Lew Rockwell Institute

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In today’s Liberty Report, Chris Rossini and Daniel McAdams chew on the latest news that you may have missed. Russia, tariffs, Panama Canal, Syria revolt. Tune in!

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Former Congressman Curt Weldon is leading an initiative to call for a new independent presidential commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks that would focus on the suspicious destruction of World Trade Center Towers 1, 2, and 7 on 9/11.   In Congress, Weldon revealed that prior to 9/11, Operation Able Danger identified alleged lead hijacker Mohamed Atta 13 different times.   Able Danger also identified “a problem” in Yemen two weeks before the USS Cole attack in 2000.  The operation also identified two al-Qaeda cells involved in 9/11 and a Brooklyn cell linked to the Blind Sheikh.  Conveniently for the United States government, 2.5 terabytes of information on Able Danger were destroyed in 2000.

Weldon’s current initiative includes architects, engineers, firefighters, lawyers, and activists who have compiled compelling evidence that the World Trade Center towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions.  For example, seismic activity was recorded at World Trade Center Towers 1 and 2 just before the impact of the planes.  Also, NASA thermal images confirmed long-lasting extreme temperatures of above 1400° Fahrenheit at Ground Zero months after the attacks.

There are more anomalies about 9/11 that go beyond the destruction of the World Trade Center.  For example, the United States government refused for years to launch an independent investigation into 9/11 and finally agreed to the formation of the 9/11 Commission after the relentless advocacy of the victims’ families.  Unfortunately, the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail” and refused to objectively investigate 9/11 to protect the United States government and its allies such as Saudi Arabia.  Furthermore, the intelligence community and the Bush administration deliberately obstructed the 9/11 Commission to conceal the truth about 9/11 from the public.

It is well-past time to acknowledge that we were lied to about 9/11 and to demand the truth.  I hope that Weldon’s initiative to investigate the destruction of the World Trade Center will lead to a comprehensive examination of all aspects of 9/11.

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I just read that Whoopi Goldberg is boycotting performing at the Kennedy Center in protest of Trump winning the presidential election.  Another win for genuine entertainment and another DEI loser slowly disappears from our sight.

It gets better.  That stupid Broadway play “Hamilton” has also canceled its Kennedy Center performance in a hissy fit over Americans not having elected a brain dead California communist as their president.

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Thanks, W. T. White.

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Thanks, Ginny Garner.

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Many of us have seen videos of the Press Conference in the Oval Office, the spectacle Trump-Vance-Zelensky last Friday, 28 February 2025. Essentially, it appeared that President Trump was ready to make a deal with Zelensky, unelected President of Ukraine, for peace in the Ukraine-Russia war.

The deal consisted of Zelensky granting a concession to the US to mine rare earths (REEs) from Ukraine in part to pay back some of the US$ 350 billion which, according to President Trump, the US has given Ukraine in money and weapons to fight Russia, and in part for Donald Trump, i.e. the US, to negotiate with Vladimir Putin a lasting Peace for the two countries.

The figure of US$ 350 billion, according to more accurate accounting, is vastly exaggerated, the real figure is more likely around US$200 billion. Notwithstanding that about two-thirds of the military equipment never made it to the front, but was “lost” to the black market. In the current situation, this is rather immaterial. This was already reported a year ago by BBC and CNN.

Mr. Zelensky, before signing a concession agreement, wanted “securities”, whatever that means, from Mr. Trump because he doesn’t trust President Putin to stick to a peace agreement. With “security”, the Ukrainian dictator probably meant US troops along with EU troops in Ukraine to guarantee that President Putin does not break the ceasefire and/or Peace Agreement.

During the White House Oval Office Press Conference, hosted by President Trump with the attendance of JD Vance, Vice President; Marco Rubio, Secretary of State; and other US government officials, Zelensky was parading one lie after another about Mr. Putin and Russia. He pretended Putin had broken 25 ceasefire agreements since February 2014, though never was specific. Zelensky is either extremely stupid or he believes that Donald Trump and JD Vance do not know the history, how it got to the war, which would also be extremely stupid.

As Jens Stoltenberg, former Secretary-General of NATO, repeatedly said in the times before passing on the scepter to Mark Rutte, new NATO boss,

“This war started already in February 2014 with the Maidan Coup.”

Stoltenberg did not elaborate who instigated the Coup. It does not matter because it is well known that it was the West, the US with the assistance of Europe. Both Stoltenberg and Rutte are ‘graduates’ of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL).

Let us not forget, the two German-French-sponsored Minsk Agreements [September 2014 and February 2015] were never meant to be implemented, as Madame Merkel, former German Chancellor, shockingly admitted in December 2022 (see this).

After Zelensky’s insistence on ”security” before signing any agreement, Mr. Vance berated Zelensky for being ungrateful, never having said “thank you” for all the moral and material support he has received from the US in the last three years; and Trump doubled-up, accusing Zelensky to be unwilling to make Peace, potentially provoking WWIII.

During the argument, President Trump added something to the extent,

“this is the best deal you could ever get. Normally, a mining company takes 90% and leaves you with 10%, or less. With me you get 50% and we, the United States, get 50%. That’s a fair deal.”

The spat ended up in an unfriendly shouting match which terminated the Press Conference and Zelensky’s stay at the White House rater abruptly, as he was asked to immediately leave the White House, and come back only once he was willing to make Peace. Trump’s final words with a smile were,

“This makes for great television.”

The rare earths deal was not signed. The truth is, a mining deal for Peace would not be ethical. President Trump knows that and would unlikely go down that rabbit hole. But Zelensky fell for the deal, hoping he could incite President Trump to defend his, Zelensky’s, side against President Putin.  How wrong he was!

President Trump said in no uncertain words,

“I am the mediator, the Peace negotiator, I cannot take sides.”

Zelensky’s days are counted. He is an obstacle to Peace. But he is a puppet, supported by the falling-apart European Union (EU). According to Scott Ritter, Daniel Estulin and others, this unfriendly debate in the White House was staged, so that Zelensky’s character of undiplomatic lies and insults on President Putin, and on all those questioning his legitimacy, would be internationally exposed and the Ukrainian people and Parliament would ask for Zelensky’s resignation, or outright overthrow him. His popularity at home is below 10%.  According to Trump, it is 4%.

The Ukrainian people want Peace not war. This to the detriment of a split Europe, parts of whom [Germany, for one and some Nordic countries], against all reason and common sense, are seeking to continue war with Russia, instead of cooperation with Russia, which is what their economy badly needs.

Trump is a deal-maker, according to himself,

“I make deals for a living, always did. I’m a businessman, and deals are what makes me successful.”

It is, however, unlikely that President Trump would gamble Peace for a REEs mining concession in the Ukraine. This would be beyond the ethics, even of Trump, the deal-maker. Especially since Putin told him on an earlier occasion that Russia is one of the richest countries in rare earths, and they would gladly sell REEs to the United States.

However, China has by far the most REEs, an estimated 44 million metric tons. The country was also the world’s leading REEs producer in 2024 by a long shot, producing 270,000 MT. See this.

“Rare earths” are 17 metallic elements, comprising the lanthanide series and (usually) scandium and yttrium. They are key ingredients for manufacturing of lights, magnets, batteries, chips, catalytic converters, and are used in everything from cell phones to cars and, foremost, for the arms and weapons [WAR] industries; not for nothing are they in such high demand.

Immediately after the White House fiasco, Zelensky flew to London, where the British PM Keir Starmer organized a European summit, basically to counter the Trump Peace initiative. However, that didn’t seem to be so easy since within the EU there is growing division about spending – or not – hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to support a war, killing ever more people. Also, the faltering European economies could use their money for economic recovery and development at home.

Therefore, Starmer announced to BBC that the UK, France and maybe one or two other EU countries [not mentioning war-mongering Germany], may together with Zelensky work on a Peace Plan for Ukraine, to eventually discuss it with President Trump. Starmer apparently hinted at the division within the EU, saying that he was seeking a “coalition of the willing”, rather than waiting for every individual country to come along.

If anything, Mr. Trump has apparently managed to bring a leading group of Europeans around to think and talk Peace rather than continue beating their war drums.

Gaza, Palestine

What about Peace in the Middle East?

Converting the current ceasefire into a lasting Peace, ending the atrocious, horrendous war – the genocide – by Israel against Palestine, especially Gaza – rebuilding Gaza and making Palestine a sovereign, fully independent nation, so that all the Palestinians that had left during the war, may return HOME, is an absolute priority.

Purely hypothetically, and thinking about President Trump’s “deal” skills, on this occasion they might even bring an ethical and fast solution. It could be a tripartite “deal”; Palestine, the US, and Russia, with each receiving about a third of the Gaza offshore gas proceeds. This would be a negotiated contractual settlement while all the gas would remain the property of Palestine.

The cost for reconstruction would be shared between the US and Palestine. The US being the co-aggressor with Israel, for largely funding the war and supplying most of the weaponry and war planes. There is no use to event try to have Israel help rebuild Gaza.

