Lew Rockwell Institute

While American businesses and consumers are bearing the burden of higher costs from tariffs and inflation, the United States is providing a $20 billion bailout to Argentina’s Milei regime.  This bailout is separate from the $20 billion bailout given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to Argentina earlier this year. Argentina is by far the largest debtor to the IMF.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US has reached a $20 billion currency swap agreement with Argentina’s central bank, allowing it to exchange Argentine pesos for the US dollar. CNN reported that the US also bought, “an undisclosed amount of Argentine pesos.”

The bailout would greatly benefit Rob Citrone, a billionaire hedge fund manager with substantial investments in Argentina. “Bessent’s personal and professional relationship with Citrone has spanned decades,” according to journalist Judd Legum.

“It’s unclear why the Trump administration is providing a de facto bailout of the Argentinian peso when there is no significant financial or economic relationship between the two economies,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at the audit and consulting firm, RSM.

Furthermore, we should question whether the US bailout of Argentina is motivated by the Milei regime’s enthusiastic support of the US and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We should acknowledge that President Trump is a puppet of political donor Miriam Adelson and Israeli Prime Minister (and de-facto US President) Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ordinary people suffer the consequences of the reckless economic policies of their politicians. The Argentinian people should demand the immediate removal of the incompetent Milei regime and the American people should demand the immediate removal of the treasonous Netanyahu-Trump regime.

The post Milei Bailout appeared first on LewRockwell.

We are all familiar with the wonderful descriptive term, “the welfare-warfare state.” Ron Paul frequently uses it, as does Lew Rockwell, the late Justin Raimondo, Tom Woods, Thomas DiLorenzo, and myself. Murray Rothbard coined it in his brilliant essay, “The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique,” in Marvin E. Gettleman & David Mermelstein, ed., The Great Society Reader: The Failure of American Liberalism, 1967. This is one of three crucial articles by Rothbard which defines and outlines this important concept describing our society today and how it became that way. The other two articles are: “Origins of the Welfare State in America,” and “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals.” 

The concept has its origin with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who united Germany under his doctrine of “Blood and Iron,” at the same time his American counterpart was waging his own war of coercive national unification. Bismarck, in creating the ideological justification for what became “the welfare-warfare state,” gave birth to the paradigm which continues to invigorate and mold the American political landscape of today.

Because of the tremendous number of key American intellectuals who studied in Germany during the time of Bismarck in preparation for their doctorate degrees (or in post-doctoral studies), and who returned emboldened and willing to use the state to transform society, the Progressive Movement was born. Although not household names today, these highly influential men included Richard Ely, Albion Woodbury Small, W. E. B. DuBois, Franz Boas, Walter Weyl, Nicholas Murray Butler, Edmund J. James, Walter Rauschenbusch, E. R. A. Seligman, Henry C. Adams, John W. Burgess, William James, George Santayana, Henry Farnam, George Herbert Mead, Frank Taussig, Simon Patten, John Bates Clark, Herbert Baxter Adams, Arthur T. Hadley. Each of them has had a long lasting impact on American society through their ideas and the subsequent generations these ideas shaped.

Ideas do not exist in a sterile vacuum but are often intertwined and serendipitously related to each other. Such is the case of various statist doctrines that came to fruition in the 19th century, and which still dramatically affect our world today. “Scientific racism,” “social Darwinism,” eugenics, Comtean positivism, imperialism, and “social imperialism,” were pseudoscientific rationales for the expansionary and invasive welfare-warfare state at home and abroad.

As Princeton’s Thomas C. Leonard noted in his seminal article, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era:”

Progressive opposition to laissez faire was motivated by a set of deep intellectual commitments regarding the relationship between social science, social scientific expertise and right governance. The progressives were committed to 1) the explanatory power of scientific (especially statistical) social inquiry to get at the root causes of social and economic problems; 2) the legitimacy of social control, which derives from a holist conception of society as prior to and greater than the sum of its constituent individuals; 3) the efficacy of social control via expert management of public administration; where 4) expertise is both sufficient and necessary for the task of wise public administration.

The post Roots of the Welfare-Warfare State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Earlier this week my wife Dawn and I had the joyous opportunity to meet up with Drs Sam and Mark Bailey in Salt Lake City, Utah where they’d come to be the Keynote Speakers at the Weston A Price Foundation’s Wise Traditions Conference.

And now you can attend their Live-Stream Presentations, October 18, 19 & 20th, 2025 – along with many other amazing presenters.

Plus, you can get a CD or USB record of the entire conference, HERE.

Here’s the schedule:

Friday, October 18, 7.30-9.30pm (MDT)

Dr Samantha Bailey: SECRETS OF A STAGED PANDEMIC

Saturday, October 19

11.00am-12.15pm (MDT)

Dr Samantha Bailey: THE TRUTH ABOUT LYME DISEASE

6:30–9:30pm (MDT)

Dr Mark Bailey: AWARDS BANQUET AND KEYNOTE: VIROLOGY’S FINAL DAYS

Sunday, October 20

10.45am-12pm Dr Mark Bailey: A LOGICAL END TO VIROLOGY

1:30–2:45pm (MDT)

Drs Mark Bailey, Samantha Bailey, Tom Cowan, Andrew Kaufman “Virus Deniers Unite Panel”

Don’t miss this rare event!

IMPORTANT!

If you miss this event please go to their website where you can watch their MANY videos and read their Paradigm Changing papers, HERE.

Highly Recommended

The post Meet Drs Sam & Mark Bailey appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Yankee Problem in America, by Clyde Wilson

Fanatical Yankee Utopians, by Thomas DiLorenzo

Blame the Beechers and That Fanatic Finney, by Charles Burris

Just War, by Murray N. Rothbard

The Damn Yankees and Their War, by Charles Burris

Causes of the American Civil War, by Charles Burris

In the midst of the vicious and violent assault by willfully ignorant street mobs on American historical memory prior to Year Zero (formerly known as 2009 when Obama took office), here is vital authoritative, factual, historical information you need to know.

There are two seminal issues to consider when examining the War of 1861-1865: They are the defense of revolutionary Southern self-determination or secession, and abolitionism.

Why did the Southern states want to leave the Union?

Why did the Northern states refuse to let them go?

The War was both the culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution.

The War marked the decisive turning point in the inexorable growth of government and coercive authority, and most accurately should be described as the War for Coercive National Unification. The same situation was going on in Europe at the same time under Otto von Bismarck and his wars to unify and create the nation-state of Germany.

Slavery and secession are two separate issues.

Secession was a revolutionary right of free peoples to determine their destiny.

Slavery was a gross violation of inalienable human rights.

Even if slavery explains why the Southern states left the Union, it does not necessarily explain or justify the general government under Lincoln refusal to recognize their independence and launch an unconstitutional invasion of the South.

Slavery still fails to explain why the Northern states resorted to force or coercion; letting the lower South go in peace was a viable, antislavery option refused by Lincoln.

Most militant abolitionists believed there was no contradiction between condemning slavery and advocating secession (in particular, see the essays by the Boston abolitionist Lysander Spooner below).

The War was a tragic, needless conflict. It was all about power and control, the imposition upon or domination of one geographic section of people by another without their consent.

The Real History of Slavery, by Thomas Sowell

Why The War Was Not About Slavery, by Clyde Wilson

Lysander Spooner was a Boston abolitionist who wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (a favorite, much cited book by Robert Barnes). He also authored the three powerful articles below in his No Treason series:

No Treason #1

No Treason #2: The Constitution

No Treason #6: The Constitution of No Authority

Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War

“Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War” is a book, edited by D. Jonathan White, that challenges the common narrative that Northerners were united against secession from the start. The book argues that there was significant and enduring opposition to the war in the North, which is often overlooked in favor of the story of a unified, righteous effort to suppress the rebellion. Opposition groups, such as the Copperheads, favored immediate peace and resisted the draft, while other opponents argued the war was unnecessary and costly, prompting Lincoln to take measures like suspending habeas corpus.

The post The Damn Yankees and Their War appeared first on LewRockwell.

LewRockwell.com readers are supporting LRC and shopping at the same time. It’s easy and does not cost you a penny more than it would if you didn’t go through the LRC link. Just click on the Amazon link on LewRockwell.com’s homepage and add your items to your cart. It’s that easy!

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1. Rational Fasting: Official Ehret Society Edition 
2. Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines
3. Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
4. Understanding Terrain Theory: Rethinking Disease, Uncovering Its True Causes, and Reclaiming Health Naturally 
   
5. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945
6. The Covenantal Structure of Christian Economics: A Primer on Economics from a Biblical Worldview
7. The Self-Care Toolkit (4 books in 1): Self-Therapy, Freedom From Anxiety, Transform Your Self-Talk, Control Your Thoughts, & Stop Overthinking
8. The COVID-19 VACCINES & Beyond …: What the Medical Industrial Complex is NOT Telling Us
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10. Anti-Inflammatory Eating Made Easy: 75 Recipes with Meal Plans for Beginners
    
11. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician
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14. Over the Counter Natural Cures, Expanded Edition: Take Charge of Your Health in 30 Days with 10 Lifesaving Supplements for under $10
    
15. Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel
16. Future Shock
17. The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma (The Wilson Files)
18. The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America
19. Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300 
20. The Time of the Signs: A Chronology of Earth’s Final Events

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It all started on March 5, 2014: a US sponsored fascist coalition government under the disguise of democracy was installed in Ukraine.

