Lew Rockwell Institute

America, above all countries, was born in an explicitly libertarian revolution, a revolution against empire; against taxation, trade monopoly, and regulation; and against militarism and executive power. — Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

What happened?  How did we, in 2025, get so far from the dream of establishing a libertarian society?  Answer: Certain elites didn’t want one.  They wanted protection from the great multitude. They wanted power concentrated in a few people of their choosing, and that meant establishing a central coercive state.  But directing the country away from its libertarian founding required slick political maneuvering.

Most Americans born before 1980 know something began on July 4, 1776 that didn’t conclude until years later.  On that day in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress declared its member colonies to be “free and independent states,” and as such they would conduct themselves as states “may of right do.”  This put the signers of this declaration in charge of their own fate, provided they win the war with Great Britain that began over a year earlier.  And should king or Parliament doubt their sincerity, by signing they mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

Usually war is an elite enrichment scheme, and for some the Revolution was indeed a profitable undertaking, as was true for Robert Morris, the Revolution’s financier.  But for others, such as Thomas Nelson, Jr., the war destroyed his personal fortune — he sank “from affluence, almost to absolute poverty,” as a friend put it in Nelson’s eulogy.  He lost it all fighting for the radical ideals of the Declaration.  Although Morris had no such idealistic fervor during the war, after it was over his failed real estate speculations landed him in debtor’s prison for three years.

Winning the war without formal confederation

Wars are normally fought between governments — more precisely, governments declare wars, the people fight them.  Americans’ formal government was under construction until March 1, 1781 when the states unanimously ratified the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.  For five years, they fought with only the Continental Congress serving as an undocumented central advisory. This was suspiciously close to a condition of anarchy.

As we know, the quasi-anarchist Americans fared well in their struggle for independence. After Burgoyne surrendered to Gates at Saratoga in October 1777, marking a major victory for the Americans, France entered into a commercial and military alliance with the US in 1778 that eventually proved decisive at Yorktown in 1781, where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington to end the war.

The Battles of Saratoga were considered a turning point in the war.  But how did it get that far?  The Americans had no well-trained, standing army when it started.  They were farmers and tradesmen with muskets facing what was regarded as the world’s premiere fighting force.  George Washington accepted command of the ragtag American “army” in June 1775 and six months later Thomas Paine gave them bold words about why they should declare independence, followed by Jefferson’s eloquent  libertarianism of the Declaration.  But does this explain the Americans’ eventual victory?  Was it a matter of home turf advantage combined with discipline, ideological purpose, and the enemy’s lack of enthusiasm?  All of it under guidance of an informal, argumentative committee called a Congress and funded by paper that created economic havoc?

That wouldn’t be far from the truth.  But while Paine was writing an inspirational essay to keep Washington’s demoralized troops in camp, the conservatives in Congress were making plans for an American central state if they were victorious.  As a corollary to his call for independence in June, 1776 Richard Henry Lee included a resolution for confederation which resulted in archconservative John Dickinson chairing a committee of 13 to provide one.  Based on a plan circulated by Benjamin Franklin the previous year, the draft promoted the idea of a strong central government wherein the powers left to the states would be negligible, with Congress having the power to create any and all laws necessary for the “general welfare.”

As Rothbard explains, Dickinson’s conservative call for subordination of the existing states to a central Congress took a hit with the arrival of Dr. Thomas Burke of North Carolina in the spring of 1777.  Burke secured an amendment that became Article Two of the Articles, which stated:

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

Sovereignty had been shifted from the central government to the states. Rothbard concludes,

While the radicals had succeeded in pulling much of the centralist teeth, the Articles were still a momentous step from the loose but effective unity of the original Continental Congress to the creation of a powerful new central government. To that extent, they were an important victory for conservatism and centralization, and proved to be a halfway house on the road to the Constitution.

The rest is history

Following the war, debt notices and collectors showed up at the doors of backcountry residents in Massachusetts, leading to what became known as Shays’s Rebellion.  As historian Leonard L. Richards has meticulously documented, the standard story of Shays’s Rebellion as an uprising of indebted farmers in Western Massachusetts who refused to pay their taxes simply did not wash.  Based on his archival research, the insurgency was in fact a protest of western farmers, many of them veterans of the Revolution and leaders in their towns, against the Massachusetts government for its attempt to enrich the few at the expense of the backcountry.

Shays’s Rebellion was  propagandized to drag George Washington from retirement to Chair the Constitutional Convention on the grounds that the rebellion reflected a grave weakness in government.  Called for the purpose of revising the Articles, the Convention instead conducted secret proceedings and developed a new document that has centralized control over the states and the American people.