It can be safely estimated that Gaza’s offshore gas may be worth over a trillion US dollars. In an unequivocal no-nonsense manner, Donald Trump must keep his buddy, Netanyahu and Zionist Israel at bay. In 21st century-style, the MAGA President must and will be assertive: Israel has no right whatsoever to the Gaza gas. Thus, no intervention at all by Israel.

For those in the know – the world leaders, the WEF and those commanding it, as well as the UN – Israel, the real aggressor in this war, must immediately cease all aggressions against Gaza, Palestine, and her neighbors-at-large including Iran. Ambitions for Greater Israel must stop now. Lest all financial and military assistance from the US, Europe and potentially elsewhere will immediately cease, or being intercepted. This would bring about the immediate collapse of Israel, both economically and militarily.

In turn, Hamas would be dismantled. A new sub-government structure for Gaza, for example of a Provincial nature, within the  Palestine Government would be negotiated.

Future economic and military aid to Israel would be in the form of interest-bearing loans; no longer grants.

Once the “deal-maker” has reached that stage, reconstruction can begin, paid for by Gaza’s offshore gas which would be extracted by Russian expert Gas Corporations and marketed jointly by Russia and the US. According to “France 24 – Business”, reconstruction of Gaza would cost between 50 and 100 billion US dollars, and take at least five years (optimistic estimate). See video below.

Reuters reports (5 February 2025) that the World Bank, UN, European Union Interim Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (IRDNA), predicts more than US$ 50 billion will be required to rebuild Gaza.

Reconstruction is estimated to take between five and ten years. During the first three years US$ 20 billion would be needed. See this.

These are preliminary and linear estimates. As we know, life is not linear, but dynamic. Hence, cost predictions might significantly vary during reconstruction work.

The division between Palestine and Israel would return to the pre-1967 borders. The result MUST be a two-state solution, with two sovereign nations of equal rights. The natural resources, including water, under, on and above the ground of the two states would respectively belong to the two independent countries.

To secure the borders and the Peace, UN troops in equal force and ranks from the United States, Russia, Europe, and China would be discreetly patrolling the borders for at least ten years, longer if deemed necessary.

As mentioned before, this is a highly hypothetical and speculative scenario. But all things being equal, and with Peace an absolute priority and number ONE objective, it is a theoretically possible solution.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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AI, the shorthand symbol for artificial intelligence, is not merely a technological development that enhances productivity.  It is also an attack on the viability of most of humanity.  Elon Musk, who knows something about the subject, said recently that AI’s ability to be programmed to replace so many human jobs is leading us into communism in which everyone would be given the same income with which to purchase the goods and services produced by AI.

Policymakers and economists are unaware of the real threat of AI.  Instead, they worry about a dystopian world in which machines superior to humans have taken over.  This concern is a red herring. Machines are inanimate matter.  They are not alive.  They don’t have sentience.  Geeks confuse computation ability with the ability to think.  AI is programmed.  It can do tasks that humans can program it to do.  AI cannot program itself, because AI cannot think or create.  There is no spectrum at which at some point computational ability becomes thought.

A friend who is a software engineer told me recently, as I reported, that his employer told the engineers that they would be replaced in 3 years by AI.  This announcement gave them time to find a different kind of employment.

The announcement could be premature and wrong.  The employer could easily be carried along by false beliefs in AI’s potency. But it is plausible that if software engineering procedures can be programed into machines, the machines can use the program to produce the needed software for the application.  But it takes a human to tell AI what to come up with. AI has no way of knowing on its own.

A friend who was an accomplished architect told me some years ago that architects no longer needed to know how to design a building.  AI did it for them. The architect’s input was to give AI the parameters of the building. 

Many years ago a cab driver in NYC who was an engineering student told me that they still had to learn math, but never needed to use it, because they had software programs.

AI is most dangerous to routine and programmable jobs. What is not understood is that AI is not just another technological development that displaces one kind of work with another–producers of buggy whips and wagons replaced with producers of  cars, or  the replacement of the way of organizing work, such as the replacement of the putting out system of cloth production by factory production.  The difference between a dispersed work force and one concentrated in a factory is totally different from AI which replaces people, not less effective ways of organizing production or replacement of one product with another. AI eliminates jobs without creating new ones.  People are no longer necessary to do many jobs, and where are the replacement jobs?  The number of people with 120-130 IQs capable of doing high level work are limited in number.

Consider the offshoring of US manufacturing jobs, followed by research and design jobs.  Economists promised that new and better jobs would take the place of “dirty fingernail manufacturing jobs,” but they did not.

We know for an absolute fact that the American middle class has shrunk.  We know for an absolute fact that America’s once powerful manufacturing cities have shrunk in population by as much as 20%, leaving them without a tax base to support existing levels of  commitments and expenditure.  

As the replacement jobs for the offshored manufactured jobs as promised by Harvard and Dartmouth university economists did not happen, what jobs are going to replace the millions of jobs lost to AI?

It is possible that AI could be managed by humans to improve human productivity as any other capital investment would do instead of creating massive unemployment requiring a universal income.  But in capitalism profits are the god, and profits come from eliminating labor costs.  The corporations can end up with low cost production and no consumers with incomes to purchase.

A colleague and I are going to investigate, as best we can with our capabilities, whether AI can relieve people of the dreariness of so many jobs without destroying their lives. Can AI enhance life, or can it only leave humans without purpose?

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Now that we know that the end goal for Trump and Elon is for us to live in a technocracy or a technate administered by a gov-corp, another step toward global government or a New World order, what would libertarianism and its founding leaders think about this?

I asked X’s AI tool Grok: What do Mises, Hayek and Rothbard and libertarianism say about technocracy?

They wouldn’t care for it. Grok’s response:

Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and the broader libertarian tradition offer critical perspectives on technocracy, rooted in their emphasis on individual liberty, spontaneous order, and skepticism of centralized control. While they don’t address “technocracy” as a single, unified concept in identical terms, their works critique systems where technical experts wield authority over economic or social life, which aligns with technocracy’s core idea. Here’s how each thinker and libertarianism generally approach it:

Ludwig von Mises

Mises, an Austrian economist, didn’t explicitly target technocracy as a movement but critiqued centralized planning and expert-driven control, which technocracy often implies. In Human Action (1949), he argues that economic calculation is impossible without market prices, a point he developed in his 1920 essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” Technocracy, with its vision of engineers or scientists managing society based on efficiency, would fall under his critique of socialism—replacing market signals with bureaucratic or technical directives leads to inefficiency and tyranny. Mises saw the market as a decentralized process where individuals, not elites (technical or otherwise), coordinate resources through voluntary exchange. A technocratic system, even if well-intentioned, would stifle this by imposing top-down solutions, ignoring the subjective nature of human preferences.

Friedrich Hayek

Hayek’s critique is more direct and nuanced, particularly in The Road to Serfdom (1944) and “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945). He argued that centralized control—whether by politicians, planners, or technical experts—fails because no single authority can possess the dispersed, tacit knowledge held by individuals across society. Technocracy, with its faith in experts optimizing systems, exemplifies what Hayek called the “fatal conceit”—the belief that human reason can fully design complex social orders. In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), he warns against “scientism,” the misapplication of scientific methods to social affairs, which technocrats often embody. Hayek admired technical progress but insisted it thrives best under spontaneous order, not engineered governance. A technocratic regime, to him, risks authoritarianism as experts inevitably coerce compliance to enforce their plans.

Murray Rothbard

Rothbard, an anarcho-capitalist, took a harder line, blending Mises’s economics with a radical rejection of all coercive authority. In Man, Economy, and State (1962) and For a New Liberty (1973), he dismantles any system—technocratic or otherwise—that overrides individual sovereignty. Technocracy, to Rothbard, would be another flavor of statism, where “so-called experts” (he’d likely scoff at the term) impose their will, violating property rights and free markets. He’d see technocrats as a new aristocracy, cloaking their power grabs in scientific jargon. Rothbard’s disdain for government-funded science (e.g., his critiques of NASA in The Logic of Action) suggests he’d view technocratic schemes as parasitic, relying on taxation rather than voluntary cooperation. His ideal—pure market anarchy—leaves no room for technocratic overlords.

Libertarianism Broadly

Libertarianism, drawing from these thinkers, is inherently skeptical of technocracy. It champions individual liberty and free markets over any centralized authority, technical or not. The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s, led by figures like Howard Scott, proposed replacing politicians with engineers and managing resources via “energy credits”—a system libertarians would decry as collectivist and anti-market. Modern libertarians, like those at the Mises Institute or Cato Institute, often critique technocratic trends (e.g., central banking, regulatory overreach) as distortions of spontaneous order. They’d argue that technological progress flourishes under liberty, not expert diktats—pointing to Silicon Valley’s early deregulated days versus today’s bureaucratic creep.