With historical foresight pertaining to the dangers of a Third World War, this article by Felicity Arbuthnot was first published more than eleven years ago on March 15, 2014 in the immediate wake of the US sponsored EuroMaidan Coup d’état. 

***

On March 5, Ukraine’s Putsch “Prime Minister” Arseniy Yatsenyuk, arbitrarily sacked three senior Defence Ministry politicians, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Oleynik, with Deputy Defense Ministers Vladimir Mozharovskiy and Arturo Francisco Babenko.

According to Itar-Tass (6th March 2014) they had drawn Yatsenyuk’s ire by expressing:

“sharp criticism over giving the Right Sector militants the status of regular military units.”

A contact of the publication stated that one of the three had also:

“told Yatsenyuk that actions of today’s Kiev authorities in overtures with radical nationalist organizations would destroy national unity” and that it was simply: “harmful to involve the state military agency in such dangerous games.”

Their stand resulted in “management reshuffles” – in the country in which Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has stated that the US has invested $5 Billion: “in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good

So far US multi-billion democracy-building via the man of whom Nuland opined to the US Ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt: “I think Yats is the guy …”(2) has all the hallmarks of becoming a mirror of the historic tragedies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and being plotted via further humanitarian horrors committed by their proxies in Syria.

Additionally the Nobel Peace Laureate American President appears to have reignited the Cold War, laid to rest with such joy across the world as the Berlin Wall fell just over twenty four years ago, on the 9th November 1989.

However, if the US Administration’s choice as a democratic Prime Minister is scarily woeful, the man who would be President, Dmitry Yarosh, is nothing short of astonishing. As Julie Levesque has written in a meticulous, jaw dropping article: “Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Maidan Brown Shirts (is) on an international wanted list and charged with inciting terrorism.

“Under the new government, Yarosh is leader of the Neo-Nazi Right Sector delegation to the Ukraine Parliament. His close friend and political partner Andriy Parubiy co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed by the new government to the position of Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. Right Sektor leaders Yarosh was appointed to the number two position at RNBOU.”

Levesque asks: “Have the Neo-Nazis cornered Ukraine’s National Security agenda?”.

The answer would appear to be a rapidly accelerating affirmative, with Robert Parry stating that Neo-Nazis are now in charge of four Ministries and:

“some ten ‘oligarchs’ mostly run the show in shifting alliances, buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population faces a bleak future, which now includes more European-demanded ‘austerity’ …”(4)

Meanwhile the stand-off over the Crimea continues. Train tickets between Kiev and Crimea have been suspended by the latest government shoehorned in to the latest “new democracy.”

In neighbouring Russia, as the Sochi Paralympics opened with a spectacular ceremony, President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel and their parties hurled their collective toys from their prams and failed to attend. Another chance to make peace not war in what should be the Olympic spirit, also willfully thrown away.

The opening theme was “Breaking The Ice,” and “the importance of breaking down barriers and stereotypes …” a popular 1990’s Russian song called “Good-bye America” played as the Russian team closed the parade.

However for all the US posturing, Gallop shows President Putin’s popularity rating at a consistent 67.8% an endorsement of which his American counterpart could only dream, fluctuating between 38% to 42%.

As this ends news comes through that the US is to send fighter jets and personnel to Poland and Lithuania by Thursday, the US Navy destroyer, the USS Truxton, one of the largest destroyers ever built for the US Navy, has crossed in to the Black Sea for “exercises” with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies (5) there are mass protests in the south and east of Ukraine about the “self proclaimed” government in Kiev and America has unleashed a possible World War Three.

Somebody in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, please demand the return of that ill awarded Peace Prize.

Notes

1. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26079957

3.http://www.globalresearch.ca/democratization-and-anti-semitism-in-ukraine-neo-nazi-symbols-become-the-new-normal/5371919

4. http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/09/crimeas-case-for-leaving-ukraine/

5. http://rt.com/news/us-fighter-jets-poland-830/

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Ukraine: US Launches a Neo-Nazi Government, and World War Three? appeared first on LewRockwell.

What is going around now is another cover up, another denial of what a lot of people on both sides call “the second Nakba,” the sin atop the original sin.

Headline in the Sunday editions of The New York Times: “A New Test for Israel: Can It Repair Its Ties to Americans?”

What a question. Let us set aside our indignation and think about this.

The piece below this head is by David Halbfinger, whose trade over the years has been to appear balanced when covering the Zionist state while glossing its past, which is wall-to-wall condemnable, and faithfully apologizing for its present, which — need this be said — is also wall-to-wall condemnable.

David Halbfinger, who has just begun his second tour as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, in action:

“The war in Gaza may finally be ending, after two years of bloodshed and destruction. But among the damage that has been done is a series of devastating blows to Israel’s relationship with the citizens of its most important and most stalwart ally, the United States.

Israel’s reputation in the United States is in tatters, and not only on college campuses or among progressives….

The question is whether those younger Americans will be lost to Israel long- term — and what Israel’s advocates will do to try to reverse that.”

Halbfinger proceeds to quote none of “those younger Americans,” or anyone else of any age who stands forthrightly against “the Jewish state” in response to the campaign of terror, murder and starvation it has conducted against the civilian population of Gaza these past two years.

No, his sources are professors, think-tank inhabitants and, of course, Israeli Zionists, American Zionists and in two cases Israeli–American Zionists — the good old divided-loyalties crowd.

Halbfinger quotes Shibley Telhami, an Arab–Israeli scholar with safe harbors at The Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland, to this effect:

“We now have a paradigmatic Gaza generation like we had a Vietnam generation and a Pearl Harbor generation. There’s this growing sense among people that what they’re witnessing is genocide in real time, amplified by new media, which we didn’t have in Vietnam. It’s a new generation where Israel is seen as a villain. And I don’t think that’s likely to go away.”

This is an astute bit of historical context, I find — worthy of further exploration. And I am with Telhami: There is no persuading Americans — a majority, to go by recent polls — that the atrocities of the past two years are to be forgiven and forgotten. The thought is ridiculous.

But Halbfinger takes Telhami’s interesting observation no further. It stands only as what we can call “the problem.” He, Halbfinger, devotes the rest of his report to the thoughts of those trying to figure out how to make the Zionist regime look good again — or rid it of “a bad odor,” as one of these people puts it.

One of Halbfinger’s sources — Halie Soifer, chief exec at the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which supports Democratic political candidates “who share our core values” — is looking for “a bit of a reset in the way Israel is viewed.” Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli–American scholar, thinks “there is room for a bounce-back.”

Professor Scheindlin elaborates:

“People tend to overestimate how bad the damage has been. Just stopping the slaughter will allow some people to go back to their comfort zone of being supportive.”

Jeez, if I may invoke one of history’s most famous Jews. Bouncing back to the comfort zone, is it?

You see what is going on here, I trust.

I have anticipated for many months — no great insight in this — that when something like the end of Israel’s terror in Gaza comes there will be no thought among its allies in the West, and certainly none among its Zionist supporters, of any kind of reckoning in the name of justice.

No, a “war” will be over, not a racist campaign of annihilation, and certainly not a genocide. The highly honorable Cost of War Project at Brown University put out a paper on Oct. 7 reckoning total casualties in Gaza (killed and injured) at 236,505, “more than 10% of the pre-war population.” These are responsibly researched facts.

We know these facts. “It doesn’t take rocket science to grasp the picture,” Norman Finkelstein said in a lecture delivered at the University of Massachusetts five days before the Netanyahu–Trump “peace plan” was announced.

He said: “Everyone at this point knows the picture — unless you have a material stake in lying to yourself and lying to others.”

Read the Whole Article

The post Let Us Now Bury the Truth (Again) appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I first got my driver’s license years ago, they asked if I wanted to be an organ donor. Having learned to be skeptical of institutions and having heard some concerning stories, I said no. But I felt conflicted about it—I believe in treating others as you’d want to be treated, and if I needed a transplant someday, I’d desperately want someone willing to help save my life.

Since then, I’ve discovered much more disturbing information about organ transplantation that completely shifted my perspective. Recently, RFK Jr. did something I never expected—he formally announced that there were widespread failures in our organ donation system’s ethical safeguards. This opened the floodgates for others to start discussing the grim reality that organs were being taken from people who were still alive.

The Value of Organs

Over time, medicine transformed our cultural relationship with death—from an accepted, intimate companion to a feared, medicalized enemy to be defeated (e.g., one author traces this shift through six historical stages, arguing that medicalization stripped individuals of autonomy and commodified death itself).

Medicine fueled this transformation by performing modern “miracles,” such as reviving the dead through cardiac resuscitation and transplanting organs—crossing what was once an absolute boundary between life and death. In doing so, it gained immense public trust and the ability to justify exorbitant costs.

This cultivated the myth that medicine can conquer death. Over time, it became seen not just as a means of survival, but as something to be continuously consumed in the name of “health”—transforming it into a highly profitable industry that now accounts for over 17.6% of all U.S. spending.

Because viable donor organs (a central crux of medicine’s dominion over death) are so limited, transplants quickly became incredibly valuable—costs range from $446,800 to $1,918,700 depending on the organ. Given how desperate people are for organs and how much money is involved, it hence seemed reasonable to assume some illegal harvesting would occur.