The post Government Is a Racket appeared first on LewRockwell.

Aside from enforcing existing US immigration law and introducing a tariff and trade reset with 100 countries, Trump 2.0 is largely Biden with a functional spinal cord, Obama with a third term, a self-confessed McKinley for the 21st Century.  Despite the particular lack of respect granted the 9th and 10th Amendments, as the center dissolves and weakens, those two are our walkaway cards, served by the First and Second Amendments, but not subservient to them.  Walk we will, joining other Americans in a massive ongoing movement of decentralization of place, economy, and thinking that echoes earlier migrations from Europe to North America.  Now we travel away from urban and Washingtonian command and control towards a million Walden Ponds.

The impoverished, the risk takers, the independent thinkers, the entrepreneurs and the sincerely religious packed up from the Old World and set sail for a new one they hoped would be more to their liking –  including a Republic that from its very gestation was uncertain about its fundamental and limited role in American society.  In 1830, John Adams wondered if the unusual vagueness of the so-called “common defense and general welfare” clause in the Constitution was undefined because of an innocent “inattention to the phraseology” or something far more sinister.  He goes on to write, defining the fundamental cause and effect of the war between the states yet to come:

…without an equal watchfulness over the great landmarks between the General Government and the particular Governments, the danger is certainly not less, of either a gradual relaxation of the band which holds the latter together, leading to an entire separation, or of a gradual assumption of their powers by the former, leading to a consolidation of all the Governments into a single one [italics added].

Decentralizing forces opposing the totalitarian might be only philosophical, or somewhat political, or simply the second law of thermodynamics as applied to human energy.  In fact, they are all three.

Persistent totalitarian tendencies, and an irrational and immoral lack of give and take in state relations, tends to collapse empires – philosophically, politically, and physically.  The question is, does NEWTRUMP acknowledge this reality, or does it embrace anti-reality?  Does NEWTRUMP understand “how stuff works” or does it seek creative ahistoricism towards some as yet mysterious new state of affairs?

Five months in, NEWTRUMP sits astride a deep state that remains viciously predictable, solely survival-oriented, and closer than ever to its natural and probably violent end. Trump inherited the deep state’s war against Russia, and those conducted for the Israeli state, and so far NEWTRUMP has delivered none of the promised peace.  Henry Kissinger, bless his heart, published his last book entitled “Leadership” and he bemoaned two things – first, the ability of people outside of the state to access information formerly controlled by the state, and secondly, that “Forgetfulness is sometimes the glue for societies that would not otherwise adhere.”  We the people, and our trite, banal governments are no longer allowed the luxury of forgetfulness.

NEWTRUMP faces unusual foreign policy challenges. I should clarify – the challenges are not unusual, but NEWTRUMP’s options in dealing with them are more limited.  For example, on June 8th, 1967, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was faced with the question of protecting the crew and vessel of the United States Navy attacked in international waters, and prosecuting to the full extent of the law the unprovoked attackers of that vessel.  This is the story of the USS Liberty, a ship and crew we remembered for 58th year last weekend. LBJ, a devoted vassal of Israel, called back the initial launch of US Navy rescue ships and fighter aircraft, in hope of giving Israel time to eliminate the witnesses. When that failed, LBJ ordered a coverup of the attack on the USS Liberty, endorsed an official whitewashing of the perps, and gagged all surviving members of the crew from speaking about the attack.  Back in the 1960s, US presidents could make up stories about events overseas, as this same administration did with the Gulf of Tonkin “attack.” They could likewise create coverups of actual attacks that didn’t fit the administration’s narrative, as the administration did with the Israeli attempt to sink the USS Liberty and murder every man on board on June 8th, 1967.

What a different 58 years can make!  US “ally” Ukraine recently attacked a part of the Russian nuclear triad while these long range bombers were parked on runways, in compliance with the US-Russia New START treaty for the purpose of daily counting and verification.  Russia correctly assesses that the UK, possibly other NATO operatives, and even members of the US CIA or special forces had advance knowledge of this attack on Russia’s nuclear triad.  It follows, Russia must understand that NATO and the US willingly participated in – or failed to prevent – a violation of a bilateral Nuclear Treaty, an act of war by the US and its allies.

Instead of ordering a coverup, NEWTRUMP is left in stunned silence, trying to get out of his culpability pickle of having presided over 1) a devious Deep State acting independently to launch an expanded, perhaps nuclear, war, or 2) overseeing a staff and state bureaucracy so utterly incompetent in the field of nuclear weapons and treaties and intelligence that they themselves didn’t know, or innocently failed to tell the President in advance, or 3) all of the above.

