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Labor Day originated as a celebration of the American worker and the gains organized labor won for him, most preeminently the fixed, 40-hour workweek. But not every “pro-labor” government mandate is actually what workers want.

Public intellectual Oren Cass summed up a just concluded Wall Street Journal series about where the money of today’s new parents goes—and, therefore, why young people are reticent about parenthood—as “the big math problem.” The finances of three families with young children in which both parents work revealed:

• For family 1, 75% of new, child-related expenses were the cost of a nanny.
• For family 2, 100% of those expenses were daycare.
• For family 3—where one parent decided to stay home with the child—no new costs but a major income loss because the stay-at-home parent was dad.

Cue Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and AOC announcing the government must expand subsidies for daycare to alleviate the costs for working parents. But surveys by Oren Cass’ think tank, American Compass, suggest that “solution” is actually backward. What many parents want is not daycare subsidies so they can work; they want a system where a parent can remain at home with young children during their formative years.

Why is the subsidies solution backward? Because two groups are looking at the problem in two very different ways. Most Americans look at the problem within the context of what Cass calls “Middle-Class Security”: What does it take to live a reasonably modest but comfortable, secure life? What the policy wonks look at is “how to solve the daycare costs problem.” It’s a difference between macro- and micro-visions.

What Cass calls “middle-class security” is what the average American once expected a provider’s honest, hard work should be able to provide: a house; affordable health care insurance you can use to stay healthy; being able to save toward kids’ college; retirement security. Note I wrote “a provider’s honest hard work.” Singular. One pay. One provider. In other words, what Pope Leo XIII described, more than a century ago, as “a living wage.”

As Cass sums it up:

most families don’t want subsidized childcare so that both ‘parents are freed up to work,’ they want to have a parent at home with young children. The problem is the paradoxical economic model in the United States that depends upon two incomes to obtain middle-class security, even though families rightly recognize that middle-class security requires being able to support themselves on one income.

Labor Day originated to honor a political decision about what constitutes an ethical economy—i.e., that an individual’s and nation’s prosperity should be achievable in an economy that demanded no more than 40 hours of work per week. That’s roughly one-quarter of a man’s life each week, one-third of his working days. Given he spends the other third sleeping, having one-third of his life for all his other obligations and rights outside of economic activity seems fair.

In other words, just as Labor Day was born in connection with taming the amount of time a job can take out of a worker’s week, the question for Labor Day today seems to be taming an economic model in terms of the time it can claim, as the price of middle-class prosperity, out of people’s lives. That means recognizing that other things—most preeminently families—may and should govern, even trump, that model.

Stable families in which good parenting is recognized as contributing at least as much to a commonwealth’s prosperity as the GDP makes political and economic—as well as moral—sense. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense to the economist guided by next-quarter earnings, but the work of creating good, solid, reliable, and prosperous future workers, businessmen, and consumers starts with long-term investments in families. That reality is overlooked by the Scylla of economic laissez-faireists who dismiss it as a purely “private” concern and the Charybdis of government interventionists who proffer expanded daycare as the solution to the “problem” of kids getting in the way of work. Consciously or not, the latter form common cause with the former because both reduce humans to homo economicus, refusing to see the problem may not be the kids but what Claudia Goldin called “greedy work.”

Labor Day was born of the conviction that a man’s prosperity should not consume his whole life. Forty hours was a moral boundary, not just an economic bargain: one-third of his week to work, one-third to rest, and one-third to family, faith, and civic duty. Today, the great question is not only how much time work demands but whose time. An economic model that requires two full-time incomes to secure middle-class stability has already failed the family, even if GDP rises. The measure of prosperity is not quarterly earnings but whether parents can give the gift of presence to their children.

The “labor” question in 2025 is: Should the “living wage” due for work require consuming the time of two parents to ensure familial economic security? Because, especially in the case of mothers, woman does not live by or on work alone.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Woman Does Not Live on Work Alone appeared first on LewRockwell.

I have spent the bulk of my career — on and off since the late Carter Administration — following the money that drives war and repression. What I have finally learned after so many decades of doing research on the war machine is that while research is critical, it must be in the service of a smart strategy backed by a lot of hard work by organizers from all walks of life.

My interest in using research to promote social change was sparked by my years at Columbia University in the 1970s, when I was a researcher and advocate in the divestment movement targeting the apartheid regime of South Africa and a participant in other social justice movements like the boycott in support of the United Farmworkers Union and the opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

Henry Kissinger’s justification for the U.S.-backed coup in Chile that put Augusto Pinochet in power still sticks in my mind: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”

So much for the land of the free and the beacon of global democracy.

The U.S. role in the coup was eventually recounted by many media outlets, but for me the first and most important was the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), which devoted several issues of its magazine, then called The Latin America and Empire Report, to the origins of the coup, including the role of U.S. corporations. I was so impressed with their research and commitment that I applied to work at NACLA after graduating from Columbia in January 1978. They wisely demurred, since my background on Latin America was largely limited to what I had read in their own reports. Still, their skill in deploying detailed research to debunk the official lies that surrounded the coup stuck with me.

Research Against Apartheid

My real schooling in research, however, came in the anti-apartheid movement, starting with the divestment campaign at Columbia and expanding into my work with national anti-apartheid organizations like the American Committee on Africa (ACOA). Again, research was front and center. In order to make effective demands for divestment, we needed to know which companies were supporting the apartheid regime, and which of those companies our universities held stock in. ACOA was of great help in this, including through Richard Knight, who worked in a back room of their offices at 198 Broadway and had what may well have been the messiest desk in the history of progressive politics. But if my memory serves me correctly, he seemed to be able to remember exactly where he put a given document in one of the many piles of paper that obscured his desktop. The work he did, along with colleagues at ACOA, helped fuel the student divestment movement, along with research by students on campuses around the country.

Another key group at that time was Corporate Data Exchange (CDE). Tina Simcich, who worked at CDE and was also part of the New York Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa (COBLSA), did the definitive research on which banks were lending to the apartheid regime.

At Columbia, we made an interesting discovery that put the lie to the university’s position on divestment. In response to demands to divest from firms involved with the apartheid regime, university leaders argued that, if there were objections to the actions of companies they were invested in, they felt it would be more productive to support shareholder resolutions seeking to change their conduct than to divest from those companies’ stocks.

But after digging around in past Columbia University documents, we found a memo from a prior year in which the university had responded to a request to support a shareholder resolution on behalf of trade unionists in Chile, some of whom had been murdered by the Pinochet regime. The university’s position then proved to be precisely the opposite of what it said just a few years later when asked to divest from companies involved in South Africa: they didn’t think it was productive to engage in shareholder resolutions. If there was an ethical issue with one of their holdings, their preference was to divest from the stock of that company.

Although it was a small instance of hypocrisy, it was nonetheless revealing. At that point, the university had been determined to do absolutely nothing to hold companies that were complicit in repression accountable. Our divestment campaign of the mid-1970s did not succeed, but in 1985, another cohort of student activists did finally persuade Columbia to divest. The next year, in 1986, Congress passed comprehensive sanctions on South Africa, overriding a veto attempt by President Ronald Reagan.

Obviously, research was only partly responsible for our success. It was research in the service of organizing and sound strategy that won the day. The fact that the liberation movements in South Africa, including the African National Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement, were calling for divestment greatly strengthened our case. And inspiring organizers and speakers like the incomparable Prexy Nesbitt and the late Dumisani Kumalo, a South African exile who went on to be liberated South Africa’s first representative to the United Nations, played a huge role, as did thousands of campus activists, religious leaders, trade unionists, state and local officials, and heads of pension funds.

Eight years later, in 1994, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first president of a free South Africa. The vast bulk of the credit for that historic change goes to the people of South Africa, but the divestment campaign and the larger global boycott of the apartheid regime played an important supporting role, a role much appreciated by activists in South Africa.

As for me, my work in the anti-apartheid movement shaped my career. I worked for a while as part of the collective that put out Southern Africa magazine, an independent journal that supported the anti-apartheid movement and the liberation movements in Southern Africa. The original editor was Jennifer Davis, the brilliant exiled South African economist who went on to direct ACOA. I wrote articles about the divestment campaign, violations of the arms embargo on South Africa, and the role of U.S. firms in propping up the apartheid regime. The skills and values I learned there were far more important to my career than my philosophy degree from Columbia, an institution whose leaders have now covered themselves in shame by cracking down on students speaking out against U.S.-financed Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The Impact of ‘68

Our work against apartheid was inspired in part by the generation of 1968, whose research exposed the role of companies fueling the war in Vietnam, including Dow Chemical, which produced napalm that was used to kill and maim untold numbers of people. We were also influenced by publications like “Who Rules Columbia,” as well as a handy publication on how to research the corporate ties of one’s university, published by the ever-relevant and crucial NACLA. And groups like National Action Research on the Military-Industrial Complex (NARMIC) were invaluable for peace activists from the anti-Vietnam War period onward.

Other influences on me from that generation of researchers and analysts included Michael Klare, whose reports and books like Supplying Repression, War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams, and Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy were foundational in forming my understanding of U.S. military spending and strategy. And my perspective on the domestic factors driving Pentagon spending began with The Iron Triangle, written by my friend and mentor Gordon Adams (now Abby Ross).

The Corporate Role in Fueling Genocide in Gaza

Activists pushing universities to divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war in Gaza have made connections with the earlier generation of researchers described above, from webinars with members of NARMIC to essays that link to documents like “Who Rules Columbia?”

