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The United States government says it has about 261 million troy ounces of gold in its gold reserves. That is rather impressive, if true.

The US government is not a great role model for honesty, though. So, it seems a good idea to put its gold claim to the test.

President Donald Trump talked on occasion in the first couple months of his second term about traveling to Fort Knox where much of the gold is supposed to be held to check if it is really there. But, more recently, he has largely gone silent about the matter.

Maybe an act of Congress is what is needed to double-check that all the gold is where the government says it is. That is just what Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced on Friday — the Gold Reserve Transparency Act (HR 3795).

Massie’s bill requires the Comptroller General to “contract with a qualified, independent, third-party, external auditor to conduct and complete … a full assay, inventory, and audit of all gold reserves” within nine months of the bill becoming law and every five years thereafter. The auditor would also report on other gold reserves related matters including the sufficiency of measures for the physical security of the gold reserves; all encumbrances on the gold at present or entered into over the last 50 years; all sales, purchases, disbursements, or receipts of gold over those 50 years along with identification of the terms and parties for those transactions; and a full accounting of all third parties held gold in which the US government – including the Federal Reserve — has a direct or indirect interest.

The Comptroller General is further required by the legislation to report every five years all results, findings, and determinations of the bill’s required investigations to Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury, as well as on the internet for the public. All relied on source material would need to be included with the reports. Redactions, the bill specifies, may be made only in regard to physical security for the gold reserves.

Massie is an advisory board member for the Ron Paul Institute.

Original cosponsors of the Gold Reserve Transparency Act are Reps. Warren Davidson (R-OH), Addison McDowell (R-NC), and Troy Nehls (R-TX).

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

The post Rep. Thomas Massie Introduces US Gold Reserves Audit Bill appeared first on LewRockwell.

At some point a clarifying event occurs which confirms that you are at the end of the road. In this particular case we are talking again about the bothersome subject of fiscal sanity—and the exclamation point the Donald supplied recently when his was trolling the House GOP caucus in behalf of his Big Beautiful Bill.

In order to ensure the extension of his precious (but unpaid for) 2017 tax cut and provide budgetary sanction for a 13% increase in defense spending and 60% rise in outlays for border control, the Donald doesn’t want any “grandstanders” upsetting the works:

“Don’t f‑‑‑ around with Medicaid,” Trump told lawmakers in the private meeting. Trump had told reporters before the meeting that the bill is not cutting “anything meaningful (from Medicaid),” and instead was focused on “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Well, let’s see. Along with his defense and border control increases, Trump has ruled out cuts in Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and presumably interest on the public debt. So those sacred cows alone account for fully $62 trillion or 66% of total Federal spending over the next 10-years, and today he was commanding the corporal’s guard of fiscal hawks left in the GOP caucus to stay away from another $8.2 trillion in Medicaid spending over the decade, too.

So that’s a no-fly zone amounting to more than $70 trillion or 77% of Federal spending during the 10-year budget window ahead. In turn, that means there’s only $24 trillion left to cut, representing the entirety of the rest of the Federal government from the Washington Monument to the Klondike National Park in Alaska.

Then again, what’s left outside of this $70 trillion ring-fence also happens to be less than the size of the out-of-control deficit that would result from the Donald’s Great Big Beautiful Bill over the next 10-years. The idea of painting yourself into a corner, therefore, hardly does justice to the sheer fiscal lunacy of where the Trumpified GOP has implanted itself.

And, no, you are not going to save more than nickels and dimes by attacking “fraud, waste and abuse”, which the Donald apparently claims to be his alternative. Indeed, we know from first hand experience that “waste, fraud and abuse”reduction is the go to hiding place for chicken shit politicians who don’t want to face the fact that there are only two levers to save real money when it comes to the major entitlements. To wit, you must change the statutory language to either reduce the number of people eligible or cut the level of benefits per person. And since these kinds of measures save real money, they also generate angry constituencies. The truth being, of course, that there is no politically antiseptic way to cut the budget.

In the case of Medicaid, there were about 80 million recipients in 2024 and average spending per capita was $11,400 overall, of which the Federal share was $7,300 per person. So if you just eliminated the ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid, which most Republicans have advocated ever since its 2010 enactment, the recipient rolls would total 40 million, not 80 million; and, all other things equal, you could save $325 billion per year or about $4 trillion over the budget window.

That’s real money, of course. It could pay for the $2 trillion cost of extending the most important part of the TCJA—the marginal rate reductions—and still provide another $2 trillion for reduction of the $22 trillion baseline deficit over 2026-2035.

Or, in the alternative, you could cut the rolls to the 70 million level that Trump inherited in 2017 before he also massively expanded Medicaid in 2020, and reduce real benefits/per recipient to about the $9,000 level (2024 $) that prevailed in the year 2000. Back then, even Bill Clinton thought Medicaid was doing its safety net job. Yet taken together pre-Trump recipient rolls and Bill Clinton levels of real benefits per recipient would reduce spending by about $200 billion in 2026 and $2.5 trillion over the next decade.

But, no, the GOP legislative draftsman didn’t even have the cajones to attempt either of these reasonable roll-backs. Instead, they marked-up barely $700 billion of savings, and even that much is sketchy in the extreme. That’s because the one measure that would actually reduce the beneficiary rolls—a work requirement for able-bodied beneficiaries—does not really kick-in until after 2028, and is so loophole ridden that it is sure to invite extensive work-arounds out in the blue states of New York and California were a high share of working-age Medicaid recipients reside.

So the truth is, the Trumpified GOP is apparently copacetic with de facto socialist health care. With Medicare off-limits, ObamaCare left in tact and now Medicaid consigned by the Donald himself to the “no f*ck around” zone, what we actually have is a combined Medicaid, Medicare and the ObamaCare insurance subsidy population that totals 141 million Americans after you eliminate the dual and triple eligibles.