Synthesis

Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard would agree that technocracy misjudges human nature and economics. Mises would focus on its impracticality (no price mechanism), Hayek on its hubris (knowledge problem), and Rothbard on its immorality (coercion). Libertarianism echoes this, favoring decentralized innovation over engineered utopias. They’d likely see technocracy as a shiny veneer on the old problem of power: it promises efficiency but delivers control. As Hayek put it, “The more the state ‘plans,’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual”—a sentiment that cuts technocracy to its core.

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Convincing large swaths of the Western public that the Ukrainian war was an unprovoked act of Russian aggression undoubtedly stands as one of the great coups in the history of propaganda art.

Nothing could, in fact, be further from the truth than the continually repeated claim that the Russian incursion into Ukraine was “unprovoked.”

Anyone not in denial about the basic facts of the case must see that the bloody three-year-old war was caused by NATO’s eastward expansion, which was driven by the heedless transatlantic elites.

An insightful commentator named Arnaud Bertrand put together a powerful, eye-opening thread on X (formerly Twitter) that puts to lie the Establishment canard about the “unprovoked” Russian aggression.

Bertrand’s thread is a must-see for anyone who sincerely wishes to know the true origin of the Ukrainian war. You can view his thread by clicking here. You can also see it by clicking on the graphic below. It will be enlightening for anyone interested in learning about the real cause of the conflict and going beyond the shameless propaganda spouted by the fake establishment media.

Bertrand skillfully collected pronouncements from distinguished politicians, scholars, diplomats, and thinkers from across the political spectrum who had warned that NATO’s march toward Ukraine was a misguided policy that would eventually provoke a war with Russia and result in a disaster of grand proportions. These warnings date back more than two decades to Russia’s invasion.

Here are some of the distinguished personages included in Bertrand’s collection:

• As early as 1997, fifty prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to President Bill Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion. It’s a “policy error of historic proportions,” they wrote in their missive.
• Henry Kissinger wrote that “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country” and that it needs a policy of “reconciliation.” He insisted that “Ukraine should not join NATO.”
• George Kennan was the architect of the U.S. Cold War strategy and is considered by many to be America’s greatest foreign policy mastermind. Kennan warned as early as 1998 that NATO expansion was a “tragic mistake” that would likely draw a “bad reaction from Russia.”
• One of the world’s most famous public intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, said in 2015: “The idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader.” He also said that Ukraine’s desire to join NATO “is not protecting Ukraine; it is threatening Ukraine with major war.”
• John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s leading geopolitical scholars, famously said in 2015: “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked […] What we’re doing is in fact encouraging that outcome.”
• Jack F. Matlock Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, warned in 1997 that NATO expansion was “the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat […] since the Soviet Union collapsed.”
• In his memoir, Bill Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry wrote that NATO enlargement seemed to be the cause of “the rupture in relations with Russia.”
• Bill Burns, former CIA director, wrote in 2008 that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for [Russia]” and “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
• Malcolm Fraser, prime minister of Australia, warned in 2014 that “the move east [by NATO is] provocative, unwise and a very clear signal to Russia.” He added that this would lead to a “difficult and extraordinarily dangerous problem.”
• Sir Roderic Lyne, former British ambassador to Russia, warned one year before the war that “[pushing] Ukraine into NATO […] is stupid on every level.”
• Pat Buchanan, assistant and special consultant to U.S. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, wrote in his 1999 book A Republic, Not an Empire: “By moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation.”
• Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the internationally sought-after analyst and economic advisor, warned in a column in the Financial Times just weeks before the war broke out that “NATO enlargement is utterly misguided and risky. True friends of Ukraine and of global peace should be calling for a US and NATO compromise with Russia.”
• Vladimir Pozner, a highly respected Russian-American journalist, said in 2018 that NATO expansion in Ukraine is unacceptable to Russians. He urged a compromise in which Ukraine “will not become a member of NATO.”
• Stephen Cohen, a well-known scholar of Russian studies, warned in 2014 that “if we move NATO forces toward Russia’s borders […] it’s obviously gonna militarize the situation [and] Russia will not back off; this is existential.”
• John Pilger, the legendary journalist, wrote in 2014 that Ukraine had become a “CIA theme park” and that this situation would lead to “a NATO-run guerrilla war.”

These are only some of the experts whose prophetic predictions Bertrand assembled. What his material makes very clear is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was as inevitable as it was predictable, given the injudicious policy of NATO’s eastward enlargement.

For decades, some of the world’s distinguished thinkers have warned against the mistaken course and predicted the disaster that is now unfolding before our eyes. The blame for this lies not with Vladimir Putin but with the foolish Western leadership.

The Kremlin’s foray into Ukraine was a foreseeable response to an uncalled-for and deranged drive to the Russian borders by the Western military alliance.

As seen above, the Russian incursion was by no means unprovoked. It was, in fact, flagrantly provoked by the misguided actions of the collective West’s leadership, which heedlessly pursued a policy that Russia viewed as an existential threat to its security.

Over the years, Russia’s chiefs have protested and repeatedly pleaded with Western leaders to stop. They have warned of unacceptable strategic positions and red lines.

In the fall of 2021, the Kremlin sent a draft treaty to NATO asking that Ukraine be excluded from the alliance in a last-ditch attempt to avoid military confrontation. In his later testimony to the European Union Parliament about this event, then NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg stated haughtily, “of course, we didn’t sign that.” A few months later, Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine.

Impudently disregarding Russia’s legitimate security concerns while relentlessly driving NATO eastward against the advice and warnings of wise men, this predictable and unnecessary war has been provoked by the foolish transatlantic globalists.

To say that the Russian incursion was “unprovoked” is about as accurate as the claim that the COVID-19 vaccines were “safe and effective.” The same elites and the same corrupt media have peddled both brazen lies.

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Donald Trump declared a triumphalist vision and a golden age for the United States this week.  Yet, had it been an autopsy, the Democratic side of the chamber presented like a giant deflated left lung with just a touch of pink.

Trump has known for many years that the United States is not healthy, nor on a healthy track. “America is Back!” is aspirational, but it takes more than a good slogan to coax, push, and inspire an over-stressed, tired, broke-ass nation to peace and prosperity.

With his New York bluntness occasionally revealing a soft heart, Trump makes me think of Dr. Ron Paul – the kindest and wisest of men, with his fist cheerfully raised at the deep state for the past 50 years.  Trump’s aim – to align America’s actions and principles with fairness, prosperity and peace – is Paulian.  Both men share an energetic and uncontrived political radicalism in support of this vision.  I don’t know if God saved Trump from a deep state bullet for a higher purpose in 2025, as he has mentioned.  I do know that the limited government mantra that Ron Paul revived over 40 years ago, from the old anti-war Right, is the reason we have a populist President today, who wants to end wars, shrink the bureaucracy, and abandon serfdom to the state.

Trump’s foreign policy message to Congress was mainly about tariffs, and an incipient peace in Ukraine.  Trump understands the existent Russian victory, he wants organic elections in Ukraine, and the end of the Zelensky era and NATO expansion.  Trump’s approach is pragmatic, realistic, popular – and radical only because it simultaneously breaks up the revenue stream, the narrative, and the credibility of the corrupt oligarchies of Europe and America.

Trump mentioned another Republican president, economic protectionist and territorial expansionist William McKinley, first elected in 1896.  Trump admires McKinley, and McKinley’s role in the 1896 Republican Party resurgence. Thomas DiLorenzo recently observed, “…the Republican party by that time stood for imperialism, emboldened by its conquest of the South and its campaign of genocide against the Plains Indians from 1865-1890.”  McKinley, incidentally, was also responsible for the 1900 Gold Standard Act, making all issued paper dollars redeemable in gold, an act abrogated by FDR in 1933.

It is not hard to see Trump as more McKinley, and less Paul.  Yet, despite his affection for tariffs and mercantilism, Trump seems to have simultaneously and schizophrenically internalized the opposing idea that “if goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”

Trump’s explanation of his rare earth deal with Ukraine is as much Bastiat as it is crony imperialist McKinley.  McKinley learned economics “as an Army supply officer in Lincoln’s army.”  Trump learned economics from his successful father, and the rough and tumble New York real estate and construction world.  McKinley launched troops to take Hawaii, to finish off the Plains Indians, and subdue the Philippines;  Trump believes “if we are economically in Ukraine, it is more a deterrent of Russian or NATO violence [than a standing army would ever be].”  To be fair, Trump’s “shared investment” in Ukrainian “rare earths” after a 2014 US-fomented coup and civil war reeks of American hypocrisy, disaster state-capitalism, and old style imperialism.

And yet, Trump implied he was late to Congress on Wednesday because he was waiting for confirmation that a Blackrock-led consortium had purchased two ports on both sides of the Panama Canal.  Like it or not, Trump sees an American investment presence – American “ownership” as a healthy substitute for western armies, whether in Ukraine, in Panama, in Greenland, or in Gaza.  He sees American “ownership” as a way to reduce military expenditures structurally and substantially, while enriching all sides.