The Spider’s Web op was an act of terror not just against Russia, but against the United States, Ukraine’s biggest “benefactor” since long before 2014, providing over $300 billion in arms and aid since 2021, the country paying the salaries of Ukraine’s civil servants for years.  Oh that LBJ were in office in 1967 to shut down speculation, to lie on stage to protect his allies, unchecked and unquestioned by facts and witnesses.  Forgetfulness is, as Kissinger noted, increasingly impossible, and so is ignorance.

The lies of state today are easily exposed, and we understand these lying states do not wish to pursue peace.  This explains Ukraine’s situation, and our own, as illustrated by Washington’s Logan and Hatch Act violating Senators.  But unlike two generations ago, we see this reality as it happens.  Who was watching as the US wildly pushed to expand NATO eastward and southward, and promised NATO membership to Ukraine, while denying and demurring as to exactly when and how?  Who was watching as the US for over 50 years promised the world a two-state solution while privately swearing to the Israeli regime it would never happen?  What “Ambassador” Huckabee says now is not a change of policy, but a public confession of a continued US policy that supports and pays for every Israeli-desired war, a public confession of US full faith and guarantee of Israel’s every move to deny Palestinians human rights, property rights, and political power, food, healthcare, and life itself.

It is the United States and its dependent allies who deny human rights, and are willing to destroy a country to the last Palestinian, and steal the land that remains.  It is the US and her dependent allies who demand that Ukraine fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian” is “the best money we ever spent.”

A main difference between these two conflicts can be found in the objectives of the state.  Israel used a security breach of their own making on October 7th 2023 to invade Gaza and expand control over the West Bank, continuing a decades long agenda of forcibly removing all Palestinians from land Israel desires. Planned genocide, with 19th century colonial overtones of racism and arrogance, supporting territorial expansion was, and remains, the objective, one that the US government supports and funds without complaint.

On the other hand, the Russian response to US and NATO deceit regarding the Minsk treaties of 2014 and 2015 was predictable, but slow to launch, in effect, not a long-planned development, or part of a long-held vision.  Once launched, Russia’s purpose and rationale were publicly and repeatedly explained as protecting Russian people, their culture and economy along the eastern border, who had been assaulted and attacked by Kiev in willful violation of signed treaties for over five years. Ukraine had existed as a peaceful, if politically compromised, Slavic neighbor and economic partner for two generations, prior to 2021. Strangely enough, if the United States had to pick a side based on our “City on a Hill” value system, we would be supporting Yemen and Russia, rather than Tel Aviv and Kiev.

When US allies adopt total war, practice genocide and abandon Christian principles that command the pursuit of peace, while ostensible US opponents show proportionality, restraint and Christian ethics, we may wonder what NEWTRUMP is delivering, and what we may expect from the current occupant of the White House, or his similarly compromised backup character.

Why we fight remains a legitimate question, but how we have fought in Ukraine and in Palestine has already produced a frightening new and energetic contempt for the US government at home and abroad, a multigenerational contempt legitimized by an ugly and shameful reality. Our Orwellian government – depersonalized, disconnected from truth, oblivious to reality, obsessed with endless war and state murder – prevails for now, full steam ahead on the last century’s compromised tracks.

The post NEWTRUMP Foreign Policy: Is it a Trainwreck? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Tim McGraw. 

I know this drive and area well. I’ve driven over Stevens Pass dozens of times and hiked and snowshoeed at Stevens Pass (Highway 2).

The highway and the newer RR tunnel are on the south side of the pass. The RR disaster happened on the northern side of the pass. As one drove up Hwy 2 from the west, I could see the snow sheds and the scene of the RR disaster on the other side of the valley. I don’t remember a trail to them back in the day, or a road.

The trail the videographers hike on is surrounded by Devil’s Club. That name is no lie. It is a horrible plant covered in thick thorns.

The abandoned snow sheds look like the Mines of Moria in “Fellowship of the Ring.” No doubt it was an inspiration for the movie artists.

The new RR tunnel is one of the longest in North America. When the trains reach Seattle, they are covered in grime from the diesel smoke in the tunnel.

The post The Great Northern RR Disaster, Stevens Pass, WA appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Middle East Eye

The post Israeli military officials say there are no restrictions on bombing Gaza homes appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

Shortly after October 7, with the commencement in Gaza of Israel’s Operation Swords of Iron, certain self-evident truths became crystal clear. By late October, Israel’s actions within and without Gaza had shown the world the absolute depravity of Israel, state and civil society.