That’s 41% of the entire US population! And yet the Donald had the audacity to attack Congressman Tom Massie and his small band of fiscal conservative stalwarts for insisting that the final Reconciliation bill include meaningful Medicaid and other cuts to at least begin to whittle down the $22 trillion of deficits built in over the next 10 years under the CBO baseline. And, as we showed yesterday, upwards of $30 trillion of cumulative deficits under the Trumpified GOP’s Great Big Ugly Debt Bomb as currently written.

Stated as succinctly as possible, if you think that Tom Massie is the problem and should be kicked out of the GOP, it’s a sign that you are so full of shit that your back teeth will soon be floating. Truly, the Donald’s attack below marks the end of the road for any hope that the GOP will ever rise to the occasion and take on the budgetary Doomsday Machine that is now careening rapidly toward Fiscal Armageddon.

“I don’t think Thomas Massie understands government,” Trump told reporters before the meeting. “I think he’s a grandstander, frankly. I think he should be voted out of office.”

After all, here again is the record of runaway Medicaid growth since the turn of the century. Constant dollar spending has tripled and the number of recipients has doubled. Yet if the Trumpified GOP is going to give this fiscal abomination a hall pass, pray tell what is left that they might actually have the courage to seriously cut?

After all, we dare say their are precious few Republican voters among the 80 million Medicaid recipients. And even among the estimated 800,000 resident of Medicaid nursing homes, we’d guess there are precious few GOP votes. Once the Dem vote harvesters sweep through the nursing homes, in fact, there are not normally many GOP votes in the absentee sheets they later stuff into the ballot boxes.

In short, we think the Donald’s demarche on Medicaid is a very big deal. It literally means that any serious attention to the nation’s soaring public debt is over and done—at least through 2028; and after that point the debt/bond yield/interest expense doom loop may be too powerful for any democratic government to stop.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post When Medicaid Is The Donald’s No Play Around Zone—It’s All Over Except The Shouting appeared first on LewRockwell.

It often pays, literally, to be perceived as a perpetual victim, a status that Israel and the Jewish institutional constituency have exploited relentlessly since 1945. It is now eighty years since the Second World War ended and the numbers of those receiving “holocaust” reparations from the German government hardly seems to diminish and may now include children of survivors who presumably were somehow damaged in the womb after the conflict ended and the camps in Europe were “liberated.” More than 20,000 Jews fled to Shanghai in China before and during the war, avoiding the prison camps in Europe, but they too are reported to be eligible for reparations. And then there are the still sprouting-everywhere taxpayer funded holocaust memorials and museums throughout the US even though the alleged events commemorated took place a long time ago and far away from America. Public schools and some state colleges in America are also increasingly being compelled to teach about the so-called holocaust as part of the required history syllabus, so the brainwashing will continue into the next generation.

Excuse me, but if all of the above cannot be perceived at least in part as special consideration granted to a tiny part of the US population which is admittedly hugely disproportionately wealthy and politically powerful, it begs one to provide a satisfactory explanation for the developments. The latest turn of the wheel comes in the wake of the killing of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington DC. It is not widely known that the US Department of Homeland Security gives out discretionary grants of aid money to help provide security for nonprofit entities and groups that are perceived by the government as being threatened. The largest tranche of those grants, to the tune of more than $275 million in 2024 went to Jewish groups, monuments and buildings. A number of Jewish organizations and Israel-First congressmen are now calling for that money to be increased dramatically by an additional $1 billion. The money is justified by the much-touted claim that Jews are experiencing a surge in what is described as “antisemitism.” As many of the compilers of the statistics behind the surge are themselves Jewish groups that in some fashion benefit from the cash in hand, like the dreadful Anti-Defamation League (ADL) headed by the ghastly Jonathan Greenblatt, one might reasonably suspect that the numbers are cooked to include incidents so minor as to pass under normal circumstances. And there is also the issue of Israel itself, which is carrying out a genocide in Gaza and an occupation by Jewish settlers of what remains of historic Palestine on the West Bank. As the US government and groups like ADL define criticism of Israel as antisemitism any such commentary is rolled neatly into the statistics claiming the surge in anti-Jewish sentiment when it is really about the monstrous behavior of the Jewish state, which, in fact declares itself to be just that in law, that is, a Jewish state.

And it doesn’t all end there. There are numerous Jewish or neocon think tanks and foundations, all of which are well funded without any real need for a federal government handout to provide their security. Most of them claim to be “charitable” or “educational” to secure a tax exemption while they dig their talons deep into government in the United States at all levels down even to the state and local levels where many citizens cannot even write a letter to the editor to protest against Israel’s behavior without being denied benefits as an antisemite. Witness the recently passed antisemitism in education act in Arizona, which takes an extreme response to fear of antisemitism and makes it even more outrageous. The legislation bars public schools and public colleges from promoting what it describes as “antisemitic conduct” and creates disciplinary procedures for violations.

Worse than that, some states require applicants for jobs or benefits to sign a document confirming that they will not ever support the so-called BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) which calls for pressuring the war criminals in Tel Aviv using economic measures. Indeed, the federal government is even worse with a national campaign against America’s universities being given alleged “credibility” by the depiction of college campuses as hotbeds of Jew-hatred even though in reality it is not about Jews per se and is rather Israel’s behavior that is arousing student anger as the mass starvation makes the piles of dead Palestinian babies continue to grow.

Israel’s perpetual victim status is part of the cover story that has been developed, most particularly in the United States, to explain away atrocities that have been carried out by the Israelis against their neighbors since and even before the founding of the state. As early as 1917 during the First World War, Britain, the colonial power in Palestine, responded to Jewish pressure from its major banking families with the Balfour Resolution, which promised a Jewish homeland. During the later post World War 2 period of the transition from British colonial rule which foresaw a division of Mandate Palestine into two separate states, Jewish terrorist groups brought pressure by assassinating British officials and soldiers and blowing up hotels and residences. They even went so far as to bomb and destroy the British Embassy in Rome!