A key organization in the middle of current efforts is Little Sis — a powerful research organization whose name is based on the idea that they are the opposite of Big Brother. They facilitate research and make connections on a wide range of issues, but at this moment one of their most important products is a webinar they did with Dissenters, a youth anti-militarism group based in Chicago, on how to research the corporate ties of universities. It’s a tutorial on researching university ties to war profiteers, going well beyond the issue of stock holdings in arms makers to look at the connections of trustees, financial institutions, and other relevant ties to weapons makers.

Groups of dedicated students within the ceasefire and anti-genocide movements on U.S campuses have done excellent work in researching the corporate ties of their own universities. I appeared on Santita Jackson’s radio show in February 2025 and connected with Bryce Greene, a student at the University of Indiana involved in the ceasefire/Gaza movement there. He and his fellow students were researching the military ties of the university and they wanted me to review their research to see if they were missing anything. As it happened, they had dug up far more information than I would have, in part because of local connections. Their biggest find was related to the university’s ties to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division, which provides technical support for everything from missile defense systems to Special Operations Forces. University professors had gone back and forth between Crane and campus, and Crane had a direct presence at the school. Students then started a “keep Crane off campus” campaign.

Researchers focused specifically on Israel/Gaza include the American Friends Service Committee, which has a web page on “Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide,” and No Tech for Apartheid, which, among other things, reaches out to workers at Google and Amazon to encourage them to take a stand against technology from tech firms going to support the Israeli war effort. One of the most valuable current resources is the United Nations report, “From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide,” produced under the supervision of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, which describes its purpose this way:

“This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives.”

Models of Research and Strategy

The most effective current model for using data to shape the debate on security issues is the Costs of War Project at Brown University. Their work on the costs of America’s post-9/11 wars ($8 trillion and counting), the number of overseas U.S. counter-terror missions, the cost of U.S. military aid and military operations in support of Israel (over $22 billion in the first year of the war in Gaza) is routinely cited in the press and by political leaders, and provides fuel for activists in their writing and public education efforts.

The best current example of merging research, organizing, and strategy is the new Poor People’s Campaign, co-chaired by Reverend William Barber of Repairers of the Breach and Reverend Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center. Their campaign was inspired by the effort of the same name announced by Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1967. King was assassinated before his campaign came to fruition, but the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and other groups picked up the work of making its signature event, The Poor People’s March on Washington, happen.

One of the bedrock principles of the current Poor People’s Campaign is that the people most impacted by poverty should lead the movement. But cultivating such leadership, especially among those who have been excluded from the halls of power and influence for so long, requires an ongoing process of research, education, and training. Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, underscores this point in her new book on the history of poor people’s organizing, co-authored with Noam Sandweiss-Back:

“Without a continual process of learning, reflecting, and growing intellectually, our organizing is reduced to mobilizing, an exercise in moving bodies without supporting existing leaders and developing new ones . . . mobilizing people is important, but when it becomes our sole focus, we sacrifice long-term power for short-term action.”

As Theoharis notes, King made a similar point in Where Do We Go From Here?:

“Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy… Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.”

In the midst of the torrent of lies and repressive practices emanating from Washington, the use of research to guide strategy and support organizing is more important than ever. But as the Trump administration stops collecting some kinds of data and destroys other kinds altogether, the job of research will be ever more difficult. That can be partially compensated for by drawing on the collective knowledge of researchers, organizers, and community members alike, taking our lead from people who are on the front lines of dealing with repressive policies.

Occasionally, when I am giving a talk on how to reduce the influence of the war machine, I point out that, if there were not people organizing for change, my research would be little more than a peculiar hobby. That is only a slight exaggeration. We need to bring together researchers, organizers, and strategists, taking our lead from members of impacted communities, to work in partnership against the challenges we now face on a daily, at times hourly, basis.

This means the content of our work may take different forms. Rather than reports and briefings, we may need to rely on music, storytelling, art, and ritual to share insights on the political terrain and tales of resistance and revival in these times of escalating crisis. This may become even more to the point as traditional forms of protest continue to be criminalized.

We have a rich history to guide and inspire us, but the task is ours.

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.

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This article is a report or summation of recent news reports about Tina Peters, a Mesa County, Colorado clerk, who was sentenced to prison for nine years for looking at the evidence and reporting Democrat vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election.  

Her “crime” was looking at the evidence, which scum Democrats, whore media, corrupt Democrat prosecutors and Democrat judge labeled “breaching the system,” which means looking at the evidence.  Finding evidence of vote fraud and letting it out was her second offense. Democrats have made it illegal to reveal the truth about stolen elections if the truth implicates them.

A Democrat activist judge, Matthew Barrett, who seems to epitomize lawfare, sent Peters to prison for 9 years for blowing the whistle on the Democrats’ vote-stealing operation.  To be sure the entire country understood his ruling was based on nothing but political pay-back, Barrett denounced the truth-teller standing in his corrupt court for insisting that she acted in the public interest:  “I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” he continued. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Barrett could not make it more clear:  Peters was expected to be loyal and protect a crime. By truthfully accusing Democrats, she made herself a charlatan by failing to realize that Democrats are more important than mere truth and the integrity of elections.  Stealing elections is absolutely the Democrats moral duty or the evil Republicans will gain office.  How is it that people like Barrett don’t get pushed in front of a truck?

The principal function of Democrats is to steal elections so that racist white supremacist fascist white America, with open borders, can become a DEI Tower of Babel in which all sexual perversion is legalized and redefined as normal. Some of the crazed Democrats actually want to criminalize heterosexuals and to pass a law against marriage between a white man and women, which perpetuates “aversive racism” by producing white aversive racists.

Evidence has been revealed that clears Tina Peters.  The evidence consists of correspondence between Jessi Romero in the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, and two employees of Dominion Voting Machines, machines that experts have said are easily hacked and, if my understanding is correct, can actually be set up to steal elections.

Sheriff Dar Leaf has referred the evidence for criminal investigation.  He made it clear that the evidence was withheld by the Democrats from Tina Peters’ attorney. Thus the prosecution discredited the trial and conviction.

So here we have a patriot American imprisoned on totally false charges by a corrupt Democrat prosecution and a corrupt Democrat judge.  President Trump cannot pardon her because she is imprisoned for a state crime.  

This tells us what it means to live in a blue state.  In every blue state to speak any truth that is unfavorable to Democrats is a de facto criminal offense. They will get you.

The Democrat Party is the Party for the Obliteration of Truth.

This fact is beyond the comprehension of the average insouciant American who can’t stop scrolling his/her cell phone long enough to participate in reality.

The inattentiveness and ignorance of the American population is the reason America is rapidly declining into tyranny, a process that the next Democrat regime will complete. See this.

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Thanks, Bruce McLane.

Zero Hedge

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Writes Tim McGraw:

An aircraft mechanic has to check, double-check, triple-check, and with me, I’d check my aviation work four times before signing off on it. I also kept a good track of my tools. My toolbox was organized. I knew if something was missing. 

I feel sorry for Chuck, the mechanic who did the engine change, but you have to at least double-check the work, no matter how much management wants the job done yesterday. Chuck would have found his hammer if he’d checked over the engine installation with a flashlight.

With my Jeep Grand Wagoneer, the mechanic at the shop left his hose clamp tool on top of the V-8’s intake manifold. This metal tool concentrated the heat from the engine on the left valve cover, causing the valve cover gasket to leak at high temperatures. I have new chrome, ooooh chrome, valve covers, and new gaskets, but haven’t replaced them. I only drive the Jeep a few miles a week. The gasket doesn’t leak until about 10 miles of driving. 

I mailed the hose clamp tool back to the mechanic. Told him what it did. The shop offered to fix the problem, but the shop always keeps my Jeep for 5 weeks for repairs. No thanks.

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Writes Tim McGraw:

There are no heroes in the Middle East. Ronald Reagan was right. Avoid the place at all costs. Instead, Trump and Congress are fully involved and supporting the Zionists in Israel. General Douglas MacArthur was right. Anyone who says America should be involved in a war in Asia is insane.

See this.

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E come ogni economia di guerra che si rispetti, la censura è un'arma che viene impiegata per imporre conformismo e serrare i ranghi. Ormai è difficile che non venga notato ovunque, soprattutto perché i costi di questa campagna continuano a lievitare e senza una fonte di denaro facile con cui finanziarla l'UE crollerà sotto il peso delle sue contraddizioni. Il Digital Markets Act (DMA) è diventato il fulcro della disputa transatlantica. Donald Trump insiste per avere voce in capitolo nell'interpretazione delle norme che, come il DSA, colpiscono principalmente le piattaforme di comunicazione statunitensi dominanti (es. X e Meta). In sostanza, Bruxelles mira a far rispettare le sue linee di politica di censura proprio su quelle piattaforme che stanno diventando sempre più importanti per il dibattito pubblico. Mascherato nella formula “incitamento all'odio”, lo spazio della comunicazione digitale deve essere sottoposto al controllo della censura pubblica. Bruxelles ha notato che le contro-narrazioni che prendono di mira l'eco-autoritarismo si stanno formando principalmente su queste piattaforme e mettono sempre più a nudo il funzionamento e gli obiettivi dell'apparato di potere dell'UE. Per garantire la propria politica di censura, Ursula von der Leyen e il suo apparato burocratico a Bruxelles accettano di buon grado che, alla fine, siano le aziende e i consumatori europei a pagare il prezzo della mania di controllo dell'UE attraverso dazi più elevati. Gli Stati Uniti manterranno l'attuale regime tariffario fino a quando non verrà raggiunto un accordo sulla gestione della politica di censura europea. La posizione intransigente di Washington fa sperare che Bruxelles subirà un duro colpo nel suo tentativo di instaurare una dittatura digitale.

