Jefferson, temevano che i dazi protezionistici avrebbero trasformato l'America da una nazione rurale a una urbana, in cui banchieri e industriali avrebbero detenuto tutto il potere.

Altri ricordavano che la Dichiarazione d'Indipendenza aveva condannato Re Giorgio per “aver interrotto il nostro commercio con tutte le parti del mondo”, un riferimento alle restrizioni imposte dal Trade and Navigation Act britannico.

Nonostante questi scrupoli, la dura realtà della guerra commerciale britannica costrinse presto i Padri Fondatori a riesaminare i loro presupposti sul libero scambio.

Il campanello d'allarme arrivò nel 1783. Subito dopo la firma del trattato di pace che pose fine alla Guerra d'Indipendenza, la Gran Bretagna iniziò a immettere enormi quantità di prodotti manifatturieri a basso costo sul mercato statunitense, vendendoli a prezzi molto inferiori a quelli inglesi e, in molti casi, sottocosto.

I produttori americani alle prime armi non riuscirono a sostenere tali prezzi e fallirono. L'economia crollò; i debitori persero le loro case.

Dal 1786 al 1787 scoppiò una rivolta armata nel Massachusetts, nota come Ribellione di Shay, per chiedere sollievo dai debiti, dagli sfratti e dal dumping britannico.

Molti stati chiesero a gran voce la secessione; la Repubblica era sull'orlo della dissoluzione.

Indipendenza politica & indipendenza economica

Attraverso questa esperienza la generazione rivoluzionaria imparò che l'indipendenza politica è inutile senza indipendenza economica.

Finché gli inglesi controllavano i cordoni della borsa americana, controllavano l'America.

La guerra commerciale del 1783 rese chiaro che la Gran Bretagna non avrebbe rinunciato al suo monopolio sui prodotti manifatturieri in America.

All'atto pratico l'America rimaneva una colonia britannica.

L'essenza di un rapporto coloniale è che la colonia produce cibo e materie prime, mentre la madrepatria produce manufatti. Poiché le materie prime sono economiche e i prodotti manifatturieri costosi, i profitti affluiscono costantemente alla madrepatria.

Prima della Rivoluzione la Gran Bretagna mantenne uno stretto controllo sul commercio americano attraverso i Trade and Navigation Act del 1660, 1663 e 1672.

Ai coloni era proibito dedicarsi all'industria manifatturiera. Inoltre tutte le navi che trasportavano merci da e per le colonie erano tenute a fare scalo nei porti inglesi per pagare dazi e altre spese di trasporto, indipendentemente dalla loro destinazione finale o dal punto di origine. Persino una nave che andava da Boston al Rhode Island e ritorno doveva attraversare l'oceano due volte, fermandosi due volte nei porti inglesi, per pagare dazi e altre spese di trasporto.

Come risultato di queste leggi, nel 1677 la Gran Bretagna godeva di uno squilibrio commerciale di dieci a uno con le sue colonie americane, un rapporto che rimase costante fino alla Rivoluzione.

Nel suo libro, The Unity of Law (1872), Henry Carey calcolò che le normative commerciali coloniali consentivano alla Gran Bretagna di tassare “tre quarti del prodotto del lavoro americano” ogni anno.

Indipendenza: “Un pezzo di pergamena”

Durante la Guerra d'Indipendenza gli americani dovettero cavarsela da soli. Impararono a produrre i propri vestiti, corde, carta, ferro e altri beni essenziali. Molti speravano che queste nuove industrie locali avrebbero dato vita a un'economia prospera e indipendente.

Ma il dumping britannico pose fine a quel sogno nel 1783.

Edward Everett, fervente sostenitore del sistema americano, ricordò nel 1831: “Si presentò così lo straordinario e disastroso spettacolo di una rivoluzione vittoriosa, che fallì completamente nel suo obiettivo finale. Il popolo americano era andato in guerra non per i nomi, ma per le cose. Non si trattava semplicemente di cambiare un governo amministrato da re, principi e ministri, con un governo amministrato da presidenti, segretari e membri del Congresso. Si trattava di riparare i propri torti, di migliorare la propria condizione, di liberarsi del peso che il sistema coloniale imponeva alla propria industria. Per raggiungere questi obiettivi, sopportarono difficoltà incredibili; sopportarono e soffrirono in modo quasi inimmaginabile. E quando ottennero la loro indipendenza, scoprirono che era ormai un pezzo di pergamena”.

Gli americani impararono che una guerra commerciale può devastare una nazione con la stessa crudeltà del ferro e del fuoco. Impararono anche che l'unico modo per combattere una guerra commerciale è vendicarsi con la stessa moneta.

Gli Articoli della Confederazione, allora in vigore, non offrivano alcun mezzo di ritorsione. I singoli stati potevano imporre dazi, ma non il governo nazionale.

In risposta alla crisi alcuni stati istituirono le proprie dogane e imposero dazi, ma questo portò solo a guerre commerciali tra stati, dividendo ulteriormente il Paese.

Nei quattro anni successivi alla battaglia di Yorktown, dal 1781 al 1785, la bilancia commerciale tra Gran Bretagna e Stati Uniti rimase più di tre a uno a favore della Gran Bretagna.

Combattere il fuoco con il fuoco

Quando la Costituzione fu firmata nel 1787, praticamente tutti i Padri Fondatori erano giunti a concordare sulla necessità di dazi protettivi per contrastare la guerra commerciale britannica.