Israel kills Americans whenever it believes there is some advantage to be gained from doing so and no presidents since John F Kennedy and George HW Bush have dared to push back to protect United States civilians and military even when major US interests are at stake. This reticence about confronting Israel has clearly been due to the widely recognized malignant power and wealth of the Israel Lobby. To cite only the most egregious killing of Americans by Israel, I would recall the June 8th, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 crewmen and injured 171 more. The crew’s dwindling number of survivors are this very weekend having a reunion in Norfolk Virginia.

The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States named Lyndon Johnson even back nearly sixty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country. The two-hour assault on the Liberty was, in truth, the worst attack ever carried out on a US Naval vessel in peace time. It was a surprise attack which was clearly intended to destroy the intelligence gathering vessel operating in international waters collecting information on the ongoing Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and using gunboats from the sea. When the ship’s distress signal was received, the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga launched fighters to go to its assistance, but they were called back under orders from President Johnson. The incredible courage and determination of the surviving crew was the only thing that kept the Liberty from sinking.

The Israelis and their political and media supporters in the United States have always claimed the attack was a tragic mistake while many of the Liberty crew have indicated their firm belief that it was anything but, that the vessel was flying an oversized American flag and was clearly and easily identifiable as a US Navy vessel. The ship’s commanding officer Captain William McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic role in keeping the ship afloat, though President Lyndon Baines Johnson broke with tradition and refused to hold the medal ceremony in the White House, also declining to award it personally, delegating that task to the Secretary of the Navy in an unpublicized presentation made at the Washington Navy Yard. The additional medals given to other crew members in the aftermath of the attack made the USS Liberty the most decorated ship in the history of the United States Navy.

The Liberty crew was sworn to secrecy over the incident and a hastily convened and conducted court of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain acted under orders from Washington to declare the attack a case of mistaken identity. The inquiry’s senior legal counsel Captain Ward Boston, who subsequently declared the attack to be a “deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew,” also described how “President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” The court’s findings were rewritten and sections relating to Israeli war crimes, to include the machine gunning of life rafts, were excised. Following in his father’s footsteps, Senator John McCain of Arizona later used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to effectively block any reconvening of a board of inquiry to reexamine the evidence. The cover-up continues to this day. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis is one of the most ardent Israel-firsters in national politics. He describes his state as the most “Pro-Israel” in the US. When he was a congressman representing a Florida district several retired Liberty survivors who were his constituents sought to meet with him. He turned them down. Most of the documents relating to the Liberty incident have never been released to the public in spite of the 58 years that have passed since the attack took place.

Israel famously has long sustained the doctrine that Jews are somehow chosen by God and can do no wrong when they are advancing their own interests. This belief has meant near constant warfare directed against neighbors like the Palestinians, as well as against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Currently the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is intent on destroying Iran’s military capabilities with the help of the United States of America. Netanyahu has argued repeatedly for over twenty years that Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear weapon, which would threaten both Israel and the region, but both the CIA and even Mossad agree that there is no such development being pursued on the part of the Iranian government. Ironically, Israel is the only country in the Middle East region that is “nuclear.” It has a substantial secret arsenal consisting of 200-300 nuclear bombs that was obtained illegally by theft from the United States. JFK may have paid a price for his temerity when he tried to expose Jewish groups that were acting as fronts for the Israeli government while also stopping the nuclear development and disarming them. I am not aware of any American politician having ever challenged Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal publicly and it is widely believed within the federal government that to do so would be “illegal.” That is what putting “Israel First” is all about!

I am sad to observe over this USS Liberty weekend how President Donald Trump is apparently crawling to Netanyahu and his murderous associates, just like his predecessor in office Genocide Joe Biden. The US has again in the UN Security Council vetoed an otherwise unanimous vote to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, supporting Israel but no conceivable US or even humanitarian interest. Instead of taking the relatively simple step to contact Netanyahu and tell him that he must end the slaughter of the Palestinians using weapons, money and political cover all provided in abundance by Uncle Sam or face the consequences immediately. No more money, weapons and visits from pathetic grifter Senators like Lindsey Graham. In fact it might be a good thing to suggest to Bibi that he-she Lindsey just might be tried for treason as he is interfering illegally with US foreign policy in both Gaza and Ukraine. But we will save that story for another time, maybe next week!

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

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The great Murray Rothbard was taken from us far too soon in 1995 at the age of 68.  His death left a void in the libertarian movement that could never be filled.  I often long for his unfiltered, contrarian, non-interventionist commentary on world events, never more so than today with the Israel-Palestine conflict.  What would Rothbard think about Israel’s invasion of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 Israelis, 70% of them civilians?

In preview, I will begin by examining Rothbard’s framework on war and how he felt it should be conducted in order to conform to libertarian principles.  Next, I will apply his criteria to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, assuming they are acting in self-defense.  Finally, I will attempt to determine who is the historical aggressor in the Israel-Palestine conflict as seen through Rothbard’s eyes.  Thankfully, he left us a wealth of written material on the subject.

First some personal background: My introduction to Austrian economics began in 1989 with the discovery of the Mises Institute and while attending the week-long Mises University in the summer of 1990.  Mises U was the intellectual experience of a lifetime.  Lectures were given and classes taught by a Who’s Who of Austro-libertarianism: Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Joe Sobran, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Walter Block, Sheldon Richman, Yuri Maltsev, Jeffrey Herbener and Roger Garrison, among others.  Without question, Rothbard was the rock star of the group.  As students, we all had backstage passes which allowed us to rub shoulders with and pick the brains of “the talent.”  Rothbard was known to stay up late at night in conversation with students.  He relished in the experience and his laugh (more like a cackle) was as unforgettable as it was infectious.

