Lew Rockwell Institute

Last night President Trump stated on his Truth Social account that he is reversing course in the matter of the Epstein files and now supports their full release.

Lately I’ve been wondering if the hypothesis that Epstein’s primary weapon was the use of underage girls may, to some extent, be a red herring.

While underage girls were likely a part of some of his operations, I imagine a scenario in which Epstein (or his masters) also used the representation that underage girls were present at social gatherings to amplify the force of their blackmail operation. Epstein could have insinuated that underage girls were present and used it as a pretext for “letting attendees know”—months or even years later—that law enforcement had started asking questions.

Epstein could have said something to the effect of, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered and I’ll keep you posted.” This sort of operation may be characterized as primarily psychological in nature—a way of instilling fear, paranoia, and compliance.

Psychological terror would be further amplified once the word got out that Epstein had installed hidden video cameras in the various rooms of his various properties. At that point, the guys who attended his events would find themselves in a Catch-22. Those who were confident they had not broken any laws would want to exculpate themselves by proclaiming, “I don’t care if the files are released—I have nothing to hide.”

The trouble is that—though they may have nothing illegal to hide—the disclosure of the documents and images could nevertheless prove to be extremely embarrassing for them.

As Machiavelli pointed out in his 1513 pamphlet, The Prince (published in 1532) rulers must only present themselves to the people they rule in a formal, ceremonious way that maximizes their mystique.

Once the ruler is shown to be an ordinary mortal with ordinary vices, his mystique is lost, and the plebeians will cease to perceive him as having any real power.

This is why the British Royal Family is now widely regarded as an embarrassing joke. Once the males in the family are perceived to be ordinary weak men with ordinary weak men’s vices, they are done for.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the final cache of Epstein files does not reveal anything illegal, but turns out to be merely cringeworthy in the extreme.

If my hypothesis proves to be correct, the great lords of this world will be exposed not so much as pedophiles, but as weak (and debased) flesh no different from us, apart from their vast wealth and privilege. At that point the plebeians will marvel that the great lords of this earth are a bunch of self-indulgent and immoral clowns.

In reviewing the personal conflict between Gaius Octavius (who later became Emperor Augustus) and Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), historians have pointed out that Octavian had the advantage of personal discipline, while Antony was too given to sensuality to maintain his power.

In Rome it was claimed that Antony had been ruined by the “harlot queen” (meretrix regina) Cleopatra, while Octavian always stayed true to the Stoic principles he’d learned from his tutors, the philosophers Athenodorus Cananites and Arius Didymus.

IF the Epstein files are ultimately disclosed in their entirety, the upshot may be that the powerful men of disciplined habits will survive the scandal, while those given to sensuality and self-indulgence will lose their mystique and therefore their power.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post Trump Now Says He Supports Release of Epstein Files appeared first on LewRockwell.

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This year’s anniversary of 9/11 passed without mainstream mention. Almost two-and-a-half decades on, the media appears to have lost all interest in that fateful, world-changing day. This is despite the April 2023 release of a bombshell court filing by the Office of Military Commissions, which concluded at least two of the alleged hijackers were CIA assets, having been recruited “via a liaison relationship” with Saudi intelligence. The same document offers illuminating insight into how the 9/11 Commission buried this, among other inconvenient truths.

Central to the coverup was Commission chief Philip Zelikow. Commission investigator Dana Leseman, dubbed “CS-2” in the filing, told representatives of the Office of Military Commissions – the legal body overseeing the prosecution of 9/11 defendants – Zelikow consistently sought “to blunt” inquiries “into Saudi involvement with the hijackers.” Leseman was formally charged with investigating “the possible link” between Riyadh and the 9/11 attacks, but Zelikow was determined she would not succeed.

His wrecking efforts included blocking Leseman’s requests to conduct interviews with certain individuals of interest, and obtain documents that could shed light on Riyadh’s foreknowledge of, if not active participation in, 9/11 – and the CIA’s by extension. More widely, Zelikow had exclusive control over who the Commission did and did not interview, and on what topics, strictly limiting which witnesses were grilled, and the evidence heard.

Leseman was fired by Zelikow in April 2003, after obtaining a classified index to the House and Senate’s joint inquiry into 9/11, “from a source other than official channels.” The index listed sensitive documents possessed by the FBI and other US government agencies, detailing “suspected Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks.” While “a minor security violation”, Zelikow summarily terminated Leseman and seized the index. News of her defenestration didn’t leak at the time. No other staffer was permitted to view the document thereafter.

Elsewhere in the filing, Bill Clinton’s counter-terror czar Richard Clarke, who has long-charged the CIA had a relationship with some of the alleged hijackers, told investigators Zelikow was explicitly selected by George W Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice “to prevent damage to the Bush Administration by blocking the Commission’s line of inquiry into the Saudi connection.”

Clarke further asserted his belief the Saudi-led effort to penetrate Al Qaeda “may have [been] organized by high level employees at the CIA,” and “most of the records” of the top-secret mission “were destroyed in an effort to cover up the operation.” Tellingly, Clarke relayed how after he expressed his opinion the CIA “was running a ‘false flag’ operation to recruit the hijackers” publicly, “he received an ‘angry call’ from George Tenet,” CIA Director during 9/11. Despite his wrath, Tenet “did not deny the allegation.”

‘Act Preemptively’

Philip Zelikow’s appointment to head the 9/11 Commission was the culmination of the body’s thoroughly troubled gestation. Initially, the Bush administration vehemently rejected mass public demand for any official investigation into the attacks. It was not until November 2002 the Commission was begrudgingly established at long last. Its initial chief, Henry Kissinger, resigned within mere weeks due to conflicts of interest. This included awkward questions over whether he counted any Saudi Arabians – particularly individuals with the surname bin Laden – as clients.

Zelikow had a panoply of conflicts of interest of his own, some of which were well-established at the time. Others only emerged when the Commission was underway. For one, he enjoyed a long-running relationship with Condoleezza Rice, and was part of George W Bush’s transition team, overseeing the new administration’s National Security Council taking office. This process led to the White House’s Counterterrorism Security Group being downgraded, and its chief Richard Clarke demoted, creating layers of bureaucracy between him and senior government officials.