______________________________________________________________________________________

da Zerohedge

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-nuova-economia-di-guerra-europea)

Mentre la pseudo-economia verde trascina l'economia in generale nel baratro, due terzi dei tedeschi si dichiarano soddisfatti delle energie rinnovabili o addirittura ne auspicano una più rapida espansione. Nel frattempo la costruzione di un'economia di guerra europea segna la fase successiva dell'attuale impoverimento dell'Europa.

La strategia economica più popolare e allo stesso tempo più distruttiva rimane l'interpretazione moderna del keynesismo. Con la sua visione semplicistica dell'attività economica, l'economista britannico John Maynard Keynes ha consegnato ai politici del dopoguerra una cassetta degli attrezzi che in seguito hanno distorto in una “soluzione” universale per ogni crisi economica. La versione condensata recita come segue: quasi ogni recessione deriva da un deficit di domanda da parte dei consumatori. Il compito dello stato, quindi, è quello di creare credito artificiale per colmare questo divario di domanda.

Ricetta per l'espansione burocratica

Tassi d'interesse più bassi, stampa di credito e, come dice la favoletta, l'economia decolla. In realtà ciò che rimane è una montagna di debito pubblico, una burocrazia in crescita, mercati finanziari distorti e una produttività in calo. Questi sono fatti economici, facilmente verificabili anche dai non economisti. La prosperità nasce da uno stock di capitale in crescita che soddisfa la domanda dei consumatori in modo efficiente e preciso con più beni e servizi.

La politica keynesiana si è rivelata disastrosa per l'Europa, perché offre ai politici una scusa permanente per espandere la propria influenza, costruire burocrazia e manipolare i mercati. Istituzioni politiche come la Commissione Europea, la maggior parte dei partiti europei e i governi degli stati membri operano quasi esclusivamente in questo modo.

Il Green Deal

È con questo spirito che è nato il Green Deal: una pseudo-economia mascherata da “trasformazione verde” e spacciata per un contributo alla salvezza del pianeta. In realtà si tratta di un congegno mostruoso, una risposta grottesca alla dipendenza energetica dell'Europa che ogni anno divora porzioni sempre più grandi dell'economia solo per mantenere in funzione la sua smisurata macchina dei sussidi.

Solo nel 2024 la Germania ha versato in questa macchina tra i €90 e i €100 miliardi. Il governo federale tedesco ha erogato €58 miliardi, mentre la Banca europea per gli investimenti ha aggiunto €8,6 miliardi in nuovi prestiti, il programma InvestEU €9,1 miliardi e i Fondi per l'innovazione e l'ambiente dell'UE circa €20 miliardi. Senza questo flusso costante di finanziamenti, l'economia zombie crollerebbe. A dimostrazione di ciò, il governo tedesco ha incanalato altri €100 miliardi di debito – mascherati da “fondo speciale” – nella macchina dei sussidi verdi, sempre più affamata.

Le pseudo-economie sopravvivono solo grazie a nuove iniezioni di capitale, andando continuamente contro la domanda del mercato. Le tensioni interne aumentano fino a rendere inevitabile il collasso. Il Green Deal ha intrappolato l'Europa proprio in questa spirale mortale.

Le ricadute

La Germania è ora al terzo anno di recessione e registra un numero record di fallimenti aziendali. Allo stesso tempo il governo ha creato mezzo milione di posti di lavoro nel settore pubblico in soli sei anni, mentre 1,2 milioni di posti di lavoro nel settore privato sono scomparsi. Combinato con l'immigrazione incontrollata, il risultato è una pressione estrema sul sistema di welfare tedesco.

La politica si è ritirata in una posizione puramente difensiva: lo Stato sociale funge da bacino di raccolta per centinaia di migliaia di persone che perdono i propri mezzi di sussistenza, mentre il settore privato crolla sotto il peso dei costi energetici e dei sussidi.

La diagnosi è chiara: il Green Deal è un vicolo cieco. Ogni euro speso esclude i mercati dei capitali privati, alloca male le risorse e incatena i lavoratori nei settori improduttivi. Il contrasto con l'Argentina è sorprendente: lì il presidente Milei ha tagliato la quota di PIL dello stato di sei punti percentuali e ha innescato un boom economico con una crescita del 7,7%.

La trasformazione richiede dolore

L'unica via d'uscita per l'Europa è accettare una dolorosa fase di trasformazione, ridimensionare lo stato e abbandonare le sue fantasie ecologiste. Una politica energetica razionale significa energia nucleare e reintegrazione delle forniture energetiche russe.

Eppure l'opinione pubblica racconta una storia diversa: il 64% dei tedeschi è soddisfatto delle energie rinnovabili, o ne vorrebbe di più. Anni di propaganda statale hanno cancellato il legame tra sussidi verdi e collasso economico. La narrazione del cambiamento climatico, moralizzata e trasformata in un'arma, si è radicata nella coscienza pubblica.

Le energie rinnovabili possono avere il loro posto, ma solo in mercati liberi, senza coercizioni o imposizioni. L'economia verde zombi non è mai riuscita a rilanciare la crescita dell'Europa. È tempo di affrontare la realtà e abbattere questa struttura prima che si possa costruire qualcosa di nuovo.

Il prossimo tentativo

Ma l'Europa non mostra segni di cambiamento di rotta. La burocrazia è diventata troppo grande per smantellarsi da sola. Da Berlino a Bruxelles, i leader trattano l'esodo industriale come una serie di sfortunati incidenti piuttosto che come il risultato diretto delle loro linee di politica. L'accogliente tavola rotonda “Made for Germany” tra Friedrich Merz e gli amministratori delegati del DAX ha confermato il sospetto di collusione tra aziende e statalismo.

Dopo aver fallito con il Green Deal, i politici europei stanno ora sperimentando una nuova pseudo-economia: un complesso militare-industriale alimentato dal debito. Secondo uno studio di Ernst & Young, le aziende tedesche del DAX hanno tagliato 30.000 posti di lavoro nella prima metà del 2025, ad eccezione delle aziende appaltatrici della difesa Rheinmetall e MTU Aero Engines, che hanno aumentato l'organico rispettivamente del 17% e del 7%.

Il piano dell'UE: entro il 2035, metà di tutti i beni di difesa europei – dall'artiglieria alla difesa informatica alle munizioni di precisione – saranno prodotti all'interno dell'Unione, creando fino a 660.000 posti di lavoro. Tutto ciò sarà finanziato non solo dall'aumento dei bilanci nazionali per la difesa, ma anche da programmi UE come ReARM Europe e SAFE, che genereranno centinaia di miliardi di nuovo debito.

Occhi ben chiusi

Bruxelles prevede di mobilitare ulteriori €800 miliardi in spese per la difesa entro il 2030. Eppure nessun settore è più lontano dalla domanda reale dei consumatori dell'industria bellica. Questa è la pseudo-economia keynesiana nella sua forma più estrema: guadagnare tempo con il debito, affamando al contempo i mercati dei capitali privati.

L'ascesa della lobby della difesa come nuova beniamina di Bruxelles alimenterà la corruzione, acuirà il divario tra le strutture parassitarie dell'UE e le forze produttive in contrazione, e consoliderà il clientelismo corporativo come sistema operativo dell'UE. Lo scandalo degli SMS con Pfizer della von der Leyen rimane il simbolo più calzante di questa macchina orrenda di Bruxelles.

In definitiva, l'economia europea non ha né le risorse né la tecnologia per realizzare il sogno di un'UE militarizzata. È una tragica replica del Green Deal: alimentata dalla propaganda, alimentata dal debito e destinata al collasso.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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The fact is, the European elites do not care that the vital interests of European citizens are being destroyed by the Americans or the puppet regime in Kiev.

The EU-backed Ukrainian regime’s blowing up of a major pipeline delivering vital oil supply to Europe is an astounding signal of self-destruction. It demonstrates how insane the European Union’s leadership has become in its obsession with defeating Russia, no matter the cost. The insanity means that the interests of EU member states and European citizens are willingly sacrificed. Russophobic Eurocrats who have shunned all diplomatic engagement with Moscow are in effect funding the destruction of Europe.

In another development, as Russian airstrikes on Kiev this week hit European Union and British government sites in the Ukrainian capital, EU and British politicians were outraged, condemning Russia for “barbaric attacks” on their delegations. Yet it is these same European and British politicians who are pushing conflict to the brink of no return as they insist on arming a NeoNazi regime to continue striking Russian civilian targets and refuse to listen to Russia’s historic grievances about how this conflict evolved.

The Ukrainian regime, bankrolled by EU taxpayers, launched multiple drone and missile attacks on the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies EU member states Hungary and Slovakia. The pipeline supplies those states with about 50 percent of their oil imports. The attacks knocked out pipeline infrastructure in Russian territory. Hungary and Slovakia were cut off from crude oil supplies for several days. Budapest and Bratislava angrily protested to the European Union leadership that the sabotage was an unacceptable assault on the sovereign, vital interests.

However, the European Commission in Brussels responded with remarkable indifference, noting that Hungary and Slovakia’s 90-day emergency stockpiles of oil were sufficient to carry the countries over the interruption in supply. The complacency of the EU leadership is extraordinary. So, a non-EU state cuts off the energy supply of EU members, and there is no reprimand for the sabotage. The insouciance is tantamount to giving the Ukrainian regime a green light to carry out more such attacks.

The background is even more sinister. Earlier this week, the Kiev regime’s nominal president, Vladimir Zelensky, made a veiled threat to Hungary and Slovakia that his forces would continue to blow up the pipeline if Budapest and Bratislava did not lift their vetoes on Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union. To their credit, Hungary and Slovakia have both consistently opposed Ukraine joining the bloc, warning that such a move will exacerbate the conflict with Russia and destabilize internal markets from cheap Ukrainian imports. They have also opposed doling out more EU taxpayer funds for military weapons and prolonging a slaughter.