Over the years, as demand for organs continues to increase, I’ve continually found disturbing evidence that this was happening. This includes:

•Individuals being tricked into selling a kidney (e.g., in 2011, a viral story discussed a Chinese teenager who did so for an iPhone 4—approximately 0.0125% of the black market rate for a kidney, after which he became septic and his other kidney failed leaving him permanently bedridden, and in 2023, a wealthy Nigerian politician being convicted for trying to trick someone into donating a kidney for a transplant at an English hospital).

•A 2009 and 2014 Newsweek investigation and a 2025 paper highlighted the extensive illegal organ trade, estimating that 5% of global organ transplants involve black market purchases (totaling $600 million to $1.7 billion annually), with kidneys comprising 75% of these due to high demand for kidney failure treatments and the possibility of surviving with one kidney (though this greatly reduces your vitality). Approximately 10-20% of kidney transplants from living donors are illegal, with British buyers paying $50,000–$60,000, while desperate impoverished donors (e.g., from refugee camps or countries like Pakistan, India, China, and Africa) receive minimal payment and are abandoned when medical complications arise, despite promises of care. To quote the 2009 article:

Diflo became an outspoken advocate for reform several years ago, when he discovered that, rather than risk dying on the U.S. wait list, many of his wealthier dialysis patients had their transplants done in China. There, they could purchase the kidneys of executed prisoners. In India, Lawrence Cohen, another UC Berkeley anthropologist, found that women were being forced by their husbands to sell organs to foreign buyers to contribute to the family’s income, or to provide for the dowry of a daughter. But while the WHO estimates that organ-trafficking networks are widespread and growing, it says that reliable data are almost impossible to come by.

Note: these reports also highlighted that these surgeries operate on the periphery of the medical system and involve complicit medical professionals who typically claim ignorance of its illegality (e.g., a good case was made that a few US hospitals, like Cedars Sinai were complicit in the trade).

• A 2004 court case where a South African hospital pleaded guilty to illegally transplanting kidneys from poorer recipients (who received $6,000–$20,000) to wealthy recipients (who paid up to $120,000).1 2

• Many reports of organ harvesting by the Chinese government against specific political prisoners.1,2,3,4,5 This evidence is quite compelling, particularly since until 2006, China admitted organs were sourced from death row prisoners (with data suggesting the practice has not stopped).
Note: harvesting organs from death row prisoners represents one of the most reliable ways to get healthy organs immediately at the time of death (which is one of the greatest challenges in transplant medicine).

• I’ve read reports of organ harvesting occurring in Middle East conflict zones, by ISIS and in the Kosovo conflict, and with drug cartels.

Note: many other disturbing cases of illicit organ harvesting are discussed in more detail here. Likewise, many other valuable tissues (e.g., tendons and corneas) can be harvested from dead bodies. Significant controversy also exists with the ethics of how these are collected (e.g., this investigation highlights that the industry is highly profit focused and gives minimal respect to the bodies).

When Consciousness Gets Trapped

Different parts of the brain control various aspects of our being, so people who are still conscious can sometimes completely lose control of their bodies or their ability to communicate—known as Locked-in syndrome.

The most famous case involves Martin, a 12-year-old who fell ill with meningitis and entered a vegetative state. He was sent home to die, but stayed alive. At 16, he began regaining consciousness, became fully aware by 19, and at 26, a caregiver finally realized he was conscious and got him a communication computer. He eventually married.

Jahi McMath, a thirteen-year-old declared brain dead after tonsillectomy complications, was kept on life support by her family despite court orders. Nine months later, she had regained brainwaves and blood flow to the brain, and moved in response to verbal commands.

Similar cases include Lewis Roberts (began breathing hours before organ harvesting), Ryan Marlow (diagnosis reversed after wife’s insistence), Colleen Burns (awoke on the operating table and was later found by HHS to have been repeatedly misdiagnosed), and Trenton McKinley (13-year-old who recovered before scheduled donation). There were also cases like Steven Thorpe (declared brain dead by four doctors, parents refused organ donation, and he awoke two weeks later), and Gloria Cruz (husband refused to allow withdrawal of care, and she recovered).

Note: A recent study found that over 30% of brain-injured patients deemed unrecoverable would have partially or fully recovered had life support not been withdrawn.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Hidden Crisis in Organ Transplantation appeared first on LewRockwell.

GDP is like collecting data on passenger satisfaction with the dessert cart on the Titanic and declaring everyone is delighted as the great “unsinkable” ship settles into the icy waters of the Atlantic.

That Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an outdated and misleading metric of the economy is widely accepted. The problem isn’t an abstraction, as we manage what we measure and so policymakers and citizens alike make decisions on what’s being measured. If what’s being measured is misleading, then we’re flying blind.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz has long advocated for an overhaul for what we measure economically, focusing on well-being rather than adding up transactions. A new book The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters, explains the difficulty of the overhaul. A recent article on the topic addressed the urgency of the task (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2025, paywalled):

“For Americans, these are tumultuous times. Inequality in income and wealth is at historically high levels. Artificial intelligence is reshaping society at an unprecedented pace, prompting layoffs and putting entire professions at risk. According to an estimate by the Brookings Institution, up to 85 percent of current workers in the U.S. labor force could see their jobs affected by today’s generative AI technology. In the future, that percentage could climb even higher.

At moments of danger and uncertainty, it is usually the task of governments to protect people and help them navigate change–to step in when markets cannot. Yet Americans seem to have little belief in Washington’s capabilities. Over the past two decades, public trust in the U.S. government has plummeted by 40 percent. Some Americans believe the federal government has been absent. Others believe it has failed to meet pressing challenges, including the rising cost of living, and the potential disruptions of AI. Either way, Washington has its work cut out for it as the government tries to regain Americans’ trust.

So where can it start? The Measure of Progress, meanwhile, takes aim at the economic data that states use. According to Coyle, analysts evaluate the economy using outdated, limited metrics, causing policymakers to misunderstand the challenges citizens face.

Coyle’s book is focused on understanding the economy as it exists today. But her argument–that analysts and governments have failed to properly measure peoples’ well-being–is equally essential. The metrics that economists use, Coyle insists, are inherently flawed and do not sufficiently represent the reality of economic activity and value. That poses an immense problem for policymakers and analysts, distorting their view of the world and potentially leading them to faulty conclusions and ineffective policies.”

The problem is multi-faceted. GDP and other metrics were institutionalized in the industrial age, where agriculture and factory production were easy to measure. As these sectors’ share of the economy has slipped, the “hard-to-measure” parts of the economy are now dominant–81.5% by one estimate.

There are many other critical wrinkles in measuring the economy as it is. The book raises the issue of unpaid work, such as families caring for elderly parents and the unpaid “shadow work” that we’re required to do now to keep all of our technology functioning. All this activity occurs outside the traditional market.

Since our metrics don’t put a price tag on clean air and functional ecosystems, these are left out of the calculations, as if they don’t exist. Not only do they exist, they’re critical to our well-being. The book discusses natural capital accounting as an alternative, but alternative measures like this are inherently more challenging than toting up transactions.

What if we decided to measure the economy by the quality of life of the citizenry? While there are endless possibilities of what goes into quality of life, we can start with these basics:

1. Our physical and mental health.

2. The health of our social order–our social contract, social trust, communities and trust in our key institutions

3. The security and stability of our livelihoods and financial future.

Defining health isn’t that difficult. A healthy person doesn’t need any medications because, well, they’re healthy, so there’s no need for any interventions. A healthy person has an HDL / triglyceride ratio (calculated by dividing your triglyceride level by your HDL cholesterol level) well under 2, can walk a mile without even noticing, can stand on each foot for an extended time, and so on.

As for mental health, numerous studies have found that social connections are critical to our overall health, along with what we might call sufficiency–enough financial resources to secure the basics of life, and enough opportunities to fulfill one’s potential.

Read the Whole Article

The post If We Measured the Economy by Quality-of-Life Instead of GDP, We’d Be in a Depression appeared first on LewRockwell.

In October 2024 a Lebanese writer named Lina Mounzer wrote, “ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

I’ve thought about that line a lot over the last year.

I thought about it as Israel hammered Lebanon with at least 20 airstrikes during a supposed “ceasefire”.

I thought about it during the Gaza ceasefire negotiations when the western political/media class kept calling the Israelis held by Hamas “hostages” while calling the innocent Palestinians held captive by Israel “prisoners”.

I think about it as the IDF continues to murder Palestinian civilians every day during the Gaza “ceasefire” when they are deemed to be traveling into forbidden areas, because Palestinians are so dehumanized that Israel sees bullets as a perfectly legitimate means of directing civilian foot traffic.

I think about it as these daily ceasefire violations and acts of military slaughter barely make a blip in the western news media, while any time anything happens that makes western Jews feel anxious or upset it dominates headlines for days.

I thought about it while the western political/media class solemnly commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, even as the daily death toll from the Gaza holocaust ticked along with its victims unnamed and unacknowledged by those same institutions.

I thought about it when all of western politics and media stopped dead in its tracks and stood transfixed for days on the assassination of Charlie Kirk while ignoring the genocide he had spent the last two years of his life actively manufacturing consent for.