A secret report produced by Clarke’s team in January 2000 concluded US intelligence was ill-equipped to respond to a major, ever-growing domestic terror threat. It outlined 18 recommendations, with 16 accompanying funding proposals, to “seriously weaken” Al Qaeda. Its findings were ignored by the Bush administration. Numerous memos authored subsequently by Clarke, urgently requesting high-level meetings to discuss Al Qaeda and outline strategies for combating the group at home and abroad, were similarly disregarded.

Meanwhile, in September 2002, the Bush administration submitted a 31-page document, The National Security Strategy of the United States, to Congress. It set out a very clear blueprint for the looming War On Terror, calling for a massive buildup in US military spending, and Washington to “act preemptively” against “rogue states”, such as Iraq. While it bore the President’s signature, the incendiary document was secretly written by none other than Zelikow.

His authorship only became known by the Commission when the investigation was almost over, prompting several key staffers and a commissioner to threaten to quit. The body’s chiefs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton were apparently unaware when Zelikow was appointed. The pair subsequently charged the Commission was set up to fail. Its investigations got off to a glacial start, in part due to funding issues. The Commission was initially given a paltry $3 million dollars to complete its work.

By contrast, a concurrent probe of the space shuttle Columbia’s crash, in which just seven people died, was granted $50 million. In March 2003, due to repeated demands from its staffers, the Commission was allocated a further $9 million – $2 million less than requested. Despite these grave teething problems, that same month – three months into the 16-month-long probe, and before a single hearing had even been convened – Zelikow produced a complete outline of the Commission’s final report.

The finished article, released in July 2004, followed Zelikow’s preordained design very closely. In the intervening time, he personally rewrote several statements submitted by staffers, which informed the report’s findings. In one instance, he amended a statement to strongly insinuate, without making the direct accusation, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a relationship of some kind, horrifying its authors. This false claim was frequently peddled by White House officials to justify the criminal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

Read the Whole Article

The post Court Filing Exposes 9/11 Coverup appeared first on LewRockwell.

Nima and I discuss these issues.  We do not discuss whether Epstein was murdered, which is the question at the heart of the matter.  If he was murdered,  why?  Was Epstein murdered because he threatened to reveal that he was running a blackmail operation, not a sex-trafficking operation?  Was he murdered because he had the dirt on too many elite Americans?  Did the CIA have him murdered as revenge for Israel’s spying on the US?

The circumstances suggest that he was murdered.  A high profile prisoner, he was in a suicide-proof cell watched by two guards and by security cameras.  For the brief period during which he died, the guards happened to wander off the job.  The security cameras malfunctioned or were turned off.  In other words, not just part of security failed.  All of it did.

There is no evidence of suicide.  There is only assertion by authorities.  How often do authorities tell the truth?  President John F. Kennedy’s assassination?  His brother, Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination?  9/11?, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction?  Assad’s use of  chemical weapons?  The lies about Gaddafi?  The examples of authorities saying the opposite of the truth are endless.

If Epstein was running an Israeli blackmail operation to ensure American conformity with Israel’s policy of expansion in the Middle East, it is unlikely any youths below the age of sexual consent were present involuntary.  Israel would hire young women rather than  jeopardize an important operation by kidnapping underaged girls and holding them in sexual bondage, which could lead to an investigation.  Moreover, whether or not 17-year old Virginia Guthrie was underaged depends on her state of residency.  In the 50 US states the age varies from 16 to 18 years old.  In 31 of the 50 states the age of consent is 16.  In eight of the states the age of consent is 17.  In eleven of the states the age of consent is 18.

The age of sexual consent is arbitrary.  In 1871 Delaware lowered  the age of female sexual consent from 10 to 7 years old.  In the rest of the US at that time the age was 10 to 12 years old.  Today in some South American and African countries the age of female consent is 12.  In Austria it is 14. In France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Greece, Denmark and Iceland, the age of consent is 15. In the rest of Europe the age of consent is 16 or 17.  In China the age of consent is 14.  In Japan the age was recently raised from 13 to 16.  In many Muslim countries sexual intercourse outside of marriage is prohibited.  In Iran males can marry at 15 and girls at 13.

In the US the age of consent was raised partly to reduce teenage pregnancy.  Today this problem is combated by mothers having 12-year old daughters on birth control pills.  Moreover, whether or not sex with an underaged female is a criminal offense depends on the age of the male.  As long as the male is not 21, the arbitrary age of adulthood, it is not a criminal offense.

Consider the paradox, an 18 year old American, a non-adult, cannot purchase alcohol or a gun, but can be sent as a soldier to kill and die abroad.  This shows how arbitrary the age definitions are.

The narrative that Epstein was running a sex trafficking operation for pedophiles appeals to MAGA-Americans who see the elite as a corrupt class.  As many MAGA-Americans are Christian Zionists, they don’t want to hear that Israel was entrapping Americans for blackmail purposes. Male-hating feminists also prefer the sex-trafficking narrative as it lays the blame on men.  Emotions and indoctrination predispose much of the public to see the Epstein saga as an underage sex-trafficking business.  This predisposition protects Israel by dismissing a blackmail operation as anti-semitism and a conspiracy theory.

The question is whether there are sufficient Americans free of indoctrination and brainwashing who are capable of rational analysis instead of emotional responses to ever reach the truth about anything.  If a person reads comment sections on articles and podcasts that are posted, he sees a lot of emotion and little thought.  A person also discovers that people follow websites, podcasts and social media that support what they already believe.  There are not many whose beliefs are based on objective analysis of facts.  Indeed, what the actual facts are is becoming harder to ascertain.  How likely is it that a majority can arrive at the truth of any issue?

Watch interview here.

The post Is Trump Killing His Movement and Was Epstein Running a Mossad Blackmail Operation? appeared first on LewRockwell.

If you really want to counter the chaos grifters of the political left in the US, then you have to be willing to offer a coherent and consistent plan which dissolves the chaos they thrive on. Planning eases instability. Consistency defeats confusion. Clarity squashes disorder. The public needs to see a comprehensive list of standards, actions and goals and they don’t like it when their leaders suddenly derail the train.

When it comes to economics, vision is meaningless. Every idiot out there has an economic “vision”, very few people have any idea how to get from Point A to Point Z.

To be clear, Trump has limited political capacity to change the economy for the better. He has three years left on his second term and the fiscal problems he’s dealing with were created through decades of government and central bank mismanagement (or deliberate sabotage).