In other words, Hungary and Slovakia have become an obstacle to the proxy war against Russia. That is not merely annoying to the Kyiv cabal and its war racket; it also, more importantly, frustrates the Eurocrat elites’ desire to expand the war, with the Russophobic obsession of defeating Russia.

The Kiev regime has for a long time been haranguing Hungary and Slovakia to terminate all oil imports from Russia, and get in line with the rest of the EU. Ukraine accuses Hungarian and Slovakian leaders of buying Russian oil with blood money and fueling the war. This is similar to the United States castigating India for continuing to purchase Russian oil, with Trump aide Peter Navarro this week absurdly calling the Ukraine conflict “Modi’s war” in a snide reference to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Hungary, Slovakia, India, and others retort that it is their national prerogative to buy oil from Russia. They say it is not up to the Kiev regime or the United States to determine from whom they obtain their vital energy supplies. The Kiev regime and Washington are acting like bandits and mafia. It was the United States under the Biden administration that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in September 2022. That act of terrorism cut off Germany from Russia’s natural gas supply and led to the destruction of the German economy.

The Kiev regime shut down unilaterally the Brotherhood natural gas pipeline to the rest of Europe at the end of 2024 because it decided not to renew a decades-old transit contract with Russia. Later, the Kiev regime attacked the Turk Stream gas pipelines linking Russian gas to southern Europe. Now the regime is bombing that last oil pipeline into Europe from Russia. And all this banditry holding Europe hostage is countenanced by the Eurocrat leadership.

Where is European sovereignty here? Where is European leadership insisting that the basic rule of law must be respected and vital civilian infrastructure must not be interfered with, especially when that interference amounts to blatant acts of terrorism? Incredibly, the European Commission and the governments of Germany and Denmark, among others, continue to ignore the Nord Stream terror attacks by their American ally as if those crimes never happened. Every so often, the EU authorities find some ridiculous scapegoat to blame, like low-level Ukrainian saboteurs.

The fact is, the European elites do not care that the vital interests of European citizens are being destroyed by the Americans or the puppet regime in Kiev.

Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó correctly suggests that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other elites, like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, no doubt knew and gave their approval to the Kiev regime to deliver on its threats to blow up the Hungarian and Slovakian oil supplies. For these elites, some of whom have Nazi Third Reich heritage in their veins, their obsession with defeating Russia is all that matters, Über alles!

Of course, they will support a fascist regime in Kiev before the democratic needs of European citizens. The same mentality has led Europe to self-destruction in two world wars. Here we go again, if they have their way.

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

The post Blowing up Europe… Druzhba Pipeline Sabotage Showcases EU Self-Destruction appeared first on LewRockwell.

The news that the Reconciliation Monument will be restored to the Arlington National Cemetery should be welcomed as an opportunity to reiterate the importance of peace, and to set aside historical grievances. The monument signifies steps towards reconciliation between North and South that were taken at the turn of the twentieth century, when both sides set out to move beyond the previous era of sectional hatred and fratricidal war. It explicitly invokes peace in the words of Isaiah inscribed upon it: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” It was intended, after a troubled and violent Reconstruction Era, to embrace the new spirit of fraternity that was reflected in the “reunions of the Blue and the Grey.” Writing in 1948, Major C. A. Phillips, of the US Marine Corps describes the location of the memorial, and the poetic words of a Confederate chaplain—the Reverend Randolph Harrison McKim—which pay tribute to the fallen:

Still inside the wall, the visitor continues through the well kept grounds to Jackson Circle where stands the magnificent bronze monument erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Surrounded by the headstones of nearly five hundred graves of Confederate veterans as well as some of their wives, the inscription on the base of the monument attests the simple creed of soldier dead everywhere:

Not for fame or reward,

Not for place or rank,

Not lured by ambition or goaded by necessity, But in simple obedience to duty,

As they understood it,

These men suffered all,

Sacrificed all,

Dared all—and died.

The point of reconciliation is not to relitigate the war or attempt to glorify it, but to look ahead to peace. As Charles Adams has pointed out in his book When in the Course of Human Events, the seeds of war are often sown in the ashes of previous wars. If people fail to learn from history and instead double down on the same claims and counterclaims that previously led to deadly conflict, or if they seek to humiliate and mock the once-vanquished—taunting them and destroying their war memorials—that leads, not to peace, but to what Adams calls “a cold war of bitterness.” Adams argues that, “Wars have seldom been justified, and as the years and centuries pass, war looks increasingly foolish.” Reconciliation is the commonsense approach—to let bygones be bygones, and to settle disagreement by diplomacy, not by denunciation and diatribe.

It is therefore disconcerting to see some liberals now dismissing the importance of reconciliation. Having removed the Reconciliation Monument from Arlington in 2023, they are now furious that it is to be restored. They reject the idea of reconciliation altogether. Preoccupied as they are with virtue-signaling about the perceived evils of centuries past, they fulminate about the causes of the war using the vitriolic language of nineteenth century Radical Republicans. They glorify the military triumph of North over South, and even celebrate the burning of the South and the suffering of Southern civilians. Britannica reports:

After seizing Atlanta, Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman embarked on a scorched-earth campaign intended to cripple the South’s war-making capacity and wound the Confederate psyche… Sherman’s 37-day campaign is remembered as one of the most successful examples of “total war,” and its psychological effects persisted in the postbellum South.

Far from regretting incidents of war crimes or acknowledging post-war reconciliation, Sherman’s admirers argue that more should have been done to punish the “traitors” who had the temerity to secede from the Union. One hundred sixty years after the war, they are still angry that Confederates were not, in their opinion, sufficiently punished. An opinion piece in the New York Times laments the fact that Confederate leaders died as free men. The writer seems to be unaware that the causes of this war are contested by historians, and relies entirely on the partisan interpretation advanced by the Marxist historian Eric Foner, whom he cites with approval,

Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy and the commander in chief of forces that killed more than 360,000 American troops, died a free man. Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, died a free man as well. Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, whose “cornerstone” speech defined the secessionist cause, served five terms in Congress after the war and also died a free man. Nor was this trio an exception. Other, less prominent Confederates were also able to escape any real punishment. Most of the leaders of the deadliest insurrection in American history died free men…

The writer contrasts the war to the alleged “insurrection” of January 6, suggesting that contemporary politics can be understood by analogy to the war. He describes President Trump as getting away with insurrection “unchastened and unrestrained,” just like the Confederate leaders. But there is nothing to be gained by interminably perpetuating the hostilities of the nineteenth century in this way, especially since many of those who are most determined to invoke the conflict in contemporary political debate seem to know very little about the war and simply use it as a proxy for grievances relating to what they call “systemic racism.” It is almost as if the war merely supplies them with convenient ammunition for their political arguments about the need for government interventions designed to crush “white supremacy” by vesting more money and power in the race hustlers. Republicans, too, often invoke the war as a way of criticizing their political opponents, frequently comparing today’s communist Democrats to the conservative Southern Democrats of the nineteenth century.

As Ludwig von Mises emphasizes in Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, peace is not just a matter of convenience or an optional extra—it is essential to civilization and to human flourishing. This does not mean that war memorials should be torn down and everyone should try to forget that the war ever happened. On the contrary, erasing history only makes future hostilities more likely as people forget the lessons of the past. Further, the memory of ties that bind people together matters. Mises observes that, “Heroic deeds performed in such a war by those fighting for their freedom and their lives are entirely praiseworthy, and one rightly extols the manliness and courage of such fighters.” We remember the fallen. not in order to endorse the waging of war—with all the attendant loss of life and human suffering—but to remember the courage and sacrifice of those who stood in defense of a just cause. A just war, as Murray Rothbard defined it, is one fought in defense. He regarded both the Revolutionary War and the War for Southern Independence as just wars,

My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination… There have been only two wars in American history that were, in my view, assuredly and unquestionably proper and just; not only that, the opposing side waged a war that was clearly and notably unjust. Why? Because we did not have to question whether a threat against our liberty and property was clear or present; in both of these wars, Americans were trying to rid themselves of an unwanted domination by another people. And in both cases, the other side ferociously tried to maintain their coercive rule over Americans. In each case, one side — “our side” if you will — was notably just, the other side — “their side” — unjust.

Honoring memorials to the fallen is part of history, and history should not be erased. But this does not justify harking back to old wars as a framework for contemporary political discourse. Reconciliation and peace should be the standard.

The post The Significance of the Arlington Reconciliation Monument appeared first on LewRockwell.

Edmund Burke’s England was indeed lovely, and his wisdom about our capacity for love of country seems cruelly prophetic today. When the Anglo-Irish statesman penned Reflections on the Revolution in France, he understood that a nation’s character—its “distinct system of manners” —must undergird any lasting affection for the homeland. Yet here we stand, citizens of a republic whose vast beauty cannot disguise its withered soul.

The modern American condition is most clearly revealed in our degraded political vocabulary. When every political disagreement becomes “fascist,” for example, we witness not merely semantic inflation but the collapse of serious discourse itself.

Consider the scholarly consensus: Stanley Payne, the foremost authority on European fascism, observed in his seminal 1980 work, Fascism: Comparison and Definition, that “fascism is probably the vaguest of contemporary political terms”. Ernst Nolte developed his “fascist minimum” —antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, and totalitarian aims.

Paul Gottfried, editor of Chronicles, notes that fascism “now stands for a host of iniquities that progressives, multiculturists, and libertarians all oppose, even if they offer no single, coherent account of what they’re condemning.”