—

By the polls, nothing outside their self-righteous and self-obsessed selves mattered to a preponderance of Jewish Israelis. Israeli Jews, by and large, have become a sorority of Jewish supremacists, and Palestinians have paid a terrible price for Israel’s systemic societal sociopathy.

—

In Gaza…America’s participated in mass murder for the sake of murder. In Gaza, Uncle Sam has finally achieved an official or formal inversion of all universal values.

Ilana Mercer

Amalek

The post The Real Israel vs. Hasbara History appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

USA Today

The post Neo-Nazi leader who inspired school shooting extradited to US appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

https://www.vigilantfox.com/p/declassified-biden-admin-labeled 

https://www.vigilantfox.com/p/the-next-pandemic-is-already-funded

The post Declassified: Biden Admin Labeled COVID Dissenters ‘Domestic Violent Extremists’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

The Daily Sceptic

The post Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Trump’s Iran Roller Coaster Ride appeared first on LewRockwell.

Patrick Foy wrote:

The legacy of Genocide Joe continues… 
No change of policy in the Age of Trump.
Free World purported leader is a nullity.

The post BBC Interview of Gaza Doctor… appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

See here.

The post Birthright Is Booming This Year. Here’s How the Israeli Propaganda Trip Works. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Steve Kirsch

The post COVID time series graphs show clearly the COVID vaccine kill people appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Ben Bartee

The post Legacy Media Meltdown as RFK Jr. Nukes Entire CDC Vaccine Committee appeared first on LewRockwell.

Stephen Mack wrote:

Lew,

Trump wasting 40 million taxpayer dollars and creating massive inconvenience so that he can smugly celebrate himself applauding the War Machine spectacle like Stalin standing on top of Lenin’s Mausoleum on May Day.

See here.

The post Trump’s military parade appeared first on LewRockwell.

“They don’t appear on rich lists. They don’t flaunt their wealth. But behind the scenes, the Wallenberg family controls an empire worth hundreds of billions of dollars. From AstraZeneca to Ericsson, their influence quietly shapes the global economy—but only few even know their name. For over six generations, the Wallenbergs have mastered the art of staying invisible. Their financial empire was built through banking, strategic investments, and political influence, making them one of the most powerful families in Europe. But their history is full of contradictions.

“During World War II, they walked a dangerous line—helping both the Nazis and the resistance. They banked for Hitler, yet also aided in secret plots to overthrow him. They helped save thousands of Jewish lives, but were later blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury for financial dealings with the Nazis. So, how did the Wallenbergs become the secret rulers of Sweden? How do they keep their wealth hidden in foundations while maintaining control over Sweden’s economy? And why does every Swedish government—left or right—have to work with them? This is the untold story of the Wallenbergs, the billionaire dynasty you’ve never heard of.”

Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x…

The post How Hitler’s Secret Bankers Own Most of Europe Today appeared first on LewRockwell.

Media analyst Mark Dice dives deep into the controversial theories surrounding the dramatic rise in transgender and LGBTQ identification over recent decades. This isn’t just about social media influence – there’s mounting scientific evidence pointing to chemical culprits that nobody wants to discuss. From endocrine-disrupting plastics in food packaging to atrazine herbicide contaminating water supplies, research shows these chemicals are literally feminizing male brains during fetal development.

Studies from University of Rochester found gender-bending chemicals in plastics alter baby boys’ brain development, while other research reveals how these same chemicals can chemically castrate frogs and turn 10% of males into egg-producing females. Even RFK Jr. warned about this “tsunami of toxic chemicals” causing sexual dysphoria. In this stunning in-depth report Mark Dice raises the questions few are willing to ask about what is really causing transgenderism and gender dysphoria in so many people today.

The post What is Causing the Transgender Epidemic? This Suppressed Science May Be The Key To Understanding appeared first on LewRockwell.

CNN reported that Trump’s approval ratings regarding immigration enforcement are skyrocketing.  This is a three alarm alert to the Demo-Bolshevik party that has planned and organized the riots and their lying media scum comrades who call burning police cars “peaceful protesting.”

The post This Will Probably End the LA Riots appeared first on LewRockwell.

As the language of Marxism becomes increasingly disguised in moralistic slogans such as “social justice” and “inclusiveness,” many people fail to recognize Marxist theories when they encounter them. They expect theories derived from Marxism to be littered with red flag phrases like “dialectical materialism” or “class conflict,” which would be the dead giveaway that they are dealing with Marxist interpretations. In the absence of such phrases, they deny that social justice theories are Marxist at all.