Even if Trump had two more terms it would be difficult, and I’m setting aside the fact that the political left DOES NOT WANT the economy to be fixed and will do everything in their power to keep instability in place. Why? Because the worse things get the greater their election chances in 2026 and 2028. And, the more the system breaks the easier it is to convince the public that socialism is the ultimate solution.

To bring our nation back to legitimate self reliance would require a total reformation of our society and the removal of the political left (including globalists) from the equation. Part of this long term reformation demands a reversal of open borders ideology and multiculturalism, which has ravaged the west. Migrants view our economy as a “global commons”, a wealth pool they are all entitled to access. They don’t see it is a privilege, they see it as a “right”.

This is something that Trump does have the capacity to fix in the three years he has left in office, but he has a tendency to get sidetracked by minutia and bad advice.

I have been warning since before Trump was re-elected that the economy was going to be his Achilles Heal. From past examples it seems that Trump delegates a lot of his policy ideas to advisers and among these advisers (he has dozens of them, official and unofficial) there are always people who give him suicidal arguments and terrible talking points.

His lack of concrete planning for economic repair is putting conservatives on edge and handing immense social influence over to Democrats and woke activists. All they have to do is point at the lack of a clear strategy and suggest that they can do better (they can’t, but it won’t matter to voters living paycheck to paycheck).

Trump has done some things right. His tariff policies are absolutely necessary to counter the wealth gap created by corporate globalism. The US has been turned into a consumer nation that continuously takes on debt in order to create ever depreciating wealth. That wealth is then siphoned from the public by international conglomerates, banks and foreign interests. We are being slowly drained of our lifeblood by a nest of vampires.

Tariffs are one of the few measures at Trump’s disposal to unilaterally stop the bleeding and force corporations to bring the wealth and jobs back to the US. This is done through new domestic manufacturing and the end of general outsourcing using third world labor. Globalism is NOT the free market, it is the opposite. It is forced interdependency of nations and economies to the benefit of a tiny handful of ultra-wealthy elites.

The tariff fight is direct and Trump’s reasons are evident. The average Joe wants more American jobs with higher salaries for the middle class instead of wallowing in low-wage retail and service sector hell. But Trump can’t say he’s fighting for this end result through tariffs and then turn around and let an army of migrants take middle class jobs.

The President stumbled into multiple forehead slapping blunders this past week. He called for 600,000 Chinese students to prop up US colleges. He called for 50-year mortgages to offset plunging home ownership, and he argued that America doesn’t have the talent pool to fill jobs taken by H1B foreigners.

I’ll focus on his flip-flop over H1B visas because it’s an obvious example of Trump trusting biased advisers when he should be following his campaign policies (The foreign student issue requires a separate article. The 50 year mortgage idea feels lazy and pro-banker, but no one is forced to take on a long term mortgage).

The H1B issue reveals Trump’s great weakness: He doesn’t have a clear economic plan with rules and goals – Making him easily changeable and vulnerable to outside influence. He’s playing the situation by ear. That might work for some problems, but not for a financial system weakened by stagflation and mass immigration. I am, of course, also operating on the assumption that Trump WANTS to fix the economy and doesn’t want to be blamed for its downfall.

There are approximately 730,000 foreign workers operating in the US today on H1B visas. Most of these workers come from third-world economies, 70% of them come from India. I’ve written about this in the past, but there is a hidden dynamic in play when it comes to third world countries and remittances.

Remittances are cash transfers from illegal migrants and visa holders back to their home countries. These transfers represent a massive dollar-based wealth transfer to certain nations. India is the largest recipient of remittances from the US (Mexico is the second largest). Over $129 billion is transferred from foreign workers into India every year.

To put this in perspective, this is nearly three times the amount that India spends annually on public welfare programs. It’s also almost twice the amount of the dollar value in goods that India exports to US markets. That is to say, remittances are far more important for cash flowing into India’s economy than manufacturing and agricultural exports to US consumers.

It is possible that in order to cut deals with India on tariffs Trump is compelled to back off of his opposition to H1B. That said, I think that more pressure is coming from his associates at home than political leaders in India.

Trump’s recent argument is, essentially, that America isn’t able to function without H1B workers and that Americans are not able to fill the jobs that these migrant do. This is utter nonsense.

There are advisers from the corporate sector that are keen to keep the caravan of cheap labor marching forward (Elon Musk has not hidden his views on this, though I think he wrongly downplays the wage factor). Then, there are also Indian-American conservative politicians and academics like Vivek Ramaswamy and Dinesh D’Souza who make rather impassioned declarations about American workers who are not up to snuff.

Even conservatives with migrant backgrounds often don’t view America as a culture they need to adapt to and support, they view it as an economic zone for their countrymen to freely access and exploit. This is their definition of the “American Dream”, and this is why immigration is a problem. Illegal immigration certainly, but H1B is also a concern. These people are quick to trash on Americans as “too uneducated” or “too lazy” to take on certain jobs.

First and foremost, H1B holders are not working integral jobs. The vast majority (65%) work in IT and software development, largely for Silicon Valley. Only 9% are architects and engineers and 1% are doctors. These are not key workers keeping America afloat with their skills, though they might be keeping Silicon Valley companies afloat with their cheap labor.

Second, H1B workers are not hired for their expertise, they are hired because they work for less money on average. Over 80% of visa applicants are hired for entry level positions or “junior/qualified” roles.

Analysis from 2020 to 2025 shows that H1B employees are consistently paid less than their American counterparts (10% to 30% less depending on the sector and job). The H1B program legally allows companies to pay foreign workers less. The White House’s own documentation outlines this problem.

The biggest lie about H1B is that foreign workers are hired because they have the training. Many do not. In fact, companies run training centers in the US, bring workers over on visas, then teach them how to do the jobs they’re being hired for. Even worse, American employees are often forced under contract to train their third world replacements before they are laid off.

One could argue that H1B applicants are usually required to have a degree for the job they want to work. Not surprisingly, there are numerous programs for foreigners to gain admission to US colleges. Around 60% of Indian H1B holders got their degrees in US colleges, not Indian colleges. Over 300,000 Indian students go to college in the US every year. There are over 1,100 different college scholarship programs in the US specifically catering to Indian students.

Again, why aren’t these classroom seats and jobs being filled with American citizens first? Are foreign workers more talented, or are they just being offered more opportunities because they are cheaper to hire?