In un discorso del 9 aprile 1789, James Madison disse al Congresso che “il commercio dovrebbe essere libero”. Osservò, tuttavia, che questo principio funzionava solo quando tutti seguivano le stesse regole: “Se l'America lasciasse i suoi porti perfettamente liberi e non facesse alcuna discriminazione tra le navi di proprietà dei suoi cittadini e quelle di proprietà straniera, mentre altre nazioni facessero questa discriminazione, è ovvio che tale linea di politica finirebbe per escludere del tutto la navigazione americana dai porti stranieri, e l'America ne subirebbe le conseguenze materiali in uno dei suoi interessi più importanti”.

Quindi l'unica difesa contro il protezionismo britannico era il protezionismo americano. Gli americani avrebbero dovuto combattere il fuoco con il fuoco.

“Washington e i suoi segretari, Hamilton e Jefferson, approvarono questa linea d'azione”, scrisse Carey, “e, così facendo, furono seguiti da tutti i successori di Washington, fino al generale Jackson”.

La Costituzione

Molti americani hanno dimenticato che la nostra Costituzione è nata dall'urgente necessità di difendere l'industria statunitense dalla guerra commerciale britannica.

Fisher Ames, che prese parte alla Convenzione, affermò che “l'attuale Costituzione è stata dettata da necessità commerciali più che da qualsiasi altra causa. La mancanza di un governo efficiente per tutelare gli interessi manifatturieri e promuovere il nostro commercio è stata a lungo avvertita da uomini di giudizio e sottolineata da patrioti desiderosi di promuovere il nostro benessere generale”.

Firmata il 17 settembre 1787, la nuova Costituzione conferiva al Congresso il potere di imporre dazi doganali.

“Il potere di regolamentare sia il commercio estero che quello tra gli stati era attribuito chiaramente al governo nazionale adesso, per sempre sottratto agli stati stessi”, scrisse Robert Ellis Thompson in Political Economy with Special Reference to the Industrial History of Nations (1882).

Per il suo insediamento George Washington indossò un abito di stoffa tessuta in casa, per dimostrare la sua solidarietà agli industriali americani in difficoltà.

Guerra economica

Se posso permettermi una digressione personale, alcuni lettori potrebbero essere interessati a sapere che difendere il protezionismo non mi viene né facile né naturale. Ero uno studente universitario diciannovenne quando lessi per la prima volta Per una nuova libertà di Murray Rothbard, e da allora mi definisco un libertario.

Tuttavia, dopo aver studiato il sistema coloniale britannico e le sue numerose guerre commerciali contro gli Stati Uniti, non riesco a trovare altra difesa contro questi mali se non quella che i nostri Padri Fondatori alla fine decisero: i dazi protettivi.

La Gran Bretagna aveva chiaramente sia la volontà che il potere di schiacciare l'industria manifatturiera statunitense, e lo fece ripetutamente nei primi anni della nostra Repubblica.

Nel 1816, mentre la Gran Bretagna attaccava nuovamente le industrie statunitensi con una campagna di dumping, il signor (e in seguito Lord) Brougham dichiarò alla Camera dei Comuni che “vale la pena subire una perdita [...] per soffocare nella culla quelle giovani industrie manifatturiere degli Stati Uniti che la guerra ha costretto alla nascita”.

David Syme, un tempo liberoscambista inglese, emigrò in Australia e vide con i propri occhi gli effetti distruttivi del dumping britannico.

Nel suo libro, Outlines of an Industrial Science (1876), Syme descrisse come la Gran Bretagna mantenesse i suoi monopoli attraverso la guerra economica: “Il modo in cui il capitale inglese viene utilizzato per conservare la supremazia manifatturiera dell'Inghilterra è ben noto all'estero. In qualsiasi parte del mondo si presenti un concorrente che potrebbe interferire con il suo monopolio, il capitale dei suoi produttori si concentra immediatamente in quella particolare parte e le merci vengono esportate in grandi quantità e vendute a prezzi tali da schiacciare di fatto la concorrenza esterna. È noto che per anni i produttori inglesi hanno esportato merci in mercati lontani e le hanno vendute a prezzo di costo, con l'obiettivo di riprendere il controllo di quei mercati”.

Il sistema britannico di libero scambio

Nei suoi scritti Henry Carey racchiudeva abitualmente il termine “libero scambio” tra virgolette per ricordare ai lettori che era semplicemente un rebranding della tradizionale linea di politica coloniale britannica.

Mentre autoproclamati discepoli di Adam Smith evangelizzavano il mondo attraverso gruppi come la British Free-Trade League, la Gran Bretagna stessa continuava a governare i suoi mercati con la forza bruta.

A titolo di esempio, Carey citò le Guerre dell'Oppio del 1839-42 e del 1856-60 in cui la Gran Bretagna usò la forza militare per costringere la Cina ad acquistare oppio da produttori autorizzati dagli stessi inglesi nell'India britannica.

Carey osservò che azioni militari, crisi finanziarie orchestrate, dazi proibitivi e campagne di dumping erano solo alcuni degli interventi diretti e sovvenzionati dallo stato che i “principi mercanti” britannici usavano abitualmente per proteggere i loro monopoli, spingendo nel contempo il “libero scambio” verso le loro vittime designate.

