Lew Rockwell Institute

“I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.” ~ Étienne de La Boétie, “On Voluntary Servitude,” Anno Domini 1552

From time to time people ask me what might work well as far as making a better future for themselves and their descendants. Oftentimes these conversations take place in the context of talk of politics.

It is not possible to fix the problems caused by the excesses of politics through the addition of more politics. I’ve said that a great many times. My friend Bill Buppert says it in a more memorable turn of phrase, “You can’t end cannibalism by eating cannibals.”

Friends, I know what you want. You want to be invulnerable, especially to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Specifically you’d rather not suffer from the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the law’s delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, if you like the bard’s play about the Danish prince Hamlet. Perhaps you prefer the language of the committee that drafted the Declaration of 1776? A long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object that evinces a design to reduce you under absolute despotism? Yes, you’d rather not suffer those, would you.

You want to be invisible in that you prefer to be left alone. You don’t want “the Man” coming around to bother you, to ransack your home, civil asset forfeiture your property, murder your children, commit outrageous acts of violence on your family dog, rape anyone in sight, as those in power often have their minions do. Ayn Rand was convinced that to start a whole new civilisation one would need a special electromagnetic shield that would disguise an entire Rocky Mountain valley (Galt’s Gulch, in particular) from the view of aeroplanes. Freeman Dyson pointed out that there is really no place on Earth where a group of people could go to be isolated from the rest of society, no matter how clever they are.

You want to be invincible. When the evil militarised constabulary of Apache county, Arizona came to Milton William Cooper’s home in AD 2001 they murdered him. He had already sent his wife and children away, knowing that the notoriously brutal and murderous deputies were intent on killing everyone in the home. You’d rather not die fighting the authorities over false charges.

You want to come and go like the wind, not barred from entering or leaving places of your choosing. Sometimes, perhaps, like a very light wind, that comes and goes almost without being noticed. Sometimes, perhaps, like a fierce storm wind that blows through and clears out all the terrible things in the way of peace, justice, and decency.

How do you get there?

Perhaps you have despaired of finding a free country. Perhaps, like me, you’ve looked. Done your research. Read Erwin Strauss on How to Start Your Own Country. Gone to the founding conference in AD 1995 of the New Country Foundation. Met Mike Oliver who founded the Republic of Minerva with money from John Templeton. Met with Michael van Notten and his associates, including Spencer MacCallum, and worked on building a new Hong Kong in the Gulf of Aden. Joined what is now called Liberty International and attended various of their meetings over the years. Looked for people talking about individual sovereignty or any sort of independent sovereignty, and met with sons of Confederate veterans, League of the South, Republic of Texas provisional governments (two out of three that were extant at the time I met with them). Attended the Grand Western Conference II and helped compose and set your name to the declaration of independence of the Free Mountain West. Travelled on four continents, looking, and held online discussions with people on the other three continents from time to time.

There are no free countries on Earth. The people involved in human communities in space projects are mostly wicked authoritarians who take Werner von Braun, a former SS officer and slave camp operator, as the example of how they want to do things.

So you might say to yourself, well, if there are no free places on Earth, perhaps we should make one. Or, in a very ambitious moment, consider making several hundred such places. I’ll go you one better.

At Christmas in 1995, I was given a copy of the paperback of Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s book War and Anti-War. You should read it. Quite good, really. In it they discuss a conversation they had with Warren Christopher, a rat fink functionary of war profiteers who served as mass murderer Bill Clinton’s secretary of state 1993-1997. During their chat with him, he told the Tofflers that if people were ever allowed to have their own way about who should live in and around them, there would be over 5,000 countries in the world. The Tofflers mentioned, for further evidence of this view, that there were over 600 native sovereignties in North America, two thousand identifiable ethnic populations in Africa, and several thousand in Asia. The former secretary of state, the late Warren Christopher, hated the idea of having so many “country desks.” It would be very inconvenient, to him, as a functionary, to have to have people who had expertise in the languages and customs and ethnic populations of so many places, so he was in favour of the kind of extreme violence that resulted from the Berlin conference of 1884-5. That conference drew the borders of Africa. It took place in, as the name indicates, the city of Berlin, not in Africa. There was exactly one country from Africa represented at the event, the empire of Ethiopia. All the rest of Africa was regarded as the colonial property, and all the other peoples of Africa were considered the chattel slaves of one or another European empire.

For a time, I had the intention of writing a book that I would entitle “Five Thousand Free Countries,” and mention that very strange Toffler, Toffler, and Christopher conversation toward the opening pages. But, I haven’t gotten around to it. And lately I am inclined to think that five thousand would not be enough. There are on the close order of 10 billion people on Earth, though the bureau rats and politicians and tax collectors and similar filth can’t seem to count them all. Not that I want any enumeration of the population, the lessons from 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21 not having been lost on me. (It is ungodly, wrong, and evil that the constitution for the United States deliberately provides for the enumeration every ten years of the population.)

How many countries should there be? As many as people want. If you and your family don’t want to be in some country that already exists, secede and form your own. After all, in fighting against the evil mass murdering tyrant of England in the 1773-1783 war, the American colonists seceded. Many such cases.

But, a violent revolution to overthrow some other outfit necessarily has to arrange things so that those escaping the authoritarian control of vile tyrants have more power and a stronger military than the people who they are seeking to overthrow. It has always worked out that the revolution is either successful and then betrayed (as the American revolution was betrayed by the convention of 1787) or is successful and then you meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The party on the left is partying on the right, and the beards have all grown longer overnight. The freemasons funded the Bolshevik revolution and the Cuban revolution and quite a few other revolutions, murdered JFK, and did all manner of other violent acts, to gain for themselves more and more power while shedding oceans of blood – arranging the murder in combat of 55 million and the murder in genocides of 262 million during the 20th Century alone.

So, to be candid, although I very strongly encourage you to keep and bear arms, to have guns at home, a good large supply of ammo, and to train in the use of secure communications, night vision gear, body armour, firearms, and explosives, and have a local group of friends and neighbours upon whom you can rely for mutual self-defence, I do not think you are likely to build a new free country out of the embers of some war torn territory. Which, when you look around where you live, is what your home would become if you went to war to overthrow tyranny.

What to do? Stop supporting the tyrants, for one thing. You don’t need their permission to hunt, fish, cut down trees, make a fire, build a home, drive a car, own property. Stop paying them for these things. Stop paying sales tax – every state lets you be sales tax exempt for all purchases for a non-profit organisation, so start one. Every state has a very discounted price for such. There are lots of 501 c 3 groups around, and you can easily get their “taxpayer identification number” and be sales tax exempt if you work at it, contribute to them, help out.

Way back in the late 1990s there were hearings in congress about the internal revenue disservice. Lots of Americans were fed up. The revenuers were ugly, brutal, mean-spirited, vicious, violent, and bad. So congress held hearings to find out what had been done, and there was a great deal of testimony. It was on C-SPAN. You can still watch carefully curated videos of some of the testimony. And the congress critters asked the ugly venal avaricious commissioner from the irs to come say why his staff were so bad and wrong and nasty. So he told them that 66 million Americans the irs thinks should be filing tax papers were not doing so. And he said they didn’t have enough jail cells, enough police to arrest everyone, enough criminal courts to prosecute all of them, so they “had to be brutal” to push the narrative that not filing your taxes is a bad idea.