This is about US companies taking advantage and saving money on labor, it has nothing to do with skill or education.

Trump ran on a campaign platform of America for Americans and America first. The H1B program was originally designed as a way to bring foreign workers with niche skills to the US to fill desperately needed roles. Instead, they are used by conglomerates to supplant American workers for less pay. They are also used by foreigners as the primary stepping stone to quick US citizenship, and by foreign governments as a way to drain wealth from the US economy.

If a foreign worker really has something to offer that’s valuable to our country, then by all means, let’s bring them here. However, no foreign worker should be given a visa until companies at least attempt to hire and train Americans for these roles. If they can’t find enough people, only then should those jobs be outsourced.

When Trump ignores these factors, it makes it seem as though he is abandoning the America First mantra that got him elected. It runs contrary to his efforts to keep jobs in America for Americans. Furthermore, blindly defending H1Bs from the third world undermines his goal of reducing immigration to only the best and brightest. Yes, there are many educated workers coming from countries like India – Because we educated them and trained them to replace us.

The point is, if we can educate and train third worlders, then we can easily educate and train Americans. Therefore, there’s little reason for H1B to exist.

If the economic plan is to make America stronger by retaining our jobs and resources, then stick to the plan, Donald. Stop acting like the US is an open economic zone. Establish education programs that favor American citizens that want to train for these jobs. Close the low wage loophole for foreigners. Remove the incentives that encourage corporations to hire outside the US and watch how many middle class jobs (and dollars) boost the US economy instead of feeding bank accounts in India. This is within your power as president.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post The Foreign Worker Scam Exposes Trump’s Economic Achilles Heel appeared first on LewRockwell.

In another sign that the MAGA coalition is imploding, President Donald Trump pulled back his endorsement of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican firebrand from Georgia who, until recently, was one of his most devoted supporters. Moreover, the president said he would endorse a primary challenger. Greene, who was inspired to first run for Congress by Trump, has become increasingly critical of him.

“Over the past few weeks, despite my creating Record Achievements for our Country … all I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump said Friday in a Truth Social post. “I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.”

The next day, he went after Greene again: “Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Brown (Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!), betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left, performed poorly on the pathetic View, and became the RINO that we all know she always was. Just another Fake politician, no different than Rand Paul Jr. (Thomas Massie), who got caught being a full-fledged Republican In Name Only (RINO)! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump said in his signature lowbrow fashion.

What Happened?

Trump told reporters while on Air Force One that Greene had changed, that something happened to her. But it’s no mystery what has happened. Like many others, Greene has become disillusioned with Trump’s failure to deliver on some of his most important America First promises. She has made several public comments indicating that she’s frustrated with his excessive focus on foreign matters and his refusal to halt foreign aide to all countries — all while average Americans continue to struggle with the high cost of everyday items. Greene voiced these concerns in her conversation with the leftist women on the talk show The View. “[People are] so tired of their hard-earned tax dollars being sent overseas to foreign wars, foreign aide, foreign causes — while life in America just becomes more unaffordable. We want this money invested at home for our infrastructure, for programs, for our people,” she said.

Part of a Pattern

Trump’s recent split with Greene is part of a pattern. He has also turned on Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has also opposed the president’s foreign policy and fiscal recklessness. Trump has supported the idea of primarying Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — who has voted against Trump-backed budget bills and made the media rounds criticizing his interventionist foreign policy.

Greene, Massie, and Paul are among the few federal legislators with proven Constitutional voting records. The New American’s Freedom Index gives Greene a 97 percent cumulative score, Massie a 99 percent score, and Paul a score of 96 percent.

To make matters worse, Trump not only attacks the principled legislators, but he backs the worst of them. He has endorsed one of the most Constitution-averse, war-loving neocons in all of Congress. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) represents everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party. He loves big spending, big government, and military adventurism. He’s a huge fan of spending piles of cash on overseas wars and foreign aide. He is the epitome of a Uniparty swamp creature, and his 57 percent cumulative Freedom Index score reflects it. Nevertheless, earlier this year, Trump announced, “Senator Lindsey Graham has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. Everyone in South Carolina should help Lindsey have a BIG WIN next year!”

The Epstein Files

In addition to opposition to foreign wars and deficit spending, Greene, Massie, and Paul have been pushing for transparency about Jeffrey Epstein, another point of frustration for Trump. When he campaigned last year, Trump said he would support releasing the Epstein files, albeit with some hesitation. But for months now, he has been trying to put the kibosh on that very transparency, igniting a firestorm of backlash among his base and supporters in the media. As a result, suspicion has grown among conservatives that Trump may indeed have something to hide. The emails released last week did little to put those suspicions to rest.

Massie has been working with Democrat Ro Khanna of California on a discharge petition to bypass House leadership and force a vote on a resolution that would release Justice Department files on Epstein. The special election victory of Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) gave Massie the 218 votes he needed to push the vote onto the House floor. With Massie included, only four Republicans signed the petition. Last week, Trump unsuccessfully pressured at least one of those legislators, Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), to withdraw her signature, according to reports.

By Sunday, Massie was telling the media that he expected “a hundred or more” House Republicans to vote for the resolution. Sensing the inevitable, by Sunday evening, Trump caved and issued a surprising reversal. “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” he said in a Truth Social Post. “I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT …”

On Monday, Massie thanked the president for encouraging Republicans to vote yes on the resolution. He told reporters, “He got tired of me winning,” a soft elbow in the president’s side, who just days earlier said, in a bizarrely juvenile social media post, that Massie’s wife “will soon find out that she’s stuck with a LOSER!.”

House Republicans will vote on releasing the DOJ’s Epstein files tomorrow.

MAGA Implosion

Despite Trump’s recent reversal on the Epstein files, the MAGA camp is imploding. While he has done some things well — he’s largely delivered on border security and energy — Trump has made a series of bad decisions. And the people are frustrated. A recent theory is that behind Trump’s freefall is his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, whose long neocon and lobbying background was suspect from the beginning. We profiled Wiles in a February print issue. “Wiles will also have a say in who gains access to the president. That type of gatekeeping power has some in MAGA Land worried, given Wiles’ Establishment pedigree,” we noted.

Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of The National Pulse, recently tied Wiles to the early November poll from CNN showing Trump’s disapproval rating rising to an all-time high of 63 percent. He wrote in a social media post, “There has been more focus on the international than the domestic economy so far this year,” adding, “With Susie Wiles vetoing anything remotely MAGA, the White House agenda has trended back to a more corporate-friendly GOP median, which is leading to Dems leading on the generic ballot question for the first time since 2022.”