Un membro del Parlamento, mister Robertson, confermò l'opinione di Carey quando dichiarò alla Camera dei Comuni, il 22 ottobre 1831: “Era inutile da parte nostra cercare di persuadere altre nazioni ad unirsi a noi nell'adottare i principi di quello che veniva chiamato 'libero scambio'. Altre nazioni sapevano, così come il nobile Lord di fronte a noi e coloro che agivano con lui, che ciò che intendevamo per 'libero scambio' non era altro che, grazie ai grandi vantaggi di cui godevamo, ottenere il monopolio di tutti i loro mercati per i nostri produttori e impedire loro, tutti quanti, di diventare nazioni manifatturiere”.

Monopolio britannico nel Sud degli Stati Uniti

Nel 1860 la Gran Bretagna era diventata il principale produttore mondiale di tessuti e fili di cotone, importando l'80% del suo cotone grezzo dall'America.

Il cotone divenne così la principale esportazione del Sud e la Gran Bretagna il suo principale cliente. In sintesi, il Sud dipendeva dalla Gran Bretagna per il suo sostentamento.

Quando, nel 1824, i protezionisti cercarono di incoraggiare la produzione tessile statunitense imponendo dazi sulle importazioni straniere, i membri del Congresso del Sud li contrastarono. Il Nord non avrebbe mai potuto sperare di sostituire l'Inghilterra come partner commerciale del Sud, sostenevano, perché non sarebbe mai stato in grado di acquistare tanto cotone quanto l'Inghilterra.

Quest'ultima forniva prodotti di cotone al mondo, sostenevano, mentre le fabbriche del Nord rifornivano solo l'America, e solo una piccola parte di essa.

Cotton is King (1856) di David Christy – una polemica anti-protezionista che contribuì a ispirare la ribellione del Sud – sosteneva che le fabbriche statunitensi nel Nord non avevano la capacità di lavorare più di un quarto della resa totale. Inoltre la popolazione statunitense dell'epoca non poteva consumare più di un terzo della produzione del Sud, anche se le fabbriche statunitensi fossero riuscite a sfornare abbastanza indumenti di cotone per tutti. L'Inghilterra era quindi l'unico cliente valido, concluse Christy.

La lealtà del Sud degli Stati Uniti verso i suoi partner commerciali britannici era impressionante, ma non era ricambiata. La Gran Bretagna non cessò mai di cercare fonti alternative di cotone per sostituirlo, cercandole in Egitto, Brasile, India e altrove.

Come il sistema britannico incoraggiò la schiavitù

L'instancabile ricerca da parte dell'Inghilterra di cotone a prezzi più bassi spinse gli agricoltori del Sud degli Stati Uniti a offrire i prezzi più bassi possibili, cosa che riuscirono a fare solo utilizzando manodopera schiava.

Una delle principali critiche di Carey al sistema britannico era che incoraggiasse la schiavitù abbassando il prezzo del lavoro – cioè i salari – in tutto il mondo.

Sotto il sistema britannico, ogni Paese era costretto a fare affidamento sul commercio estero; a nessuno era permesso di diventare autosufficiente.

Così, ogni acquirente, in ogni Paese, setacciava costantemente il pianeta alla ricerca dei beni più economici. Allo stesso modo ogni venditore in tutto il mondo era in competizione per attrarre quegli acquirenti globali fornendo i beni più economici.

Il modo più semplice per produrre beni a basso costo era pagare meno i lavoratori.

Pertanto il sistema britannico premiava costantemente coloro che pagavano meno i lavoratori. I prodotti più economici, realizzati dai lavoratori meno pagati, ottenevano inevitabilmente la distribuzione più ampia.

Il lavoro da schiavi era il più economico di tutti e per questo motivo i beni prodotti dagli schiavi godevano di un vantaggio naturale nel sistema britannico.

“Qualsiasi sistema basato sull'idea di abbassare il prezzo delle materie prime manifatturiere [e] dei prodotti grezzi del lavoro agricolo e minerario, tende necessariamente alla schiavitù [...]”, concluse Carey nel suo opuscolo del 1867, Reconstruction: Industrial, Financial and Political.

“L'imperialismo del libero scambio”

Il sistema britannico esercitò un'ulteriore pressione sul Sud degli Stati Uniti.

Poiché quest'ultimo non aveva industrie interne, era costretto ad acquistare tutto ciò di cui aveva bisogno altrove, principalmente dall'Inghilterra.

Se il Sud avesse aumentato troppo i prezzi del cotone, gli inglesi l'avrebbero acquistato altrove; il reddito del Sud si sarebbe prosciugato.

I consumatori del Sud si sarebbero quindi trovati nell'impossibilità di permettersi i beni importati da cui dipendevano. In una crisi del genere, il sistema delle piantagioni stesso avrebbe potuto facilmente crollare.

I sudisti vivevano nel timore di un simile crollo e avrebbero fatto qualsiasi cosa per impedirlo.

Per questo motivo gli storici John Gallagher e Ronald Robinson definirono il Sud anteguerra un'“economia coloniale” della Gran Bretagna, nel loro articolo del 1953 intitolato The Imperialism of Free Trade.

La dipendenza dal commercio britannico non lasciò altra scelta ai sudisti se non quella di accontentare e cooperare con la Gran Bretagna in ogni questione: la definizione stessa di dipendenza coloniale.

L'impero Dixie britannico

“Le imprese commerciali britanniche trasformarono il cotone sudista in un'economia coloniale e gli investitori britannici speravano di fare lo stesso con il Midwest”, scrissero Gallagher e Robinson, “ma la forza politica del Paese [gli Stati Uniti] si oppose loro”.

Con queste parole Gallagher e Robinson svelarono le origini del conflitto che portò alla Guerra Civile Americana.