Since that time, the number of non-filers has increased every year. The last year for which I have good numbers, from the tax agency itself, there were over 125 million non-filers. So why do you file? Well, because they have your address, because you have filed. And they will send you letters. Unless you move and leave no forwarding address. Which might be a burden on you, because you really do have a very nice house. (I myself do not.) But, then, maybe you don’t really want to be free, but comfortable. I cannot help you.

A very great many Americans, for hundreds of years, have been punished, imprisoned, murdered, raped, or tortured by people in power who have claimed they were doing something wrong. Bill Cooper was murdered in 2001 (Remember, remember the fifth of November, the day Bill Cooper was shot. I can see no reason why the deep state treason should ever be forgot.) because he had an outstanding warrant. Not because he had been convicted of any crime, but because gutless cowards in the Apache county Arizona sheriff’s department wanted him dead. So they killed him. Many such cases. Ruby Ridge. The Waco massacre. The battle of Athens, Tennessee. The people in Montrose county, Colorado. Others too numerous to name. Those they capture alive they often torture (January 6 prisoners, for example) and those they imprison often die in jail. Lots of men and women have been raped by the police, sheriffs, jailers, or other inmates in their communities. You perhaps don’t want to look directly at these facts, but, then, you have that really nice home and you prefer to remain comfortable. I myself do not want you to be comfortable, at all, as long as your neighbours are treated with brutality.

Parallel societies

For a great many years I have been aware of what is called Système D. It seems to have begun in 1855 in French West Africa. It has been discussed by George Orwell and the late Anthony Bourdain (murdered by the hired thugs of Adam Schiff on information and belief). So what does the D stand for? Système D is a resourceful and ingenious way of overcoming problems through adaptation and improvisation, especially when faced with difficult or bureaucratic systems. The “D” can stand for various French words like débrouiller (to get on with it or figure things out) or démerder (to get out of the manure or get out of trouble). The concept describes the ability to get things done with limited resources. It can refer to resourcefulness in everyday life. It is also used to describe elements of the informal economy. Sam Konkin called it agorism.

The concept almost certainly originated amongst troops of La Légion étrangère, the French foreign legion. It is also widely known in the Marine Corps as the saying, “improvise, adapt, overcome,” and was made popular in a Clint Eastwood film in 1986, “Heartbreak Ridge.” But it is not an especially militaristic concept. It is about anyone, in any situation, getting themselves out of difficulty.

Americans talk and write about thinking outside the box. Système D is about making your own box, making anything you want without a box, and ignoring the rules, regimentation, strictures, and objections of the arrogant, pompous, ugly, disgusting, foul-minded, rapist, aristo rat, bureau rat, politician filth who think they run things. In many ways, the same concepts date back over 500 years, because Étienne de La Boétie was writing about them in the 1550s. You really ought to read his little pamphlet sized book. Here, go read it now: On Voluntary Servitude.

The short of it is that the tyrants in the District of Corruption are very few in number. Maybe 2.1 million in the military, in all ranks and in all services. Maybe 2.3 million in the bureau rat agencies. (And they are shut down, by the way, and have been since the start of last month.) Mostly, it is you that obeys them, even though they aren’t there.

The tyrants don’t have enough jailers, torturers, spies, listening devices, so they have you. You call the police. You report your neighbours. You complain. You post videos to TikTok. Or maybe you are careful not to do those things. Good for you. But enough of your neighbours are rat finks that you suffer, anyway. So, stop obeying. Stop complying.

Lacerations are red
Contusions are blue
Never call the police
They will hurt you

Stop getting construction permits. Stop paying attention to the prohibition of drilling a water well on your own property. Stop paying attention to the laws prohibiting you from generating your own power. Your truck can generate power. Why are you paying a monopoly utility and all those extra fees the crazy local, state, and feral bureau rats tack on to your electric bill? Make your own power.

Recognise and honour your own power. Do you hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal? Do you? I don’t think you do. I think you have some craven miserable desire to obey people who aren’t fit to clean your shoes. But maybe you should start living up to that creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator, the Lord our God, with rights such as life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. We hold it to be a self-evident truth that the only reason governments should ever have been created is to protect these rights, and judging entirely by the ENTIRE HISTORY of all mankind’s experiences, that has never worked. We also hold it to be a self-evident truth that without the consent of the governed, there is no just power to “the government.” So stop consenting. Stop obeying. Stop complying.

And stop telling yourself that if you obey, if you are a good little German, if you don’t yell at them when the Gestapo comes and hauls your neighbours away for being handicapped, mentally retarded, injured, dissident, Jewish, Gypsy, a labour organiser, or in some other way a threat to the military state, they will leave you alone. They won’t. They murdered Vicky Weaver. Lon Horiuchi, the gutless coward fbi hostage “rescue” team member shot her to death while she was holding her infant child in her arms. The gutless evil scum fbi hostage rescue team set fire to the Branch Davidian church because they wanted to barbecue seven dozen Texans, including women and children. And you think if you obey, they won’t prosecute you, lie about you, testi-lie, rape, murder, and destroy you. You are a fool if you think obedience is any defence against the law.

The law is the law of plunder. It isn’t God’s law. Bastiat tried to tell you, but you weren’t paying attention. “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it.” And you let them.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” ~ Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago, English translation published 1974.

Do you actually want freedom? Then stop being so obedient. If you tell me that you took an elk in Colorado with a great shot from 100 yards, good on you. If you then go on to tell me that you paid for a non-resident elk tag $825.03 to the bums in the Colorado bureau rat agency, you slimy jerk. Did the elk ask to see your tag before you shot it? Of course not. But you are too frightened to shoot an elk without permission? What are you? “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you, and may posterity forget you were our countryman,” said Sam Adams.

Do you want to be a part of their system? Pay them for a licence tag for your property and a licence identity card (it is digital, by the way, it is REAL ID, and your department of Homeland Security can use it against you any time they want) in order to drive on the streets that your tax dollars pay for? Why, by the way, are you paying taxes? Why are you so obedient? You are making your neighbours suffer. You should stop.

Why are you sending your children to their schools? They aren’t teaching. They are “educating” which means a systematic instruction. It is propaganda. Stop it. Stop being a part of the evil of unjust men. Now would be a good time to start. After all, if the feral gooferment can be shut down, your state gooferment can, too.

You have no obligation to obey their rules, pay their fees, take their licences, give their nephews jobs inside in offices to write regulations to make everything more expensive and hurt your neighbours. You should stop. Today.

Mutual aid response teams

Did you know there were 676,900 volunteer firefighters in the United States in 2020? That figure represents 65% of all firefighters in America. More than twice as many as the paid bureau rat firefighters in cities. So, it is clearly possible to have fire response teams on a volunteer basis rather than having to rely on taxes.

Two hundred years ago, in the 1820s, the firefighters in cities mostly worked for insurance companies that hired them out of funds paid by people and businesses that had fire protection insurance. So, what did the insurance companies do? The grifters convinced the politicians to pay for the firefighters out of city taxes. Then they didn’t have to hire their own fire fighters. Their profits went way up. You know that company that has the slogan “We are farmers”? Yeah, they aren’t farmers. They’re liars.