Moreover, Wiles is also getting credit for sabotaging the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again ) movement. The Redacted podcast had on whistleblowers Dr. Steven Hatfill and Grey Delany, who said this very thing.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., however, defended Wiles as recently as Friday. He said in an X post, “The MAHA movement has no better friend in Washington than Susie Wiles, who has supported every effort to end the chronic disease epidemic and restore health freedom to every American.”

America First

Trump is not even one year into this term and the coalition he has led for 10 years is in danger of completely collapsing. His neocon foreign policy, deficit spending, and attempt to make the Epstein saga go away without further transparency has alienated his base.

Sensing that he’s losing his influence, he recently declared himself the movement. “Don’t forget: MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else’s idea,” he said on The Ingraham Angle. “I know what MAGA wants better than anyone else, and MAGA wants to see our country thrive.”

Trump is wrong. MAGA was not his idea. The idea of a leadership class that prioritizes its citizens and national sovereignty is a fundamental element of Americanism that has always existed to some degree. From Barry Goldwater to the Tea Party to the Ron Paul Revolution, Americans have been yearning for leaders who prioritize secure borders, fiscal responsibility, and nonintervention foreign policy.

What Trump has been doing for the last 10 years was tap into a voter base that was already there, a cohort that just needed a point man. Trump didn’t convince people that putting America first was a good idea. He just convinced them that he would do it. And he convinced them that, because he was already rich, he couldn’t be corrupted.

Now people are no longer sure any of that is true.

The silver lining here is that this highlights the problem with putting too much faith in personalities. The American Republic our Founders gave us was intentionally designed to distribute power among three branches of government. And the executive was never meant to be the most powerful branch.

It’s long past time to restore to the legislative branch the powers allocated by the U.S. Constitution. We’ve created a tool to do just that right here.

This article was originally published on The New American.

The post Trump Turns on MTG as MAGA Implosion Continues appeared first on LewRockwell.

* Image of Lebanese boys disfigured by Israeli boobytraps courtesy of Rania Khalek.

About the Sde Teima leaked rape tape, suffice it to say that, like the Hostage Square demonstrators in Tel Aviv, whose concern was exclusively for their hostages; the same Israeli society is not unhappy about crimes against Palestinians; but that one such crime had been made public, to the detriment of their criminally complicit countrymen. ~ilana

There’s a reason I purposefully avoided mention of the fracas in Israel over the leaked Sde Teiman video, in the companion column to this one: “Rape of Palestinian Men By IDF & Israeli Security Forces: Habitual.”

You see, the Hasbara herd seems to have one gift, in Israel and stateside. They live in a self-reverential and self-referential world: They talk from under wet cement about … themselves. And, they are training you to do the same: talk about them.

As hard as it is for this lot to compute; the genocide, however, is about their victims, Israel’s victims, the Palestinians.

About the Sde Teima leaked rape tape, suffice it to say the following: Like the Hostage Square demonstrators in Tel Aviv, whose concern was exclusively for only their hostages; the same Israeli society is not unhappy about crimes against Palestinians; but that one such crime had been made public to the detriment of their criminally complicit countrymen.

More so than mere publicity—after all, Israel is conducting genocide to a packed house, the world—Israel’s military advocate general worries that the leaked Sde Teiman footage will undermine Israel’s international legal impunity.

The case of the rectal-rape-with-objects of a Palestinian hostage, one among thousands held in the legal limbo of detention-without-trial, was leaked by the Military Advocate General’s office (MAG), whose apparatchiks had heretofore never expressed—nor acted to convey—regret, remorse, contrition, or penitence over the genocide ongoing. (So you know, Israel has merely shifted to “genocide lite” and to the “ghettoization” of the Strip.)

There are no nettles of conscience in the genocidal society. The on-camera rape has just become a PR (public relations) problem. Unless the world’s yelling can be quelled, Israel’s legal representatives fear for the country’s legal impunity, which is meant to last in perpetuity.

Like all shouting scraps in Israel, this one is entirely without an ethical or moral dimension. The leak of the filmed rape is but a procedural, administrative annoyance, the “Minister of Defense and many others in the political sphere and public discourse,” even claiming that any criminal proceedings constitute a “blood libel.”

At about this time, Israeli think-tank residents are fretting. As the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) put it (in all sincerity), it is imperative to preserve “Israel’s legal and diplomatic ‘resilience’ internationally, and thus … our ability to protect IDF (Israel Defense Forces) service members from legal risks around the world.”

If the IDF justice system, headed by the [aforementioned] MAG [Military Advocate General], is not perceived as professionally independent, Israel will struggle to argue that there is no place to advance overseas legal proceedings against soldiers and commanders alleged to have violated the law of armed conflict, and that the Israeli justice system should be given primacy in handling suspects. (IDI)

Cloaking themselves in the raiment of decency, the code-word for “impunity” in Israeli think tanks is “resilience.” The country must remain “resilient” internationally.  Bathed in blood though it is; Israel and its military advocate general still want continued carte-blanche from the international community for their crimes. Hence the Brownian motion over the public rape of a Palestinian hostage.

Again, the leaked Sde Teiman tape threatens Israel’s legal impunity which is meant to last in perpetuity.

Let us, then, end forthwith conversation about Israel’s two-bit Kabuki players. We who inhabit the Global Genocidal Western Woke matrix have a responsibility to help pilot Palestinians through these dangerous shoals. Or, support those who are doing that work. Let’s, then, return to the resilient victims of the genocidal entity, the Palestinians.

Early in the genocide, in essays that provide a comprehensive chronology of the signal events, the people violated and the first principles flouted, I had picked up on—and postulated about—the seemingly systematic nature of the sexual sadism evinced by Israel’s army and security forces.

Palestinians are “living alongside serial-killing sexual sadists,” I remarked in a subsection of the essay, “Why The Israel-Occupied Levant Must be Liberated, S.O.S.,” further noting that “the pairing of sexual arousal and violence toward Palestinians, in the practices of the IDF and Israeli Security Forces, makes for a particularly irremediable pathology, the stuff of serial killers.”