We can – because of Trump – visualize a lasting peace in a neutral Ukraine.  We can imagine a more American-friendly Panama Canal.  We can chuckle nervously with Vance and Johnson about the 56,000 mostly Native Inuits in Greenland and how we will make them “very safe and very rich.”  However, most Trump observers remain shocked at his proposal for Gaza, which amounts to funding and assisting Israel’s bipartisan and bloody conclusion of decades of slow genocide in Gaza.

Over two million Palestinians were crowded into the Gaza Strip during previous Israeli wars and by habitual Zionist expansion, in repeated spasmodic bouts of ethnic cleansing since 1948.  In the past seventeen months, over 45,000 Gazans killed by the IDF were officially identified and buried.  Gazan corpses decomposing under collapsed buildings, unreachable and unidentifiable, sometimes being eaten by dogs and cats, or frozen to death, or dying for lack of medical care, pushes the death toll to closer to 150,000 or more.  Of course, Trump would never consider ethnic cleansing the 56,000 native men, women and children who live on top of the Greenland’s minerals, fresh water, strategic lines of communication and passage, and energy reserves.

Trump’s “Gaza without Gazans” plan was countered by Egypt.  To be funded by Israel’s Arab neighbors, the Egyptian plan includes Gazans remaining on their land, as part of a necessary and committed workforce to rebuild their wasted hospitals, schools, universities, factories, parks, and playgrounds. Trump rejected this plan within hours of hearing about it.  In shocking contrast to open claims of national interest made in the Greenland offer, Israel and the US are silent about what they want in Gaza: full ownership of Gaza’s offshore gas deposits, its strategic location, and a “final solution” for Palestinian physical and moral resistance to the Zionist project.

Like every US president since 1963, President Trump is a shill for Israel’s government.   Trump’s biggest donors, and his appointments, his musings of owning Gaza, and his actions bear this out.

William McKinley was not a particularly smart man. He was shaped by his experience in the Union Army during and after the Civil War, and by a political career beholden to the crony capitalists of his day.  Trump has been shaped by different forces, and the result of his life experience has blinded him to Zionism’s excessive and never-ending financial, military and moral cost to America.  Trump likes to talk about getting what we pay for with NATO, in Ukraine, of fair trade and shared prosperity.  As we saw in his address to Congress, and in every one of his rallies, Trump knows many details about innocent people who have had terrible crimes committed against them, and he seeks justice – with one massive exception.

A“shill” endorses a product in public forums with the pretense of sincerity, when in fact he is being paid for his services.”  Is Israel a tiny bit concerned about Trump’s second term sincerity, given where the rest if his policies seem to be heading?  Is this why, despite getting everything AIPAC has demanded, including bans on pro-Palestinian assemblies and speech on college campuses, Netanyahu’s cabinet doesn’t seem particularly grateful, or elated with the White House?  Is this why AIPAC and its reliable proxies like Tom Cotton in the Senate are panicked about the upcoming confirmation of Ridge Colby?  Is why the we cannot watch the BBC documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” or find a showing of last week’s Oscar winner “No Other Land?”

Present-day Israeli leadership will never allow Trump to own Gaza, nor to define and dictate the strategic pace of their limitless regional land grabs. They expect the US President hand over hundreds of billions in war support, and to endorse all of Israel’s crimes sincerely, without pretense, exactly as he was paid to do.  If not corrected, Trump’s “Israel exception” will completely destroy his much touted “Golden Age” legacy, and bury America with it.

The post Understanding Trump’s Foreign Policy – and Where It Might Lead appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: After spending over $350 billion—half of which is reportedly unaccounted for—the US government is finally pulling the plug on supporting the Ukraine in its war with Russia.

What do you make of this?

Doug Casey: It was criminally insane for the US to involve itself in a border war between two countries on the other side of the world. Not many Americans know that “Ukraine,” which was previously always known as “the Ukraine,” means borderland. It was just a region, like Kurdistan, with undefined shifting borders until Lenin created it in 1921.

Why, you might ask, would the West take a chance on starting World War III over the most corrupt country in Europe?

Several reasons. For one, Ukraine has been a highly effective laundromat. Gigantic amounts of American tax dollars disappeared into a black hole to re-emerge in the pockets of NGOs, masquerading as aid. For another, connected scumbags like the Bidens got fat. Scores of billions were redistributed to weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and God knows who else. And, of course, a large coterie of Neocons in DC have made careers out of trying to destroy Russia at any cost.

I only hope that as Trump digs into where all the money has gone, it will result in massive clawbacks and long jail terms for lots of people, both in the US and Europe.

International Man: As the post below makes clear, President Trump is displeased with Zelensky. Without US backing, Zelensky’s days in power in Kiev seem to be numbered.

What are your thoughts on Zelensky’s future and that of Ukraine?

Doug Casey: How Zelensky, a second-rate nobody actor in a poor country, became immensely wealthy is a tale that should be widely disseminated. Years ago, the Panama Papers showed that Zelensky was already worth about $300 million and had two ultra-expensive houses in southern Florida. But to this day, nobody’s looked into the provenance of that fortune. I’m sure it’s grown to billions in the intervening years.

Here’s a rule of thumb: Dictators who are responsible for wholesale destruction, millions of casualties, and massive looting should wind up like Mussolini, who was hung by his heels from a lamppost.

If Zelensky were smart, he’d hightail to a country without extradition. Israel might work, although they declined to shelter Meyer Lansky, who also had Law of Return rights.

At a minimum, he should be indicted for criminally bad taste, prancing around in his faux military olive-green T-shirts and cargo pants for the last three years. Although he went to a nicely laundered black long-sleeve pullover for his formal meeting, last week.

It was hilarious watching Trump treat him with the respect he deserved in the White House before kicking him out (link).

International Man: What are the broader geopolitical consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine?

How might this impact NATO, the EU, and Europe as a whole?

Doug Casey: Despite Putin having said that he misses the old Soviet Union’s borders, the chances of Russia attempting to conquer Europe are zero. In fact, the chances are that Russia itself—which is a multicultural domestic empire—will disintegrate into lots of smaller units over the next few decades.

People don’t understand that things are very different from the days of the Roman Empire or even before WW1. Back then, it could make sense if you conquered or colonized another country.

Life was cheap; if you won, you got to steal the gold, cattle, artwork, and slaves. Things are different today. If Russia were foolish enough to try to reincorporate the old USSR—forget about the rest of Europe—it will find little “stealable” wealth exists in today’s world. They’d wind up with an extraordinarily expensive war followed by an interminable guerrilla war, resulting in the total collapse of Russia. There’s absolutely nothing to be gained, and everything to be lost.

How do such insane memes even originate? There are psychological reasons, but now isn’t the moment for us to go down that rabbit hole. Russian invasion of Europe is a red herring floated by American and NATO warmongers. Only very stupid and unknowledgeable people even consider it. But that’s not to say great dangers haven’t been set in motion.

Russia has had to triple the size of its army, and that’s expensive. If the war ends, it will have to disband most of it, creating back-to-back distortions in their economy.

Another likelihood is that NATO—which should have been abolished after the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early ’90s, but has continued to grow like a cancer, even though it no longer serves any useful purpose—will finally fall apart. This is a good thing because NATO is nothing but a provocation to Russia and China.

There will be a wave of emigres from the Ukraine, joining the millions who’ve already left. Most Ukrainians are reasonably well-educated. Who wants to stay in a poverty-stricken, war-torn country with a predatory government? Millions more will move west.

As far as rebuilding the Ukraine is concerned, the idea of a Marshall Plan is counterproductive. If foreigners want to come in and carpetbag, that’s one thing. But bankrupt US or EU governments throwing money at the place will just make things worse. It will inevitably go into the pockets of well-placed rich guys, corrupting both the giver and the receiver.

Ukraine should be totally free-marketized. Entrepreneurs will quickly move in, not to create an altruistic sham, a latter-day Potemkin village, but to make a profit. But who knows? Maybe the UN and EU will jury-rig some kind of solution, and the place will resemble a perpetual Gaza or post-war East Germany.

International Man: After pouring so much blood, treasure, and political capital into the Ukrainian quagmire, defeat will be a bitter pill for the Deep State and advocates of this war. The anti-Russia hysteria remains deeply ingrained in large segments of American and European society.

After years of being promised victory, how will these people cope with such a reality check?

Do you think the Deep State will attempt to block any US rapprochement with Russia?

Doug Casey: Russia and the Soviet Union have been the bête noire—the national enemy—of the US ever since I was a little kid. We all practiced duck and cover under our desks for fear of an obviously unprovoked attack by the evil Russkies.

Americans should realize that the enemy was never the Russian people, it was a Soviet state steeped in Marxist-Leninist dogma. And the almost equally pathological US Deep State, populated by our own group of warmongers, opportunists, and sociopaths.

For the last 30 years, there have been more communists in American universities alone than there are in all of Russia. The real danger is the socialists, fascists, communists, and Woke Europeans who have captured most European governments.