The absurdity reaches its apex when Hollywood scribes have baseball strikeouts declared “fascist,” like Crash Davis did in Bull Durham.

What about the black-clad urban vandals calling themselves “Antifa” torching American cities while claiming to fight fascism? These costumed revolutionaries, responsible for billions in property damage, have transformed anti-fascism into a performance of adolescent rebellion.

As former soccer star Alexi Lalas observed, this “strange self-loathing of country” manifests across cultural sectors—music, fashion, politics—wherever Americans have learned to despise the civilization that shelters them.

The weaponization of “fascist” as a political cudgel reached its nadir during the Dobbs decision, when returning abortion law to the states—the very essence of federalism—was branded authoritarian. Here we witness the inversion Burke warned against: legitimate constitutional processes become tyrannical while actual lawlessness masquerades as resistance.

This linguistic corruption serves a deeper purpose within what Michael Rechtenwald calls the “welfare-warfare state.” Writing in Chronicles, the former NYU professor and 2024 Libertarian presidential candidate identified the vicious cycle that sustains our national decline:

Social welfare only increases that which it putatively aims to eradicate: poverty, illness, homelessness, and so on. This is both logically deducible and empirically verifiable. Meanwhile, social welfare feeds state power and enables its warfare by placating those it disempowers, both the payers and the payees of the state’s pretended largesse.

The political class requires this manufactured crisis of language because it obscures their fundamental betrayal of the common good. When a failed presidential candidate branded half the electorate a “basket of deplorables” —calling them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic” —before labeling them “irredeemable” bigots, she revealed the contempt our ruling class holds for ordinary Americans.

This was no gaffe but calculated cruelty, repeated across multiple venues as a deliberate strategy to dehumanize political opposition.

The more profound tragedy lies not in the elite’s hatred—that was always predictable—but in the response it provokes. Too many Americans have internalized this contempt, becoming active participants in their own cultural demolition. They mistake submission to fashionable causes for moral sophistication, trading their birthright for the fleeting approval of those who despise them.

Yet Burke’s insight cuts both ways. If character corruption makes love of country impossible, then character restoration becomes the prerequisite for national renewal. This requires what Rechtenwald calls “principled opposition” —the courage to reject the welfare-warfare state’s seductions and reclaim the habits of self-governance that once made America lovely.

The path forward demands what previous generations called civic virtue: the willingness to shoulder responsibility for our communities rather than outsourcing our duties to distant bureaucracies. It means choosing the difficult work of local engagement over the easy pleasure of national outrage.

Most importantly, it requires recognizing that the corruption of our public language reflects the corruption of our private character—and that both can be restored by citizens willing to speak truth in their own neighborhoods.

Burke understood that civilizations die from within long before external enemies deliver the fatal blow. There is a stark choice remaining: restore the loveliness that merits love, or watch the country become unworthy of either affection or its children’s inheritance.

The hour grows late, but it is not yet midnight.

This article was originally published on The O’Leary Review.

The post When Language Dies, Nations Follow Soon After appeared first on LewRockwell.

In a political age that prizes charisma over conviction, Ron Paul’s career stands out as a long series of principled noes. The Texas physician–turned–congressman won his first seat in 1976, lost it a few months later, then returned repeatedly to the House, always as an outsider and always carrying the same simple message: the federal government must be bound by the Constitution, money must be sound, markets must be free, and peace is a moral imperative. As he turns ninety today, it is worth revisiting how a soft‑spoken obstetrician came to inspire a movement that outlived his political campaigns, and why he deserves to be counted among the most influential libertarians of the modern era.

Paul’s moral consistency is legendary. Born in Pittsburgh in 1935 and trained as a doctor, he served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force before establishing a medical practice in Texas. His early reading of Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Leonard Read convinced him that expansive government and fiat money were incompatible with liberty. When President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, Paul later wrote, he knew “the stage was set for the 1970s inflation and for the political chaos that would follow,” so he entered politics to champion sound money and limited government. Over more than two decades in Congress he would never vote for a tax increase, never vote for an unbalanced budget, and never vote to raise congressional pay.

Such obstinacy made him politically lonely, but it also gave him credibility. In his farewell address to Congress in 2012 he warned that Washington’s spending binge rested on a bipartisan bargain. “One side doesn’t give up one penny on military spending, the other side doesn’t give up one penny on welfare spending, while both sides support the bailouts and subsidies for the banking and corporate elite,” he told his colleagues. With typical understatement he added that his 1976 goals—“promote peace and prosperity by a strict adherence to the principles of individual liberty”—remained unchanged. That fidelity allows his admirers to call him the “Dr. No” of the House with affection rather than disdain.

Paul’s libertarianism begins with the text of the Constitution. In a 2011 speech titled “True Fidelity to the Constitution,” he argued that Congress has “justified every conceivable expansion of the Federal Government” by misinterpreting the General Welfare Clause, the Interstate Commerce Clause, and the Necessary‑and‑Proper Clause. Such distortions, he said, allow members to treat the Constitution as a “living document” they can bend to suit political expediency. The remedy, Paul insisted, is not civic cheerleading but an honest reassessment of policy: no more wars without an actual declaration from Congress; repeal the Federal Reserve Act; respect gold and silver as legal tender; abolish unconstitutional departments like Education, Commerce, and Homeland Security; repeal the PATRIOT Act; and restrain the Transportation Security Administration. He pointedly asked whether Americans possess the moral character to demand such changes and whether politicians have the courage to refuse special interests. Without love of liberty and respect for the rule of law, he warned, the Constitution is “a worthless piece of paper.”

To him, enumerated powers were not a rhetorical flourish but a bulwark against tyranny. When many conservatives argued that the general welfare clause authorizes vast spending, Paul reminded them that Article I lists only eighteen federal powers and leaves education, retirement, and health care to the states or the people. If fidelity to the Constitution is “cranky,” he mused, then so were James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

Paul’s libertarianism also rests on a classical understanding of markets. In a column published after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, he defended so‑called “price gouging.” When the government imposed gasoline price caps, he observed, miles‑long lines formed and a black market flourished; had gas stations been allowed to raise prices, those most in need would have bought fuel and outside suppliers would have rushed in. “Prices perform an important role in providing information, coordinating supply and demand, and enabling economic calculation,” he wrote. Interfering with the price mechanism always leads to shortages, and no legislature can repeal the laws of supply and demand.

Paul extends the same logic to money itself. In End the Fed, he explains that crowds chanted “End the Fed” not because he incited them but because the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air, depreciates the dollar, and has not prevented business cycles. He argues that the Fed wields “ominous power with no oversight” and that paper money is unconstitutional; only gold and silver are legal tender. Inflation, he warns, is regressive: it benefits bankers and government contractors while hurting savers, encourages protectionism, and finances wars. The solution, he believes, is to restore a free market in money, allow competing currencies, and gradually return to a gold standard. When central bankers and politicians have no ability to inflate, government must live within its means.

Paul applies his economic creed consistently. He opposed the bank bailouts of 2008 and 2020, argued against corporate subsidies, and denounced deficit spending regardless of the party in power. Even when asked to back popular price controls—for example on gasoline or pharmaceuticals—he refused, explaining that such interventions misallocate resources and harm the poor. Unlike some libertarians who see a role for targeted regulation, Paul seldom deviates. His critics label him dogmatic; his admirers call him principled.

No aspect of Paul’s philosophy has generated more controversy than his foreign policy. While most of his Republican colleagues embraced interventionism, Paul called for non‑intervention and invoked the Golden Rule. In the 2007 Republican primary debate, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani denounced Paul for suggesting that U.S. foreign policy contributed to the 9/11 attacks. Unfazed, Paul asked Americans to imagine how they would react if China crossed the ocean, demanded bases on U.S. soil, and tried to dictate American life: even if the Chinese had good intentions, he argued, “we would all be together and we’d be furious.” The exchange illustrated his belief in “blowback”—that military interventions create unforeseen and often violent repercussions.

Paul first articulated this thesis during the Cold War. In his 2002 House speech opposing the authorization for use of force in Iraq, he noted that Iraq posed no threat to national security and that preemptive war would set a dangerous precedent. He warned that war without an act of aggression and without exhausting diplomatic options violated the just war doctrine. Echoing Madison, he reminded Congress that the executive branch is predisposed to war. History vindicated his fears: the Iraq War cost trillions of dollars, destabilized the Middle East, and fuelled global anti‑American sentiment.

Paul’s anti‑war stance is inseparable from his defense of civil liberties. In a 2011 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) he lambasted the PATRIOT Act as “the destruction of the Fourth Amendment.” He argued that fiscal conservatives should look critically at U.S. support for dictators; in Egypt alone, Washington spent $70 billion propping up Hosni Mubarak, only to see his regime toppled and the money siphoned into Swiss accounts. He described foreign aid bluntly as taking “money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country” and called for friendships and trade while avoiding “entangling alliances.” Paul lamented that the United States maintained troops in 135 countries and nine-hundred bases and insisted it was time to “bring troops home.”

Critics accuse Paul of isolationism, but he responds that non‑intervention is not isolation. Trade, travel, diplomacy, and cultural exchange flourish in peace. He notes that the Soviet Union collapsed because of economic failure, not because the United States fought a land war in Eastern Europe. Heavy military spending weakens the economy, fosters debt, and expands the state. As he told CPAC attendees, many conservatives will not cut a penny of military spending, “and the military is not equated to defense”; President Dwight Eisenhower himself warned of the “military–industrial complex.”