As though Israel was not already outside all moral gravitational pull—the evidence for my deductions is now in. What we’ve known to be deductively true has been empirically confirmed. The social science is in: Palestinians are sexually brutalized by Israeli occupation forces!

If you had lingering doubts that sexual perversion and predation by the Israeli military and security forces is systemic and statistically significant—new social science nixes that naïve notion.

Incidents of sexual torture are not outlier cases. The Israel Occupation Forces are indeed a festering cauldron of serial-killing sadists and sexual deviants. Helpless Palestinians are the repository of this rot.

Having investigated the phenomenon and tabulated the results; the UN International Commission of Inquiry has revealed that rape, genital mutilation—of men, women, boys and girls—exhibitionism (public flashing); all the sexual perversions and paraphilias I had picked up on—are systemic, pervasive, carried out happily, seemingly ordained from above. No crime is a “one-off.”

“Israel uses sexual violence as a weapon of war,” concludes the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, writing, on March 13, 2025, that,

The frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based crimes perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory leads the Commission to conclude that sexual and gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people. The Commission documented a pattern of sexual violence, including cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and other inhumane acts that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Section number 222 of the report’s summary states that, “Israeli detention is characterized by widespread and systematic abuse and sexual and gender-based violence. These practices have increased significantly in severity and frequency since 7 October 2023, following orders and statements of the Minister for National Security Ben Gvir who is in charge of prisons. The mistreatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli authorities is a result of an intentional policy that utilizes sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence to humiliate and degrade Palestinians in detention. This was observed across several facilities, temporary holding locations, during interrogation and while in transit.”

These Israelis are men and women of cold violence. Their hearts are as black as boot polish. The brutalized bodies of Palestinian men, women, and children; their pets and livestock bear this out. But broad-brush statements aggregating their practices are not enough.

Daily, the Palestinians’ closest neighbors, the settlers, make manifest their red-hot hatred toward them, stealing private Palestinian property, vandalizing installations on this land, regularly slaughtering helpless livestock with biblical cruelty (watch settlers gouge the eyes out of helpless lambs), and generally menacing Palestinian property owners. Most disturbing is the overt, perverted threat of sexual violence from settlers and their soldier helpers.

Indeed, the poisonous cabal of Israeli settlers and soldiers works cheek by jowl.

In “Holy Redemption: Stealing Palestinian Land,” a TRT World exclusive documentary, there is no editorializing. The videographers plainly followed and recorded these settlers in character. Twenty-nine minutes and 20 seconds into this TRT settler odyssey, Turkish TV captures a uniformed IDF, in cahoots with settlers, publicly manhandling himself on camera, in a manner not fit to print.

Said IDF soldier hisses:

“I spit on Palestine. F-ck your mother. I’m the Israeli Army.” He is not done. Just as I imagined this breed of Cain could not expose itself as more indecent, the same soldier comes close to indecent exposure. At the said timestamp, the atavistic, low-brow individual shows himself to be lacking the inhibitions to keep his perversion private. Reflexively. Quite obviously, this IDF had been aroused by threatening a helpless group of Palestinian homesteaders. He had likely imbibed a pornographic sensibility and had not been taught propriety and shame in public.

Right there on film is that pathological pairing of violence and sexual arousal, the stuff of serial killers!

In another unremarkable vignette, filmed by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, an armed settler threatens a Palestinian farmer in the South Hebron Hills with rape. “Rape in the name of God,” a la SdeTeiman, promises settler Shem Tov Luski, to a mortified, modest Palestinian man. “No officers were dispatched, and the residents were advised to file a complaint at the Kiryat Arba police station,” reports Wikipedia.

At one point, the “Halachic right to rape” (See “Sde Teiman: Genocide, Snuff Films, Extra-Judicial Assassinations & Rape Are De Facto Legal in Israel”) had been issued from the very top of Israeli moral precincts.

His flesh softer than sin, the delightful Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim, the head of the military rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces, had instructed, in 2016, that, essentially, any carnal demands of the flesh be allowed: “As part of maintaining fitness for the army and the soldiers’ morale during fighting, it is permitted to …satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will… .’ News of the rabbinical rape-injunction came courtesy of Israel’s own YnetNews.com.

Before Rabbi Karim, there was Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safad, who “urged a genocide in Gaza and excused rape by soldiers.” (Via Electronic Intifada.)

Israel’s female soldiers are as sadistic and malevolent. In a clip, “Israel’s ‘Sick’ Female Guards,” young Israeli uniformed IDF females and security police terrorize Palestinian men as they shuttle from one check point to the next.

We zoom out again to the abstraction of the aggregated data:

214. “Israel has targeted civilian women and girls directly, acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of willful killing. Women and girls have also died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities impacting access to reproductive health care, acts that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination. …”
215. “Palestinian men and boys have been subjected to specific persecutory acts intended to punish them collectively. The way in which these often-sexual acts are committed, including their filming, photographing and dissemination online, in conjunction with similar cases being documented in several locations, shows that forced public stripping and nudity, as well as sexualized torture and ill-treatment, are part of the persecutory attack against men and boys committed to punish, humiliate and intimidate Palestinian men and boys into subjugation. …”
216. “Specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault, de facto form part of the Israel Security Forces (ISF) standard operating procedures towards Palestinians. The Commission concludes that these and other forms of sexualized torture, including rape and violence targeting the genitals, are committed with either explicit orders or an implicit encouragement by the top civilian and military leadership. The Commission found that all its documented incidents of sexual and gender-based violence committed by members of the ISF were met with impunity. Under these circumstances, the civilian and military leaders are as responsible for these crimes, as are the direct perpetrators. …”

In the “widespread use of sexualized violence against men and boys,” the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security has [too] identified several specific patterns of sexualized violence that are indicative of a genocidal process, not all overlapping the findings of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory:

Life-force atrocities (including ritualized humiliations); separation of families and other reproductive violence; and possible elitocide through the use of sexualized violence.

By “elitocide,” the Lemkin Institute is probably referring to sexual violence to whittle at the finest and noblest; the people we most rely on: altruistic aid and rescue workers, healers in their clinics ministering to their patients, peace activists, writers, reporters and intellectuals recording the crimes for posterity.

Dr. Adnan Al Bursh, for example. The 50-year-old renowned orthopedic surgeon headed the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “A doctor. a stellar surgeon. The embodiment of Palestinian ethics, Dr. Al Bursh was likely raped to death.”