The breadth of Rothbard’s knowledge on various subjects was breathtaking.  He was like five geniuses rolled into one.  I recently asked David Gordon, a close personal friend of Rothbard and leading scholar with a deep understanding of his work, “What was he most passionate about and dedicated the greatest amount of his writing attention to?”  He replied, “Avoiding war would probably be his greatest concern.”  I also asked, “In For a New Liberty (1973), Rothbard dedicated an entire chapter to ‘War and Foreign Policy.’  Did he ever deviate from this at all in his final 22 years?”  His answer: “No.”

Murray Rothbard is a joy to read in part because of his logical clarity and consistency.  If you truly want to understand his intellectual framework on war, I suggest reading the first nine pages of this chapter in For a New Liberty or his essay, “War, Peace and the State” (1963).

Rothbard’s war framework

How did Rothbard apply libertarian principles to war and foreign policy in a less-than-perfect world of nation-states?

Libertarians favor liberty as a natural human right, and advocate it not only for Americans but for all peoples.  In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no “foreign policy” because there would be no States, no governments with a monopoly of coercion over particular territorial areas.  But since we live in a world of nation-states. And since this system is hardly likely to disappear in the near future, what is the attitude of libertarians toward foreign policy in the current State-ridden world?

Pending the dissolution of States, libertarians desire to limit, to whittle down, the area of governmental power in all directions and as much as possible…

Specifically, the entire land area of the world is now parcelled out among various States, and each land area is ruled by a central government with monopoly of violence over that area.  In relations between States, then, the libertarian goal is to keep each of those States from extending their violence to other countries, so that each State’s tyranny is at least confined to its own bailiwick…  In short, the objective of the libertarian is to confine any existing State to as small a degree of invasion of person and property as possible.  And this means the total avoidance of war.  The people under each State should pressure “their” respective States not to attack one another, or, if a conflict should break out, to withdraw from it as quickly as physically possible.1

He continues:

Let us assume for the moment, a world of two hypothetical countries: Graustark and Belgravia.  Each is ruled by its own State.  What happens if the government of Graustark invades the territory of Belgravia?  From the libertarian point of view two evils immediately occur.  First, the Graustark Army begins to slaughter innocent Belgravian civilians, persons who are not implicated in whatever crimes the Belgravian government might have committed.  War, then, is mass murder, and this massive invasion of the right to life, of self-ownership, of numbers of people is not only a crime but, for the libertarian, the ultimate crime.  Second, since all governments obtain their revenue from the thievery of coercive taxation, any mobilization and launching of troops inevitably involve an increase in tax-coercion in Graustark.  For both reasons – because inter-State wars inevitably involve both mass murder and an increase in tax-coercion, the libertarian opposes war.  Period.2

Rothbard then draws a distinction between modern wars and pre-modern wars:

It was not always thus. During the Middle Ages, the scope of wars was far more limited.  Before the rise of modern weapons, armaments were so limited that governments could – and often did – strictly confine their violence to the armies of the rival governments.  It is true that tax coercion increased, but at least there was no mass murder of the innocents.  Not only was firepower low enough to confine violence to the armies of the contending sides, but in the pre-modern era there was no central nation-state that spoke inevitably in the name of all inhabitants of a given land area.  If one set of kings or barons fought another, it was not felt that everyone in the area must be a dedicated partisan.  Moreover, instead of mass conscript armies enslaved to their respective rulers, armies were small bands of hired mercenaries.  Often, a favorite sport for the populace was to observe a battle from the safety of the town ramparts, and war was regarded as something of a sporting match.  But with the rise of the centralizing State and of modern weapons of mass destruction, the slaughter of civilians, as well as conscript armies, have become a vital part of inter-State warfare.3

He continues:

Suppose that despite possible libertarian opposition, war has broken out.  Clearly, the libertarian position should be that, so long as the war continues, the scope of assault upon innocent civilians must be diminished as much as possible.  Old-fashioned international law had two excellent devices to accomplish this goal: the “laws of war,” and the “laws of neutrality” or “neutral’s rights”…  In short, the libertarian tries to induce the warring States to observe fully the rights of neutral citizens.  The “laws of war,” for their part, were designed to limit as much as possible the invasion by warring States of the rights of civilians in their respective countries.  As the British jurist F.J.P. Veale put it:

“The fundamental principle of this code was that hostilities between civilized peoples must be limited to the armed forces…  It drew a distinction between combatants and non-combatants by laying down that the sole business of the combatants is to fight each other and, consequently, that non-combatants must be excluded from the scope of military operations.”4

When was the line crossed into modern warfare?

In the modified form of prohibiting the bombardment of all cities not in the front line, this rule held in Western European wars in recent centuries until Britain launched the strategic bombing of civilians in World War II.  Now, of course, the entire concept is scarcely remembered, since the very nature of modern nuclear warfare rests upon the annihilation of civilians.5

Even so, Rothbard did not rule out the unlikely possibility of a just, defensive war, listing three criteria:

(a) weapons limited so that no civilians were injured in their persons or property;

(b) volunteer rather than conscript armies; and also

(c) financing by voluntary methods instead of taxation6

He even gave a fairly recent example that came close, the Indo-Pakastani war of 1971.

Furthermore, Rothbard was opposed to other countries jumping in and escalating a conflict, even on the side of the country being attacked:

To return to our hypothetical Graustark and Belgravia, suppose that Graustark has invaded Belgravia, and that a third government, Walldavia, now leaps into the war in order to defend Belgravia against “Graustarkian aggression.”  Is this action justifiable?  Here, indeed, is the germ of the pernicious twentieth century theory of “collective security” – the idea that when one government “aggresses” against another, it is the moral obligation of the other governments of the world to band together to defend the “victimized” State.