Day after day after day we see glaring, inexcusable discrepancies between the amount of attention that is given to the violent death of an Arab and the attention that is given to the violent death of an Israeli, a western Jew, or any westerner.

These last two years have been a time of unprecedented unmasking in all sorts of ways, but I think that’s the one that’s going to stick with me the most. The way western civilization came right out into the cold harsh light to admit, day after day after day, that they don’t truly view Arabs as human beings.

Ours is a profoundly sick society.

One of the main arguments you’ll hear from rightists about why the west needs to support Israel is that Israel is helping to defend the west from the savage Muslim hoards — a sentiment that Israeli pundits and politicians have been all too happy to feed into of late. It’s revealing because it’s just coming right out and saying that slaughtering Muslims is a virtue in and of itself, so anyone who kills Muslims is an ally of the west.

But any time I come across this argument all I can think is, why would anyone want to defend the west if this is what the west has become?

Even if we pretend these delusions that Arabs and Islam pose some kind of threat to western civilization are valid, why would it even matter? This civilization does not deserve to be saved. Not if we’re going to be living like this.

If we’ve become so detached from our own humanity that we can’t even see innocent children as fully human just because they live somewhere else and have a different religion, then we are the monsters. We are the villains. We are everything the craziest Zionist pretends the Arabs are.

These last two years have shown us that western civilization doesn’t need protection, it needs redemption. It needs to save its soul.

__________________

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The post The West’s Dehumanization of Arabs Is Completely Unforgivable appeared first on LewRockwell.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to be back on good terms — at least for now.

Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he had a very “productive” call with the Russian head of state, who congratulated him for the “great accomplishment” of “peace in the Middle East.” The Russian leader also passed on niceties to the First Lady for her involvement with children.

The two leaders discussed potential business between the United States and Russia after “the War with Ukraine is over,” according to Trump’s version of the call.  The Russians confirmed the call, which they announced as it was happening.

Before hanging up, they agreed to a meeting of high-level advisors next week, to be followed up by an in-person meeting in Budapest, Hungary, where they’ll discuss ending the “inglorious” war between Russia and Ukraine.

The president ended his Truth Social announcement on a high note. “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he said.

Good News

The news was undoubtedly welcomed by sensible Americans who realize there is nothing to gain and too much at risk by egging on a war between two very corrupt nations on the other side of the planet, neither of which pose a serious threat to the U.S. homeland so long as we stay out of their business. Former Trump National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn was among them. “This is what we voted for,” he announced on social media. Flynn previously alleged that a group of warmongers were exerting undue influence on the president.

Those who’ve been keeping up with the TMZ-style drama between these two strongheaded world leaders and are cheering for de-escalation are, like Flynn, happy to hear this news — but there is also some trepidation. This is about the fifth rerun of this episode. The script goes something like this: The two talk, Putin flatters and reassures, and Trump emerges smitten, only to become disillusioned just weeks later. Nevertheless, this is better than how the saga had been tracking as of late.

Escalatory Rhetoric

Just Wednesday, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth implied he would wage war against Russia if it did not wind down its war against Ukraine. “If there is no path to peace in the short term then the United States, along with our allies, will take steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression,” Hegseth said Wednesday. “If we must take this step, the U.S. War Department stands ready to do our part in ways that only the United States can do.”

Hegseth said this during a meeting focused on Ukraine at the NATO headquarters. He apparently did not elaborate on whether he meant to say what it sounded like he said.

Before that, Trump was publicly mulling over the idea of sending the Ukrainians Tomahawks, long-range missiles with the capability to strike any major Russian city. The big idea was that doing this would cripple the Kremlin’s major source of revenue, its energy sector. On Sunday, Trump told reporters he was thinking of speaking to Russia to ask them if “they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction?” Maybe he did.

Russia had previously responded to the threat with its own warning, pointing out that sending that kind of power would directly implicate the United States. Somewhere in that melee of threats and bluster, Trump even called Russia a “paper tiger.”

Just Bluffing?

All of that talk, however, may have been nothing more than bluffing designed to keep the Russians off balance and convince them to get serious about winding down the war. And maybe it worked.

Or maybe Hegseth’s rhetoric was the result of Trump waking up in an especially crabby mood on account of being edged out of the Nobel Peace Prize and ordering his War Sec to throw caution to the wind since they won’t award him with the accolade he badly wants, anyway. It’s hard to tell. As we’ve said before, there’s a good chance that when it comes to dealing with the mess in Eastern Europe, Trump’s so good at keeping everyone guessing that even he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

That’s probably why some European leaders, as much as they want Trump to get and stay tough with Putin, were reluctant to celebrate Hegseth’s comments. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters, “I would read into that a kind of change of perspective and approach, but not more for the moment. I can’t interpret, really, what he did mean.”

Unleash the Tomahawks

It’s telling that the folks at the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) were ecstatic about the possibility that the United States would give the Ukrainians Tomahawks. “As with Hamas and the fighting in Gaza, bringing the Ukraine war to an end requires speaking the only language that Moscow understands: force,” wrote Seth G. Jones and Tom Karako in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. More from Jones and Karako:

Without Tomahawks or a system with a similar payload and range, Ukraine can’t put real pressure on Russian supply lines, military production or long-range launchers into Ukrainian territory. Ukraine can use Tomahawks to target rear support areas sustaining Russian front-line operations, including weapons and fuel depots, tank-production facilities, and air bases used by Russian fighters and bombers.

It’s true that Putin might interpret America’s friendly negotiation approach as weak and naïve. But it’s also true that the CSIS is a profoundly hawkish outfit funded by defense contractors and staffed by people with strong ties to defense and intelligence agencies. They’re the hand guiding the only tool the know of, the hammer, to the nail. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing are among the CISIS’s financial backers. But that’s three of many more. As the Quincy Institute noted in 2023, when CSIS was complaining that the Pentagon wasn’t spending enough, 20 different defense contractors were funding the CISIS. Moreover, Jones, the president of CSIS, is a former Department of Defense senior official and has worked with the CIA in advisory roles.

Uncertain Outcome

Trump has been trying to mediate peace between these two sibling nations before he even moved back in the Oval Office. And despite what some think, it’s hard to interpret his behavior, words, and efforts as a façade covering a hidden motive to start World War III. A more likely explanation is that Trump’s erratic personality and allergy to details is what’s prompting the vacillating, chaotic foreign policy of the U.S. government.

Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky have more in common than they may care to admit. Both are accused of being dictators. Both lead governments believed to have persecuted, even killed, dissident journalists. And both have an alleged track record of silencing government critics.

On Friday, Zelensky will be back in the White House, hat in hand. He’ll likely have a bigger hat than the one he passes out in Europe because he’ll be asking for Tomahawks. He’ll likely try to convince Trump that, just like all the previous times, Putin’s reassurances will come to naught and that the right thing to do is give Ukraine more firepower.

The question is, what will Trump do?

This article was originally published on The New American.

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Yesterday I saw in report in the Telegraph headlined Britain and France are at the end stage of ‘centrist dad’ collapse and found the following paragraph about Starmer and Macron especially memorable.

Wrong on almost everything, hated by voters, incapable of truth-telling, driven by a messianic belief in environmentalism and global technocracy, unable to confront reality, gripped by suicidal empathy and addicted to virtue-signalling, Starmer and Macron have ended up as unlikely brothers in arms, despite their seemingly incompatible styles.

The report resonated with me, as I had, just the day before, had a long telephone conversation with former British MP, Andrew Bridgen, about the current state of affairs in England. He perceives them to be very grim.

In the summer of 2014, on the 100th anniversary of the First World War, I found myself visiting Leipzig, Germany, where I wandered into a book store near the St. Thomas Church, where J.S. Bach had served as the music director from 1723 to 1750. The store was stocked with books by authors all trying to answer the question: Why did the great nations of Europe essentially commit suicide in 1914-18?

The answer, it seems to me, is the marked tendency of any society’s political class to be captured by interests and ideologies that have little to do with the interests of the people they govern. Apart from bankers and arms manufacturers, the Great War of 1914-18 served no one who lived in the warring countries. On the contrary, it sent millions of their young men—including their most educated young men—to be machine gunned and gassed in the trenches.

While some elements of the state are necessary for providing basic security, maintaining critical infrastructure, and adjudicating conflict, the state invariably becomes way too big and parasitic, and ultimately cancerous.

I fear that Britain, France, and Germany are currently suffering from Stage 4 Cancer that originated in the bosom of their bizarre governments run by total weirdos who in no way represent the interests of the people they govern.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The End of Britain, France, and Germany appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gilbert Doctorow and I share the belief that unless Putin responds more firmly than he has been inclined to do to the West’s provocations, war is inevitable.

Hungary, led by the only intelligent leader in Europe, has arranged a meeting in Budapest between Trump and Putin.  I suspect that this is the last chance to avoid war.  Its success turns on whether Trump can abandon his bully role, understand that the solution requires a NATO pullback from Russia’s borders and a mutual security agreement between Russia and the West, and declare in a press conference that Washington’s support (incitement really) of Ukraine is at an end.