Paul’s messaging alienated many Republican voters. During the 2012 South Carolina debate he urged the audience to apply the Golden Rule—“treat other nations as we would want them to treat us”—and quipped that if Americans do not want others to ban U.S. oil imports, they should not ban Iran’s. He expressed puzzlement that the term “golden rule” elicited boos. The conservative electorate jeered, and Texas Governor Rick Perry joked that the moderator should cut off Paul with a gong. Yet the moment became an emblem of his courage: alone among the candidates, he dared to apply a moral principle to foreign policy.

But for his supporters, these exchanges are badges of honor. Paul stood on the same stage as frontrunners, refused to parrot applause lines about American exceptionalism, and quoted Jesus’ admonition from the Sermon on the Mount to treat others as we would wish to be treated. His critics called him naïve; his defenders noted that past presidents as diverse as John Quincy Adams and Dwight Eisenhower made similar points. That he was jeered by his own party speaks not to his wrongness but to the state of political discourse.

Paul’s critics like to portray him as doctrinaire, but his morality is rooted in empathy. He opposes war because it kills innocents and breeds resentment; he opposes the draft because it treats young people as property of the state; he opposes asset forfeiture because it strips citizens of property without due process; he opposes drug prohibition because it cages non‑violent offenders and fuels racial disparity. His stance against civil asset forfeiture, the drug war, and the draft is not pragmatic but principled—government should not coerce unless an individual violates another’s rights.

This defense of the powerless extends to financial policy. Paul notes that inflation, deficits, and bailouts are hidden forms of taxation that punish the poor. When Congress authorizes spending it cannot fund through taxes, the Federal Reserve monetizes the debt; the resulting price inflation reduces the purchasing power of wages and savings. By contrast, those close to the Federal Reserve—the banks and corporations receiving cheap credit—profit. Paul thus frames central banking as a form of class warfare.

Ron Paul is not a typical politician; he is a moral philosopher who happened to hold office. His critics mock his consistent voting record as cranky and quixotic, but the record testifies to a rare integrity. He opposed war when both parties cheered; he condemned the Federal Reserve when few understood it; he warned about surveillance long before Edward Snowden’s revelations; he criticized corporate welfare; and he rejected the false choice between safety and liberty. He treated opponents with civility even when dismantling their arguments. He inspired a movement without demanding a following. In an era of shifting positions and pragmatic compromises, he stands as a model of uncompromising ethical consistency. That is why, as he celebrates his ninetieth year, the libertarian movement he galvanized continues to grow.

This article was originally published on The Libertarian Institute.

The post Ron Paul: Defender of the Powerless, Critic of the Powerful appeared first on LewRockwell.

Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest.

Therefore, if a tablecloth is spread out on a table and an object, such as the fishbowl above, is placed on that tablecloth, the fishbowl will tend to “want” to remain right where it is.

If the tablecloth were to be yanked away quickly, the fishbowl would move very little. Inertia, having been overcome by the tablecloth, would then be overcome, but the fishbowl, already at rest, would tend to remain right where it had been before – on the table.

And the same is true of human nature. If a government or an economic system collapses, the populace will experience an immediate shock of change, but their tendency will be to adapt as quickly as possible to maintain their previous situation as much as can be accomplished.

Has the government collapsed? Create a new one, possibly on similar principles as the previous one (hopefully with revisions made, to prevent the next government from making the same self-destructive mistakes a second time.)

Has the economy collapsed? Throw together whatever new form of economy works best until a more solid one can be created. This could mean relying temporarily on barter, but might mean the establishment of a safer form of currency, such as precious metals. And, again, when a new currency is introduced, revisions might be made as to who controls it, in order to assure that the same mistake is not repeated.

But, these are natural calamities that happen from time to time in civilization and, as long as the people dealing with the re-establishment of the government or economy are motivated in the direction of the benefit of the populace, there’s every chance that a solution will be created that would be implemented quickly, might minimize damage and, hopefully, be better than the last version.

After all, if left to their own devices, people will come up with whatever system serves them well.

But, of course, we rarely witness the above scenario with regard to governments and economies. What we do see playing out, time after time, in one era or another, in one geographical location or another, is something quite different.

Historically, what we’ve seen is that government performs the political and/or economic equivalent of pulling the tablecloth away slowly.

And, of course, anyone who’s familiar with the old tablecloth trick understands what will happen. The fishbowl ends up smashed on the floor and the fish are left gasping for their last breaths.

This latter fact illustrates vividly why no one should ever pull away the tablecloth slowly.

And yet, in generation after generation, humankind is repeatedly suckered into a situation in which their government does exactly that.

The way it works is that the government first says, “It’s too troublesome for you to run your own lives; leave it to us and we’ll look after you. We’ll take care of all those pesky details of life that are nuisances for you now.”

First, they take control of “protection” in the form of a military, to protect the populace from threats from without and, later, create a police force to protect the populace from threats from within.

Then, clearly, the people need a central fire service. They also need roads and community buildings. And, of course, these all cost money, so taxes are implemented.

Then they are raised, as the costs of such services inevitably increase over time.

Then, an increasingly expansive list of other services is put forward – assistance for the poor, retirement funds, universal health benefits, etc. Soon, it becomes “necessary” to increase taxes to pay for the ever-expanding list of services the government controls.

Throughout this process, the populace nods as each new “benefit” is introduced. And, since the process is gradual, they almost invariably fail to worry that the tablecloth is in motion and that their fishbowl is closer to the edge of the table than it was before.

But, in the meantime, the political leaders are continuing to pull the tablecloth and are aware that the fishbowl is nearing the edge. At this point, if they were responsible people, they’d say, “Oh-oh, we’ve been a bit too greedy and we’ve put you folks in danger. But, at this point, it won’t do any good for us to tax you less and cut out the services that have been promised to you. At this point, we need to stop pulling entirely.”

And, of course, were they to do that, two things would occur. First, the populace would be up in arms at their entitlements being cut off.

Second, the political leaders would be out of a job.

With no more services to provide, taxation would cease to have validation. The political leaders would be in far greater danger from a cessation of movement than the people themselves.

What to do?

Well, most of us, as we become adults, recognize that, in order to live, we must become productive. That’s what turns us into responsible people. But, remember, political leaders never learn this lesson. They go straight from being parasitical as children to being parasitical as adults. When the jig is up and the fishbowl is nearing the edge, they act the way they’ve always acted – as parasites. Only now, they realise that it’s all about to end very soon. Therefore, it’s time to get a last squeeze of the lemon before it goes dry.

At that point, they ramp up the economy through the creation of debt. They also increase taxation dramatically, with the claim that benefits must be increased.

They then do their best to get themselves out of the way as the last pull of the tablecloth sends the fishbowl over the edge.

This, of course, is why it’s so overwhelmingly common for political leaders to take a hike just as their economies and/or governments are collapsing. Regardless of the era, regardless of the geographical locale, whether the leader be Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio Batista or Idi Amin, those who caused the problem tend to have a well-funded exit plan in place and are rarely themselves trapped in the fishbowl.

Since this has been the nature of governments throughout history, we’d be wise to observe the situation objectively when assessing the country in which we live, and, we’d be wise to concurrently assess how things are going in other countries. If our home country is literally getting close to the edge, we might wish to make a move before the inevitable occurs.

Historically, in any era, there are always some countries that are getting near the edge and others that are not. The choice for anyone whose situation is reaching its expiry date might wish to vote with his feet, rather than to await the final pull of the tablecloth.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Old Tablecloth Trick appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If human equality is to be forever averted—if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently—then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” — George Orwell, 1984

“In contrast to all other thinkers, left, right, or in-between, the libertarian refuses to give the State the moral sanction to commit actions that almost everyone agrees would be immoral, illegal, and criminal if committed by any person or group in society.” — Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

The government, federal or otherwise, has no business model because it is not a business.  We know this at the outset because government does not compete on the market for people’s money, as every other business must do.  As a monopoly of violence it seizes the money it needs through taxes and monetary inflation.  As long as the government doesn’t get carried away by taxing and inflating too much, most people, some of whom call themselves libertarians, regard this setup as the best we can hope for.

In America Loves Paying Taxes Vanessa Williamson writes:

In national surveys, over 95 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes,” and more than half see taxpaying as “very patriotic.” One man from Ohio called it a responsibility to “the Founding Fathers.” A former Marine said taxpaying is “the cost of being an American,” while a man from California said tax avoidance is the equivalent of “shorting the country.”

Comforting, isn’t it?

Every business, if it is to stay in business, must produce a profit.  It must make more money than it spends.  Competition will force companies to keep its prices as low as possible while still bringing in enough revenue to make a profit.  Without a sound business plan that adjusts to attacks from competition and changing consumer preferences, a firm’s existence will be short-lived.

Consider the once strong demand for MS DOS personal computer applications in the early 1980s (I had a side business writing them). When the Mac came along in 1984 with its Smalltalk-inspired UI Microsoft was caught flat-footed.  Users no longer had to type cryptic commands they couldn’t remember at a blinking cursor; they could do everything they wanted from pull-down menus and a mouse.  The Mac was the computer “for the rest of us.”  Bill Gates immediately ordered creation of a DOS shell he called Interface Manager, later changed to Windows.  It lacked the elegance of the Mac but it sustained the company’s leadership until they created a Windows OS from scratch.

Apple helped Gates by failing to include a killer business app with their radical offering.  Critics said the little Mac couldn’t do anything except paint pretty pictures.  And at a price of $2,495 ($7,760.75 in 2025) it sold poorly.  Later, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple after his dismissal by the company’s board, he decided to empower individual users instead of hidebound organizations and developed a successful marketing strategy with the lowercase “i” and colorful, more powerful home computers.  Apple’s Jony Ive-desgned iMac, introduced on May 6, 1998, reversed the company’s fortunes.