There are several fatal flaws in this concept of collective security against “aggression.”  One is that when Walldavia, or any other States, leap into the fray they are themselves expanding and compounding the extent of the aggression, because they are (1) unjustly slaughtering masses of Graustarkian civilians, and (2) increasing tax-coercion over Walldavian citizens.  Furthermore, (3) in this age when States and subjects are closely identifiable, Walldavia is thereby leaving Walldavian citizens open to retaliation by Graustarkian bombers or missiles.  Thus, entry into the war by Walldavian government puts into jeopardy the very lives and properties of Walldavian citizens which the government is supposed to be protecting.  Finally, (4) conscription-enslavement of Walldavian citizens will usually intensify.

If this kind of “collective security” should really be applied on a worldwide scale, with all the “Walldavias” rushing into every local conflict and escalating them, every local skirmish would soon be raised into a global conflagration.7

On war, Murray Rothbard had two overarching concerns:

Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy and prefer to spend their energies either on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such “domestic” concerns as the free market or privatizing postal service or garbage disposal.  Yet an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial importance to libertarians.  There are two important reasons.  One has become a cliché, but is all too true nevertheless: the overriding importance of preventing a nuclear holocaust.  To all the long-standing reasons, moral and economic, against an interventionist foreign policy has now been added the imminent, ever-present threat of world destruction…

The other reason is that, apart from the nuclear menace, war, in the words of the libertarian Randolph Bourne, “is the health of the State.”  War has always been the occasion of a great – and usually permanent – acceleration and intensification of State power over society.  War is the great excuse for mobilizing all the energies and resources of the nation, in the name of patriotic rhetoric, under the aegis and dictation of the State apparatus.  It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.  Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest.  Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morals – as the libertarian Albert Jay Nock once phrased it – of an “army on the march.”8

Applying Rothbard’s self-defense criteria to Israel’s invasion of Gaza

Let us assume that Israel has been acting in self-defense in its retaliation for the October 7th attacks (as well as previous attacks) and apply Rothbard’s criteria for just war conduct:

1. Protection of civilians – Just two months into Israel’s Gaza bombing campaign, researchers called it the most destructive of this century. As reported by Al Jazeera, “Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed at least 41,165 Palestinians living in Gaza, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.  At least 16,756 children have been killed, the highest number of children recorded in a single year of conflict over the past two decades…  At least 97,303 people are injured in Gaza – equal to one in 23 people…  In the past year, three quarters of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been infected with contagious diseases due to a lack of sanitation, open sewage and inadequate access to hygiene…  At least 2.15 million people, or 96 percent of Gaza’s population, are facing severe lack of food.  One in five Palestinians, or about 495,000 people, are facing starvation…”
2. Conscription – As cited by Grok, “Israel’s conscription system is unique among developed countries due to its near-universal mandatory military service for both men and women, a policy rooted in its ongoing security challenges… Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israel has significantly expanded conscription by increasing the reserve force cap to 450,000, extending mandatory service to three years, raising reserve exemption ages, and advancing legislation to include Haredi Jews, though with limited scope.”
3. Taxation – As per Grok, “According to the OECD’s 2023 data, Israel’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 31.2% in 2022, slightly below the OECD average of 34.0%… Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israel has increased taxes, notably raising VAT to 18% and implementing a 15% global minimum corporate tax, driven by war-related defense spending and a growing budget deficit.  These changes have slightly elevated the tax burden, but debt financing has absorbed much of the fiscal strain.”

Read the Whole Article

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It has become obvious over the past few years that more and more Americans are questioning not only the wisdom behind our unwavering support of Israel, but Jewish power and influence itself. The artist formerly known as Kanye West played a large role here, as did other prominent Blacks like Jason Whitlock and Candace Owens.

White conservatives, which in the past were more likely to criticize Israel, have been completely coopted by the Rapture bunch, the ones who enable the Jews’ elitist notion that they are God’s “chosen people.” Every politician who hopes to hold elected office visits the Wailing Wall in Israel, and dons a yarmulke. I’d call it just another humiliation ritual, but I’m sure that would be labeled “anti-Semitic.” Consider how Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that “if the Capitol crumbles to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to Israel…that’s fundamental.” One member of our Congress has worn his IDF uniform to work. Lindsay Graham isn’t the only U.S. “representative” that has stated Israel should nuke Iran. Whether or not he really did have some kind of verbal altercation with Bibi Netanyahu, Donald Trump’s support of Israel is such that they have streets named after him there.

Because Black people are generally untouchable in terms of public criticism, their anti-Zionist or blunt anti-Jewish comments were ignored at first. Ignored by a state controlled media which consists of a wildly disproportionate number of Jews in prominent positions. But something happened when Ben Shapiro- who fits every historical stereotype of an obnoxious, parasitic figure who profits from a society he considers himself outside of- fired Candace Owens from the Daily Wire. Prior to that, Owens was a pretty innocuous Black conservative- the kind the Stupid Party salivates over. However, Owens was triggered enough by her dismissal to apparently start researching some forbidden topics. Pretty much anything to do with Jews collectively, the religion or the race, is “forbidden.” Ask the Anti-Defamation League, which serves as an unregistered agent for the foreign state of Israel.

To a large extent, the ADL controls public discourse in this country. If I was well known enough, they would be all over my Substack, and this article in particular. They police speech in America, even though they are not an American outfit. Now, because this same media promoted and enabled Black entertainers, creating monstrous egos in the process, someone like Kanye West felt comfortable in going where no White man in show business had gone before. And even though they retaliated by largely depleting his fortune, West hasn’t really backed down. He’s taken to wearing what looks like a Black version of a KKK outfit, and his latest song is provocatively titled “Heil Hitler.” And Owens has all but “denied” the Holocaust, pointing out all the Christian genocide and questioning why that ethnic cleansing isn’t constantly referenced. Where are the films about the Catholics slaughtered by the Bolsheviks?