For Putin, I suspect the meeting in Hungary is Putin’s last test of Trump.  If Trump fails the test, chances are high that delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine will result in a Russian declaration of war against Ukraine and quick destruction by conventional means of Ukraine’s ability to continue the conflict.  Putin will have reversed his strategy of non-response to provocations and put the West on notice, something he should have done years ago.  The likelihood is the Russian Foreign Ministry’s effort to dismiss the Tomahawk threat as terrorism rather than an act of war will fail.

Unless Trump comes to his senses, a brutal demonstration of Russian force is all that can stop the momentum toward a real war.  See this and this.

The post The Trump-Putin Meeting in Hungary Is the Last Chance for Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

There are a number of indicators which lets one predict that the Trump administration, during the next election, will use government forces to severely attack and disrupt all opposition to it.

Trump has send the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into the cities to harass and arrest alleged illegal immigrants. Due cause is disregarded and the methods used by the agents are brutal.

Trump has also sent National Guard troops into cities where, he claimed, riots were taking place. There were no riots or ‘terrorist incidents’ but the presence of troops is used to create a militarized atmosphere.

A new National Security Presidential Memorandum, NSPM-7 issued by Trump has defined new classes of internal enemies:

With the mainstream media distracted by the made-for-TV drama of James Comey’s indictment, Trump has signed a little-noticed national security directive identifying “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence.
…
In NSPM-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” President Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to fight his version of political violence in America, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on “leftist” political violence in America. This vast counterterrorism army, made up of federal, state, and local agents would, as Trump aide Stephen Miller said, form “the central hub of that effort.”
…
The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:
anti-Americanism,

• • anti-capitalism,
  • anti-Christianity,
  • support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
  • extremism on migration,
  • extremism on race,
  • extremism on gender,
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts,” the directive states (emphasis mine).

That all may sound laughable but these are unfortunately serious policies .  The target list includes organizations which do not exist:

The FBI and the homeland security department are actively investigating “Antifa” individuals and organizations that the Trump administration has branded domestic terrorists. Actions so far include collecting intelligence on Antifa “affinity” groups, canvassing the FBI’s vast informant network for tips about Antifa, and scrutinizing financial records, two sources involved in the investigations tell me.

There are no ‘antifa’ organizations. ‘Antifa’ is the idea of fighting indications of fascism. From time to time local interest groups may claim to do so for this or that reason. This category ‘antifa’ was likely chosen because it can be applied to any group that opposes government policies.

Today Yves Smith reports of another enforcement agency that Trump will use to destroy opposition to him:

The war against Trump’s perceived political enemies keeps escalating. The Wall Street Journal provides new detail on how the Trump Administration intends to use an IRS criminal unit, whose members bear arms, as part of his campaign against “left-leaning” organizations. This fallows a Reuters account describing how the Trump Administration intends to use the Department of Justice and DHS to pursue “left wing” groups that allegedly fomented violence.
…
Now to the press accounts. Key sections from the Journal’s report:

The Trump administration is preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily, according to people familiar with the matter.

A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, some of the people said.

The undertaking aims to install allies of President Trump at the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, to exert firmer control over the unit and weaken the involvement of IRS lawyers in criminal investigations, officials said. The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes…

Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups…

Many on the left will not mind any attack on George Soros as his organization is well know for financing foreign color revolutions against legitimate leftist rulers. We can however be assured that Trump wont stop with them:

The list includes Soros’ Open Society Foundations; ActBlue, the funding arm of the Democratic Party; Indivisible, a grassroots coalition opposed to Trump policies and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a Los Angeles-based group.
…
Other groups on the list include two Jewish nonprofits that oppose Israel’s war in Gaza – IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

There is unfortunately little institutional or political opposition that can restrain Trump:

The push against domestic groups and their donors comes amid Trump’s attacks on law firms, universities and the media, and his deployment of National Guard troops to some Democratic-run cities.
…
Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and former director of the Richard Nixon presidential library, said Trump and Nixon were similar in their desire to punish political enemies and silence critics, but a pliant Republican-controlled Congress and a cabinet packed with loyalists are enabling Trump to go further.

“That’s why this particular moment is more dangerous for the rule of law in the United States than the 1970s were,” Naftali said.

All these are ominous signs that Trumps war on the political opposition will escalate further. Seymour Hersh’s sources are warning of this:

What’s happening now may be a trial run for the use of those forces to interfere on the behalf of the president and the Republican Party in states where the Democratic Party has a chance to win crucial seats in next fall’s Congressional elections. I’ve been told by someone with inside knowledge that planning for such action is now under way in the White House.

The ‘coerced dominance’ that has marked Trump’s brutal approach to foreign policy will now being applied to domestic issues and legitimate opposition.

Russell Vought, Trumps’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, are the men behind this.

The scary thing is that there is, so far, little or any opposition to these plans and only few warnings about their consequences.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s War Against ‘Left-leaning’ Groups Extends Further appeared first on LewRockwell.

Whether he has done so wittingly or unwittingly, President Trump has backed himself into a corner with respect to Venezuela. After amassing a formidable armada of military forces in the Caribbean off Venezuelan shores and having killed some 24 suspected U.S. drug-law violators on the high seas, Trump has now effectively committed himself to initiating a regime-change war against Venezuela. Everyone should now brace himself for what is coming — another in a long line of foreign regime-change undeclared wars of aggression in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the principles set forth at Nuremberg.

After all, Trump knows that if he backs down now and orders a withdrawal of that armada of warships, war planes (including B-52s), and tens of thousands of troops, Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro will crow about how he forced the all-powerful ruler of the United States to back down and return his military forces to the United States. There is no way that Trump can now permit himself to go down that road. From his own personal perspective, he cannot be seen as being “weak.” He has placed himself in a position where he has to show courage and fortitude by initiating a war against Venezuela, one that leaves Maduro dead or captured.

No doubt that Trump is hoping that this massive military buildup will pressure Maduro into abdicating and fleeing the country, in which case Trump knows that he (Trump) will be hailed as a hero for saving the country from an unelected socialist dictator. Will Maduro do so? It’s possible, and he’d be smart to do so. But if he doesn’t, Trump has placed himself in a position of having to launch an illegal regime-change war against Venezuela, one that will leave at least some innocent people dead.

But consider the benefits of such a war from the standpoint of Trump. First and foremost, a war against Venezuela will put to rest the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion within Trump’s MAGA movement. With the massive military buildup in the Caribbean and the killing of unarmed suspected drug-law violators at the hands of the military, the Epstein rebellion has already dissipated. It will fizzle out with the first bombs or missiles fired into Venezuelan territory.

I pointed out this phenomenon back on July 22, before Trump had begun to send warships to Venezuela. My article was entitled, “Get Ready for a Big Foreign Crisis.” No, I don’t profess to be Nostradamus. My reasoning was simply based on the insightful words of James Madison: “The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.”

There was a boiling revolt among Trump’s MAGA supporters over Trump’s failure to order the release of the Epstein files. What better way to suppress that revolt than to excite a war against Venezuela? When the bombing of Venezuela begins, I will guarantee you that the Trump’s MAGA supporters will completely forget Jeffrey Epstein and will hop to, click their heels, recite the Pledge of Allegiance (which was written by a socialist), sing the Start Spangled Banner, thank the troops for their “service” in defending our “freedom,” and bask in their vicarious courage. The Epstein rebellion will be all but dead.

Moreover, Trump knows that many Venezuelan citizens will hail him as the greatest liberator since Simón Bolívar for having saved the country from a socialist dictator who clearly lost the last presidential election.

There is also a huge benefit for the national-security branch of the federal government. Consider its 20-year deadly and destructive military fiasco in Afghanistan, one in which American soldiers were sacrificed for nothing, just like they were in Vietnam. The American people never even had time to reflect on the Afghanistan disaster because the Pentagon, using its old Cold War dinosaur NATO, quickly maneuvered America into another war — this one against Russia by using Ukraine as its proxy. As everyone knows, that war isn’t going so well either.

And don’t forget Iraq, where U.S. officials used their bogus WMD scare to justify an undeclared regime-change war of aggression, one that left thousands of Iraqis and Americans dead, destroyed the entire country, and installed a regime that was aligned with Iran, which is considered to be an official enemy of the United States.

Of course, Iran is the country whose democratic system was destroyed by the CIA in yet another instance of U.S. foreign interventionism, which led to the U.S.-supported tyranny of the Shah, which led to the Iranian revolution, which led to Iran being declared a permanent official enemy of the United States.

One year after the 1953 Iranian escapade came the CIA’s regime-change operation in Guatemala, which led to a decade-long civil war that killed more than a million people. Oh well, at least they weren’t Americans.

Clearly, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA could use a lift. A war with Venezuela will easily give them such a lift. Despite Madura’s bluster, there is no way that the Venezuelan military can oppose the most powerful military in the world. After all, look at how quickly U.S. forces have dispatched and destroyed those suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. They have been able to easily win those battles and, as the Pentagon points out, without any loss of American life.

Moreover, Venezuela has been the victim of socialism and U.S. sanctions for decades. Its military is so weak it couldn’t defeat Grenada. Upon the first sight of U.S. Marines, Venezuelan forces and Maduro’s civilian “militia” will quickly surrender. They are not about to sacrifice their lives for Maduro, who will be assassinated, executed, or captured and brought back to the United States in chains.