Dopo essere riusciti a stabilire un'“economia coloniale” nel Sud, gli inglesi si opposero a qualsiasi tentativo del Nord di interferire con il loro monopolio. In particolare si opposero a qualsiasi suo tentativo di sostituire la Gran Bretagna come principale partner commerciale del Sud, cosa che il Nord cercò continuamente di fare imponendo dazi doganali proibitivi sui prodotti britannici.

Nel loro articolo, The Imperialism of Free Trade, Gallagher e Robinson ammettevano che la Gran Bretagna considerava le industrie nascenti del Nord una minaccia al loro controllo coloniale sul Sud.

“Era impossibile fermare l'industrializzazione americana”, scrissero, “e le sezioni industrializzate [del Nord] fecero campagna propagandistica per ottenere dazi doganali nonostante l'opposizione di quelle sezioni [il Sud] che dipendevano dai rapporti commerciali britannici”.

Qui risiedeva la causa della Guerra Civile Americana.

Perché i Confederati inserirono una clausola di “libero scambio” nella loro Costituzione

Uno dei modi in cui i sudisti cercarono di compiacere e collaborare con la Gran Bretagna fu l'inserimento di una clausola di “libero scambio” nella Costituzione confederata adottata l'11 marzo 1861.

L'Articolo I, Sezione 8(1), stabiliva che “nessun dazio o tassa sulle importazioni da nazioni straniere [sarà] imposto per promuovere o favorire alcun ramo dell'industria [...]”.

Con queste parole i Confederati assicurarono ai loro protettori britannici di non avere alcuna ambizione di costruire industrie nazionali. Erano contenti di rimanere produttori a basso costo di alimenti e materie prime.

I diplomatici confederati usarono questa clausola di “libero scambio” nei loro negoziati con la Gran Bretagna.

Ad esempio, quando gli inviati confederati incontrarono John Russell, il Ministro degli Esteri britannico, il 4 maggio 1861, lo allettarono con la visione di un nuovo Sud indipendente, che non avrebbe mai più permesso a Washington di limitare il commercio britannico.

Russell reagì favorevolmente.

In seguito a questa conversazione gli inviati riferirono all'allora Segretario di Stato confederato, Robert Toombs, la lieta notizia che “l'Inghilterra non è in realtà contraria alla disintegrazione degli Stati Uniti e [Inghilterra e Francia] agiranno favorevolmente nei nostri confronti al primo successo [militare] decisivo che otterremo”.

La dipendenza economica porta alla dipendenza politica

Imponendo il “libero scambio” al Brasile, la Gran Bretagna aveva di fatto stabilito quello che Gallagher e Robinson chiamavano un dominio “informale” sul Paese.

Allo stesso modo la Costituzione del “libero scambio” della Confederazione ratificava il dominio “informale” della Gran Bretagna sul Sud degli Stati Uniti.

Nel loro articolo del 1953 Gallagher e Robinson sostenevano che esistessero in realtà due imperi britannici: uno “formale” e uno “informale”.

L'impero “formale” comprendeva quei Paesi su cui la Gran Bretagna esercitava un controllo diretto, solitamente indicati in rosso o rosa sulle vecchie mappe. L'impero “informale” comprendeva quei Paesi che la Gran Bretagna controllava attraverso accordi economici.

La differenza tra governo “formale” e “informale” era in realtà irrilevante, sostenevano gli autori, poiché la Gran Bretagna manteneva il controllo politico in entrambi i casi. “L'impero formale e quello informale sono essenzialmente interconnessi e in una certa misura intercambiabili”, concludevano.

I limiti sfumati del potere britannico

Cercare di determinare i limiti del potere britannico in base all'estensione del territorio “colorato in rosso sulle mappe” era “come giudicare le dimensioni e le caratteristiche degli iceberg basandosi esclusivamente sulle parti che emergono dalla linea di galleggiamento”, sostenevano Gallagher e Robinson.

Quei Paesi che in vari periodi sono stati sottoposti al dominio britannico “informale” erano parte integrante dell'Impero britannico, insistevano Gallagher e Robinson, nonostante non siano mai stati “colorati in rosso sulle mappe”.

I nomi di alcune di queste dipendenze “informali” sorprenderanno alcuni lettori.

L'India, che aveva apparentemente ottenuto la sua “indipendenza” nel 1947, era ancora sotto il dominio britannico “informale” all'epoca in cui gli autori scrivevano (1953), o almeno così sostenevano.

“L'India è passata da un'associazione informale a una formale con il Regno Unito e, dalla Seconda Guerra Mondiale, è tornata a una connessione informale”, scrissero.

Altri esempi di passate dipendenze britanniche – secondo Gallagher e Robinson – includevano Cina, Brasile, Argentina e il Sud degli Stati Uniti anteguerra.

L'élite coloniale del Sud

Gallagher e Robinson osservarono che, una volta che la Gran Bretagna avesse instaurato un sistema di “libero scambio” in un Paese, le élite locali avrebbero cercato di perpetuare quel sistema: “Una volta che le loro economie erano diventate sufficientemente dipendenti dal commercio estero, le classi la cui prosperità derivava da esso, si impegnavano nella politica locale per preservarne le condizioni necessarie”.

In altre parole i locali che traevano profitto dal commercio con la Gran Bretagna fungevano da rappresentanti locali per gli inglesi, facendo valere gli interessi britannici sul territorio.

Questo è ciò che intendeva Carey quando scrisse che “gli agenti britannici sono sempre stati in stretta alleanza con l'aristocrazia schiavista del Sud”.