Ben Shapiro went apoplectic after Owens challenged him to a public debate. Her main point of contention was the proper definition of “anti-Semitism.” She wanted Shapiro to explain just what “anti-Semitism” is. Not surprisingly, Shapiro never accepted that challenge. Since the term is bandied about so often, it would be helpful to all of us to know exactly what is meant by it. Does it mean defamation of the entire Jewish people? The religion- if it is a religion? The race- if it is a race? Many of us have wondered how so many members of a particular religion can have identifiable physical traits. Does anyone look like a Methodist? As a Catholic, I can’t recognize other members of my faith by their looks. And then there is the polling which suggests that a large number, perhaps a majority, of Jews are actually atheists. That’s pretty odd. I mean, if you’re an atheist, then you’d no longer be a Jew, right?

Shapiro has commented that he is only loyal to America because the state of Israel exists. He called the Jewish state a “backstop in case anything should go wrong” here in America 2.0. What exactly could “go wrong,” one wonders? Perhaps if millions of Americans suddenly realize how much power a tiny group comprising just two percent of the population wields in this country? And questioned it? Shapiro must cringe every time Whitlock refers to “the tribe” with a knowing smile on his face, or the Black Hoge twins chuckle over Jewish power, and respectfully interview the likes of David Duke. More of the alt media is indeed starting to question Jewish influence in America. Or really the world. How is the president of Mexico a Jewish woman? Are there any other Jews in Mexico? There are too many questions that dare not be asked, and some of us are tired of that. We ought to be able to question everything.

The intense anger that Shapiro has been known for was matched recently by Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports. Now I don’t really know what the significance of Barstool Sports is, or how Portnoy could possibly make $200 million or whatever from it. Portnoy is not one of those rare Irish success stories. A viral video of a near maniacal Portnoy, lashing out at a gentile talking head who works for him, revealed how these prominent Jews wear their religion/race/whatever it is on their sleeves. He called the guy juvenile names, and disparaged him for telling “Jew jokes” when “all these Jews are dying.” This has been a common refrain from the ADL types for seemingly forever. “Anti-Semitism” is always said to be “on the rise.” “Hate crimes” against Jews are always said to be increasing. The fact that pretty much every one of these incidents is proven to be a hoax doesn’t quiet the refrain. Just stop with the Jew jokes! Portnoy fancies himself a “player,” and has been accused of sexual misconduct.

The foundation of all the Orwellian “hate speech” nonsense is what has indelicately been referred to as “the Jewish Question.” It is “hate” to question anything about this one special group. Even though Jewish comedians have long joked themselves about the “goyim,” it is “hate” to claim that Jews refer in this demeaning manner (“goyim” supposedly means “cattle”) to gentiles. If you watched Portnoy’s recent rant, you saw someone who clearly believes he’s superior, lashing out at a person he obviously considers beneath him. I would call this “arrogance,” but to claim any Jew is arrogant is one of the estimated billion examples of “anti-Semitism.” Other verboten questions would be how did Jews become so involved in moneylending? Why are names associated with earthly wealth, like gold, silver, diamond, ruby, etc., invariably Jewish? Did Jews invent the concept of charging interest? What Catholics decried as usury?

As readers of my work know, so much of history has been suppressed that it is very difficult to ascertain the truth about anything. It must always be remembered that history is written by the victors. I’ve seen the March 24, 1933 newspaper headline from the London Daily Express, which declared, “Judea Declares War on Germany: Jews of all the World Unite in Action.” It certainly looks legitimate. Maybe they had AI in 1933. This trumpeted a boycott of Hitler’s government, and the American Jewish Congress held a massive rally in Madison Square Garden, advocating the same thing. This was years before any concentration camps. More disturbingly, the figure of 6 million was apparently used multiple times before World War II. A 1906 article in the New York Times worried about “the condition and future of Russia’s 6 million Jews.” It also claimed that the Czar’s government had a “studied policy for the ‘solution’ of the Jewish question is systematic and murderous extermination.”

The World Zionist Organization warned in 1911 about the “annihilation of 6 million people.” In 1914, the New York Times again talked about the American Jewish Relief Committee, which had convened a conference to “consider the plight of more than 6 million Jews who live within the war zone.” New York Governor Martin H. Glynn wrote an article titled “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!” which was published in the American Hebrew magazine on October 31, 1919. In it, Glynn revealed, “Six million men and women are dying from lack of the necessaries of life…” In 1921, the Chicago Tribune featured an article which claimed that “Russia’s 6 million Jews are facing extermination by massacre…” On December 29, 1931 a Montreal newspaper quoted Rabbi Stephen Wise that 6 million Jews faced starvation in southeastern Europe. In 1936, the New York Times asked England to “…throw open the gates of Palestine and let in the victimized and persecuted Jews escaping from the European holocaust.”

Read the Whole Article

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Thanks,  Tim McGraw. 

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Click Here:

John Leake

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Writes Brian Dunaway:

This column by Daniel Morena Vitonvia of The Mises Institute, posted on ZeroHedge, is among the most succinct, elegant writing I’ve seen on how inflation degrades the spiritual self. I was especially taken by these two passages:

“Saving, which is linked to sacrifice, also benefits the economy of giving, and deflation supports it – because falling prices discourage leverage, especially in households. As capital use becomes less profitable, the opportunity cost of making donations drops, which increases charitable giving both in absolute and relative terms. Inflation, by contrast, is harmful because it reduces the value of inheritances, and one of the strongest incentives to save before death is the desire to leave something to one’s loved ones. From this, it follows that one of the most powerful motivations for preserving wealth is the ability to make donations.”

And this distillation of Hülsmann, “Inflation is a hidden tax with devastating economic and moral consequences; it encourages the population to go into debt by making credit cheaper, and it penalizes saving, increasing the length of time preference. Not only that, but it is also a spiritual burden. It drives people to seek ways to protect their savings, making society more materialistic, causing people to prioritize money over happiness, and often forcing them to migrate, thereby breaking family and patriotic ties.” (Emphasis mine.)