Trump and his MAGA supporters as well as the national-security establishment will be exultant over this gigantic difficult military victory. They will sing about how proud they are to be Americans because their difficult undeclared, unconstitutional, illegal war against Venezuela will have brought “freedom” to Venezuela and protected America from the dangers of socialism, the Tren de Aragua gang, illegal-immigrant invaders, and “narco-terrorism.”

Never mind that the destruction of freedom in America through militarized and para-militarized omnipotent government will continue apace, with many shell-shocked American citizens passively letting it happen or even supporting what James Madison called “the instruments of tyranny at home.” At the same time, the irrational mass killings, the soaring suicide rates among young people and veterans, the hopeless dependency on government largess, and the out-of-control federal spending and debt that threaten national bankruptcy will continue to afflict America’s statist society — all coincidentally of course.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Another Regime-Change War Is Coming appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te limits its discussion of “migrants” to three paragraphs: 73–75. Paragraph 73 claims that “The experience of migration accompanies the history of the People of God,” citing Abraham, Moses, and the Flight into Egypt. Paragraph 74 focuses on two 19th-century Church figures involved in the care of migrants in the Americas: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini. Paragraph 75 cites contemporary examples of work with “migrants,” quoting Pope Francis’ line that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote, and integrate.” It further reminds us that every person is a child of God, made in the divine image and likeness, and insists that “proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome,” concluding that “in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”

Before these claims even reach the level of theology, standard logic would challenge them. The first question arises from what Dilexi Te does not ask: the legal status of a “migrant.” The Exhortation simply ignores the issue. There are only “migrants.”

What are we to conclude from that omission? That the legal status of a migrant is irrelevant? That would surprise nearly every state in the world, each of which not only distinguishes between legal and illegal immigrants but among legal categories themselves: temporary workers on nonimmigrant visas, refugees, asylum seekers, parolees, or permanent residents. The legal status of a migrant determines that person’s rights, obligations, and future in the host country. Would the Holy See tell  states to abandon such distinctions? If not, why does Dilexi Te fail even to acknowledge them?

Or is the Exhortation suggesting that Catholics should disregard the legality question altogether? If so, that would represent a radical shift in Catholic teaching about the obligations of citizens toward the state. If this is now doctrine, when and where was it promulgated? If it is not, then what is the nature of Dilexi Te’s statements on migration? Are they opinion, advice, or fervorino? Catholics have a right to know what binds conscience and what does not. A clear line has always separated authoritative teaching from pastoral commentary, the latter not enjoying magisterial weight.

These distinctions matter. What should a Catholic who works for ICE in field enforcement think? Or a CBP officer at a border checkpoint? Or a USCIS employee adjudicating claims for status change? Does a Catholic immigration officer act in bad faith by enforcing his country’s immigration laws?

Dilexi Te also plays loosely with history. Migration patterns in the ancient world differed radically from the modern era. Israel lay along the Fertile Crescent, between Egypt’s Nile and Babylon’s Tigris and Euphrates. Movement along that route was normal—but not unregulated. Those who use Exodus 23:9 (“you were aliens in the land of Egypt”) as a proof text for open borders forget that even St. Thomas Aquinas noted that Old Testament norms for foreigners were nuanced and conditional.

Moreover, to use ancient migration as a model for modern policy ignores the Westphalian system of sovereign states that emerged after 1648. Modern theology praises “historical development,” yet Dilexi Te seems blind to the historical development of political order itself. If doctrine may “develop,” why can’t history? Does anyone in Rome seriously believe the Westphalian state can—or should—be erased?

The discussion of Cabrini and Scalabrini likewise sidesteps the legality issue. When Mother Cabrini tended an orphan, she did not ask his legal status, but she lived in an era of lawful, regulated migration. The late 19th century was marked by large-scale, legally sanctioned immigration to the United States and Canada. Her ministry, and that of Bishop Scalabrini, did not conflict with the legal order of the countries they served. Indeed, the Catholic bishops of the United States then worked hard to reinforce the idea that “good Catholic” meant “good American.” It is difficult to imagine John Ireland or “Dagger John” Hughes endorsing or abetting large-scale illegal entry into the United States.

Invoking historical precedents from a different time and legal order to justify contemporary mass illegal immigration stretches analogy beyond reason. Only by ignoring both history and law can one claim—on Francis’ word—that the verbs governing migration can only be “welcome, protect, promote, and integrate.”

Does “welcoming” mean disregarding national immigration law? Nothing in Catholic teaching defines immigration restrictions as intrinsically unjust. On what basis does the Church think it may ignore—de jure or de facto—legitimate state law in this area?  Under the banner of “protecting” migrants? When violations of those laws occur on a massive scale, does the Church’s practical disregard for them amount to material cooperation with lawbreaking? Or does it evade that charge by saying it merely “promotes” the cause of migrants, regardless of legal status?

If immigration controls are a legitimate act of sovereignty, then when the Church “integrates” migrants sociologically without corresponding legal integration, it risks trespassing on rights that belong to Caesar. By fostering sociological integration absent legal status, the Church effectively pressures the state to create legal pathways, even though determining such status is a civil competence. Caesar has rights in justice too—including not to have his hand forced by faits accomplis.

These are not just questions of “standing with the poor.” They concern the relationship between Church and state and the Church’s role in telling states how to adjudicate legal presence, residence, and citizenship. Their implications reach far beyond charity. To omit the core issue—legal status—is to discuss migration as if the modern political order did not exist.

When Jesus was asked about paying taxes to Rome, He did not merely dodge a trap; He recognized that while God’s primacy is absolute, Caesar has real, subordinate rights. Vatican II called this the “autonomy of created things.” Those “created things,” after 1648, include the sovereign state. No honest discussion of migration can ignore that fact.

In the end, Dilexi Te’s treatment of migration leaves Catholics with serious unanswered questions. The Church may and must remind believers of the moral dignity of every person. But she cannot call Catholics to actions that imply contempt for lawful authority, nor can she treat the existence of sovereign states as a regrettable accident of history. If Rome wishes to speak credibly about migration, it must do so in full awareness that the world of Abraham and Moses is not the world of passports, borders, and visas—and that Catholics, while bound by charity, are also citizens. Between God and Caesar, the Exhortation seems to have forgotten that both still have legitimate claims upon us.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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One day we’re in a “trade war with China,” and the next day we’re not. One day, there are threats of “100% tariffs,” on Chinese goods and the next day there aren’t. World leaders need to do nothing but sit back and watch. Meanwhile, the American people are taken on an emotional roller-coaster of threats that (ironically) would harm the American people more than anyone else. What’s going on here?

The post Trump “Trade War” Chaos with China — Who Benefits? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The colorful fabric of the United States is beginning to tear apart as Democrats and Republicans attempt to address the immigration crisis in their own separate and very different ways.

Los Angeles has declared an emergency in response to federal immigration raids, a move traditionally reserved for natural disasters or other circumstances beyond the control of local authorities.

The legislation stated that the tactics used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other entities have “created a climate of fear, leading to widespread disruption in daily life and adverse impacts to our regional economy.”

Meanwhile, the White House is of the opinion that the raids are lawful and designed to remove immigrants in the United States illegally from the country after the Biden administration opened America’s southern border with Mexico.

Due to its proximity to the Mexican border, Los Angeles has been at the epicenter of Trump’s efforts to deport illegals. In June, he sent the National Guard and Marines into the metropolis to guard federal buildings and protect ICE agents as they carried out raids. These actions prompted widespread protests across the city and nation at large.

“We will not stand by while fear and chaos spread throughout our neighborhoods,” said Republican LA lawmaker Lindsey Horvath. “When our neighbors are targeted, our country feels it in the workplaces, in our schools and in our homes.”

“Let’s give the ICE agents… the support they deserve.”

County officials revealed that the immigration raids would contribute to the loss of $275 million in gross domestic product in the state of California, pointing to a study by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute in partnership with the University of California, Merced, MSN reported.

Meanwhile, residents in the town of El Paso, Texas are in uproar after reports emerged that an agent with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) participated in a “use of force incident” where a family dog was unjustifiably shot and killed.

KFOX14 spoke with a distressed family who claimed to have been the victims of this incident said agents forcibly entered the home where they shot and killed their rottweiler.

On the other side of the country, in Chicago, residents have begun to organize volunteer watch groups to monitor their neighborhoods for federal immigration agents. Some blow whistles or honk their car horns when agents are spotted in the vicinity.

This week, ICE agents, together with military units, deployed tear gas on Chicago residents, the largest clash in the nation’s third-largest city as the White House has carried out its controversial immigration crackdown.

“This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest and agitators and criminals ramming cars into our law enforcement officer, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. The statement went on to say that federal agents resorted to “crowd control measures” after a crowd had gathered and turned violent.

It was just one of multiple hostile episodes to erupt on the streets of Chicago in recent days. ICE agent and the BCP have roamed the vast metropolis and suburbs conducting arrests, often stopping people on the streets and asking for identification. Many times, people are seen running away when approached by marked vehicles.

“The actions being taken by these Trump agents are a clear violation of our democratic rights,” said one female passerby who gave the name Maria. “My family and I traveled hundreds of miles to reach the U.S. border only to be treated as criminals.”
When asked if she was in the United States legally, the woman said the situation in her native country of Ecuador had become too dangerous so her only option was to flee as soon as possible.