For example, although the historian Eric Foner is reputed to be a “noted Marxist historian,” he describes himself, not as a Marxist, but merely as “one who grew up in an Old Left family.” Thus, his history of the Reconstruction Era is taught as “objective” scholarship; after all, his work is not Marxist but merely Marxist-adjacent. While WEB Du Bois writes an explicitly Marxist history of the Reconstruction Era—describing it as the “dictatorship of the proletariat”—Foner believes nobody should be described as a Marxist:

JG: Would you be happy to be described as a “Marxist historian” or is there a more accurate term for historians like you, Howard Zinn and others?

EF: I tend to eschew labels. Marx is believed to have said: “I am not a Marxist.” In other words: “I don’t want to be assigned to a single school of interpretation.”

But no-one can understand history who does not have at least some familiarity with the writings of Marx.

I have been powerfully influenced by Marxist insights, especially those of the last generation of British Marxist scholars such as Eric Hobsbawm, E.P. Thompson and others.

But I have also been influenced by black radical scholars like WEB Du Bois, who himself was influenced by Marxism and also by other radical traditions and by feminist scholars.

Understanding history through “Marxist insights” is not merely about being familiar with Marxist theories of historical materialism and the Hegelian dialectic. The greatest infiltration of Marxist doctrine into the social justice discourse does not come directly from notions of class conflict or historical materialism, but from the far more pernicious influence of Marxist doctrine in erasing human will and agency. Marxists insist that human action is inevitably determined, not by individual will or choice, but by one’s economic and social circumstances. As David Gordon explains in “Mises Contra Marx,” the Marxist premise is that human will is governed by the prevailing “forces of production.” Marxists argue that each person’s choices are determined by his historical epoch, his class consciousness, his race, or other socioeconomic structures of his society. By contrast, Ludwig von Mises accords to human beings the will and power to make choices and take purposeful action. In Human Action, he states that “[A]cting man chooses, determines, and tries to reach an end. Of two things which he cannot have together he selects one and gives up the other.” Mises further explains:

Human action is purposeful behavior. Or we may say: Action is human will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person’s conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life.

Mises highlights the importance of the human will and human agency in making choices:

For the term will means nothing else than man’s faculty to choose between different states of affairs, to prefer one, to set aside the other, and to behave according to the decision made in aiming at the chosen state and forsaking the other.

Constant adjustment in pursuit of individual ends and goals is key to understanding human action. According to Mises, “In the course of social events there prevails a regularity of phenomena to which man must adjust his action if he wishes to succeed.”

But how can man “wish to succeed” in the first place, much less “adjust his action” accordingly, if he is merely some kind of automaton responding to the stimulus of his material circumstances? According to Marxists, there are certain predetermined actions that will inevitably be adopted by people who are classified as “exploited” and other actions will always be adopted by their “exploiters.” To Marxists, man does not adjust his actions based on his personal preferences or his own agency but merely follows the collective dictates of his group. By viewing everyone’s actions as determined by their group, it immediately becomes self-evident what their choices must be in every situation—you know what a white person would choose, what a slave would do in any situation, etc.

At the very least, this is regarded by Marxists as the default position and anyone asserting the contrary is regarded with deep skepticism and subjected to the highest standard of proof. They certainly would not get past the academic gatekeepers. For example, there is a widespread belief that there are no happy black people in America, and if any black person claims to be happy, he must be suffering from false consciousness or perhaps he was paid by white people to claim to be happy. In “Why America Has Never Been Great for Black People” Ariana Doss writes that:

Our president’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” has always confused me.

As a progressive person, who only views the past to find ways to improve the future, I cannot fathom why President Trump wants to go backwards. When I examine this country’s history, I do not find a time in which I, or any other Black person for this matter, would have wanted to go.

HK Egerton—a black man from North Carolina who defends the Confederate heritage of the South—is depicted by the Southern Poverty Law Center as simply incomprehensible: “I’ve often wondered what could cause him to do such things,” they say. The notion that a black man might not share the SPLC worldview is a deep mystery to them. This expectation that people’s opinions are determined by their class consciousness or race consciousness is held even by progressives who claim to reject Marxist ideology. They regard their worldview as merely a statement of the “obvious” and nothing to do with Marxist theories. Isn’t it obvious that exploited people will be in constant struggle against their exploiters and would never willingly cooperate with them?

There are many problems with this reasoning, but the key point being highlighted here is that it denies the very notion of free will and individual choice. As Mises explains:

Marxism asserts that a man’s thinking is determined by his class affiliation. Every social class has a logic of its own. The product of thought cannot be anything else than an “ideological disguise” of the selfish class interests of the thinker.