I was really struck by the truth, “causing people to prioritize money over happiness.” When I was a young man, I used all the imagination I could muster to understand what it would be like to have great wealth. Aside from lustful adventures, what I imagined was awful. I thought to myself that I would be perpetually considering how best to protect my fortune. (I also considered that even if one creates new wealth, almost anything is psychologically normalized rather quickly, and that the greatest joys, physical and spiritual, require little to no money at all.) I recently read that William Kissam Vanderbilt (grandson of Cornelius), shortly before his death in 1920 (as reported in The New York Times), shared that “My life was never destined to be quite happy. … Inherited wealth is a real handicap to happiness. It is as certain a death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.”

I’ve often felt that unhappiness is not just fathered by evil, but a synonym for it, even more so for the perpetrator than the victim. If the love of money is the root of all evil, so it is misery even more.

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Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Smithsonian Magazine

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Thanks, Thomas Jefferson.

See here.

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Thanks, Bruce McLane.

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See here:

https://courtenayturner.com/ep-487-operation-george-floyd-unmasking-the-multi-layered-psyop-w-maryam-henein/

https://publiusnationalpost.substack.com/p/operation-george-floyd-a-multi-layered

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Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

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Thanks, Tim McGraw. 

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Thanks,  Saleh Abdullah. 

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Writes Tim McGraw:

I wish I could still write like this:

Romance in Belem, 1990

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Thanks. Saleh Abdullah. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYBq1LRleGM

https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/rethinking-japan/

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The relentless bombing of Gaza, with its gut-wrenching toll on civilian lives—children buried under rubble, families torn apart, entire neighborhoods reduced to ash—has become a grotesque spectacle on the global stage. The effort to bully Americans into co-signing this carnage, framed as a necessary strike against Hamas terrorists (whom Israel itself has funded and empowered), is not merely a geopolitical maneuver. It is a direct assault on the heart of Christianity’s 2,000-year legacy: the personhood revolution inaugurated by Jesus Christ. This campaign to normalize the massacre of the vulnerable will not succeed, however. The world today is too Christ-haunted, too saturated with the moral power of the victim, for such a repeal to take hold. Instead, it will backfire, exposing the fragility of empires built on scapegoating and violence. The Gaza crisis is a crucible, testing whether the West will embrace its Christian roots or reject them at its own peril.

On October 23, 2017, The American Conservative published my reflection (https://aneighborschoice.com/our-shocking-acceptance-of-state-sanctioned-violence/) on state-sanctioned violence, where I recounted a courtroom exchange that stunned a jury: “Why would I put a human being in a cage for using a blue pen? That is a nonviolent act and there is no victim.” The same question echoes now in Gaza’s smoldering ruins. Why would we endorse the slaughter of innocents to punish the guilty? The logic of collective punishment, of bombing schools and hospitals to “root out” Hamas, is the logic of the archaic sacred, where scapegoats were sacrificed to appease communal rage. This is the pre-Christian order Jesus dismantled when He stood in the place of the victim, exposing the lie that violence against the innocent can restore harmony. Yet today, powerful voices—politicians, pundits, and even some Christian leaders—demand we cheer for this bloodshed, as if Christ’s revelation never happened.

René Girard, the late Stanford professor whose mimetic theory I’ve long drawn upon, taught us that human societies are built on the scapegoat mechanism. We channel our rivalries and fears into violence against a designated “other,” believing their destruction will unify us. In Gaza, this mechanism is laid bare. Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, 2023, were indefensible, but Israel’s response—blockading, invading, and bombing with a death toll that includes thousands of children—has turned Palestinians into the West’s latest scapegoat. The narrative is familiar: “They” are the problem; “their” suffering is collateral damage; “we” must stand united in our righteous cause. This is the old pagan script, not the Gospel.

Christianity, through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, upended this script. The Cross revealed the victim as innocent, the mob as complicit, and the state’s violence as a sham. Mary’s Magnificat sings of this revolution: God scatters the proud, lifts the lowly, and defends the vulnerable. To co-sign Gaza’s bombing is to reject this song, to objectify Jesus as a mere symbol rather than the living truth who demands we see the personhood in every human face, especially the suffering. It is an attempt to repeal Christianity itself, to return to a world where might makes right and the weak are expendable.

But this repeal will not work. The world is too “Christ-haunted,” as Flannery O’Connor might say. The personhood revolution has seeped into our moral DNA, even among those who reject the Church. Why else do images of Gaza’s children—bloodied, orphaned, weeping—pierce our consciences? Why do global protests swell, from campuses to capitals, demanding a ceasefire? The West, for all its secular posturing, cannot escape the victim-powered ethic Jesus unleashed. Even atheists, shaped by 2,000 years of Christian anthropology, recoil at the sight of collective punishment. The more the war machine tries to drown out these cries with bombs, the louder the world’s conscience grows. This is not weakness; it is the enduring power of the Cross, which exposes violence as a lie that cannot hold.

The backfire is already evident. Evangelicals, long a bastion of uncritical support for Israel, are showing cracks of doubt. 2023 survey by Christianity Today (https://www.christianitytoday.com/2023/12/christian-views-israel-hamas-war-gaza-ceasefire-survey/) found that 42% of American evangelicals support an immediate ceasefire, and 50% acknowledge that Israel’s blockade has oppressed Palestinians. These numbers reflect a growing unease, a recognition that violence begets violence, and that dismissing Palestinian humanity—Christian, Muslim, or otherwise—betrays the Gospel. The dominant voices cheering for Gaza’s destruction are increasingly out of step, not just with global sentiment but with the nuanced convictions of many believers. The more the West ignores this, the more it risks alienating its own soul.