Okay, I pretend to hear you say, but it would never work in a big population area? Oh yeah? New South Wales. Population 8.4 million. All volunteer firefighters.

You can cooperate with your neighbours. You can buy radios. You can put a radio in your car or truck. You should, by the way. You can learn how to use it from a few videos online. You can use your radio transceiver on the emergency channels without licence. You can hear what the po-po are saying. You can show up to help at fires if you wish. Help fugitives of injustice escape. Do all kinds of things.

If American communities can have all volunteer fire brigades, and they do, then American communities can respond to crime the same way. And tyranny. And injustice. And invasion. You don’t need to “form a militia.” By definition, if you are an adult and you own a gun, you are the militia. So grow up and start acting like an adult.

You don’t need a permit to sell at the farmer’s market. The people who come around wanting you to collect sales taxes? Those are thieves. They are liars. You have no obligation to them. And they have thugs, bullies with badges, to enforce their will. But why do you obey? You and your friends have radios, and gear, too. So why are you letting people who have bad ideas have it all their way? Citizens can make arrests. Common law courts can be formed to indict with a grand jury and to convict with a petit jury.

You don’t need my permission, either. You can just start doing things. If you are tired of being enslaved, stop obeying. If you are tired of being oppressed, stop complying. If you are tired of the costs of everything, stop paying the mentally deficient and immoral rascals for permission to do things. God didn’t create you to be subservient. You weren’t born with a saddle on your back. The people in power didn’t come out of the womb with boots and spurs. Stop pretending that any of this nonsense is right or proper or ordained.

If you want to be free, you have to choose to free yourself.

This article was originally published on L5 News.

The post Why Free appeared first on LewRockwell.

Many medical policies are driven more by profit than by evidence of what truly benefits patients. Because of this, we frequently see medicine refuse to ever discuss the things that are making us sick (e.g., numerous studies show vaccines make children 2-10X more likely to develop chronic illnesses that are now widespread) while in tandem, we are relentlessly pressured to put all focus onto a few things which do not make enough money for lobbyists to defend them.

In this article, I will explore one of my key frustrations with this dynamic: the medical establishment’s ongoing war on salt. In this article, I will focus on one of my major frustrations with this medical paradigm—the war against salt.

Note: the war against salt began in 1977 when a Senate Committee published dietary guidelines arguing for reduced sodium consumption despite the existing evidence not supporting this. Since then, like many other bad policies, it has developed an nearly unstoppable inertia of its own.

Is Salt Bad For You?

Many people you ask, particularly those in the medical field will tell you salt is bad, and one of the most common pieces of health advice given both inside and outside of medicine is to eat less salt.

Over the years, I’ve heard two main arguments for why salt is bad for you.

First, salt raises blood pressure, and high blood pressure is deadly, so salt is too and should be avoided.

Second, with individuals who have heart failure, eating too many salty foods will create exacerbations of their condition, and as a result, after holidays where people eat those foods (e.g., the 4th of July) more heart failure patients will be admitted to hospitals for heart failure exacerbations.

Note: excessive sodium causes these exacerbations because if an excess amount of fluid accumulates in a compromised system (e.g., because the weakened heart can’t move enough blood to the kidneys to eliminate it), it then overloads other parts of the body (e.g., causing swelling and edema, which, if in the lungs, can be life threatening).

Because of these two things, many in the medical field assume that salt must be bad for you and hence strongly urge patients to avoid it (to the point you often see an elderly patient who loves her salt be aggressively pushed into abandoning it). Unfortunately, the logic behind those two arguments’ logic is less solid than it appears.

The Great Blood Pressure Scam

Since medicine revolves around making money, patient care is often structured to be as profitable as possible. In turn, since recurring revenue is a foundational principle of successful businesses, a key goal in medicine often ends up being to have as many patients as possible on lifelong prescriptions.

In most cases, the drugs that are developed and approved have real value for specific situations, but those situations are not enough to cover the exorbitant cost it requires to get a drug to market. As a result, once drugs are approved, the industry will gradually come up with reasons to give them to more and more people and in turn quickly arrive at the point where many of their customers have greater harm than benefit from the pharmaceutical.

One classic way this is done is by creating a drug that treats a number, asserting that the number has to be within a certain range for someone to be healthy, and then once that is enshrined, narrow and narrow the acceptable range so less and less people are “healthy” and hence need the drug (e.g., this happened with cholesterol once statins were invested). Likewise, this characterizes the history of blood pressure management:

Because of this, many people (particularly the elderly) are frequently pushed to excessively low blood pressures which reduces critical blood perfusion for the organs—which particularly unfortunate as high blood pressure is often a symptom of poor circulation rather than its cause.

As such, reducing the remaining circulation by lowering blood pressure then makes them significantly more likely to get a variety of significant issues (e.g., kidney injuries, cognitive impairment, macular degeneration), the most studied of which is lightheadedness or fainting leading to (often devastating) falls. Additionally, blood pressure medications also often greatly reduce one’s quality of life (e.g., by causing fatigue or erectile dysfunction).

Note: for those interested in learning more about the great blood pressure scam (a lot of what we’re taught about blood pressure is less than accurate), it can be read here.

Low Sodium

A cornerstone of cementing the blood pressure market has been to make everyone terrified of salt (much in the same way making people terrified of the sun is a cornerstone of the lucrative skin cancer treatment market—despite the fact the deadly skin cancers are actually due to a lack of sunlight).

Remarkably, much like the great dermatology scam (which has been able to make a massive amount of money from removing cancers that almost never become life threatening) the link between blood pressure and salt consumption is actual quite tenuous.

For example, the most detailed review of this subject found that drastic salt reduction typically results in less than a 1% reduction in blood pressure. Likewise, doctors rarely recognize that patients in the hospital are routinely given large amounts of IV 0.9% sodium chloride, in many cases receiving ten times the daily recommended sodium chloride we are supposed to consume—yet their blood pressure often barely rises.

Note: some individuals and certain ethnicities are salt-sensitive. They may experience greater increases in blood pressure or worsening of other symptoms when consuming moderate amounts of salt (although this does not apply to the majority of the population).

Despite this, patients are often pushed to eliminate all (or almost all) salt from their life. Beyond this significantly reducing their quality of life (as people like salty foods) it can be dangerous. For example:

• A study of 181 countries found that countries with lower salt consumption have shorter life expectancies.

• Low sodium levels (hyponatremia) are strongly correlated with a risk of dying (e.g., the salt consumption target we are recommended to follow increases one’s risk of dying by 25%). Likewise, a common reason for hospital admissions, are symptoms resulting from hyponatremia (as once sodium levels get too low, it can be very dangerous), and 15-20% of hospitalized patients have low sodium levels at admission.
Note: mild hyponatremia is also associated with an increased risk of death.

• Reduced salt consumption, not surprisingly, increases one’s risk of hyponatremia (e.g., one study one study found salt restriction made hypertensive patients 9.9 times more likely to develop hyponatremia).
Note: many blood pressure and psychiatric medications put you at risk for dangerously low sodium levels (e.g., SSRI antidepressants make you 3.16 times more likely to develop hyponatremia). Additionally, certain patients (e.g., those with autonomic nervous issues) are much more sensitive to salt restriction causing hypotension (low blood pressure).