L'“aristocrazia schiavista” pronunciata da Carey formò un'élite coloniale nel Sud, dello stesso tipo descritto da Gallagher e Robinson, “la cui prosperità derivava” dal “commercio estero” e su cui si poteva quindi contare per “impegnarsi nella politica locale” e preservare il potere britannico e il relativo progresso del programma di “libero scambio” britannico.

Era questa classe di persone, scrisse Carey, che cercava costantemente di annacquare i dazi doganali americani al punto che erano troppo bassi per influenzare i monopoli britannici.

Uno di questi dazi annacquato, la Walker Tariff del 1846, portò direttamente alle crisi finanziarie che intensificarono la nostra Guerra Civile, secondo Carey.

Nel 1867 scrisse: “Dalla data del ripristino del sistema monopolistico britannico nel 1846 [attraverso la Walker Tariff] siamo andati costantemente avanti distruggendo il commercio interno, aumentando la nostra dipendenza da Liverpool come luogo di scambi con tutto il mondo e aumentando il nostro debito estero, fino a raggiungere all'improvviso l'inevitabile risultato: lo scioglimento dell'Unione”.

Conclusione

A più di 156 anni dalla resa di Lee ad Appomattox, gli americani rimangono profondamente divisi sulla Guerra Civile.

Nessun evento nella nostra storia suscita risentimenti più profondi, né altro tema genera controversie più sconcertanti e difficili da risolvere.

Né questo articolo, né altri ancora da scrivere, riusciranno probabilmente a portare gli americani a un accordo sul perché abbiamo combattuto la Guerra Civile.

Spero che, raccogliendo questi fatti dimenticati, ciò abbia acceso la curiosità dei lettori, i quali potrebbero rendersi conto che la nostra storia è incompleta, che eventi vitali sono stati cancellati dalla nostra memoria e che dobbiamo impegnarci per recuperare ciò che è andato perduto.

Come possiamo affrontare il futuro senza la guida del passato?

Come dice il vecchio proverbio, tra i due litiganti il terzo gode.

La Gran Bretagna era il proverbiale terzo nel 1861.

Ma chi è il terzo oggi?

E cosa vuole?

Rispondere a queste domande non risolverà tutti i nostri problemi, ma potrebbe almeno consentirci di iniziare a discutere il tema del “divorzio nazionale” in modo costruttivo.

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

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Correct nomenclature, as I have long argued, is essential for our understanding of things, people, events. Unless we name something properly we will not know how to judge it or what the right course of action may be in response to what it does. This is why our public discourse is so mixed up in the matter of what to call things: Naming something rightly is powerful; so is naming something wrongly, or refusing to name it all.

We are now urged — and required by law in many jurisdictions — to accept a definition of “antisemitism” that is beyond preposterous. With the assistance of various committees and Jewish groups, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has crafted a “working definition” of this term that, to sum up its many clauses, makes criticism of Israel or Zionism antisemitic. This is an absurd misnomer — purposeful and very consequential.

Roughly three dozen states now accept the IHRA definition; as Chris Hedges reported this week, New Jersey is currently debating a law to this effect. An increasing number of institutions, notably but not only universities, are also using the IHRA definition. As Hedges asserts in the above-linked piece, this is a straight-out attack on free speech. Taking the IHRA definition to its logical conclusion, we are headed in the direction of thought control.

There are other cases — many, indeed — wherein the accepted nomenclature is critical. If you do not call the United States an empire you won’t be able to see why and how it has become, for some decades now, the No. 1 most violent, destructive and disruptive force in global affairs. And since we are not supposed to see any such thing, you cannot call the United States an empire and expect to be taken seriously in what is quaintly known as — another misnomer — polite company.

We come now to the question of Israel’s terror campaign in Gaza (and its escalating terror campaign in the West Bank). What shall we call these daily depravities? Do we or do we not witness a genocide?

If there is a more contentious case of getting the name right, I cannot think of it. Call Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide and you will understand the Zionist state one way and there will be legal ramifications; reject this term and you are wading around in “the right to defend itself” and other such notions — all of them as flimsy as that IHRA definition of antisemitism — and there will be no legal ramifications. It amounts to enabling justice or apologizing for limitless impunity.

I have never found the world to be very honest with itself. And it has been grossly dishonest since the autumn of 2023. For maybe 21 of these past 22 months, many people have insisted that Israel’s daily barbarities against the Palestinian people amount to a genocide. But the Gaza crisis has brought populations across the West face to face with their political impotence. In the seats of global power and among the media that serve them, Israel’s military aggressions and abuses of international law have gone unnamed. The consequences of this refusal can be measured any number of ways. The deaths of at least 60,000 Palestinians — and we can count this a conservative figure — are one of them.

Whether or not Israel is guilty of conducting a genocide should not be a question as the reality of its conduct enters its 22nd month. But it has been made a question, and at last this question-that-is-not-a-question begins to lose its power, its utility as a curtain drawn over Israel’s atrocities. This marks a significant advance, needless to say, in the right direction.

I have never found The New York Times to be very honest with itself, either. But when the once-but-no-longer newspaper of record takes to publishing opinion pieces (plural as of this week) that forthrightly accuse the Israelis not only of genocide but of genocidal intent, it is safe to conclude something of significance is in the hot summer winds.

We must be careful not to overstate what may come of a now-evident shift of opinion on Israel in high places — what and when. But in my read we are amid a sea change, a prelude to concerted action — legal, diplomatic, political, economic — against the Zionist regime.