This crisis is a testing ground for the West’s Christian values. Will we embrace the personhood revolution—caring for the poor, the downtrodden, the scapegoated, as the early Church did? Or will we reject it, doubling down on the myth that bombs can secure peace? The stakes are existential. A civilization that sacrifices the vulnerable to preserve its power is a civilization that has already lost its way. The West, built on the Christian insight that every person bears God’s image, cannot survive if it trades that truth for the false gods of ethno-narcissism and militarism.

On my radio show, A Neighbor’s Choice, I’ve argued that true liberty is the absence of fear—fear of death, lack, or the “other.” Jesus modeled this liberty by refusing to scapegoat, by dining with sinners, by touching lepers. In Gaza, we are called to do the same: to reject the fear-driven narrative that paints all Palestinians as threats, to see their faces as neighbors, not enemies. The world watches as we decide. If we fail this moment, we do not just betray Gaza’s children; we betray ourselves, unraveling the moral fabric that holds us together.

The Gaza crisis is beyond a geopolitical tragedy; it is a spiritual test. It challenges us to live out the Gospel’s radical call to nonviolence and solidarity with the victim. The attempt to repeal Christianity’s personhood revolution will fail because the truth of the Cross is too potent, too deeply woven into our world. But the cost of that failure will be ours to bear if we choose the path of violence over the path of love. Let us choose wisely, lest we find ourselves strangers to the very values that made us who we are.

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Warning: The following article contains disturbing content, including the potential presidency of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the next American Civil War.

At the peak of America’s temporary insanity, amid COVID-19 and the George Floyd hysteria, I wrote a novel that imagined a triumphant AOC in the White House, which most people found laughably implausible.

My creative muse entertained dramatic scenarios. The threat of open borders, and the Texas governor sending state troops to the Rio Grande. A raid on President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago. An aging President Biden dropping out of the 2024 election to be replaced by a left-wing woman of color. State-controlled censorship and a Ministry of Truth. Student loan forgiveness. Weaponization of the judicial system to target political enemies.

I predicted every one of those things in my novel States of Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Ocasio-Cortez Administration. Although some of the details were slightly off, my book proved sadly prophetic, albeit under Joe Biden instead of AOC.

The notion of a violent clash between opposing American states may seem farfetched, but we have seen it before. As Mark Twain said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Out-of-touch coastal elitists underestimate the fire of liberty that still burns in the hearts of American patriots. Unlike any other country on the planet, America has a deeply ingrained spirit of freedom and independence. If constitutional rights get trampled, at some point governors, law enforcement, and military personnel will remember their oaths to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

In many ways, America has been preparing for the coming crisis. Perhaps our collective subconscious understands what few of us mindfully recognize: that today’s opposing political factions are becoming hopelessly irreconcilable.

In recent years, America has self-segregated along ideological lines. Countless friendships, marriages, and family relationships have ended over these differences. Millions of people have voted with their feet by emigrating from blue states to red states. People are choosing sides.

I’m not saying this is a good thing, but I recognize a pattern—like the growing gulf that separated North and South in the years leading up to the Civil War—where mounting tensions and communication breakdown lead each side to demonize the other, ultimately resulting in violence.

The harmless-looking, mask-wearing Prius driver may amuse you with her “COEXIST” bumper sticker, but don’t be fooled. More and more Democrats openly condone violence—even assassination—in the furtherance of their cause. They celebrate Luigi Mangione as a hero, cheer on Hamas, and yearn for the safe return of an MS-13 wife beater. They have also become strangely enamored with the war in Ukraine that has killed hundreds of thousands of young men.

Despite their bumper stickers and sanctimonious “Hate has no home here” yard signs, there can be no peaceful coexistence between our two diametrically opposed factions. The left will not relent until MAGA is destroyed by any means possible.

Trump and his supporters breathed a huge sigh of relief last year when he and our country literally and figuratively dodged a bullet. Yet we remain a sharply divided nation. And now the leftist resistance is fighting back.

Bernie Sanders and AOC are filling arenas and raising millions from Trump-deranged Democrats who are doubling down on the crazy policies that nearly destroyed America under four years of Biden. Bernie is passing his socialist mantle to AOC, who has emerged as a leading contender for the presidency in 2028.

Now the thought of an AOC White House is not so funny.

The same Marxist-animated ideology of the Biden White House puppet-masters would be unleashed with a vengeance in an Ocasio-Cortez administration. And it very well may produce the dreaded outcome detailed in my book: the next American civil war.

Republican control of the executive and legislative branches is an extremely fragile thing. The fate of our fifty-fifty nation hinges upon a few thousand votes in fickle swing states. American memories are woefully short, and by 2028 the failures of the left’s policies will be largely forgotten in many corners.

With the departure of a multitude of MAGA voters from blue states like California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts, those constituencies are hardening in their resistance to Trump’s America First agenda. They will not go quietly into the night.

They hate Trump more than they love America. They demonstrate that hatred by fighting Trump’s every move, even to the shocking point of abusing the judiciary to return foreign criminal gang members to America’s streets.

They cheered on the destructive policies of a cognitively impaired Joe Biden—record-level inflation, unsustainable debt, widespread foreign disasters, a flood of illegal immigration, and failed energy policies—despite irrefutable damage to the country.

They reveal their disdain for the Constitution by calling for government censorship of speech they don’t like, by engaging in lawfare to eliminate political opponents, and by centralizing power in an unlimited administrative state. While they enjoy their own armed security, they seek to deny private citizens their Second Amendment rights.

How does this all end? AOC and her leftist followers understand Chairman Mao’s edict that power flows from the barrel of a gun. Let’s hope that the guns remain in the hands of those who support and defend the Constitution.

The post Stranger than Fiction: Could An AOC Presidency Spark the Next Civil War? appeared first on LewRockwell.