Two years, eight months, and four days later on April 19, 2001, Apple announced that it had shipped its five millionth iMac. That makes approximately 5,112 iMacs sold every day. It’s one iMac every 1.183 seconds.

Assuming he’s allowed to vote freely with his money, the consumer always benefits from innovation and competition.  Companies gathering the most votes stay around and possibly grow, but are always subject to the changing preferences of the ones putting their money down.

One of these things is absolutely different

One could argue that government does indeed have a business plan, and it is straightforward and unique.  Having far more guns than other organizations and virtually limitless latitude to use them it gravitates naturally toward force rather than persuasion.  When it needs more money it doesn’t innovate or economize, it plunders the public.  Resist and you could end up dead, and everyone understands this.  Judging it as we would a business organization it stands out starkly as criminal.

Apple, Microsoft and over 12,500,000 other companies would never get away with forcing people to deal with them at prices they dictate.  Don’t like iPhone’s price?  You don’t have to buy it.  Don’t like any pocket phone (as with my antiquated friend in the Ozarks)?  You’re free not to buy any.  But with government that relationship changes.

Should we wonder why our economy has become a house of cards, when we have a government-provided counterfeiter directing money matters?  Fiat money inflation is the heart and soul of government’s “business plan.”  It conjunction with the Fed it creates gargantuan mountains of debt it never worries about because it’s powerful enough to force taxpayers to pay the interest on it.

Do we need gangsters running our lives?

The argument that the kind of government we have — a monopoly of violence — is necessary is a flagrant violation of the Declaration’s self-evident truths.  How did it happen that government acquired this feature?  Where did it get that authority? Who voted for it?

Mises in Omnipotent Government writes:

With human nature as it is, the state is a necessary and indispensable institution. The state is, if properly administered, the foundation of society, of human coöperation and civilization. It is the most beneficial and most useful instrument in the endeavors of man to promote human happiness and welfare. But it is a tool and a means only, not the ultimate goal. It is not God. It is simply compulsion and coercion; it is the police power.  p142

Since we can’t recruit angels, “Human nature as it is” applies to those conducting state affairs too, which is why we’ve seen so few Ron Pauls and an onslaught of Joe Bidens.  No other entity in society possesses this power.  Does humanity depend on a society built on privileges?  And where is history’s “properly administered” state hiding?

Later in the same book Mises writes,

When the men in office and their methods no longer please the majority of the nation, they will—in the next election—be eliminated, and replaced by other men and another system.

Not surprisingly, the replacements have been disappointing.  Each administration, driven by an unelected cabal, takes government overreach as normal while enhancing the power and pelf of the elites.  If the majority love big government, and the country’s schools are promoting it, voting won’t fix anything.  And as we’ve seen recently voting has been a coup under cover of legitimacy.

The popular idea that the free market is subject to failure is a fallacy, while government failures constitute mankind’s history.  In A Critique of Interventionism Mises wrote that “Measures that are taken for the purpose of preserving and securing the private property order are not interventions in this sense.”  Mises was arguing against “the impracticability of anarchism,” a classical liberal position that acknowledges the state as a necessary evil.  It turns out the state is impracticable, at least for the welfare of the governed.

Rothbard’s 1973 For a New Liberty: A Libertarian Manifesto and other writings eliminated the “necessary evil” excuse and offered a consistent view of a stateless laissez-faire society in its place.

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The outcome now is indisputable. We, the U.S. and NATO, lost our proxy war in Ukraine, a war that will go down in history as one of our worst foreign policy disasters, even worse than our ignominious withdrawal from our 20-year war in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are dead, far more wounded and maimed. 1.72 million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or declared missing in action since the war began. Ukraine’s energy and transportation infrastructure has been decimated. Cities and villages leveled. The U.S. and NATO fought to the last Ukrainian soldier, with no skin in the game. Sorrow blankets the land. Russia is substantially stronger politically, economically, and militarily with stronger ties to Iran, North Korea, and China.

The paucity of NATO’s military forces, capabilities, and industries has been exposed. Conservative political upheaval is growing across Europe. NATO’s viability and utility have been further diminished, having proved useless for deterring Russia for over a decade, its combat equipment decimated by Russian forces on the battlefield. Some $350 billion of U.S. taxpayer money given gratis to Ukraine—with no audit trail—proved a foolish investment, enriching the corrupt Zelensky regime, the U.S. defense industry, and served no purpose other than protracting the war and filling graveyards with brave men and women. Lest we forget, it was all borrowed money increasing U.S. annual deficits and the U.S. debt, which now exceeds $37 trillion.

Considering the immense scope of this avoidable human tragedy, the war demands a candid, unbiased examination of why this war started and why NATO, using Ukraine as its proxy, failed to achieve victory on the battlefield. Over the coming weeks, many explanations will undoubtedly emerge. It is unlikely that any will address the root cause of the war or elucidate the reasons for NATO and Ukraine’s military failure. This two-part essay aims to shed light on these critical issues, hoping that future generations of U.S. political and military leaders entrusted with the responsibility of committing our sons and daughters to war, have a clear understanding of the disastrous consequences of incompetence in both domains.

It Began with A Broken Promise

The path to Russia’s war against Ukraine began with a broken promise made by political leaders of the US and NATO over 30 years ago. On February 9, 1990, just three months after the end of the Cold War and demolition of the Berlin Wall, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker met with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and his aides to chart a way forward after the Cold War and establish a lasting peace between Europe and what became the Russian Federation. During discussions surrounding the reunification of Germany, Premier Gorbachev made it unmistakably clear that “NATO expansion is unacceptable”, and its eastward expansion beyond Germany would be perceived as an existential threat to Russia’s national security. Secretary Baker acknowledged Gorbachev’s concern and assured him that “neither the President [George H.W. Bush] nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place” and that the United States understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction”. Not an inch.

Gorbachev made a grave mistake. He should have had Baker put that declaration in writing and amend the NATO charter accordingly.In less than a decade, U.S. and NATO political leaders reneged on this promise. In 1999, NATO extended membership to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland pushing NATO further east towards the Russian Federation, formed eight years earlier. NATO political leaders ignored Russia’s warning that this expansion would be perceived as a direct threat to Russia’s national security. The lesson for Russia? You cannot trust the word of the United States nor its subservient NATO members.

In his article, Why NATO Expansion Explains Russian Actions in Ukraine, Tom Switzer described the inherent danger this expansion spawned. “During the 1990’s debate over whether Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic should become alliance members, many military and foreign-policy experts argued that NATO expansion would lead to big trouble with Russia. It would create the very danger it was supposed to prevent: Russian aggression in reaction to what Moscow would deem a provocative and threatening Western policy…The list of opponents to NATO enlargement from three decades ago reads like a who’s who of that generation’s wise men.”

One of these esteemed foreign policy experts was former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, George Kennan, the architect of American Cold War strategy of containment that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. In 1997, he prophetically warned “Bluntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking”. Kennan was right. His foresight was ignored. By 2020, eleven additional nations joined the NATO alliance pushing NATO and NATO’s military capabilities further east to Russia’s western border.

Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Coupled with the eastward expansion of NATO, on June 13, 2002, the U.S. abruptly withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty it signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. The ABM Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (later the Russian Federation) barred both superpowers from deploying national defenses against long-range ballistic missiles and from building the foundation for such defenses. The treaty was based on the premise of mutual assured destruction, the belief that stability was ensured by each superpower having confidence in its ability to destroy the other, and the likelihood that if either power constructed a strategic defense, the other would build up its offensive nuclear forces to overwhelm it. The superpowers would therefore find themselves in a never-ending offensive-defensive arms race as each tried to assure the credibility of its offensive nuclear force. The treaty did, however, allow both sides to build defenses against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The ABM Treaty was negotiated and signed concurrently with the Interim Agreement on strategic offensive arms (commonly known as SALT I), the first in what became a series of U.S.-Soviet strategic arms control agreements that first capped, and later reduced, the strategic nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. Both countries considered the treaty a cornerstone of strategic stability which it was for thirty years.

Two years later, the U.S. deployed its first anti-ballistic missile system to Ft. Greely, Alaska. Five years later, the U.S., on behalf of NATO, entered negotiations to place ten (10) additional anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and an ABM missile radar system in Czechoslovakia expanding its ABM shield eastward towards Russia’s doorstep. Russia regarded this decision by the U.S. to deploy its global anti-missile defense system into Poland and Czechoslovakia as the most serious external threat to Russia’s security system since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Adding fuel to the fire, a year later, NATO began serious discussions aimed at admitting both Georgia and Ukraine into the military alliance. From Russia’s perspective, U.S. and NATO intentions were unambiguous.

NATO’s Change in Character

Meanwhile, while this expansion occurred, new reasons were forged by the political leaders of NATO member nations to justify and sustain NATO’s existence. Moreover, NATO morphed from a strictly defensive military alliance as it had been for forty years, into an offensive military alliance far removed from the purpose it was originally formed to achieve—and did achieve—deterring the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe after World War II. Yet, the treaty and its purpose were never changed.

The first evidence of this change in character emerged within a decade of the Soviet Union’s collapse. From March-June 1999, NATO launched an offensive air campaign attacking the armed forces of Serbia over a period of 78 days until Serbia agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and end its conflict with Kosovo Albanians. Political leaders of NATO nations, without the direct authorization of the United Nations Security Council, justified this war ostensibly to end and prevent egregious human rights abuses. Article 5 of the NATO treaty was not invoked. It was ignored. Not a single NATO country was attacked by Serbia.