Let us begin at the beginning. (And I do not mean to dismiss the long century of Israel’s aggressions against Palestinians prior to the afternoon of Oct. 7, 2023, when Israel began its assault on Gaza.)

In January 2024 the International Court of Justice found that it was “plausible” Israel was in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. I remember how disappointed I was to see the ICJ use so self-sabotaging a word. But even this ruling — cautious, provisional — prompted an uproar anyone paying attention will recall. Reflecting this — in my opinion reflecting this, I should say — the ICJ has since refrained from issuing a final, binding judgment and there is no telling when it will do so.

The first signs of an incipient change in the limits of acceptable discourse appeared last spring. There was a sudden spate of opinion pieces in the mainstream British press — The Economist, the Financial Times, The Independent, et al. — in which the atrocities of Israel’s war-that-is-not-war were at last acknowledged. “The longer it goes on,” The Financial Times wrote in a very pointed opinion piece signed by the editorial board, “the more those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit.”

These pieces anticipated by a few weeks yet more powerful denunciations of the “Jewish state” among various government officials. “I condemn Israel for what it is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza and indeed in the West Bank,” Mark Pritchard, a Conservative MP, said in the House of Commons May 6, “and I’d like to withdraw my support right now for the actions of Israel…. This is a moment in history when people look back, where we’ve got it wrong as a country.”

The headline atop the commentary I published in this space at the time was “Waves Upon the Sea of Silence.” So these were, but what prominent people were suddenly writing and saying in public places was more in the way of ripples. In all the pronouncements and denunciations one read and heard last spring, I know of no case that included the word “genocide.” The term was still all-but-officially off limits.

Now matters take yet another turn. It is as if the Western world is gradually inching its way toward a truthful judgment, with an implicit confession of past silence, of the Israelis’ sadistic attacks — and I consider them this — on the Palestinian people. Of Israel’s conduct of a genocide, this is to say.

Until now a few Israeli peace advocates and other voices of dissent have spoken honestly of the IDF’s purposefully genocidal atrocities. It is another thing when The New York Times publishes a long opinion piece under the headline, “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.” As many readers instantly understood, Omer Bartov’s essay, which appeared in The Times’s July 15 editions, was a very big deal, for what it said and where it said it. There it was, the “G” word, right in the headline. That yawning space between the sayable and the unsayable in matters to do with Israel suddenly seemed to get narrower.

A little Times-ology here. Bartov’s piece is typical of an old trick to which The Times resorts on occasions of ideological awkwardness. When something must be said that the paper does not want reported as fact in the news pages and with a Times reporter’s byline on it, it brings in an outside voice to hold forth in the opinion pages. So it is with Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown. I imagine The Times’s editors knew they were detonating a bomb when they published his piece; whether or not they knew, it was an explosion of some magnitude.

After explaining his scholarly caution in the first months following the events of October 2023, Bartov surveys the on-the-ground record and the many statements of intent we have heard from Israeli officials and writes:

My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.

Bartov goes on to cite the company he keeps as he declares this judgment: Amnesty International, the South Africans, who brought the above-mentioned  genocide case to the ICJ in December 2023, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, Amnesty International. This week two big names in Israel’s human-rights scene, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel issued reports, here and here, announcing they have come to the same conclusion. This time The Times reported this in its news pages; it was all over media elsewhere, too.

Read the Whole Article

The post Yes, It’s a Genocide appeared first on LewRockwell.

I found myself on a recent Judging Freedom episode saying that Trump as statesman tweets too much.  In retrospect, who am I to tell the President or anyone else to stop talking; it’s anti-liberty and rude.  Yet, it may be good advice; saying too much can help “enemies” to shape public opinion, and even to target Trump specifically.

Getting the dirt on a country’s leader – the intentions, the predilections, their secrets and their open confessions, tweets and threats – and using that dirt strategically is an intelligence function.  It’s what humans do on their own and in the employ of governments and businesses.  It’s part of the competition.  The hunter and the hunted, the prey outwitting the predator, or vice versa.

In nature, prey animals try to stay quiet, and the predator does the same.  Trump’s favorite sport is also a quiet game.  Even so, in both animal and human worlds, sound and action are used to warn the group, to compete for the best mates, and even to trick prey through subterfuge and deceit.  There are a variety of creatures that exhibit camouflage patterns to hide their real vulnerability, and mislead potential predators.  They pose as foul-tasting or dangerous, or hide in plain sight.

Trump may be the political version of the Texas wasp moth, which appears to be a dangerous stinging insect to avoid being eaten. Is Trump the Mothman?

Trump has created a lot of diversionary noise and confusion in his role of “Statesman Seeking Peace.”  His thinking on “king” dollar is a case in point, where he boldly and erroneously claims that BRICS was set up to “degenerate” or “break” the US dollar.

The average person, economist, and politician, in and out of BRICS, takes a far more evolutionary and fact-based approach.  The market in money, like anything else, moves towards security, trust, familiarity, and profitability.  There was a reason that the old Soviet ruble was never a natural draw for global investors – it was state-issued fiat on top of an impossible system of production, coupled with a largely made-up set of state data about that system of production. Beyond that flawed model, state corruption and propaganda is a global constant.  The bigger the state, the less accountable it has to be to either domestic or international forces. Trump’s solutions for saving the dollar do not appear to include actually improving dollar security, trust, familiarity and profitability. Like the Mothman itself, Trump’s strategies are not based in the natural order.