• Low dietary sodium intake causes a 34% increase in cardiovascular disease and death.

• Rapidly lowering blood sodium levels reduces cardiac output and blood pressure in a manner resembling traumatic shock (which frequently raises the heart rate as the heart tries to compensate for insufficient blood). Low salt consumption, in turn, has been repeatedly linked to tachycardia (and atrial fibrillation).

• Aging kidneys have a reduced ability to respond to changes in blood sodium levels (putting them at greater risk for hyponatremia following sodium deprivation).
Note: three of the most common symptoms of hyponatremia (which lead people to go to the Emergency Room) are fatigue, confusion and difficulty concentrating.

• Many have reported discovering low salt consumption was the cause of their fatigue and lightheadedness (which has also been proven in a clinical trial which treated postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome with increasing dietary sodium).

Note: chronically low blood pressure (e.g., POTS) has been shown to be one cause of chronic fatigue syndrome,1,2 and POTS is often treated with increased dietary sodium.

• Chronic sodium depletion has been linked to fatigue and insomnia.

•Many readers have shared with me that a variety of health issues improved once they began consuming natural salt (e.g., headaches, erectile dysfunction, waking up in the middle of the night or chronically elevated blood pressures).

Note: a variety of other health issues (e.g., worsening of diabetes or a stomach hydrochloric acid deficiency) have also been linked to insufficient dietary sodium.

Read the Whole Article

The post What They Never Tell Us About Salt appeared first on LewRockwell.

“I love Ron Paul. Ron Paul is awesome. I would have Ron Paul on the show regularly. He is a hero because Ron Paul had the courage to … challenge old sacred cows of the Republican Party.” – Charlie Kirk, July 17 2025

Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns influenced and inspired many young people, especially when the candidate spoke at college campuses. One of those young people was Charlie Kirk.

As a teenager Kirk attended events of the Tea Party, the organic grassroots movement inspired by Dr. Paul’s presidential campaigns which can thus claim Dr. Paul as its philosophical and ideological father. Dr. Paul’s principal campaign policies were a non-interventionist foreign policy, ending the Fed and economic liberty. A New York Times profile described Kirk as being “smitten with the astringent libertarian worldview of Ron Paul.” Charlie began speaking at Tea Party rallies with the objective of attracting young people who were becoming victims of generational theft through the profligate spending and bureaucracy of the US government. The initial mission of Turning Point USA when Kirk and Bill Montgomery co-founded the non-profit was promoting economic liberty, limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility.

I became aware of the influence of Dr. Paul, a proponent of Austrian economics, on Kirk when I heard former attorney Baron Coleman, who is currently investigating Charlie’s assassination, comment on his YouTube channel that TPUSA was founded in 2012 as “a sort of Mises Institute for college kids.”

Six days after the shocking murder of Kirk, Dr. Paul was already on the case. He questioned the FBI official narrative and asked, “who done it?” in his article published on Mises Institute’s web site.

Lew Rockwell, founder of the Mises Institute, republished this article on his own web site LewRockwell.com.

X’s AI tool Grok  and Chat GPT came up with a lot of interesting details when I did inquiries that sparked further research. Dr. Paul appeared as a guest on The Charlie Kirk Show in 2023 where they discussed non-interventionism and Kirk called Dr. Paul “one of the most influential and ‘prophetic’ congressmen of the last 50 years for foreseeing the crises of endless wars, Fed overreach and inflation.” On February 10, 2025 Kirk endorsed Paul as Fed Chair arguing “Ron Paul would make a great next Chairman of the Fed. No other institution in American life has so eroded the purchasing power of working Americans as the Fed, and as a longtime critic and skeptic, Ron Paul would be a living and breathing force functioning to bring reform and accountability.”

When Kirk endorsed a Texas Comptroller candidate, Charlie described him as “Ron Paul meets Donald Trump,” who matched the populist appeal of Trump with Paul’s fiscal beliefs.

TPUSA shifted its focus when Zionist Pastor Rob McCoy approached Kirk to add Zionist Christian evangelism to the non-profit’s mission. TPUSA started concentrating on religious and cultural issues and with McCoy’s influence Kirk was a fierce supporter of Israel and US funding of its Middle East wars on behalf of the Zionist state. Students continued to be interested in economic issues due to self-interest in their own future attempting to get jobs, buy houses, get married and start families. TPUSA grew to over 850 chapters by 2018 with the assistance of Republican donors including Ron Paul supporter Foster Friess.

As a growing number of the public now know, Charlie’s unquestioning support of US foreign policy began to change. As early as September 10, 2019 Kirk circled back to Dr. Paul’s non-interventionist vision echoing George Washington’s farewell address that warned America against engaging in entangling alliances with foreign nations. “There is nothing conservative about endless war,” Charlie posted on X about US funding the bloody Ukraine-Russia conflict. “Foreign occupation of a country 4,000 miles away while we are 22 trillion in debt puts our country at risk. We have spent 5 TRILLION on these wars since 9-11. With a destabilized region and thousands of American lives lost. End the war.”

Kirk began to question the “special relationship” between the US and Israel. He asked Patrick Bet David on his October 12, 2023 podcast if the Zionist state stood down on October 7 when Kirk knew as a frequent visitor Israel was a virtual fortress with young ISD soldiers every 10 yards. Eventually Charlie spoke out against the ethnic cleansing in Gaza. In July in a room full of people Kirk implored President Trump and Vice President Vance not to go to war with Iran. Trump reportedly reacted angrily. Kirk’s evolution was due to spiritual revelations, listening to his Gen Z supporters, doing his own research, and the influence of his friends Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

Growing numbers of internet sleuths and independent journalists like Baron Coleman who do not believe the FBI official narrative continue to investigate Kirk’s assassination. These grassroots investigators find the government story that a tranny-lover named Tyler Robinson perhaps collaborating with a tranny group did the dirty deed nonsensical and overwhelmingly suspect the Mossad/CIA may have had a hand in planning and executing the murder. A substantial amount of circumstantial evidence in the minds of many lead them to conclude Kirk’s emergence as a politically influential activist for peace and his departure from the warmongering policies of his donors was the likely reason why he was assassinated. Although other factors are playing a role, this conflict between the FBI official narrative believers and doubters is causing what appears to be a fatal fissure in MAGA.

Kirk had a deep respect for Dr. Paul and credited him with challenging the Republican establishment: “He made people defend the indefensible.” In the end, although Charlie expressed his concern to friends that Israel might kill him, he could no longer defend the indefensible himself.

While US foreign policy continues to reflect the deadly agenda of billionaire donors, and Charlie Kirk’s assassination remains an unraveling mystery, Gen Z overwhelmingly opposes war, US foreign aid, military interventionism, and Zionist influence over American policies. As Charlie said of Dr. Paul, “We all follow in your footsteps.” There is a shift within the younger generation and in that there is much hope.

The post Ron Paul’s Influence on Charlie Kirk and the Maga Schism appeared first on LewRockwell.

The more the nation’s Fiscal Doomsday Machine cranks out ever higher spending and fatally rising public debt, the more we realize that the 16th Amendment was a monumental error.

In the end its ratification in 1913 may well turn out to be the inflection point at which American democracy and capitalist prosperity took a fatal turn toward ruination.