In the US, the Deep State complex (with its military, corporate, academic, financial, and entertainment tentacles) shouldn’t be underrated. It needs enemies for the war machine to make essentially useless and obsolescent junk. And for its infotainment arm to keep the hoi polloi in fear, happy to support a government claiming to “defend” them.

The real danger, as JD Vance intimated in his speech in Munich, is within.

Do I think the Deep State will attempt to block any rapprochement with Russia?

Absolutely. They don’t want the chaos to end because it would expose deep layers of crime and corruption, which are as bad throughout the US government as they are in the Ukraine itself. Ending wartime chaos would expose the US government as full of arrogant and entitled grifters.

It would be very inconvenient for them if the Ukraine war, perhaps the most effective money laundromat in all of history, disappeared. Followed by a thorough investigation to determine where the money went. Of course, they’ll want to block any rapprochement with Russia.

If the “Defense” Department and the 15 agencies in the so-called “Intelligence Community” are thoroughly investigated, however, the lives of investigators will be at serious risk. It’s risky business to break the rice bowls of these dudes.

International Man: The previous US administration froze all Russian stock and bond trading in Western financial markets.

If the war ends, these assets will presumably be unfrozen and accessible to Western investors.

What are your thoughts on Russian stocks?

Given the far-reaching consequences of Ukraine losing its war with Russia, what other investment implications do you foresee?

Doug Casey: It’ll be great when it’s possible to buy Russian stocks and bonds again.

There may be some tremendous bargains on offer at that point. Let me re-emphasize what I said earlier: Russia itself will eventually break up into a lot of smaller countries, as did the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Russia isn’t the most stable country in the world, but it’s several standard deviations better than any place in Africa, for instance.

I don’t see Russia as an investment, but rather a high-potential speculation after their markets open again. The country has no debt and could easily go to a gold-backed ruble. The secession of non-Russian possessions could be a very good thing.

Meanwhile in the West, it’s not unlikely that we’ll see a financial and economic collapse as Trump unwinds numerous distortions at the same time he cranks in new ones. The Greater Depression will likely usher the Democrats back into power, which is bad news.

Given that Kiev loses its war with Moscow, it’s pretty certain that now is the time to sell military/industrial stocks, and war stocks. If Trump succeeds in cutting back military spending, as he says, a lot of money will stop flowing to the likes of Lockheed, Raytheon, and Boeing. The “defense” business is absolutely rife with fraud, stupidity and corruption.

They’ve done extremely well over the last 30 years, but based on changes in the macroeconomic situation, I think the party’s over. Not only that, but military technology is changing radically. The type of hi-tech junk that they’re producing—e.g., F-35s, B21s, carriers, and $100,000 artillery rounds—makes about as much sense as producing battleships at the end of World War II. Cheap drones make more sense. As do $20,000 Terminators.

The nature of the whole world is reorienting in every way. Radically.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Geopolitical Shockwaves of Russia’s Victory in Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” — George Orwell

The Deep State’s war on truth is being waged with doubletalk, delusion and propaganda.

Through deliberate manipulation of language—what George Orwell called “doublespeak”—Donald Trump has provided cover for the Deep State’s continued grip on power.

While promising to drain the swamp, his administration has instead relied on contradictory policies, misinformation, and propaganda to further entrench the very system he claims to oppose. Although the Trump administration is merely the latest frontman for the Deep State’s efforts to maintain its stranglehold on power, we are approaching a tipping point beyond which there may be no turning back to freedom as we have known it.

This is how “we the people” remain on the losing end of this devil’s bargain that is life in the American police state.

What we desperately need is a reality check, and that starts by disconnecting from the Deep State’s propaganda-riddled, manipulated alternative reality about the state of our nation.

While President Trump, well versed in the “art of the deal,” appears to be saying all the right things about peace, corruption, graft, wasteful spending, free speech, equality, bloated bureaucracy, national security, etc., his administration’s actions tell a far different story about his priorities and his loyalties, which remain self-serving, imperial, flagrantly unconstitutional and intended to keep the Deep State in power.

As always, actions speak louder than words.

When the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are still missing from the White House’s website, that oversight—or deliberate omission—speaks volumes.

Any government that can’t be bothered to include the Constitution among its priorities, or include it anywhere on its administration’s website, is not a government that can be trusted to abide by the Constitution.

Then again, trust has little to do with it.

The Constitution is a contract between the people and the government. What we have been experiencing over the course of both Republican and Democratic presidencies, is a breach of contract. Where the Trump administration differs from those that have come before it is in its willingness to go rogue in defiance of Congress, the courts and the rule of law.

You don’t wage a “common sense” revolution by discarding the Constitution. That way lies dictatorship.

Remember, how you do something is just as important as why you do it.

So, what’s really going on?

As a populace, we have become so desensitized to political lies, especially Trump’s barrage of lies, that we shrug them off and move on. But in doing so, we act as enablers for what hides beneath those lies.

Make no mistake: the Deep State—the real Deep State, not the decoy version of it that Trump trots out to justify dismantling our constitutional republic—hides behind that rhetoric.

As journalist Shawn McCreesh explains, “In order to remake the government, President Trump and his administration are remaking the language used to describe the government. An entire lexicon of progressive terminology nurtured by the last administration has been squelched. In its place is a new vocabulary, honed by the president and echoed by his many imitators in the capital. It is a vocabulary containing many curious uses of doublespeak.”

Doublespeak, as media scholar Edward S. Herman defines it, is characterized by “the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.”

The term is derived from George Orwell’s 1984, in which “doublethink” and “Newspeak” are used to manipulate the masses into going along with the government’s agenda.

In true Orwellian fashion, Trump has mastered the art of doublespeak.

For example, McCreesh points to “one presidential order titled ‘Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government’ [that] calls for weaponizing the federal government against itself. Another titled ‘Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling’ demands that ‘patriotic education’ be taught to children… Even as the president signed an executive order titled ‘Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,’ he signed other orders policing language.”

Consider some of Trump’s other uses of alternative facts, misdirection and misnomers to advance the Deep State’s agenda.

In true doublespeak fashion, Trump’s path to peace leads to more war. At the same time that he’s threatening to halt military aid to Ukraine in the name of securing peace with Russia, Trump’s administration is sending $4 billion in weapons and ammunition to Israel so it can continue to wage war on Gaza.

Trump’s path to nationalism by way of isolationism is in fact empire building. At the same time that Trump is declaring himself a nationalist, breaking ranks with America’s allies, withdrawing from international accords, and ceding ground to authoritarian regimes such as Russia, he is also declaring his intent to lay claim to foreign lands such as Gaza, Greenland and Canada as part of a global power grab.

Trump’s path to saving money is spending money. At the same time that Trump claims to be shining a spotlight on wasteful spending in the hopes of balancing the budget, he is also as guilty of spending—and wasting—taxpayer dollars at an alarming rate. At the same that he’s empowering Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to drastically reduce the federal workforce in a bid to save money, he is pushing tax cuts that would add $5-10 trillion to the 10-year deficit. As Reuters reports, DOGE’s savings claims are thus far “unverifiable and its calculations have been riddled with errors and corrections.”

Trump’s path to law and order is allowing the police to act lawlessly. At the same time that the Trump administration is advocating for impose harsher penalties and increased prison sentences, even for nonviolent crimes, Trump is dismantling government policies aimed at holding police accountable for official misconduct.

Trump’s path to efficiency is giving rise to even greater inefficiency. Likening DOGE to a chainsaw hacking away at a bloated bureaucracy, Musk has been wiping out whole segments of the federal workforce, agency by agency, with little thought to what programs might suffer as a result or how to keep the government functioning. As CNN reports, “There have been a lot of reports of federal workers being fired then quickly rehired once agencies realized people with critical skills had been let go…for example: Those managing the US nuclear arsenal, and those working at USDA on the response to the bird flu outbreak.”

Trump’s path to economic triumph is spelling economic disaster. Trump continues to forge ahead with his imposition of tariffs on America’s major trading partners despite warnings from economists and the business sector alike that tariffs will hurt, rather than help, the economy and could lead to a recession and a spike in inflation.

Trump’s path to draining the swamp is letting the swamp run the show. Building on the same patterns he exhibited during his first term, when Trump populated his administration with individuals engaged in a pattern of wasteful and extravagant spending on themselves at the taxpayers’ expense, Trump is once again prioritizing personal profit over the American people.

Trump’s path to free speech is censorship. At the same time that Trump claims to be liberating conservative speech from the muzzling power of political correctness, he is embarking on a massive crackdown on lawful First Amendment activities that would criminalize protest activities and punish individuals and groups advocating for policies that contradict White House executive orders.

Trump’s path to transparency is replacing watchdogs with yes-men and loyalists. At the same time that Trump claims to be bringing transparency back to government, his administration is methodically dismantling all of the systemic checks intended to protect whistleblowers and serve as bulwarks against government corruption.

Trump’s path to ending cancel culture is more cancel culture. At the same time that Trump has declared war against left-leaning, politically correct “wokeness,” he is replacing it with a right-leaning cancel culture that aims to do exactly what the left was accused of doing: renaming public spaces, erasing offensive parts of history, and silencing the opposition.