Marxist theories developed further by the Frankfurt School and modern critical race theories extend this notion of class affiliation to racial affiliation. Just as one’s thought cannot be anything else other than a reflection of his class interests, so one’s thought inevitably reflects his race. Thus, for example, Ariana Doss speaks not only of her personal opinion, but that of “any other black person.” Mises rejects this worldview. He further distinguishes the purposeful action of man from mere “animal reaction” meaning the innate biological nature of animals such as the “instincts of nourishment, of reproduction, and of aggression,” and rejects “the method of instinct-psychology” which says that the goal of human action is “the satisfaction of an instinctive urge.”

Many champions of the instinct school are convinced that they have proved that action is not determined by reason, but stems from the profound depths of innate forces, impulses, instincts, and dispositions which are not open to any rational elucidation.

Rejecting these irrational theories, Mises argues that “what distinguishes man from beasts is precisely that he adjusts his behavior deliberately. Man is the being that has inhibitions, that can master his impulses and desires.” Human action is deliberate and masterful, not simply determined by one’s history, race, or class. Human action and human choices are not prescribed by the dominant ideology or by prevailing power structures, but by individual will and agency.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post How Marxists Erase Human Will and Agency appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the days of yore, there were kings. Everybody could agree to hate the king because he was rich and well-fed, when most of his minions were not.

Then, a more effective system was invented: democracy. Its originators had in mind a system whereby the populace could choose their leader from amongst themselves – thereby gaining a leader who understood them and represented them.

In short order, those amongst the populace who wished to rule found a way to game the new system in a way that would allow them to, in effect, be kings, but to do so from behind the scenes, whilst retaining the illusion of democracy.

The formula is to create two opposing political parties. Each is led by someone who’s presented as being a “representative of the people.”

You then present the two parties as having opposing views on governance. It matters little what the differences are. In fact, you can have the differences be as obscure and arbitrary as, say, gay rights or abortion, and they will work as well as any other differences. What matters is that your two parties object to each other strenuously on the declared issues, working the electorate into a lather.

Once you have each group hating the other group “on principle,” you’re home free. At that point, you’ve successfully completed the distraction. The electorate now believe that, whatever the trumped-up issues are, they’re critical to the ethical governance of the country.

Most importantly, the electorate actually believe that their future well-being depends on the outcome of the next election – that it will decide whether their own view on the issues will prevail.

In a dictatorship, the leaders try to convince the people to support the dictatorship by claiming that more than 90% of the people voted for the dictator. But this is primitive thinking. It results in the same focused anti-leader sentiment that plagued the kings.

Far better to have the people fail to recognise who their actual rulers are and focus on the candidates, who are mere bit players and are changed as needed.

And, in a country where the illusion of democracy has become refined, the rulers come to understand that elections should not result in an overwhelming victory for one party or the other. Quite the opposite. If it can be arranged effectively, the best election is one that results in a 51% to 49% split.

This ensures that the 49% will not lose hope – that they’ll be both frustrated and angry at their near-miss, and redouble their efforts in the next election in order to have a win. And the 51% will wipe their collective brow in relief at having won, but will fear losing their slim advantage next time around.

Both parties must remain both hopeful and fearful. Keep them focused on each other – hating each other – and they’ll never figure out that you control both candidates like marionettes. The focus should never be on you, the real ruling class.

It’s also quite important to switch winners often. The ball should bounce back and forth from one party to the other frequently, allowing each winning party to dump the other party’s actual accomplishments when they take over.

However, just as important, the new winning party does not rescind the more oppressive accomplishments of the previous party. In this way, it becomes possible for the only long-term accomplishments to be the growing power of the government over the population, not advances for the populace.

And of course, this, by definition, means that the real rulers, the perennial group of individuals who control those who are elected – continually expand their power and wealth at the expense of the electorate.

But what of the candidates themselves? Do they recognise that they’re mere foot soldiers in the game?

Ideally, no. At any given time in any society, there are sufficient people whose egos exceed their abilities. Such individuals are ideal as candidates, as they tend to love the limelight, but will easily cave to the desires of those who made their candidacy possible. No candidate at the higher levels ever attains office without owing his soul to his backers. That ensures that, in spite of their public bravado, they remain controllable by their masters.

What’s extraordinary in this picture is that it’s possible for the populace to figure out the scam and yet, still believe that they live in a democratic system in which their vote may decide the future of the country.