It need not have happened had the legislators of that era understood the long-term ramifications of making income taxation the revenue staple of democratic governance. In the first place, of course, any practical appreciation of human nature and the dynamics of democratic governance would tell you that ideally you should tax consumption, not income and wages, in order to defray the necessary costs of government.

That is to say, consumption and spending by the people does not require any inducements from the state—even as too much direct tax burden upon income and wages can most surely reduce the incentives for production, investment, risk-taking, innovation and enterprise.

Still, at least in theory a simple flat rate income tax at today’s revenue levels would not be the end of the world in terms of its disincentive effects and restraint upon production and wealth creation. For instance, during 2024 the sum of employee compensation, interest and dividends and proprietors income was $21.3 trillion versus Federal income tax collections of $2.4 trillion.

So a uniform levy on all types of income at 11.4% would have generated the same Federal revenue as today’s massive Federal income tax code. Accordingly, what would amount to little more than a one-tenth tithe to Uncle Sam would not unduly impair the essential ingredients of capitalist prosperity.

Unfortunately, as the income tax has evolved over the last 112 years Washington impinged ever more heavily upon the core supply-side ingredients of prosperity by taxing work, savings, risk-taking, invention, innovation and enterprise. But more crucially, passage of the income tax opened the door to drastic, politically-imposed redistribution of the wealth via progressive tax rates and unending loopholes and preferences for economic and social behavior that at any given moment a majority of the Congress decided to reward.

Not surprisingly, therefore, what had been 27 pages of statute in 1913 has now evolved into 2,650 pages in the IRS code and another 9,000 pages of implementing regulations. Self-evidently, nearly 12,000 pages of arbitrary and often opaque commands from Washington politicians and bureaucrats is the very opposite of the smooth, prosperity-generating workings of the unseen hand of the free market.

However, unlike the normal progressive critique claiming that the wealthy make out like bandits owing to this 12,000 page tangled web of loopholes, preferences and incentives, it transpires that more nearly the opposite is now the case: To wit, the actual, politically tortured income tax has essentially euthanized the middle class citizenry from the true, crushing burden of Big Government by concentrating the Federal tax burden at the very top of the economic ladder.

The recent release of the inflation-adjusted marginal tax brackets for 2026 provides a good reminder of how a bad idea—the progressive income tax—has been twisted, perverted and mutilated by Congress, especially since 1981. That is to say, after decades of tax cutting by the GOP we have now reached the point that the broad middle and even upper middle class no longer feels the pain of Federal taxation commensurate with Washington’s bloated and growing claim on national income.

For the year just ended (FY 2025) the total Federal spending burden was a cool $7.0 trillion and amounted to 23.3% of GDP. In order to demonstrate this disconnect we have used the 2026 Federal income tax tables appended to the end of this post to calculate the share of household income taken by Federal income taxes and also by the employee share of payroll taxes at intervals from the median income household to the top 1%.

But first it should be noted that among the 154 million income tax filers in 2022, fully 31% or 48 million owed zero Federal income taxes due to the huge standard deduction of $32,200 for joint returns–plus another $2,200 of direct tax credits for each child 18 and under. And another 12 million paid less than $1,000 after all the current day deductions and credits.

In all, fully 122 million households pay a lesser percent of their gross income in Federal taxes than the 23.3% Federal spending share of national income. And for the vast bulk of the population the burden is far, far less.

This is possible, of course, only because 25% or more of Federal spending is being habitually borrowed from future generations (@ 6% of GDP deficits currently) and 65% of Federal income taxes are paid by the top 7% of households. That is to say, due to what has primarily been GOP tax policy over recent decades, the standard deduction and child tax credits have been pushed sky high while marginal rate brackets at the middle and lower end of the income ladder have been pushed very low consistent with supply-side doctrine.

Accordingly, middle class taxpayers have exceedingly low average tax rates relative to Uncle Sam’s voracious helping of national income. For example, based on the new tax tables for 2026 (which reflect the changes in Trump’s OBBBA) consider a two-earner household with two children under 18 years using the standard deduction and bringing home wage and salary income equal to the median household income of about $85,000.

That household would have $52,800 of taxable income after the standard deduction of $32,200 and would owe 10% on the first $24,800 of taxable income and a 12% marginal rate on the balance, thereby generating an income tax liability of $5,840 or just under 7% of gross income.

But the latter would be reduced by $4,400 owing to two child credits of $2,200 each. This means that the median household’s net Federal income tax payment would amount to just $1,440!

So we do mean that GOP tax policy—low marginal rates for the supply-siders and a big standard deductions and generous child credits for the pro-family and natalist factions—has essentially exempted the middle class from Federal income taxes. After all, Uncle Sam’s extraction of just 1.7% from an $85,000 income in 2026 would be roughly equivalent to a weekend at Disney World.

That’s right. Aside from a few adjustments for single households and childless families that do not materially impact the analysis, the bottom line is this: Upwards of 66 million US households at the median income and below pay less than 2% in Federal income taxes to a Leviathan on the banks of the Potomac that devours nearly one-quarter of GDP.

To be sure, this two earner household would also pay a substantial amount to Uncle Sam for the employee share of OASDHI payroll taxes, which currently amounts to 7.65%. But unlike the case of income taxes, much of the public has been bamboozled into believing that Social Security withholding is a form of insurance premium for their retirement fund, and therefore is not quite as onerous as income taxes which go into the bottomless pit of the Federal budget.

That’s nonsense, of course, because there are no real assets in the Social Security trust funds, just intra-governmental IOUs. These payroll levies are actually just a second layer of taxation on labor income. Still, even when you aggregate income and the employee share of payroll taxes for this $85,000 median income household, total Federal taxes under the 2026 schedule would come to $7,943 of just 9.3% of gross income.

Yet that’s the true evil of the 16th Amendment as it has been twisted into a pretzel by modern GOP tax and fiscal policy. The 2026 tax schedule is telling households at the dead center of the income distribution that they can have 23.3% of GDP government for a 9.3% of income charge. Stated differently, they’ll be getting Big Government on the Potomac on sale at 60% off.

Summary Of Federal Tax Burden At 1.0X Median Income or $85,000 Per Annum

• Gross wage & salary income: $85,000.
• Taxable Income after $32,200 standard deduction: $52,800.
• 10% liability on first $24,800 of taxable income: $2,480
• 12% marginal rate on the $28,000 balance of taxable income: $3,360.
• Total income tax liability: $5,840
• Average tax rate on gross income: 6.9%.
• Child tax credits: ($4,400).
• Net income tax payment:$1,440.
• Net payment as % of gross income: 1.7%.
• Payroll tax at 7.65%: $6,503.
• Total Federal Taxes paid: $7,943.
• Total taxes as % of gross income: 9.3%.

Moreover, the case above is not the half of it. As you move up the income ladder from the median, the same outcomes hold until you reach the tippy-top of the distribution.

For instance, in the case of the same two-earner, two-child standard deduction using household with a gross income at 2X the US median or $170,000, taxable income would be $137,880. So after paying 11.6% on the first $100,000 of taxable income it would pay at the 22% marginal bracket on the balance of $37,000.