When you set aside the mountain of contradictory policies and propaganda that have become hallmarks of Trump’s time in office, a grim picture emerges: Trump’s efforts to make America great again are really just a variation on one theme, which is keeping the Deep State in power at the expense of our freedoms.

Indeed, George Orwell’s fictional 1984 could increasingly be mistaken for the Trump Administration’s instruction manual on how to remake the government in the dystopian image of Oceania, the authoritarian regime run by Big Brother.

While America’s founders envisioned a separation of powers held in check by three coequal branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) as the means of thwarting abuse by any one branch, Orwell’s Oceania has four branches of government (the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty) that work together to maintain Big Brother’s chokehold on power.

As Orwell explains, “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”

According to Orwell, “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

Thus, the Ministry of Peace is tasked with waging perpetual war in order to keep the government in power. The Ministry of Love is tasked with meting out torture and punishment in order to brainwash the populace into loving Big Brother. The Ministry of Plenty is tasked with maintaining a state of perpetual poverty, scarcity and financial shortages, the rationale being that an impoverished populace is easier to control. And the Ministry of Truth is tasked with disseminating propaganda and rewriting history and language in order to keep the citizens compliant.

The key to this last undertaking, maintaining a chokehold on power, is what Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels referred to as the “big lie.”

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” stated Goebbels. “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Hannah Arendt, writing in The Origins of Totalitarianism, came to the same conclusion:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

This is how that slippery slope to authoritarianism begins, with lies that masquerade as truths and a populace disinclined to think for themselves.

Which brings us back to the tactics being deployed by the Trump administration.

Conformity, compliance and group think are necessary ingredients for tyrants to succeed.

Yet as historian Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic, “We are not a theocracy or a monarchy that accepts the word of the leader or the priesthood as law. We are a democracy that debates facts, seeks to understand problems, and then legislates solutions, all in accordance with a set of rules.”

The answer, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, is that we must re-learn what it means to think for ourselves.

Pay attention. Question everything. Dare to be different. Don’t follow the mob. Don’t let yourself become numb to the world around you. Be compassionate. Be humane. Most of all, don’t allow yourselves to become so desensitized to Trump’s brand of politics that you tolerate behavior in government officials that you would never tolerate from your own children (lying, bullying, name-calling, greed, etc.).

When all is said and done, Trump’s path to putting America First is really about putting Trump first and leaving Americans in bondage to the Deep State.

In Orwell’s world, the state maintained power through deception.

In Trump’s America, doublespeak remains the Deep State’s most powerful weapon—one that thrives as long as the public fails to recognize it for what it is—and Trump is proving to be its most effective mouthpiece.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post The Deep State’s War on Truth—Waged With Doublespeak, Delusion and Propaganda appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Donald Trump seems to believe that tariffs can help to bring manufacturing back to the States.

Trump’s tariffs have so far been aimed at four targets, the U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico, China and, soon to come, the European Union.

During his first term Trump negotiated the U.S.M.C.A. with Mexico and Canada, a free trade zone covering the U.S. and its neighbors. He is now attempting to change the rules of it. But the way he does so is inconsistent.

On January 21 Trump promised tariffs on Canada and Mexico. On February 1 he announced them. Three days later he delayed the implementation of those tariffs. On February 27 he said the tariffs would go into effect on March 4. On March 5 he was again forced to pull back (archived):

President Trump said on Wednesday that he would pause tariffs on cars coming into the United States from Canada and Mexico for one month, after a 25 percent tariff that he placed on America’s closest trading partners a day earlier roiled stock markets and prompted stiff resistance from industry.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, read a statement from Mr. Trump on Wednesday saying that White House had spoken with the three largest auto makers, and that a one-month exemption would be given to cars coming in through United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

A one-month exemption is a joke. It takes years to move parts production from one country to another. There are hundreds of companies in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. which make the myriad parts that go into a car. It is an completely integrated industry which took years to build.

U.S. car manufacturers had trusted that U.S.M.C.A. would hold. Should the tariffs apply anytime soon they will have to increase their prices by hefty margins or halt their production.

Trump’s tariffs in north America can largely be seen as pressure method for gaining some valuable concessions from neighboring countries. They are part of a negotiation scheme and unlikely to be a longer term problem.

But Trump’s tariffs against China are a different animal. The Trump administration views China as a strategic enemy and would like to seriously hurt it. But China is able to hit back (archived):

Minutes after President Trump’s latest tariffs took effect, the Chinese government said on Tuesday that it was imposing its own broad tariffs on food imported from the United States and would essentially halt sales to 15 American companies.

China’s Ministry of Finance put tariffs of 15 percent on imports of American chicken, wheat, corn and cotton and 10 percent tariffs on other foods, ranging from soybeans to dairy products. In addition, the Ministry of Commerce said 15 U.S. companies would no longer be allowed to buy products from China except with special permission, including Skydio, which is the largest American maker of drones and a supplier to the U.S. military and emergency services.

Lou Qinjian, a spokesman for China’s National People’s Congress, chastised the United States for violating the World Trade Organization’s free trade rules. “By imposing unilateral tariffs, the U.S. has violated W.T.O. rules and disrupted the security and stability of the global industrial and supply chains,” he said.

Trump claims that tariffs on China are necessary to stop the illegal import of Fentanyl, an addictive synthetic opioid widely used in the U.S.

China counters that it already has put strong controls on Fentanyl and its precursor chemicals. It can not be blamed for a problem that solely exists within the United States:

The reason why the fentanyl issue in the US is so serious has never been external; it has nothing to do with China, which strictly prohibits drugs. Illicit fentanyl started to enter the US market as early as the 1980s. Later, media revealed that US pharmaceutical companies concealed the addictive properties of synthetic opioids and that doctors overprescribed painkillers, leading to widespread addiction among patients. Statistics show that with 5 percent of the world’s population, the US consumes 80 percent of the world’s opioids, but still has not permanently scheduled fentanyl-related substances as a class. The almost abnormal demand has boosted the development of the illegal fentanyl market, fundamentally contributing to the proliferation of fentanyl in the US.

The Global Times points to the social causes of drug addiction:

[T]he lack of social governance in the US has exacerbated the drug problem. US Vice President JD Vance described a similar situation in his autobiography. Many low-income families live in chaotic community environments with a lack of education and supervision. This has led to many children living in adverse conditions of drug abuse and trafficking, forming a vicious cycle that is difficult to break.

China’s government spokesperson is promising to fight back:

Intimidation does not scare us. Bullying does not work on us. Pressuring, coercion or threats are not the right way of dealing with China. Anyone using maximum pressure on China is picking the wrong guy and miscalculating. If the U.S. truly wants to solve the fentanyl issue, then the right thing to do is to consult with China by treating each other as equals.

If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.

Such language from China is far from the usual one. It therefore seems unlikely that there will soon be a compromise between the U.S. and China.

With respect to Europe the U.S. claims that it is importing more goods from Europe than it can export to it. That is true but does not cover the full width of economical relations. The U.S. is exporting way more services (think software) to Europe than Europe is exporting to the U.S. The total of goods and services exchanges is a wash. If the U.S. insist on putting tariffs on European goods the EU can counter adding a toll to all U.S. services. The results would be, in theory, a tie.

Tariffs however are dangerous. They distort markets and add significant costs to all participants. Their pain will be mostly felt by U.S. consumers:

All the planned tariffs would take the US tariff rate to above 20% in just a few weeks, the highest since pre-WWI. As Joseph Politano points out, the costs of these actions are enormous, covering $1.3trn in US imports or roughly 42% of all goods brought into the United States, or the single-largest tariff hike since the infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of nearly a century ago.
…
The total costs of these tariffs would raise $160bn from US consumers and businesses paying more for their purchases of imported goods, with more to come. Trump’s Tuesday measures are only 40% of his proposed measures. If the next batch is implemented, it would raise the cost of imports to over $600bn, or 1.6% of GDP.
…
So worried is the International Chamber of Commerce in the US, that it reckoned that the world economy could face a crash similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s unless Trump rows back on his plans. “Our deep concern is that this could be the start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory,” said Andrew Wilson, deputy secretary-general of the ICC. So Trump’s measures may go well beyond “a little disturbance”.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s Tariff Wars Will Hurt U.S. the Most appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’m all in favor of a thorough and public audit of the US’s gold reserves. This includes the gold, not only at Fort Knox, but also at the other gold storage facilities at West Point, Denver, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Ron Paul was right when, in 2011, he tried to force the federal government to be transparent about its gold holdings.

Virtually everything the US government owns is stolen, whether it’s stolen from Americans or from foreign individuals and institutions. This is certainly true of the federal government’s gold hoard. It’s important to know how much gold the US government owns for the same reason it’s important to know how much of any asset—land, buildings, or cash—the government owns. States can easily convert wealth into power, and it’s good to know how much wealth the regime directly controls. That is, it is important to have a full and accurate account of just how much the US government has stolen. Moreover, we don’t know if the US Treasury or the Federal Reserve is using that gold for secret political transactions it isn’t telling us about.  We already know the Fed makes secret loans it obstinately refuses to make public. An audit is very much in order.