Increasingly, particularly in Europe and North America, the citizenry are becoming aware that the Deep State collectively rule the countries. They understand that this largely invisible group of people are the true rulers, yet they vainly imagine that somehow the puppet leaders that they elect have the power to effect a solution.

Time after time, regardless of how adamant the marionettes are that they’ll follow the will of the people and save the day, in every case, the people’s hopes are dashed and the national policy reverts to business as usual.

In every case, the true leaders create the problems, cash in on them, then present the government as the solution to the problems, then cash in again.

In every case, the electorate pick up the tab and, rather than rebel, vainly hope that the next election will provide them with a group of marionettes who will actually deliver them from evil.

What’s astonishing is not that the Deep State lives only for its own ends, but that the populace recognise that it exists and still imagine that change from the status quo is possible.

Voting is not intended to count. It’s meant to be the pacifier that’s inserted into the public mouth periodically, when the public become grumpy that they must submit to kings.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Democracy Is the Ideal Distraction appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” President Donald Trump, NBC News Interview, March 30, 2025

President Donald Trump is threatening to launch air strikes on Iran for activities that are approved under the terms of Iran’s treaty obligations. This is not a matter on which there should be any debate. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) explicitly grants all parties, including Iran, the “inalienable right” to develop, research, produce, and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. This “inalienable right” includes the enriching of uranium.

Trump either doesn’t understand what a “treaty” is or thinks its terms should not apply to Iran. For the sake of clarity, a treaty is a formal, legally binding agreement between sovereign states that is governed by international law. It establishes mutual obligations, rights, or rules on matters such as trade, security, nuclear non-proliferation, or environmental protection. A treaty is not optional and cannot be repealed by executive fiat. States that ratify treaties are legally obligated to comply with their terms in good faith. Political leaders, as representatives of the state, are expected to uphold these obligations.

This is all very straightforward which is why we find so it hard to understand why Trump is threatening a country that is clearly “in compliance” with its obligations under the NPT. Here’s what Trump said on Friday on Air Force One:

“They won’t be enriching. If they enrich, then we’re going to have to do it the other way… (air strikes) And I don’t really want to do it the other way but we’re going to have no choice. There’s not going to be enrichment.”

Trump has no legal authority to determine whether Iran can enrich uranium or not. It’s simply not his decision to make. Even Grok—with its obvious pro-Israel bias—understands this. Check it out:

Donald Trump, whether as a private citizen or as U.S. president, has no legal authority under international law to demand that Iran stop enriching uranium. Iran, as a sovereign state and signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), has the right under Article IV to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment, provided it complies with its safeguards obligations under Article III and its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). No individual state, including the United States, has the unilateral legal authority under international law to prohibit Iran from exercising this right. Any demand from Trump would be a political or diplomatic action, not a legally binding directive, unless backed by a UN Security Council resolution, which would require agreement from other permanent members (e.g., Russia, China). Grok

Trita Parsi explains how Trump has adopted John Bolton’s Iran policy

Also, there is no provision in international law or under the UN Charter that allows one country to attack another country based on its own subjective perception of what ‘may or may not’ constitute a threat. That’s insanity, and it flies in the face of the UN’s efforts to ensure peace and security through collective action and multilateralism. Besides, there is no credible legal case against Iran, because Iran is not violating the rules. What the MSM stubbornly refuses to tell the public is that Iran has no nuclear weapons and no nuclear weapons program. And—according to the IAEA—Iran has been “in compliance” since 2003 and has never diverted nuclear material to a weapons program. In other words, there’s no legal case against Iran at all. Zilch.

So, what is the point of Trump’s fulminations? Why is he threatening a peaceful country that is clearly “playing by the rules”?

Did we mention that the Trump campaign was given over $100 million by wealthy Zionist donors whose driving ambition is to topple the government in Tehran and absorb territorial Iran into Greater Israel?

Could that be a factor? Could that explain why Trump convened 5 separate meetings with Iranian negotiators without once mentioning the issue of “nuclear enrichment”, but then—Surprise, Surprise—did a swift 180 after which he made “zero enrichment” the foundational demand for which he has declared unflinching support?

How do you explain that sudden about-face? Is Trump pursuing an Israeli agenda or putting “America First”?

And why would Trump stake-out such a flimsy, untenable position when he knows that enrichment is the one provision in the NPT on which Iran will never budge?

The obvious answer is that Trump doesn’t want an agreement; he does not want to resolve the issue peacefully. That’s why he focused on the one issue on which there is no flexibility, figuring (quite rightly) that enrichment can be used as a pretext for war. And that’s the goal, war with Iran.