Accordingly, its Federal income tax liability would total $19,740, less the $4,400 of child tax credits. Again, the actual income tax payment to Uncle Sam of $15,340 would compute to just 9.0% of gross income. That is to say, the current twisted Federal income tax would levy a single digit average rate on a household with $170,000 per year in wage and salary income!

Also, again, when you add the payroll tax, which is not capped until $176,000 for each of the two earners, the 7.65% levy would add another $13,005 of Federal extractions. Still, the combined income and payroll tax burden in this case would amount to $28,345 or 16.7% of gross income.

And, so yet again, no cigar. Even at 2X the median income, our representative wage earning family does not come close to carrying the 23.3% weight of what Milton Friedman properly called the true tax burden—that is, the pay me now or pay me latter spending share of national income.

Summary of Federal Tax Burden at 2X The Median Income or $170,000

• Gross wage & salary income: $170,000.
• Taxable income:$137,800.
• 11.5% tax liability on first $100,800 of taxable income: $11,600.
• 22% marginal rate on balance of $37,000: $8,140.
• Total income tax liability: $19,740.
• Average tax rate: 11.6%.
• Child tax credits: ($4,400).
• Net income tax payment: $15,340.
• Net income tax %: 9.0%.
• Payroll tax at 7.65%: $13,oo5.
• Total income and payroll tax: $28,345.
• Total Federal tax rate: 16.7%.

Thus, you must climb far up the income ladder to find a taxpayer that pays a 23.3% share of its gross income, under the stipulated but typical condition of two earners, two kids and the standard deduction. In fact, only when you get to 4X the median or $340,000 of gross income do you break-even.

In that case, the household’s $307,800 of income after the standard deduction would fall in the 24% bracket. Accordingly, a liability of $35,932 on the first $211,400 (17%) and $23,146 on the balance (24%) would generate a blended liability of $54,668 after the child credits, or 16.1% on the gross income total. Only after adding in $26,010 of payroll taxes do you get total Federal tax payments of $80,678 or 23.7% of gross income.

In short, even when you set the marker to exclude 93% or 122 million of US households do you reach the point that a household is pulling a tax burden equal to the Friedmanite measure of the true Federal spending burden on national income, which currently stands at 23.3%.

So, yes, the current GOP-mutilated version of an inherently bad progressive income tax basically shields the overwhelming share of the voting public from anything that remotely resembles their pro rata share of Washington’s spending spree.

No wonder they don’t give a sh*t about runaway Federal spending and debt.

For want of doubt, we consider a final case that gets us to the boundary of the proverbial top 1%. At the present time the cut off line is $682,557 million for the top 1%, which in the most recent year (2022) consisted of 1.3 million households which paid fully 40.4% of Federal income taxes.

So consider a borderline $680,000 two-earner family which is a smidgen under the 1% boundary. Again, we stipulate two kids and for the sake of conservative bias we assume they too use the $32,200 standard deduction, although in all probability their tax accountants would find a lot more deductions from AGI (adjusted gross income) than $32,200. Still, on $647,600 of taxable income they would pay $116,896 (17.2%) on the first $512,450 of that amount and 35% marginal rate or $47,303 on the $135,150 balance.

That is to say, even at the edge of the 1% boundary, the marginal rate of 35% applies to only about 20% of the household’s gross income. In total, therefore, the Federal income tax paid after the $4,400 of child tax credits would amount to $159,799 or 23.5% of gross income.

As a practical matter, we doubt that the near 1% household is fooled by the shibboleth that the payroll tax is really an insurance premium. But if they did it would amount to saying that even the near 1 percenter in this example is paying exactly the average rate (23.3%) for the entire Friedmanite toll on the overall US economy.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that Washington borrows and spends and runs up the national debt with reckless abandon?

Moreover, in the near 1 percenter case, the 6.2% payroll tax for OASDI would be capped at $376,000, assuming two equal earners, but the HI (Medicare hospital) tax at 1.45% is uncapped. So the total payroll extraction would be $31,684 or 4.66% of gross income. And altogether, income and payroll tax would amount to $191,483.

As it happens, that’s 28.2% of gross household income or barely 500 basis points over the Friedman tax rate calculation for the entire Federal government. Needless to say, when the near 1% are barely pulling their weight on today’s income, it is no wonder that by 2054 under current fiscal policy future taxpayers—some not even yet born—will be lugging $185 trillion of public debt.

Summary of Federal Tax Burden for the Near 1% or $680,000 of Gross Income

• Gross income: $680,000.
• Taxable income at standard deduction: $647,600.
• 22.8% tax on first $512,450: $116,896.
• 35% marginal rate on balance of $135,150: $47,303.
• Total income tax liability: $164,199.
• Tax liability rate on gross income: 24.2%.
• Net income tax after $4,440 child credits: $159,799.
• Net income tax % of gross income: 23.5%.
• 6.2% OASDI payroll tax on $352,000: $21,824.
• 1.45% HI tax on $680,000: $9,860.
• Total Federal tax payments: $191,483.
• Total tax % of gross income: 28.2%.

The truth of the matter is that the bad spawn of the 16th Amendment—the current mangled Federal income tax—is utterly incompatible with today’s massive Welfare State and Warfare State spending enterprises.

The income tax places the overwhelming burden of tax collection on the top 1% and 5% of America’s households, when only the pain of roughly proportionate taxation has a prayer of re-balancing the nation’s fiscal politics as between the spenders and the payers.

Moreover, the payroll tax is almost as bad, given that it heavily taxes workers and employer labor costs at a time when the US has already priced itself out of the global markets owing to the pro-inflation policies of the Fed.

Accordingly, there is only one real solution that might stand a chance of stanching the nation’s headlong rush to fiscal disaster, yet also not exacerbate the economic problem of high-cost labor in the US at all levels of the economy. To wit, replace both the income tax and the payroll tax with a national consumption tax, which would require $4.1 trillion of annual revenue replacement.

In addition, the Federal deficit posted at $2.4 trillion during FY 2025, which would require an additional $1.2 trillion revenue increase if the budget were to be balanced on a 50/50 basis between revenue increases and $1.2 trillion of spending cuts—with the latter distributed roughly evenly between defense cuts and entitlement reforms and means-testing.

In short, on an FY 2025 basis, a true escape from the disaster of the current income tax and payroll taxes would requires a consumption tax of about $5.3 trillion, which, in turn, would amount to about 25% of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) of $21.1 trillion during the fiscal year just completed.

To be sure, that sounds like a tall, if not impossible, order. But here’s the thing: There is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that the current mangled income tax and economically oppressive payroll tax can be configured to bring the true Friedmanite cost of government to America’s 133 million households in a manner that actually results in less spending and less build-up of the nation’s runaway public debt.

In fact, the only why to tame the Leviathan on the Potomac is to insure that every time a household buys $400 of groceries or $400 of home decor items via Amazon or $400 of rides and refreshments at a theme park—they also pay an added $100 each time for Washington’s Warfare State, Welfare State and endless pork barrel.

The public experiencing that pain over and over and over again is the only way that spending can be curtailed and fiscal catastrophe avoided.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post America’s Fiscal Doomsday Machine and the 16th Amendment’s Fatal Error appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: It seems now more than ever that people have less and less in common with others who happen to carry the same government ID.

At the same time, like-minded people are finding each other from across the world.