The more Trump speaks about his global intentions and solutions, ostensibly to Make American Great Again, the more he comes across as a statist, pursuing personality-, bureaucratic-, and party-driven mandates down to the smallest detail.   This kind of totalitarian obsessiveness in the Capitol is also an indicator that a nation, and its money, is in the process of dying.

Trump doesn’t like made-up data, at least when it makes him look bad.  But if Trump was really interested in facts, he would take on the entire system of inflation statistics (designed to reduce government outlays in COLA).  He would attack the idea that government spending should be counted as additional GDP (without consideration of the government’s compulsive serial rape and abuse of actual domestic productivity).  He would end, not harangue, the Federal Reserve (which exists, as Tucker and economist Richard Werner discuss, to fund government wars on the backs of the unborn). If Trump cared about facts, he would learn something factual about the major conflicts he is funding, in Biden’s footsteps.

Statesman Trump is as uninterested in the true US impact on the world as he is about the world itself. Instead, he wants to build out a vision filled with things he does know, like nice hotels, golf courses, casinos, and boats  – through diplomatic threats, trade favors and penalties, and military power.  Trump’s foreign policy is just thin.  Diplomatic threats, reversals, and evolving promises quickly earned him the hated descriptor “Trump Always Chickens Out.”  Illustrating the lightning speed at which the world communicates outside the state, global and domestic catcalls of TACO became a tool to manipulate Trump, one he reacted to rather than controlled.

Trump’s foreign policy is thin for two reasons.  First, he does not seek or demand depth of information – and summarily rejects information that contradicts his own presumptions and assumptions. For example, he heard some things he didn’t understand about Iran from his Director of National Intelligence, so he publicly threw Tulsi Gabbard under the bus.  Secondly, Trump appears not to hold any substantive philosophy that helps him understand the nature of money, in particular the infective debilitation of a national economy that comes from unreasonable lie-based state-borrowing, and state-directed and incentivized money-printing.  His personal experience in becoming a billionaire and surviving a number of personal debt crises in his businesses taught him that debt is a game, and if you are good at the game, you will be OK.

As to philosophy, Scott Ritter says it all when he says Trump cheats at golf.  But it is Adam Smith who explains why Trump’s “statesmanship” is a problem:

…[E]very individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Successful “management” of a fading fiat currency burdened by unpayable trillions in US government debt requires that for every mistake, there are only two choices:  aggressively correct course, or compound the errors by continuing to misunderstand or misread the environment, the rules, and the data.  Trump seems to be misreading or misunderstanding the environment, the rules and the data, time after time.

Like the Texas wasp moth, he looks like he’ll do damage to the overweening state, but it’s a camouflage to ensure he can get what he really wants – applause, power, and an absolutely worthless Nobel Peace Prize.

So, does Trump talk too much, tweet too much, and threaten too much?  It’s not my place to say, but I think these tendencies reveal that his vision is not to create enduring American economic health and productivity.  Instead, he is happy to continue familiar, self-justified and ever-expanding DC imperialism with just a touch of fascismo in the pattern of his 20th and 21st century predecessors.

Six months in, second time around, Trump already seems frustrated.  How will he react when he discovers the whole world is moving on philosophically, economically, and innovatively without America’s permission?  How will he feel as he watches US vassals and beneficiaries collapsing under their own false premises, and promises, about money, state spending and war? I imagine he will tell us in a tweet, thanking us for our attention to the matter, and silently – or not – wonder if he can get a mulligan.

The post Does President Trump Talk Too Much? appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Today, we’ll explore some of the most common criticisms of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism.

Imagine two tribes. One is cohesive and tightly knit. The other promotes hyper-individualism. Which is likely to win in a conflict?

Doug Casey: There’s nothing wrong with forming cohesive groups. Humans have always been tribal because it’s conducive to survival. Many hands make light work. And specialization and division of labor—which is critical for progress—is only possible with a group. The problem is whether the group is voluntary or coercive in nature.

And you’re right. In a war, the tribe structured like a military unit has some advantages over a loose group of rugged individualists. But its only advantage is in war, which is something to be avoided at almost any cost. Why, then, do humans usually default to collectivism instead of libertarianism?

Unfortunately, the institution of the family, which is the foundation of society, inadvertently sets a bad example. That’s because the family—by its very nature—is authoritarian and socialistic. The parents call the shots and provide free food and shelter, while the kids get into the habit early of having things provided for them. They give according to their ability and receive according to their needs, a Marxist ideal. So perhaps the family, which is a good thing, paradoxically gets people off on the wrong foot.

Worse, in the real world, the arguments for liberty and individualism are all intellectual. They’re logical, they make sense—but most people don’t reason. The average person doesn’t live in an intellectual world; he lives in an emotional world. He acts according to what he feels, not what he thinks. He does what feels right without thinking about the consequences—even the immediate and direct ones, let alone the indirect and delayed ones. Reason is often used to justify emotions.

Those are two major reasons—and there are lots of others—why socialism has more appeal than capitalism, not to mention libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism.

The socialistic habits we learn with the family are reinforced by emotions, feelings, and, oftentimes, irrational assumptions. Unlike libertarianism, socialism promises something for nothing, the prospect of automatic security, and a perpetual free lunch. Socialism sounds better to those who haven’t got critical thinking skills. That’s a real problem, and a cause for pessimism about the future of humanity.