(Readers who have been following developments with Iran closely may recall that Trump’s original demand was that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”. (Iran has agreed to that demand.) But now, he has sneakily changed the wording to “no enrichment” as if the two things are the same. Naturally, the pro-Israel media has not drawn attention to the president’s sleight-of-hand fearing that it would reveal the deceptive game he is playing. But, the fact remains, Trump used the negotiations to look like he genuinely wanted peace, and then quickly moved the goalposts as the “talks” progressed. Bottom line: A peaceful settlement was never Trump’s objective.

This is from an article at The Times of Israel (June 8, 2025:

Iran conducted and covered up “a number” of implosion tests that are key to developing a nuclear weapon in 2003, an analysis of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s May 31 report on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program reveals.

According to the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security think tank, which analyzed and published key points from the IAEA report, the activities carried out by Iran were in preparation for a “cold test” in the development of a nuclear bomb, which involves the creation of “a fully assembled nuclear device with a surrogate core of natural or depleted uranium rather than weapons-grade uranium. Times of Israel

This is how desperate the Trump team (and their Israeli allies) are to cast suspicion on Iran’s perfectly legal activities. They’ve actually dug up the details of research that was conducted in 2003. (a period during which Iran has admitted to “aspects of a nuclear weapons program.”) Notice that the IAEA report does not suggest that anything illegal is going on today, or that there is any indication that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, or even that they are diverting nuclear material to some other location. No. What they’re referring to happened more than two decades ago. It’s a joke.

And the same rule applies to the uranium that has been enriched to 60% which the Iranians have admitted to many times in the past. They’re not hiding anything; they’re looking for sanction’s relief, that’s all. Turns out, they don’t like economic strangulation. Are you surprised?

Iran started enriching uranium at higher levels when Trump broke an earlier treaty (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) that was hammered out by Obama, and which was the most exhaustive and stringent nuclear agreement in history. When Trump walked out in 2018, Iran started enriching at 60% thinking they could use it as a bargaining chip in future negotiations with the administration. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out that way, mainly because Israel wants the “maximum pressure” policy to continue until they are ready to launch aerial attacks on targets in Iran. So, the sanctions have remained in place.

By the way, under the terms of the NPT, Iran is allowed to enrich uranium to 60% as the treaty does not explicitly set a maximum enrichment level for non-nuclear-weapon states. This is a fact, but it is a fact that is omitted in 100% of the MSM coverage of the issue. Why would that be?

Iran Needs Nuclear Energy

Many people believe that a country with vast oil resources like Iran has no need for nuclear energy, but that’s simply not true. Much of Iran’s electricity generation takes place at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s primary nuclear power facility, that uses low-enriched uranium to generate significant electrical power and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Iran also uses nuclear technology to produce radioisotopes for medical diagnostics and treatment,… widely used in cancer diagnosis and imaging. Iran claims its nuclear program supports healthcare by providing isotopes for over 1 million patients annually.

Iran also uses nuclear energy in industrial applications, agriculture, water resource management, scientific research, cancer treatment, technology and radioisotope production. The fact is, no country would join the NPT if they were denied the “peaceful use” of nuclear power. Why would they?

Finally….

Americans should realize that nothing one reads about Iran in the western media can be trusted; it is all poisoned with the same, vile anti-Iran hatred and bias. Since the 1979 Revolution to today, US policy towards Iran has been an unbroken chain of relentless hectoring, belligerence and demonization. Washington has never treated Iran with the respect it deserves nor will it in the future. That’s because—on a fundamental level—the entire US political class despises Iran for asserting sovereign control over their-own vast resources and for failing to kowtow to their mucky-muck overlords in Washington. That’s the real issue; Iran has refused to cave in to Uncle Sam’s diktats which is why it must be punished with economic strangulation, “maximum pressure” and, inevitably, war. That is how America treats the peasants in the provinces, with an iron fist.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi summed up Iran’s approach at a recent ceremony for the late Ayatollah Khomeini. He said:

“The main foundation of Iran’s foreign policy is based on the principle of renouncing foreign domination. Trump’s ban on enrichment is itself domination, and this is unacceptable to the Iranian people.”

To its credit, Iran has never ‘given an inch’ to Washington’s endless badgering and saber-rattling. They have stuck by their principles and defended their right as a free country to choose their own development model, their own political system and their own collective future without bullying or coercion.

Iran should be applauded for shrugging off Washington’s threats and intimidation, and for its unflinching commitment to the principle of sovereign independence. They have preserved their dignity through 45 years of nonstop hostility and antagonism.

Bravo, Iran.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

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