What’s your take on this trend? What does it mean for the nation-state?

Doug Casey: Once upon a time, like-minded people came to America because of their desire for personal freedom and financial opportunity. That’s part of what made America what it is. Americans were the kind of people that were drawn to the ideals put forth by the country’s Founding Fathers.

But now America is drawing the wrong kind of people. They’re not people who necessarily want freedom. Some do, of course. But many are drawn to the massive welfare benefits, free medical care, and free schooling.

Past migrants may have been dirt poor and ignorant, but they had to make their own way. The State didn’t subsidize them; it gave them absolutely nothing. But that’s not the case today. The character of America has changed, and so have the kind of people who want to migrate here. They don’t want to accept American values. They want to maintain their Somali, Afghan, or Haitian values. Most won’t become Americans; they’ll become United Statesers. America, a republic sharing a common culture, is being washed away and replaced by the US, a multicultural domestic empire.

America used to be totally unique, but now the US is just another nation-state like all the others. Of course, change is a constant in all areas of life. But I’ll miss the America of the before times because it was a refuge for things like free thought, free speech, free markets, and entrepreneurialism. Oh well, nothing lasts forever, and America had a pretty good run.

With that said, the main danger to you is your own government, particularly the US government headquartered in Washington DC, and to a lesser degree, state and local governments. Like other United Statesers, you’re not personally endangered by Iranians, the Chinese, or Russians—they’re on the other side of the world. You are, however, directly threatened by the US government and by other US citizens. They widely, indeed overwhelmingly, now accept socialist and welfare-state principles. Your fellow United Statesers don’t mind turning you into a serf. You’re largely on your own when it comes to trouble.

So at this point, it’s incumbent upon those of us who believe in American principles to find their countrymen wherever they are—not just in this geographical area, not just within the bailiwick of the US government. It’s part of a global trend, actually. It’s happening all over the world in different ways.

The nation-state itself, which has been around since about the 16th century, is rapidly becoming an anachronism, just like kingdoms and principalities which came before it and have joined the scrap heap of history. People everywhere are losing their loyalty to their national governments, much the way our ancestors discarded their loyalty to their kings and princes.

Government, in its present form, is actually on its way out. I say, good riddance.

International Man: The concept of “phyles” originated from a book by Neal Stephenson called The Diamond Age. The book is set in a future world where groups of people come together based on what matters most to them, instead of incidentals they cannot control, like where you were born.

With the growing polarization and divisiveness in the US and other countries, will the concept of phyles become more appealing to people?

Doug Casey: Absolutely. You can no longer rely on people in your own country for much. You may not have anything in common with them. You may not share anything other than the same government ID.

The US used to have a common culture up until the 1960s. But since then, we’ve evolved from a unicultural country into a multicultural domestic empire. People with “Red” views simply can’t relate to those with “Blue” views; in fact, they increasingly hate each other. The situation has been greatly exacerbated with the Covid hysteria, masks, and now near-mandatory vaccinations. Antagonisms are approaching those of Europe’s religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries. We’re not there yet, but things are moving in that direction.

The old idea of America is no longer relevant. And a large part of the country—the SJWs, the progressives, the socialists, the wokesters, etc.—are actively and purposefully trying to destroy it.

It’s unfortunate but understandable. People want to associate with others like themselves, who share things that are important to them. It doesn’t matter whether what’s important to them is their culture, race, language, religion, occupation, economic status, general worldview, or any of a thousand different things.

People are increasingly going to form relationships based upon things which are important to them. Those things may have little or nothing to do with the government that rules over them. In fact, their “democratic” government will likely be openly antagonistic to them.

Large groups of Americans and United Statesers will view the government as not only unimportant but an unnecessary and dangerous parasite. The average person may not recognize that right now, but the thought will eventually filter through. The same way it did when people almost everywhere started transferring their loyalties from kings and princes to nation-states, democracies, “the people,” and the like.

I know this sounds like an outrageous thought. “Democracy” is almost like a secular god—you aren’t supposed to blaspheme against it. But, in fact, it’s degenerated into something akin to a scam to justify the ruling class and the elite. Sometimes, it’s no better than a mob rule.

I believe people are finding that, rather than geographically defined nation-states, philosophically defined phyles make much more sense.

International Man: Liberland and the Free State Project in New Hampshire are two examples where like-minded people are coming together within a physical location.

Does a phyle require that its members be in the same geographic location for it to be effective?

Doug Casey: That’s certainly ideal. The fact that a lot of libertarians have gathered around the Free State Project in New Hampshire and Liberland are indications of that. They’re straws in the wind.

There are at least a half dozen things like that going on in the world today.

It’s better if like-minded people are physically close to one another. But with things like Skype, Zoom, 5G, and the rest of it, communication has become very good and, practically, free everywhere in the world.

And with transportation technology as good as it is and getting better—notwithstanding governments’ stupid and counterproductive travel bans—you can easily get to wherever you want. A lot of people are going to take advantage of that and go to enclaves where they can be around people like themselves.

What draws people together is not their nationality, their shared government IDs. Things like the Olympic games greatly over-emphasize the importance of the State. As do entities like the UN, the IMF, NATO, and hundreds of similar organizations—they amount to private clubs for government big shots.

In fact, it’s rather degrading for an individual to identify first as an American or Chinese or Brazilian or whatever. These are mostly just geographical accidents of birth and shouldn’t define who an individual is.

What’s really important is your character—that you think rationally and critically and that you follow the two great laws: Do all that you say you’re going to do, and don’t encroach upon other people or their property. I choose to associate with people based on those things, not accidents of birth.

In any event, to the extent people observe certain precepts that support their survival, they’ll stay together in groups voluntarily.

International Man: In your perspective, what makes a community successful? How can differences be handled?

Doug Casey: Two aspects are important. One is economic and the other is legal, philosophical, and worldview-oriented.

For a community to be successful, it has to produce more than it consumes and save the difference. That’s how you achieve economic prosperity either as a community or an individual.

The other aspect goes back to the two great laws that I mentioned above: Do all that you say that you will do, and do not encroach upon other people or their property.

I was talking with Rick Mayberry on my YouTube podcast “Doug Casey’s Take,” and Rick pointed out, quite accurately, that you can test whether these two great laws work, and you can do so scientifically.

For the next week, you can test it out for yourself. When you relate to people, instead of doing what you say you’re going to do, don’t do what you say you’re going to do—and see what happens when you steal other people’s stuff or assault them.

See how that works. Out of the thousands of possible phyles that may form, I’d certainly prefer to belong to those who put those principles first.

International Man: How can like-minded communities and phyles protect themselves from the threat of force and coercion from outsiders?

Doug Casey: Force, violence, and coercion from outsiders is always a worry. Defending oneself from the 20% of society who are what you might call potential trouble sources and the 20% of that 20% who are genuine sociopaths is important. There’s been a lot of writing and thinking on the subject. I won’t go into it here, but I urge everyone to read “The Market for Liberty” by Morris and Linda Tannehill, which is free on the internet.

But your biggest worry is not outsiders—it’s insiders.

It’s the State, your government, that’s the biggest danger by far, as well as people within your own community that the State is ineffective at protecting you from. In fact, the government is exactly where most of these types go. A phyle will naturally be better at protecting its members than the State is at protecting its subjects.