The problem is compounded by the nature of politics, which brings out the worst in people. When you’re trying to influence “the masses,” emotion works 100 times better than reason. Worse yet, the people who are drawn to politics want power and want to manipulate others. Politics naturally attracts criminal personalities.

It’s almost genetically guaranteed that individualists, AnCaps, and libertarians have the odds stacked against them.

International Man: How, then, do you respond to critics who argue that libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism are impractical, utopian fantasies?

Doug Casey: Well, you can look at this from two points of view—the practical and the moral.

In primitive times, it was possible for a central power to dictate how much food would cost, how much laborers would be paid, and what the rules were in every area of life. It was counterproductive, but it was possible because things were very simple, unlike today’s world, with billions of people and trillions of transactions taking place every day. However, central authorities and socialism are at odds with a technological society. Collectivism is unworkable on any scale larger than a family, as the Soviets and the Maoists proved. It turned out that, in the real world, communism was the utopian fantasy.

More importantly, any system other than radical libertarianism is immoral. I won’t discuss property rights at length here, but suffice it to say that your primary possession is your own body. And why should anybody else have a right to tell you what you must or must not do with your own body? That includes how you use it, what you ingest, what you think, what you say, and how you use your other possessions. Every person is a sovereign being.

Unfortunately, humans’ innate character flaws and ingrained psychological tendencies cause them to do self-destructive things like trying to replicate the family on a giant scale, by creating the institution of the State.

International Man: How do you respond to those who argue that libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism are, at best, irrelevant? And at worst, tools used by powerful interests to atomize individuals, making them easier to control and dominate?

Doug Casey: Politicians are disinclined to treat people as individuals. They try to control and dominate by forcing individuals to become parts of a collective.

Some say libertarianism is irrelevant because so few people understand its principles. And even if they do understand them, they don’t put them into effect.

But libertarianism cyclically expands and contracts. For instance, the reason that America was unique in world history is that it was the first country ever founded on the principles of libertarianism. And those principles are responsible for its immense success. But over America’s history, sometimes those principles grow, and sometimes they fade.

Libertarianism is basically a belief in the non-aggression principle and the limiting of force. Anarcho-capitalism goes beyond libertarianism because it doesn’t believe in the existence of the State as an entity, as an institution. And 50 years ago, the term “anarcho-capitalism” didn’t even exist. Now it’s widely discussed. The president of Argentina is an anarcho-capitalist, and the country is being radically transformed.

Speaking as an Ancap myself, I’d like to see not just 200, but eight billion sovereign nations in the world. The key is to develop institutions and accepted ways of thinking that emphasize cooperation, not coercion, in everything.

International Man: Many libertarians and anarcho-capitalists argue that fully privatizing all property would effectively solve the migrant and border issue.

Critics, however, say this vision is unrealistic and not a serious solution, claiming it ultimately serves as cover for open-border advocacy and worsens the situation in practice.

How do you respond to that criticism?

Doug Casey: Moving the U.S. toward pure libertarianism—anarcho-capitalism—is by far the best solution to the border issue. Much better than walls and border guards checking to see if “your papers are in order.” If 100% of the U.S. were privately owned, with no exceptions, it would be up to the owner of that property to decide whether any given person or group could use it or trespass on it.

The real problem is the welfare systems of the U.S. In the 19th century, there was immense immigration to the U.S. But there was zero government support. Arrivals were immediately responsible for feeding, clothing, and housing themselves—or they would, frankly, starve. Immigrants knew that. As a result, the U.S. drew the best and most enterprising people.

Today, however, migrants are quite aware of the immense welfare systems available at the local, State, and national levels, in addition to what’s provided by NGOs, which are basically maintained with tax dollars, directly or indirectly. There are networks that actively facilitate the travel and upkeep of the migrants. If welfare were abolished, we wouldn’t draw these kinds of people. The argument can be made that George Soros might use his billions to purposely import them to property that he owns. But there they would have to stay; it’s a straw man argument.

Without a government to support them, migrants would be discouraged. Of course, they could steal for a living. But thieves could expect to be treated harshly, perhaps with extreme prejudice.

Ultimately, you can’t keep people from coming or going. And why should you? Groups have migrated throughout world history. But the best way to maintain stability is with 100% private property, not a reliance on political gimmicks. Politicians can be corrupted and bribed. In fact, that’s why many get into politics. Ancaps rely on the market, not politicos, bureaucrats, and storm troopers, to maintain stability.

International Man: Libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism emphasize individual liberty and voluntary exchange, but critics argue they offer little guidance on deeper ethical or moral responsibilities beyond the non-aggression principle.

How do you see these philosophies addressing complicated questions of ethics and morality in real-world situations?

Doug Casey: Ancaps don’t intend to address issues of ethics and morality. Those things are settled by religion and philosophy. Libertarianism and ancapism are mainly concerned with how society can best protect itself from the initiation of force and fraud. It doesn’t really matter what philosophy or religion individuals are partial to, as long as they don’t initiate violence against each other.

Remember, there are just two rules: Do all that you say you’re going to do, and don’t impinge upon other people or their property. With only two laws, you don’t need a legislature. And ignorance of the law is truly no excuse.

Beyond that, you can believe or do whatever you’d like. The fact of the matter is that birds of a feather naturally flock together. People form into groups based on whatever is important to them. For some, it’s their race. For some, it’s their religion. For some, it’s their way of thinking. None of that matters as long as they don’t aggress against other individuals or other groups.

There’s much more to be said about these things. I urge you to read “The Market for Liberty.” It’s a very short book. But one that can totally change how you see the world.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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