“I hope to acquire amnesty,” she said.

Trump mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to L.A. amid anti-Immigrations and Customs Enforcements (ICE) protests in Los Angeles without the request or consent of city and state officials. California Governor Gavin Newsom has remained harshly critical of the American president, reprimanding Trump for inciting chaos, using valuable resources, and militarizing urban areas.

This month, National Guard troops and federal officers on horseback descended on MacArthur Park, where children at a summer day camp were reportedly present.

“They’re sitting there on horses with American flags, running through soccer fields, scaring kids in the middle of the day at a summer camp. For what? Just toughness,” Newsom said on The Shawn Ryan Show. “It’s a weakness masquerading as strength.”

Trump criticized Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for their apparent mishandling of violent riots in response to the ICE raids that rounded up over 100 illegal immigrants — including gang bangers and drug traffickers — this past week.

“We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual (just look at how they handled the fires, and now their VERY SLOW PERMITTING disaster. Federal permitting is complete!), unable to handle the task,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial Sunday morning.

One thing is becoming increasingly certain: the colorful fabric of the United States is beginning to tear apart as Democrats and Republicans attempt to address the immigration crisis in their own separate and very different ways. Whether this great struggle destroys the United States from within remains to be seen.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation..

The post America Is at War Against Itself Over Illegal Immigration appeared first on LewRockwell.

When hundreds of America’s admirals and generals gathered at a military base in Virginia on September 30th, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth instructed them to “prepare for war”.  Unfortunately, he was not exaggerating.  We are on the brink of war with Venezuela, President Trump is threatening to take military action if Hamas does not disarm, our relations with China are rapidly deteriorating, and if we give Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine that will put us just one step away from a nuclear war with Russia.  I am entirely convinced that the months ahead will be extremely dramatic.  Let us hope that global leaders make wise decisions during this time, because a single miscalculation could lead to the unthinkable.

On Monday, it was being reported that three B-52 bombers have been “hovering near Venezuelan airspace”…

Massive U.S. B-52H Stratofortress bombers have been spotted flying sorties over the southern Caribbean, hovering near Venezuelan airspace in a clear demonstration of military might.

Three aircraft—call signs BUNNY01, BUNNY02, and BUNNY03—were observed on extended flight patterns from Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base in a striking show of force aimed at Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

This comes as the Trump administration has stepped up military operations in the region, including a series of recent strikes on vessels off Venezuela’s coast that the U.S. linked to narcotics trafficking. The strikes, which have resulted in multiple fatalities, have drawn condemnation from Caracas and heightened concerns about escalating tensions between the two countries.

Many pundits believe that threatening Venezuela with B-52 bombers is essentially a “final warning” to the regime of Nicolas Maduro.

Trump wants Maduro to step down peacefully, but that isn’t going to happen.

Meanwhile, we continue to bomb Venezuelan ships that are trafficking drugs…

The US military conducted yet another strike on a boat alleged to be trafficking drugs off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people on board, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday.

Trump said that the vessel was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” but did not name any organization or provide evidence to back up the assertion.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

Bombing ships that are carrying narcotics is one thing.

Bombing Venezuelan territory would be an entirely different thing altogether.

Maduro is extremely concerned about what is coming, and so he is mobilizing his forces…

In a message on the Telegram social network, Maduro said he was mobilizing the military, police and a civilian militia to defend Venezuela’s “mountains, coasts, schools, hospitals, factories and markets.”

State television showed images of armored vehicles deploying in the sprawling low-income Caracas suburb of Petare, a traditional stronghold of socialist support.

Military exercises will also take place in Miranda state, which neighbors Caracas.

If the U.S. goes to war with Venezuela, our relations with other South American nations such as Colombia will be destroyed.

Hopefully Trump will back down while there is still time to do so.

In the Middle East, the situation is very tense.

We are being told that the ceasefire deal in Gaza “hangs by a thread”, and Trump is publicly threatening to “make them disarm” if Hamas does not disarm willingly…

Donald Trump has threatened to forcibly disarm Hamas if they refuse to give up their weapons as the Gaza ceasefire deal hangs by a thread.

‘They will disarm — and if they don’t I’m gonna make them disarm,’ the president told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. ‘They know what I mean.’

Trump warned that America stood ready to bring about Hamas’s disarmament ‘quickly and perhaps violently.’

Hamas is not going to hand over all of their weapons.

That simply is not going to happen.

So how would Trump make Hamas disarm?

Would he send in U.S. troops?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also suggesting that the second phase of Trump’s peace plan may not be accomplished peacefully…

He noted that the conditions of Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan “are very clear — it’s not only that we get the hostages out without getting our military out, but that we would subsequently have both demilitarization and disarmament. They’re not the same thing. First Hamas has to give up its arms. And second, you want to make sure that there are no weapons factories inside Gaza. There’s no smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

“We also agreed: Okay, let’s get the first part done. Now let’s give a chance to do the second part peacefully, which is my hope.”

We’ll see what happens.

Hamas officials have already stated that they will never hand over all of their weapons, and so the clock is ticking.

In addition, there is another factor would could potentially cause the peace deal to collapse.

Many in Israel are calling for the peace deal to be suspended “until all of the hostages’ remains are returned by Hamas”…

Both the Israeli Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the group which represents the hostage families, and Israel’s defense minister have said the entire peace deal should be shelved until all of the hostages’ remains are returned by Hamas.

The Israel Defense Forces, in multiple statements about the return of hostages since Friday, has said only that “Hamas is required to make all necessary efforts to return the deceased hostages.”

My personal opinion is that Hamas will never be able to locate many of those bodies.

So it will be impossible for all of the remains to be returned, and that may turn out to be a major issue.

I will be watching the Middle East very, very closely during the weeks ahead.

Sooner or later, more war is coming to the region.

Elsewhere, the conflict in Ukraine has escalated to a very dangerous level.

It is being reported that the United States “has for months been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities”…

Fresh reporting in the Financial Times offers more confirmation that the Trump administration has been escalating the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, in hopes of forcing Moscow to the negotiating table.

The Sunday report makes clear that “The US has for months been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities, in what officials say is a coordinated effort to weaken Vladimir Putin’s economy and force him to the negotiating table.”

“American intelligence shared with Kyiv has enabled strikes on important Russian energy assets including oil refineries far beyond the frontline, according to multiple Ukrainian and US officials familiar with the campaign,” it adds.

When we participate in such strikes, we are actively making ourselves a part of the conflict.

In other words, we are already essentially in a state of war with Russia.

We should be very thankful that the Russians have shown a tremendous amount of restraint, but now we are rapidly approaching a point of no return.

On Sunday, Trump made it clear that he is very close to sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine…

President Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One on Sunday, outlined the idea as part of negotiation tactics. He said: “I might say ‘Look: if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks.’”

And I don’t think that it is a coincidence that key Ukrainian leaders just met with representatives of the company that manufactures Tomahawks…

Senior Ukrainian officials visiting the U.S. have met with major U.S. defense companies, including the manufacturer of the Tomahawk missile that Kyiv has repeatedly requested.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, Rustem Umerov—formerly Ukraine’s defense minister, now the head of the country’s national security and defense council—as well as Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna met with representatives from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, said Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff.

Giving Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would be an exceedingly foolish thing to do.

Tomahawks were originally designed to be able to carry nuclear warheads.

And as Dmitry Medvedev has correctly pointed out, “it’s impossible to distinguish a nuclear Tomahawk missile from a conventional one in flight”…

Medvedev’s chilling response on Monday spelled out that this “could end badly for everyone … most of all, for Trump himself,” according to a translation of his Telegram post.

“It’s been said a hundred times, in a manner understandable even to the star-spangled man, that it’s impossible to distinguish a nuclear Tomahawk missile from a conventional one in flight,” Medvedev, who serves as the Russian Security Council Deputy Chair, further noted.

Medvedev here is alluding to Russian strategic doctrine. In a scenario where Moscow leaders believed or suspected a nuclear payload had been launched at Russia, its military would have the right to respond in kind, with nukes.

If Tomahawk cruise missiles are fired toward major Russian cities, will the Russians wait to see what happens when they strike their targets or will they fire back while the Tomahawks are still in the air?

If cruise missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads were fired at Washington D.C. or New York City, what would we do?

You might want to think about that.

The Russians are not bluffing when they warn that we are getting dangerously close to nuclear war.

If we push them too far, they will take action.

Kremlin mouthpiece Vladimir Solovyov just issued an extremely ominous warning…

Apparently referencing nuclear war between Russia and the West, he continued: “You will be destroyed, it’s clear and precise. You don’t have to listen to us, to love us or to giggle… I will tell you once again: We do not need your love, we need your fear. Animal-like horror. It will get to this, it certainly will.”

Threatening the Russians will not work.

If we continue to threaten the Russians, it will backfire severely.

This is not a game.

There are approximately 8 billion people living on our planet today, and their fates are hanging in the balance.