All that said, however, let’s not overstate the importance of the US gold reserve. The gold reserve is not a source of untapped wealth that can be used to balance the budget, pay off the federal debt, or fix the US’s current downward spiral into fiscal insolvency. At only $750 billion, the value of the gold reserve is much too small for any such thing.

Moreover, the gold reserve does not provide “backing” for the US dollar, for US Treasurys, or for any other asset one might possess. The value of the US dollar is determined by supply and demand as it floats freely against other unbacked currencies. The gold in the vaults is of little importance in this respect.

Strangely, however, as the calls for a gold audit have heated up within the Trump administration, one encounters an increasing number of columns and comments inflating the importance of the gold reserve. Not surprisingly, much of this commentary comes from organizations that promote gold as an investment asset, or gold mining as an industry.

In an article at mining.com, for example, the author claims that if the gold hoard proves to be smaller than the official number published by the Treasury Department, the effects could be “profound, triggering market instability, devaluing the US dollar, and causing gold prices to skyrocket.”

It’s hard to see how this would happen in real life. Let’s say that 25 percent of the gold reserve has been stolen. That would mean the value of the gold in the reserves is about $567 billion instead of $757 billion. The US economy totals $30 trillion. If the federal gold hoard dropped 25 percent, the US gold reserve would drop from being the size of 2.5 percent of the US economy to 1.9 percent. Even though the gold isn’t collateral for anything—unless there are secret deals we don’t know about—we’re supposed to believe this would “trigger market instability” and devalue the US dollar? I’m skeptical.

Many other gold-industry-oriented publications make similar claims about the size of the US gold reserves being critical to trust and confidence in the US dollar.

There is good reason to doubt these claims, however. Again: the value of the dollar is not backed by gold or any other government asset. Moreover, it’s important to reject money-crank theories such as those which tell us that fiat currencies are claims, of some sort, on a central bank’s assets. The currencies are not claims on anything, and they’re not backed by anything.

The presence of gold in the US vaults is inconsequential compared to the truly key factors that drive demand for the dollar. The fact US taxes must be paid in dollars is not unimportant, but the dollar is primarily in high demand because the dollar zone is huge, and foreign buyers of US goods need a lot of dollars to buy US goods and services. The Eurodollar economy—which includes the so-called “petrodollar”—extends this demand even further. Moreover, dollars are in high demand because US Treasurys are in high demand. Why are Treasurys in high demand? Because it is known that the US government possesses the power to extract vast amounts of wealth from the taxpayers which makes the default risk of Treasurys very low. Thus, Treasurys are a famously safe asset and have become a key component of the global economy. Buying and selling a lot of Treasurys requires a lot of dollars. Another key component driving the demand for dollars is the fact that foreign central banks continue to devalue their own currencies even faster than the US central bank is devaluing the dollar. When it comes to retaining its value, the US dollar is the “least bad” option among fiat currencies.

Indeed, we even have empirical studies showing there is little convincing evidence that the size of a country’s gold reserves have much to do with that country’s interest rates. In a 2013 study from Dirk Baur and Isaac Miyakawa, the authors look at multiple countries and central banks to examine the effects of gold reserves on “trust” in the form of bond yields and exchange-rate volatility. The results are inconclusive. This is no surprise. It is not at all clear why the size of a gold reserve would dictate any of this in a system characterized by fiat money and which is dominated by strong state institutions, and multiple tax-revenue streams.

If one is concerned about preserving “confidence” in the American state, its institutions, and its money, one would do better to worry about mounting federal deficits, which require flooding the market with ever larger amounts of Treasuries. This puts upward pressure on interest rates and fuels monetary inflation as the US central bank buys up more Treasurys with newly printed money to keep interest rates under control. The fact that the US will add three trillion dollars to its public debt this year—and probably a similar amount next year—poses a far greater risk to dollar values and Treasurys than whether or not someone has been walking off with gold bars from Fort Knox.

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

The post The Gold In Fort Knox Does Not Back the Dollar or Anything Else appeared first on LewRockwell.

The recent measles “outbreak” is being presented incorrectly in certain segments of legacy media. We are hearing that the outbreak is so tragic because, as they cry repeatedly, “measles is vaccine preventable.”

Exhibit A to this narrative: a child has died as a result of measles. And yet that claim is not fully verified, as Dr. Brian Hooker, in a fact sheet published earlier this week in Children’s Health Defense, points out here.

What is certain is the death of a child is always tragic. We pray for the family and hope that the child’s death is fully investigated and that the facts, whatever they may be, are presented to the public.

While many of the measles cases are occurring in what we are told were unvaccinated children, there are also reports that some of the cases involve people who have been vaccinated. In fact, there will also be some people who develop measles following vaccination, which this article, “Can You Get Measles If You Are Vaccinated?” – grudgingly concedes.

We live in a world where we encounter contagious viruses and bacteria all the time. When we’re in good health, we can beat back infectious “pests” even if we get sick for a while. Disease takes hold and seriously threatens the population when there is underlying poor health. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has often pointed out that Covid hit the United States so hard because of our underlying chronic illness burden. In parts of the world where overall health is better, populations were less affected by Covid.

Are there historical examples where disease outbreaks occurred when human populations were globally unwell?

Absolutely.

Historians argue that life in Constantinople, in 536 AD, under the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I, was the beginning of some of the worst years in history. It was the first recorded global pandemic. Moreover, there were two massive volcanic explosions that occurred outside of Europe which blocked sunlight. Temperatures in Europe and the Mediterranean basin were suddenly 30 degrees colder than average because a thick fog covered the land. Crops failed. Starvation followed.

In the overcrowded streets of Constantinople, the malnourished came into contact with a bacteria named yersinia pestis. The result was Bubonic Plague and what became known as the Great Plague of Justinian.

The plague was so awful that mass graves overflowed. Dead bodies lay in the streets. Boats full of the dead were set on fire and sent out to sea.

It is estimated that anywhere from 25 million to 100 million people died.

Our seasonal measles outbreak pales in comparison to the Plague of Justinian.

But if one listens to the cast of characters that legacy media parades on air, one walks away with the belief that bodies are piling up in the streets of Texas.

On NBC affiliate KPRC Click 2, in Houston, Dr. Peter Hotez, explains the measles outbreak in West Texas, with predictable hyperbole. Hotez, who never strikes me as the picture of perfect health himself, points out that the annual rodeo in Houston could be impacted by “people who are shedding the measles virus.” You’re only safe, Hotez tells us, if you are vaccinated.

Hotez is an advocate of gain-of-function research and in 2024 called the Congressional investigation into the origins of COVID’s origins “absolutely atrocious.”

“Parading prominent virologists in front of C-SPAN cameras to humiliate them is going to have long-term detrimental effects on science, bio-preparedness and virology,” Hotez said at the time.

Similarly, ABC rolled out Dr. Paul Offit, a doctor who has served on the CDC board. Offit criticized HHS Secretary Kennedy, claiming his advice on the measles outbreak is ‘internally contradictory’ because Kennedy said that good nutrition is critical; supplementing with vitamin A is beneficial; and that people can choose to get the measles vaccine but shouldn’t be required to get it.

ABC failed to mention that Dr. Offit has long served on the Advisory Commission on Immunization Practices, and has a significant history of conflicts of interest. For details on that history, look no further than Mark Blaxill’s and Dan Olmsted’s Age of Autism, in which the authors write about Offit’s $29 million windfall from a vaccine he invented while advocating for Big Pharma’s products.

Offit and Hotez are standard bearers of the old public health belief system: for them, the only answer to the threat of disease is vaccine mandates. In their minds, those two words must be connected – ‘vaccine’ and ‘mandatory.’ They hardly mention good nutrition or the need to remove toxins from our environment. And they seem to have amnesia about that thing called ‘Covid.’

These are the same old voices and tropes that the legacy media rolls out with fearful pronouncements, in between commercial breaks loaded with Big Pharma advertising. They, and their handlers, conveniently divert the public’s attention away from the chronic disease epidemics of diabetes, cancer, autism, obesity, neurological disorders, asthma, and more.

In the weeks since the media bought into measles mania, how many children have been diagnosed with autism? How many people have learned that they have ‘turbo cancers’? How many young people died suddenly from Covid vaccine-induced heart problems they did not know they had? How many people have searched for doctors to help them with vaccine injuries, only to have doors slammed in their faces?

The legacy media is asleep at the wheel. Where have they been on these vital health issues, as America gets sicker and sicker?

What if we were presented with better health choices? How would Americans feel about being part of a healthy population, with clean diets and robust immune systems built and sustained to beat back disease?

We have health choices the Byzantines never imagined. We do not have to live in fear of the great plague.

This originally appeared on The Kennedy Beacon.

The post Measles Mania: What the Legacy Media Won’t Tell You appeared first on LewRockwell.