To genocide, snuff films, the torture and torching of animals, and the rape and robbery of their Palestinian owners; to bombings, boobytrapping and extra-judicial assassinations the world over—add “elitocide.”

Another new term to add to Israel’s lexicon of crime. All this, remember, is customary, informal law in the Genocidal Society.

***

* Image of Lebanese boys disfigured by Israeli boobytraps courtesy of Rania Khalek.

The post Israelis NOT Sweating Sde Teiman Rape! Prosecutor Concerned Rape Tape Undermines Israel’s Legal Impunity appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

John Leake

The post What did Larry Summers and Noam Chomsky See in Jeffrey Epstein? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

BBC News

The post Trump’s Letter Requesting a Pardon for Netanyahu on Fraud and Bribery Charges appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Zionists are as evil as humans can be. Donald J. Trump facilitates this evil. He has no morals. Colonel Aguilar is an honorable man.

See this.

The post Colonel Aguilar’s Personal Account of the Genocide in Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

The post Uniparty Perverts Prepare for Day of Reckoning appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

The post Finished AI Data Centers Have No Electricity — AI Fraud Can’t Fake Reality appeared first on LewRockwell.

Jesse Trentadue wrote:

The post Gwin Faulconer Lippert’s Interview with Jesse Trentadue appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

The Libertarian Institute

The post Donald Trump Misunderstands Nigeria’s Problems and Their Solutions appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

John Leake

The post In Desperate Need of a Crisis appeared first on LewRockwell.

JFK Files: The 14-Minute Gap They Don’t Want You to Hear

Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley of America’s Untold Stories sit down with Rex Bradford, President of the Mary Ferrell Foundation and legendary JFK researcher, to explore one of the most chilling mysteries in Cold War history: The Fourteen Minute Gap.

What was erased?

Who was responsible?

And why has it taken decades—and lawsuits—to uncover the truth?

Rex has spent over 25 years scanning and analyzing declassified documents hidden from the American public. In this episode, he reveals how Cold War politics, CIA operations, and internal government deception collided in the aftermath of the JFK assassination.

The erased White House audio

The missing connections between the CIA, Oswald, and Cuba

The truth buried in Cold War cover-ups

What the Mary Ferrell Foundation uncovered after 1992’s JFK Records Act The deeper we dig, the darker it gets. *****************************************

Join us November 21st–23rd, 2025 in Dallas at JFK Lancer Conference (or Virtually) Tickets now available at https://assassinationconference.com/

Virtual tickets start at $75.99

In-person tickets start at $149.99 Discount Code: Use UNTOLD10 at checkout for 10% off

*****************************************

The post America’s Untold Stories – JFK Files: The 14-Minute Gap They Don’t Want You to Hear appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Another UN War? Trump To Head ‘Board Of Peace’ Governing Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

The only man on the Epstein client list.  Really remarkable!

See here.

The post The Intel Scandal Behind Prince Andrew’s Twisted Epstein Exploits appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Candace Owens continues her investigation into the assassination of her friend Charlie Kirk. 

“I have no doubt Tucker Carlson and I are being threatened, that’s pretty obvious. It’s very obvious nobody thinks Egypt is behind it. The last time that narrative ran was probably the USS Liberty, that was the plan, to make us think Egypt had attacked us. Israel attacked hat ship. Israel is growing increasingly alarming in terms of legislation they are trying to get passed, trying to censor our speech, trying to take over social media campaigns.” – Candace Owens 

She provides details on the Egyptian plane tracking Charlie and his wife Erika that landed at the Provo airport near the assassination site; exposes possible financial shenanigans at TPUSA; and reveals the license plates of rental cars at the airport, and more. 

The post Charlie Kirk Assassination: TPUSA Financial Improprieties and the Egyptian Plane appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ludwig von Mises argued that the “nineteenth century philosophy of liberalism,” or the classical tradition of liberalism, is not founded on equality but on liberty. He rejected the notion that all men are factually or substantively equal. He saw the notion of substantive equality—what is sometimes called real equality or true equality—as incompatible with individual liberty, and as a Trojan horse for coercive interventionist schemes designed to equalize all members of society. He saw liberty as essential to peaceful coexistence and to Western civilization itself. Thus, Mises took seriously the threat posed to peace and prosperity by the egalitarian schemes with which governments aim to equalize all their citizens. In his book Liberalism, he traced the roots of the erroneous belief in equality to the Enlightenment:

The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the ideas of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights because they assumed that all men are equal.…

Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race. Men are altogether unequal. Even between brothers there exist the most marked differences in physical and mental attributes. Nature never repeats itself in its creations; it produces nothing by the dozen, nor are its products standardized.

Similarly, Friedrich von Hayek rejected the idea that the classical liberal ideal of justice is based on equality. He argued in the Constitution of Liberty that justice must be based on individual liberty, which is not predicated on a presumption that everyone is equal. He cautioned that “we must not overlook the fact that individuals are very different from the outset…. As a statement of fact, it just is not true that ‘all men are born equal.’” Murray Rothbard picked up this theme in Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature, arguing that a world in which all human beings are equalized by state coercion and force would be a Procrustean world of horror fiction. He asked:

What, in fact, is “equality”? The term has been much invoked but little analyzed. A and B are “equal” if they are identical to each other with respect to a given attribute. Thus, if Smith and Jones are both exactly six feet in height, then they may be said to be “equal” in height… There is one and only one way, then, in which any two people can really be “equal” in the fullest sense: they must be identical in all of their attributes.

Yet Hayek, like Mises, defended the principle of equality before the law. Although they both rejected the notion of substantive equality, they argued that formal equality—or equality before the law—is essential to social cooperation under the rule of law. If equality under the law is not based on factual equality, on what is it based? It may seem contradictory to uphold formal equality while rejecting substantive equality, but, as Hayek explained, substantive equality actually undermines formal equality because it fails to acknowledge the very reason why formal equality is important. Justice in the classical liberal ideal was described as blind, not because there are no differences between people, but because justice is blind to their differences. The principle of blind justice is completely lost when people assume that we can only have the same rights when we are, in fact, the same, and that everyone has to be made the same through whatever interventions can make them equal, in order to align with the fact that we all want to have equal rights. The reason justice is blind is because that is the best way to maximize the scope of individual liberty. Under blind justice, nobody is subjected to legal obligations or penalties to which others are not subject, based purely on his personal identity or characteristics. As Hayek put it, “Nothing, however, is more damaging to the demand for equal treatment than to base it on so obviously untrue an assumption as that of the factual equality of all men.” Both Mises and Hayek saw individual liberty as the only rationale for formal equality, and insisted that equality under the law is the only form of equality that is compatible with liberty. In his book Liberalism, Mises argued that:

…what [liberalism] created was only equality before the law, and not real equality. All human power would be insufficient to make men really equal. Men are and always will remain unequal.… Liberalism never aimed at anything more than this.