Not all phyles would be benevolent, of course. But they can be very effective at self-defense. The Mafia is a phyle with criminal tendencies, as are the Yakusa, the Crips and the Bloods, and thousands of similar organizations around the world. Their members are pretty safe; few dare aggress against them as they are protected by the group. The same is true of police forces; criminals steer clear of hurting cops whenever possible.

If you’re a member of a phyle with defense capabilities, aggressors will tend to leave you alone because the consequences of hurting one of its members could be dire.

I suspect smart groups would organize themselves for defense but with better ethics and better principles than mafias or police forces do. Police officers are loyal first to each other, then to their employers, and only then to the citizens.

As with any problem that presents itself, the market will solve it. You don’t have to rely on political mechanisms, which inevitably cause more problems than they solve. As governments become more oppressive and break down during the Greater Depression, phyles will rise.

Think of who you want in your phyle.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Rise of Phyles and Like-Minded Communities… and Why You Need to Find One Right Now appeared first on LewRockwell.

Targeting allies and manufacturing foes is the last card available to the Empire of Chaos.

China is right in the middle of a true tech onslaught – which in several ways works as a sort of wrap-up of Made in China 2025, conceived and launched 10 years ago, and a resounding success even facing at least two tariff/sanctions offensives by Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0.

A stellar Chinese analysis by Chen Jing, published by my friends at Guancha in Shanghai, concisely interprets the importance of key vectors and variables linked to the tech onslaught. Here’s an essential breakdown, with my own comments.

The China-US decoupling

The US as a Chinese export market now represents less than 10% of total exports. In parallel, as I observed in my visits to China this year – from Shanghai and Beijing to Xian and Xinjiang – there’s no psychological fear anymore of the much-touted “decoupling”. After the Trump-Xi meeting, it became clear that what is already in effect is a managed decoupling. Beijing is cool, calm and collected: after all, it’s able to expand in markets all across the Global South. Especially because more trade usually walks side by side with more infrastructure development projects: that’s the logic behind the New Silk Roads/BRI.

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan

What was recently debated in four days in Beijing – and will be approved next March during the Two Sessions – is already rolling, as in “decisive breakthroughs in key core technologies in major areas such as integrated circuits, industrial machine tools, high-end instruments, basic software, advanced materials, and biomanufacturing.” That’s all Made in China 2025 material. The conclusion is stark: sooner, rather than later, China simply won’t need anything from the Western high-tech industrial chain. Call it industrial decoupling. And the cards, once again, are Made in China.

The US deb crisis

The analysis recalls a comparison between the US debt in 2019, before Covid – $21 trillion, with $300 billion in annual interest – with 2025: $38 trillion, with interest projected at $1.3 trillion, way ahead of the Pentagon’s budget. You don’t need to be Prof. Michael Hudson to do the math: long-term US debt is the ultimate – unpayable – nightmare. And the US debt has alreay morphed into a US dollar crisis.

The SWIFT factor

The analysis touches on a key issue regarding SWIFT. The US dollar is still responsible for approximately 47% of SWIFT transactions. The yuan share, meanwile, fell from 4.74% in July 2024 to 2.93% in August 2025. So the yuan is not exactly becoming more international. Why? Bacause the yuan is being decoupled from SWIFT, on purpose: China is encouraging the Global South – no less than 189 countries and regions – to use CIPS on international trade/financial transactions. CIPS is progressing non-stop: a year-on-year increase of approximately 42% compared to 2024.

Call it China preparing itself for financial decoupling. Even if Washington decided to cut off China from SWIFT like it did with Russia, Beijing would have no problems leveraging its massive trade power to then really internationalize the yuan.

A new path of globalization, with China at the core?
The rare earth saga.

In 2025, China entered escape velocity. The reaction to the Trump Tariff Tantrum came with unwavering self-confidence. It was a marvel to observe that on the spot in Shanghai. The analysis recognizes that much of China’s force derives from its rare earth potential.

Already in July 2023 export controls were imposed on gallium and germanium. This summarizes China’s share and position in the production of metals and rare elements, showing that “China’s advantages go far beyond the 17 rare earth elements that have recently caused panic and helplessness in the Western camp.”

There are 21 elements in the export control list; only seven are medium and heavy rare earth elements. There are several other categories such as rare refractory metals, rare dispersed metals, rare light metals, and non-ferrous heavy metals.

One of the key points of the analysis is that not only the US, but the G7 as a whole no longer has the power to dictate the rules of the global economy. China “can withstand the G7 on its own”. Especially when the myth of US industrial strength has been shattered.

That opens a new Pandora’s box of discussion: is the global majority already moving to a new path of globalization, with China at its core?

The AI bubble

So AI may turn out to be the US’s last hope to turn the tide. The problem is the humongous size of the US AI bubble – a pillar of the US economy. It will eventually burst – and the consequences are unimaginable.

Meta, OpenAI, Nvidia, and others are pouring stratospheric funds into scaling-up large language models (LLMs) and massive data centers. That may not be enough to prevent the AI bubble burst – in an environment dictated by mega-corporations only focused on quick profits.

Cue to a quite worrying prospect fueling their paranoia. Several high-level Chinese models – such as DeepSeek, QWEN and the Kimi K2 series – already dominate global AI open source. The Americans practice “closed-source” – where the thing that matters most is how to monetize their gigantic models.

China is playing a very clever game: delaying the release of Deep Seek R2 – an open source, large-scale model. Why? Because releasing it now would mostly benefit Nvidia’s GPUs, boosting their sales and of course the US stock market.

China is nearly ready to complete domestic GPU computer clusters. DeepSeek R2 is built upon these clusters. The result: that will directly disrupt US dominance. As a Shanghai expert puts it:  “How can American AI, hampered by power shortages, lack of open-source access, and high energy consumption, compete with the low-power, open-source, large-scale model that offers a significant advantage?”

MAGA: the Magically Globally Aggressive model

At the recent AI Future Summit, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang went straight to the point: China would definitely win the US-China AI competition.

A key reason is that China’s AI is about productive capitalism – and not speculation. Chinese AI is primarily used in industrial manufacturing sectors such as mining, energy, water conservancy, metallurgy, and military. Large-scale AI models combined with sensors, industrial communication, and automated control at their core, are largely applied to real-life applications,  addressing real-life problems in meteorology, marine agriculture, earth machinery, aerospace, civil geology. They truly integrate algorithms and computing power into production.

History tells us that all industrial and tech revolutions have been closely related to real-life production – from steel production and  electricity generation to the chemical industry and telecommunications engineering.

All that brings us back to the defining psycho-killer outlook of the Trump 2.0 administration. Incapable of really “winning” a tech war against the largest economy on the planet by PPP, the imperative has switched to harassing and plundering weaker nations seen as easy prey, especially in terms of grabbing their natural resources.

Meanwhile, domestically, Trump 2.0 dreams of reviving manufacturing – the MAGA way. Call it the Magically Globally Aggressive (MAGA) model, deviating attention from what really matters: the monstrous debt; the declining power of the US dollar; the tech bubble; inflation; real geopolitics. Plunder – targeting allies and manufactured foes alike – is the last card available to the Empire of Chaos.

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

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