About 25 years ago I got to be pals with a retired CIA analyst named John Mapother who was stationed in Germany and then in Austria between 1947 and 1955. I met him a few times for dinner in Washington D.C. (he lived in Maryland) and we had many long and fascinating conversations about U.S. foreign policy.

As he explained it, the people who drive U.S. foreign policy have a very hard time putting themselves in the shoes of America’s adversaries. In the case of post Cold War Russia, the prevailing mentality seemed to be that Russia was so thoroughly defeated that it was no longer in a position to make claims of having its own national and security interests. If the proud Russians were unwilling to accept their vassalage to the United States and NATO, well, that was just tough s..t for the Russians.

Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, the American inability to see things as Russians sees them has hardened into the presumption that the Russians simply have no standing to make any national security claims, even on its Ukrainian border a few hundred miles from Moscow.

This mentality completely ignores one of the central tenets of foreign relations, which is frequently called the Balance of Power doctrine. Underlying this doctrine is the recognition that—regardless of how benevolent and altruistic people declare themselves to be—when it comes to a dispute over material and strategic interests, the more powerful party can be relied upon to press any advantage he has gained.

To understand this basic reality of all human affairs, consider how few agreements involving substantial interests are consummated on the basis of a handshake instead of legal documents drafted by attorneys. Even partnerships that begin on the friendliest of terms may go sour, resulting in one partner trying to press an advantage against the other. This essential flaw of human nature has been greatly amplified in our Era of Virtue Signaling, in which the most extravagant expressions of virtue are made by the most ruthless people.

In 1823, President James Monroe declared that the United States would not tolerate any European military alliance anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. As he put it in his seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823, the European powers were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ sphere of interest.

Sphere of interest is a privilege that the U.S. government claims for itself as a given. However, when some other power such as Russia declares a sphere of interest in its own front yard, a few hundred miles from Moscow, the U.S. foreign policy establishment acts perfectly outraged. How dare Vladimir Putin declare a sphere of influence!

How would these same people react if Russia announced a military alliance with Cuba that involved placing sophisticated Russian weaponry and a large signals intelligence infrastructure in Cuba?

President Donald Trump is apparently the first president since 1990 to understand the folly of this mentality and to recognize that Russia is a legitimate nation with legitimate national security interests. Trump appears to understand that the Russian psyche was badly scarred by Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 and especially by Hitler’s in 1941.

For personal reasons, he understands that the Russians could not trust the Biden administration. For equally personal reasons, he understands the folly of blindly trusting the Ukrainian regime. Consider that Zelensky, who is no longer an elected leader of Ukraine, campaigned for Joe Biden.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a British film producer who asked me why the subject of my first book—an Austrian writer and serial killer named Jack Unterweger—was, for a time, the darling of Austria’s leftwing literati before he was exposed as a serial killer.

I pointed out to the producer that the less people know about a person or a situation, the more room they have to project their own fantasies and notions onto the person or situation. Austria’s literati feted Jack Unterweger without knowing a single thing about him or his criminal past. He was a perfect projection screen for their own silly fantasies.

It’s a conspicuous fact about Russia and Ukraine that Americans know absolutely nothing about either country. Although I lived in Austria for fifteen years and speak German, I still don’t presume to understand fully Austrian politics. The only thing Americans know about Russia and Ukraine is what they are presented with in the media, which lies all the time about everything.

Now the Europeans are butt-hurt because President Trump is tired of the killing, destruction, and sending money and weapons into the black hole of Kiev and wants to end it.

The European heads of state remind me of the jilted wife of a rich man who would rather spend millions on attorneys fees in a drawn out divorce instead of obtaining a decent settlement and moving on with her life. While nursing anger and resentment and blowing money on lawyers may satisfy a desire for revenge, it doesn’t achieve anything constructive.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post Foreign Relations & Acrimonious Divorce appeared first on LewRockwell.

Mike Lewis, founder of the website Where Peter Is, has taken a swipe at exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger. But “taking a swipe” is actually too soft a term when one considers that Mike Lewis didn’t merely challenge certain things Fr. Ripperger has said or written. Throughout his 4,000-word screed, Lewis accuses Fr. Ripperger of making “bizarre” statements that “dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church.” He even accuses Fr. Ripperger of making statements that are “contrary to Catholic Tradition, doctrine, and theology.” What he offers up as evidence are cherry-picked quotations from various speeches—often leaving off pertinent context—never once supplying any direct evidence to substantiate his very serious charges.

Lewis peppers his article with derogatory accusations, calling Fr. Ripperger things like “a fringe traditionalist figure.” But while such ad hominems are not libelous in themselves, statements like “Fr. Ripperger has a long history of controversial statements and claims, including but not limited to dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church” could be. It’s one thing to challenge the things someone says, and it is quite another to directly accuse them of what is tantamount to heresy.

Under the heading “A History of Bizarre Statements,” Lewis claims something that is completely untrue, stating it as if it were the truth. He made no attempt to contact Fr. Ripperger to obtain a clarification or to ascertain the truthfulness of his claims—he simply asserted his interpretation of the facts as fact. Lewis wrote:

Following the 2020 election, Marissa Nichols wrote about how members of her Catholic homeschool community were circulating a “Prayer of Command” composed by Fr. Ripperger, who urged that Catholics recite it, asking “Jesus Christ to break any curses, hexes, or spells and send them back to where they came from” in order to “Stop the Steal.” (emphasis added)

I reached out to Fr. Ripperger to ask if he urged Catholics to recite the “Prayer of Command” he composed and if he encouraged the use of the prayer to “stop the steal.” This is what Fr. Ripperger wrote in return:

I wrote a prayer by that title as it is in my Deliverance prayers but they modified it and I never said to say it to stop the steal. I never sent out that “memo.” It was a case of telephone: one person said to pray this prayer from Fr. Ripperger and then it morphed into me saying to say the prayer/Other people were saying that. I wrote a separate prayer (attached) which just tells people to say a prayer for the integrity of the election.

In essence, Mike Lewis took an email written by someone else and attributed its contents and its intentions to Fr. Ripperger. Had he reached out to Fr. Ripperger to confirm the situation prior to publishing, he likely would have received the same response. But instead, Lewis rushed to publish without verifying his claims; and immediately after stating this blatant falsehood, Lewis all but accused Fr. Ripperger of heresy: “Fr. Ripperger has made other statements that are not only contrary to Catholic tradition, doctrine, and theology, but which threaten spiritual and physical harm to the vulnerable people who look to him as a religious authority” (emphasis added).

The Church defines heresy as: “the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith.” Such matters which must be believed include Church doctrines, so for Lewis to claim that Fr. Ripperger is making statements contrary to doctrine, he is accusing him of spreading heretical ideas. Subsequent to this, Lewis never points out any specific doctrine, tradition, or theological teaching which he believes Fr. Ripperger to have contradicted—he merely relies upon inference and suggestion to substantiate this claim.

In the next section, “‘Making Stuff Up’ About Demons?” Lewis refers to a video clip of Fr. Ripperger talking about the hierarchical structure of Hell. Here, Lewis quoted a criticism from Fr. Matthew Schneider, who asserted that Fr. Ripperger is “making stuff up from nowhere” about the hierarchy of Hell:

According to one of these priest-theologians, Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC, Fr. Ripperger’s teachings on demon hierarchy appear to deviate from traditional views, which often either depict demons as chaotic without a clear hierarchy or align them with the seven deadly sins. He wrote of Fr. Ripperger’s claims in this video, “As far as I can tell, he’s making stuff up from nowhere.”

From here, Lewis quoted extensively from Fr. Ripperger’s talk, wherein he explained the authority of demons over others. If anyone is deviating from the traditional views of the hierarchy, it is Fr. Schneider (as well as Lewis, hiding behind Fr. Schneider’s comments). St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the first part of the Summa Theologica an answer to question 109, “The Ordering of the Bad Angels:”

On 1 Corinthians 15:24 the gloss says: “While the world lasts, angels will preside over angels, men over men, and demons over demons.”

I answer that, Since action follows the nature of a thing, where natures are subordinate, actions also must be subordinate to each other. Thus it is in corporeal things, for as the inferior bodies by natural order are below the heavenly bodies, their actions and movements are subject to the actions and movements of the heavenly bodies. Now it is plain from what we have said (Article 1), that the demons are by natural order subject to others; and hence their actions are subject to the action of those above them, and this is what we mean by precedence—that the action of the subject should be under the action of the prelate. So the very natural disposition of the demons requires that there should be authority among them. This agrees too with Divine wisdom, which leaves nothing inordinate, which “reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly” (Wisdom 8:1).

Had Lewis simply turned to Aquinas on the matter, he would have understood that what Fr. Ripperger said is indeed a part of the Church’s theological tradition and teaching. Rather, this is supposed to stand as one of Lewis’ examples of Fr. Ripperger contradicting “Catholic tradition, doctrine, and theology.” This is now the second time Lewis failed to do even a baseline level of research.

Read the Whole Article

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