So let us hope for peace, but let us also prepare for war, because I believe that a lot more war is coming.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post ‘Prepare For War’: B-52s Circle Near Venezuela, Trump Threatens Hamas, and Ukraine Is Very Close To Getting Tomahawk Cruise Missiles appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Brother, I am American. You are twisting my arm.”— Man shouts “I am American” while ICE agents detain him

Masked gunmen. Tasers. Tear gas. Pepper spray. Unmarked vehicles. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Racial profiling. Children traumatized. Families terrorized. Journalists targeted. Citizens detained. Disabled individuals, minors, the elderly, pregnant women, military veterans—snatched off the streets. Private property destroyed.

This is not a war zone. This is America.

This is what now passes for law-and-order policing by ICE agents in Trump’s America—and it is not making America safer or greater.

What began as an agency tasked with enforcing immigration law has metastasized into a domestic terror force.

From coast to coast, ICE goon squads—incognito, thuggish, fueled by profit-driven incentives and outlandish quotas, and empowered by the Trump administration to act as if they are untouchable—are prowling neighborhoods, churches, courthouses, hospitals, bus stops, and worksites, anywhere “suspected” migrants might be present, snatching people first and asking questions later.

Sometimes “later” comes hours, days or even weeks afterwards.

No one is off limits—not even American citizens.

Make no mistake: this is not how a constitutional republic operates. It is how a dictatorship behaves when it decides the rule of law—in this case, the Bill of Rights—is optional.

Journalists are being shoved to the pavement, forced into chokeholds, teargassed, and brutalized—in violation of the First Amendment. U.S. citizens, including toddlers, are being snatched up and carted off—in violation of the Fourth Amendment. People with no criminal records who have lived, worked and paid taxes in this country for decades are being made to disappear—in violation of habeas corpus.

This is not public safety. It is domestic terrorism, carried out by masked, militarized, lawless bounty hunters.

In California, ICE agents stopped a U.S. citizen and military veteran on his way to work. According to George Retes, agents fired tear gas, broke his car window, and applied physical force, including kneeling on him. Retes spent three days in federal custody with no charges, no call to his family, no access to a judge or an attorney, no shower, and no explanation for ICE’s actions before being released.

In Portland, a U.S. citizen outside his workplace was detained by masked, plainclothes agents who refused to identify themselves, threatened him with a dog, handcuffed him, hauled away in an unmarked vehicle, and held for hours without justification.

In Chicago, a local TV journalist was violently knocked to the ground by masked agents, handcuffed, arrested, and hauled to a detention center—then released without charges.

In Los Angeles, ICE agents handcuffed and detained a 23-year-old, heavily pregnant woman for over eight hours with a chain around her belly, accusing the native-born American of being from Mexico. Bruised and in labor, she went straight to the hospital upon release.

Two sisters were stopped outside a school, surrounded by at least ten ICE agents, who broke into their locked vehicle, dragged them out, and pinned them to the ground. Both women were later released without explanation.

Each of these incidents is presented as routine immigration enforcement. Yet collectively they reveal a government agency that has abandoned the principles of restraint, accountability, and due process in favor of brute force.

Justifying extreme measures—martial law, mass surveillance, suspension of constitutional safeguards— as necessary for “national security” has always been the refuge of tyrants, and this American police state is no different.

Under Trump, however, things are so much worse.

The rationalizations have become bolder, the violence more normalized, and the lies more transparent.

The biggest lie of all is the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that its costly, ego-driven, and unnecessary military invasion of Chicago—Operation Midway Blitz—rounded up “the worst of the worst pedophiles, child abusers, kidnappers, gang members, and armed robbers.” In fact, DHS’ own data shows that out of more than 1,000 people rounded up, only 10 had criminal records.

As one Chicago resident remarked, “When Donald Trump campaigned, he said he was going after criminals, rapists and drug dealers. Now, they’re assaulting women, deporting children, mothers and fathers—not criminals. And if they’re criminals, he needs to prove it. We haven’t seen that evidence yet.”

Indeed, even the courts are finding the Trump administration’s so-called “evidence” of crime to be scant and/or unreliable.

Nationally, more than 70% of individuals rounded up by ICE nationally have no criminal convictions. Many have lived in the U.S. for decades, raised families, paid taxes, contributed to the economy, and worked the jobs most Americans refuse to do.

The blatantly false claim that immigrants are inherently violent criminals has also been repeatedly refuted by studies showing that immigrants—including undocumented ones—are less likely to commit crimes than Americans born in the U.S.

Even Trump’s insistence that certain states or cities are overrun with crime, thus necessitating his military invasions, collapses under scrutiny: crime remains at record lows nationwide.

The data simply does not support the rhetoric.

Violence rises and falls with social conditions, not partisan control. Yet, conveniently, only those states that have challenged the Trump administration’s abuses have been singled out for invasion by ICE and the National Guard.

Clearly, this is not about crime, safety, or jobs.

So what is really driving this campaign of terror?

What we are witnessing is the weaponization of fear.

A government that profits from panic and rewards blind obedience has turned immigration enforcement into a spectacle of domination—part deterrent, part distraction, and all political theater.

The timing is no coincidence.

The Trump administration has just announced its fifth military strike on a Venezuelan vessel it claims—without evidence—was engaged in illegal activity. The propaganda might scream about “foreign threats,” but these spectacles serve a different purpose: to divert public outrage away from falling poll numbers, a faltering economy, and growing unrest over the regime’s corruption and incompetence.

At home, ICE raids perform the same function as those boat strikes abroad—they keep the public frightened and the cameras fixed on the wrong enemy. Meanwhile, the scandals that should command national attention—the Epstein files implicating powerful allies, the graft, the insider enrichment—sink beneath the noise.

Each new show of force, each televised arrest or explosion, is meant to remind the populace who holds the power and how easily it can be turned inward.

This is not about border control or law enforcement. It is about control, period.

When a political regime begins to equate its own survival with the nation’s survival, every citizen becomes a potential suspect and every act of dissent a potential crime.

Against such a backdrop, ICE’s strategy is predatory and deliberate.

Lower court rulings have affirmed that ICE, DHS and the Trump Administration are willfully trampling the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

When ICE agents hunt people the way one might hunt animals in the wild, they cease to be officers of the law and become roving packs of lawless predators.

Lawless, paid predators, that is.

Thanks to the vast sums of taxpayer money funneled into ICE under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” financial incentives are turning ICE agents into bounty hunters.

In addition to recruiting ICE agents with $50,000 signing bonuses and $60,000 in student loan forgiveness, DHS is also promising to lavishly reward police agencies that allow their officers to operate as extensions of ICE with salary reimbursements, overtime pay and monthly bonuses.

Then there is the Trump administration’s directive to ICE to carry out a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day.

No wonder citizens, lawful residents and immigrants with no criminal history are getting swept up. There simply aren’t enough violent criminals to fill these quotas.

While some lower courts have attempted to rein in ICE’s abuses, the U.S. Supreme Court has largely empowered them.

In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, a 6–3 Supreme Court order paused a district court injunction that would have barred ICE from stopping people based on perceived race, accent, or workplace location—in effect greenlighting racial profiling and roving patrols.

The court ruled that ICE’s criteria for targeting individuals—judging people by race, language, or job—does not rise to the constitutional level of reasonable suspicion.

But for an administration that mistakes might for right, the law is whatever justifies the hunt. “Everything we’re doing is very lawful,” Trump declared. “What they’re doing is not lawful.”

Martin Luther King Jr. offered the clearest rebuttal to that logic more than sixty years ago.

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written while jailed for participating in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, King reminded the world “that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’”

King then went on to explain how to distinguish between just and unjust laws:

“I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

King’s message was not about politics but about principle. His words remind us that legality and morality are not always the same — and that a nation that abandons moral law will soon find itself without any law at all.

A government that chains pregnant women, assaults journalists, and detains citizens without cause has lost its moral authority to govern.

King warned that the gravest threat to justice is not the clamor of bad people but the appalling silence of good ones. The same holds true today: silence in the face of government brutality is itself a form of consent.

Even in the face of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed repression, citizens have stepped up to meet military intimidation with moral conscience.

In Portland and other cities, protesters have embraced creative, nonviolent acts of symbolic resistance—appearing unclothed to expose the government’s hypocrisy, donning costumes to mock its fear, and standing silently before armed agents as living reminders of what it means to resist tyranny without becoming it.

These creative gestures recall the kind of moral witness King described: the courage to confront injustice with peace and strip it of its disguise.

The bottom line, as always, rests with “we the people.”

ICE does not protect America—it terrorizes America. And until it is reined in, dismantled, or reformed to operate wholly within constitutional boundaries, it will remain a standing army on domestic soil: unaccountable, unconstitutional, and un-American.

Tyranny always cloaks itself in the language of welfare and safety. And constitutional abuse transcends party lines.

Every regime that seeks to entrench its power begins by promising to protect the people from chaos, crime, or foreign enemies—then proceeds to manufacture both.

The raids, the strikes, the distractions are all part of the same design: to condition obedience, erase accountability, and cement totalitarian rule under the pretense of “law and order.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Constitution is not a suggestion; it is the rule of law.

The Constitution is not a suggestion; it is the rule of law.

If ICE—and by extension, the DHS and the entire Trump regime—cannot operate within those limits, if it must hide behind masks and military might to exercise its power, then it has ceased to be lawful.

It has become exactly what the Framers of the Constitution feared: a government that wages war on its own people.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post Police State Bounty Hunters: The Rise of ICE’s Unconstitutional War on America appeared first on LewRockwell.