One might ask why the law should bother to uphold formal equality, or equal treatment under the law, if people are not, in fact, equal. Mises gave two reasons. The first reason is that individual liberty is essential to social cooperation. He argued that individual liberty is justified because it promotes the good of the whole, and that classical liberalism “has always had in view the good of the whole, not that of any special group.” The good of the whole can only be achieved through social cooperation, and there can be no social cooperation where men are not free. He defined society as “an association of persons for cooperative action,” and cooperation is maximized when people are free to engage in peaceful and voluntary exchange based on the division of labor. The good of the whole, and social cooperation, are in turn dependent on individual liberty and private property rights. Mises saw this as the essential distinction between classical liberalism and socialism:

Liberalism is distinguished from socialism, which likewise professes to strive for the good of all, not by the goal at which it aims, but by the means that it chooses to attain that goal.

The second reason is “the maintenance of social peace.” Mises argued that peaceful co-existence is essential to civilization and prosperity, and requires that everyone must have the same rights under the law. A legal system which gives special privileges to one group at the expense of another leads inevitably to resentment, hostility, conflict, and ultimately war. Mises argued that “class [or group] privileges must disappear so that the conflict over them may cease.” Similarly, Rothbard emphasized that egalitarian schemes lead inexorably to conflict, warning that any society which sets out to produce equality sets off down the road to tyranny: “An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion.”

Socialists object to the classical liberal notion of formal equality by arguing that if men are not, in fact, equal then the law ought, as far as possible, to at least try to make men equal. They suggest achieving this by abolishing any privileges enjoyed by some that are not available to others, or by creating special rights for those who lack the privileges enjoyed by others, to compensate for their disadvantages. Mises rejected this notion of “privilege.” What a man earns from his skill or talent, what is acquired under the rules of private property, cannot be deemed to be a “privilege,” because it is justified as necessary for social cooperation and the good of the whole:

The fact that on a ship at sea one man is captain and the rest constitute his crew and are subject to his command is certainly an advantage for the captain. Nevertheless, it is not a privilege of the captain if he possesses the ability to steer the ship between reefs in a storm and thereby to be of service not only to himself, but to the whole crew.

Mises therefore saw formal equality, or equality under the law, as an essential component of liberty. His defense of liberty was, in turn, based on the fact that liberty is essential to human flourishing. The significance of liberty as the philosophical foundation of equality is clear—it follows that any equality “rights” that undermine individual liberty are invalid. They are indeed phony rights, as Rothbard put it.

The post An Austrian Perspective on Equality appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump is incensed, again.

This time it is over the increasing cost to renovate the U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado. The cost of the Cadet Chapel restoration project, which began in September of 2019, has now ballooned to almost $335 million, and is not expected to be completed until November of 2028.

“The United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel has been a CONSTRUCTION DISASTER from the time it was built in 1962. The earlier stories are that it leaked on Day One, and that was the good part. Hundreds of Millions of Dollars have been spent,” said Trump on social media. He also termed it a “mess” and a “complete architectural catastrophe.”

Located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), the Cadet Chapel was completed in 1962, and was named a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 2004. The chapel stands 150 feet tall, and is 280 feet long and 84 feet wide. Its most notable architectural feature is its 17 spires.

The Cadet Chapel was built to “meet the spiritual needs of cadets and staff.” It houses a Protestant chapel, a Catholic chapel, a Jewish chapel, a Muslim chapel, a Buddhist chapel, and a Falcon Circle for Wiccan, Pagan, and Druid worshippers. There are also “all-faith” rooms for other religious groups to use.

USAFA superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark stated about the renovation:

Whether you’re a cadet, a graduate or among the thousands of visitors each year who enter our gates, we know the place this amazing building has in the hearts of many who support our Academy. We’re disappointed too. We’re disappointed we can’t open the chapel doors as soon as we originally thought, but in the end, we’re doing the right work at the right time for the right reason: preserving this national historic landmark for generations of cadets, graduates and Americans.

There has been much hand-wringing over how the Air Force could allow its chapel to deteriorate so much that it needs to be closed for years for renovations costing so much.

But here is a question that no one is even considering: Should the Air Force even have a chapel in the first place?

Of course not.

First of all, the federal government has no business constructing a chapel anywhere in any government building. Not on a military base. Not in a Social Security office. Not at a national park. Not in the Capitol building. Not in the White House. Not in a Post Office. Not in an office building. Not in a courthouse. Since when is it the concern of the federal government to do something to “meet the spiritual needs” of anyone? It is not the job of the government to encourage or facilitate the practice of religion any more than it is the job of government to hinder or prohibit the practice of religion.

It should be noted that this has nothing to do with the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Constructing a chapel is not establishing a religion. The issue is simply the proper role of government.

Second, with a government chapel comes government chaplains and government control. Taxpayer-supported chaplains are expected to serve two masters: God and the state. I have written about the evils of Christians being military chaplains here and here. A government chapel means that it is the government who ultimately decides who gets to preach and what they are allowed to preach.

And third, what connection is there between religion and a branch of the U.S. military? There is none whatsoever. Religion—any religion—is supposed to uphold and pursue the sanctity of life, non-violence, virtue, respect, compassion, toleration, kindness, peace, and the Golden Rule. Contrast these things with what is done by the Air Force. The Air Force bombs countries that pose no threat to the United States, maims and kills foreigners who never harmed any American, makes widows and orphans, engages in offense while calling it defense, destroys property and infrastructure, kills civilians and calls it collateral damage, helps to carry out a reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy, and carries out unjust, immoral, and unnecessary military operations.

The actions of the Air Force cannot be sanctified by having a chapel on the grounds of the Air Force Academy. Young men and women of any religion should aim higher than a career in the Air Force.

The post Should the Air Force Have a Chapel? appeared first on LewRockwell.