Two years later, on September 11, 2001, a group of al-Queda terrorists commandeering four commercial airliners, attacked the U.S. killing over innocent citizens. Within days, NATO invoked Article 5, the first and only time in its history. A month later, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan to achieve three objectives: find and kill Osama-bin-Laden, the al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the attack, dismantle al-Qaeda, and overthrow the Taliban regime that had harbored al-Queda. Two years later, in August 2003, NATO assumed command and the mission of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. This offensive military operation marked the first deployment of NATO forces outside Europe and North America.

By 2006, NATO forces were engaged in intensive combat to defeat Taliban insurgents across the entire nation. All thirty nations of NATO contributed forces to this effort in some capacity, fighting or supporting. ISAF continued combat operations to defeat the Taliban until December 2014 when the U.S. withdrew most of its forces. Thus ended eleven years of NATO-led combat operations—for naught. The Taliban were not destroyed. In August 2021, U.S. forces executed an incompetent, humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan followed immediately by the unexpected and rapid collapse of the Afghan National Security Force, a force whose capability and will to fight had been grossly inflated and mis-represented by U.S. commanding generals for years. Taliban forces stormed across the nation and retook control of Afghanistan. 3,606 NATO soldiers were killed during operations from 2001-2021, thousands more were grievously wounded: 68% of the casualties from the U.S, 12% by the United Kingdom, 4.5% by Canada, and the remainder from other NATO nations. The cost of the war was almost $1 trillion dollars, the majority paid by U.S. taxpayers on borrowed money, and achieved nothing.

Given NATO’s history of unmet assurances, the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and NATO’s evolution from a defensive alliance to a more assertive military force, Russia had legitimate grounds for concern over NATO’s potential expansion into Ukraine.

Read the Whole Article

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For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful, Alastair Crooke writes.

Israel’s strategy from past decades continues to rest on the hope of achieving some literal Chimeric transformative ‘de-radicalisation’ of both Palestinians and of the Region, writ large – a de-radicalisation that will make ‘Israel safe’. This has been the ‘holy grail’ objective for Zionists since Israel was first founded. The code word for this chimaera today is the ‘Abraham Accords’.

Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, former Israeli Ambassador to Washington and key Trump ‘whisperer’ – writes Anna Barsky in Ma’ariv (Hebrew) on 24 August – “sees reality with cold political eyes. He is convinced that a real agreement [on Gaza] will never be concluded with Hamas, but [only] with the United States. What is needed, Dermer says, is the Americans’ adoption of Israel’s principles: the same five points that the Cabinet approved: disarmament of Hamas, return of all hostages, complete demilitarization of Gaza, Israeli security control in the Strip – and an alternative civilian government that is not Hamas and not the Palestinian Authority”.

From the perspective of Dermer, a partial hostage release deal – which Hamas has accepted – would be a political disaster. By contrast, were Washington to endorse the Dermer outcome – as an ‘American plan’ – Barsky infers Dermer suggesting: “we would have a situation in which everyone benefits”. Moreover, in Dermer’s logic, “the mere opening of a partial deal gives Hamas a window of two to three months, during which it can strengthen itself and even try to obtain a different ‘final scenario’ from that of the Americans – one that suits [Hamas] better”. “This, according to Dermer, is the truly dangerous scenario”, writes Barsky.

Dermer has for years insisted that Israel can have no peace without the prior ‘transformative de-radicalisation’ of all Palestinians. “If we do it right”, Ron Dermer says, “it will make Israel stronger – and the U.S. too!”

Some years earlier, when Dermer was asked what he saw to be the solution to the Palestinian conflict. He replied that both the West Bank and Gaza must be totally dis-armed. Yet, more important than disarmament however, was the absolute necessity that all Palestinians must be mutationally “de-radicalised”.

When asked to expand, Dermer pointed approvingly to the outcome of WW2: The Germans were defeated, but more significantly, the Japanese had been fully ‘de-radicalised’ and rendered docile by the war’s end:

“Japan had U.S. forces for 75 years. Germany — U.S. forces for 75 years. And if anyone thinks that was by agreement at the beginning they’re kidding themselves. It was imposed, then they understood it was good for them. And over time there was a mutual interest in keeping it”.

Trump is aware of Dermer’s thesis, but seemingly it is Netanyahu who instinctively dithers, so Barsky writes:

“A partial deal [with Hamas] will almost certainly lead to the resignation of Smotrich and Ben Gvir [from the government]… The government will fall apart … A partial deal means the end of the right-right government … Netanyahu knows this well, which is why his hesitation is so difficult. And yet, there is a limit to how long one can hold the rope at both ends”.

Trump seemingly accepts the ‘Dermer Thesis’: “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad”, Trump said of Hamas before leaving for his recent weekend trip to Scotland. “It got to a point where you’re [i.e. Israel] gonna have to finish the job”.

But Dermer’s notion about having the consciousness of adversaries seared by defeat was never just about Hamas alone. It extended to all Palestinians and the region as a whole – and, of course to Iran in particular.

Gideon Levy writes that we must thank the former head of the Military Intelligence, Aharon Haliva, for admitting on Channel 12:

“We need genocide every few years; the murder of the Palestinian people is a legitimate, even essential act”. This is how a “moderate” general in the IDF speaks … killing 50,000 people is “necessary”.

This ‘necessity’ is no longer ‘rational’. It has metamorphosed into bloodlust. Benny Barbash, an Israeli playwright, writes of the many Israelis he meets, including at the demonstrations in favour of a hostage-prisoner deal, who frankly admit:

“Listen, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but the children dying in Gaza really don’t bother me at all. Nor the hunger that’s there, or not. It really doesn’t interest me. I’ll tell you straight: As far as I’m concerned, they can all drop dead there”’

“Genocide as the IDF’s legacy, for the sake of future generations”; “For every one [Israeli] on 7 October, 50 Palestinians have to die. It doesn’t matter now, children. I’m not speaking out of revenge; it’s out of a message to future generations. There’s nothing to be done, they need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price”, Gideon Levy soberly quotes General Haliva saying (emphasis added).

This must be understood to represent a profound shift within the core of Zionist thinking (from Ben Gurion to Kahane). Yossi Klein writes (in Haaretz Hebrew) that:

“We are indeed in the stage of barbarism, but this is not the end of Zionism … [This barbarism] has not killed Zionism. On the contrary, it has made it relevant. Zionism has had various versions, but none resembled the new, updated, violent Zionism: the Zionism of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir …

“The old Zionism is no longer relevant. It established a state and revived its language. It has no more goals … If you ask a Zionist today what their Zionism is, they wouldn’t know how to answer. ‘Zionism’ has become an empty word … Until [that is] Meir Kahane came along. He came with an updated Zionism whose goals are clear: to expel Arabs and settle Jews. This is a Zionism that doesn’t hide behind pretty words. “Voluntary evacuation” makes it laugh. “Transfer” enchants it. It is proud of “apartheid” … To be a Zionist today is to be Ben-Gvir. To be non-Zionist is to be antisemitic. An antisemite [today] is someone who reads Haaretz …”.

Smotrich declared this week that the Jewish people are experiencing ‘physically’, “the process of redemption and the return of the divine presence to Zion – as they engage in the ‘conquest of the land’”.

It is this train of apocalyptic thought that is bleeding into the Trump Administration in its various formats: It is metamorphosing the Administration’s ethical posture towards one of ‘war is war and must be absolute’. Anything less must be seen as mere moral posturing. (This is the Talmudical understanding arising from the story of wiping out the Amalek (see Jonathan Muskat in Times of Israel)).

Thus we can see Washington’s new found thrall for de-capitation of intransigent leaderships (Yemen, Syria and Iran); the support for the political neutering of Hizbullah and the Shi’a in Lebanon; the normalisation of assassination for recalcitrant heads of state (as was mooted for Imam Kamenei); and for the toppling of state structures (i.e. as planned for Iran on 13 June).

The transformation of Israel to this Revisionist Zionism – and its hold over key factions of U.S. thinking – is precisely why war between Iran and Israel has come to be perceived as inevitable.

The Supreme Leader of Iran articulated his understanding of the implications explicitly in his public address earlier this week:

“This [American] hostility has persisted for 45 years, across different U.S. administrations, parties, and presidents. Always the same hostility, sanctions, and threats against the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people. The question is why?.

“In the past, they hid the real reason behind labels like terrorism, human rights, women’s rights, or democracy. If they did state it, they framed it more politely, saying: ‘We want Iran’s behaviour to change”.

“But the man in office today in America gave it away. He revealed the true objective: ‘Our conflict with Iran, with the Iranian people, is because Iran must obey America’. That is what we, the Iranian nation, must clearly understand. In other words: A power in the world expects that Iran—with all its history, dignity and its legacy as a great nation — should simply be submissive. That is the real reason for all the enmity”.

“Those who argue, “Why not negotiate directly with America to solve your problems?” are also looking only at the surface. That’s not the real issue. The real problem is that the U.S. wants Iran to be obedient to its commands. The Iranian people are deeply offended by such a great insult, and they will stand with all their strength against anyone who harbours such a false expectation of them … the U.S.’ real goal is Iran’s submission. Iranians will never accept this ‘great insult’”.

‘De-radicalisation’ in the Dermer thesis’ meaning means installing a Leviathan-esque “despotism that reduces the region to total powerlessness – including that of a spiritual, intellectual and moral powerlessness. The total Leviathan is a unique, absolute and unlimited power, spiritual and temporal, over other humans”, as Dr Henri Hude, former head of the Department of Ethics and Law at France’s prestigious Saint-Cyr Military Academy, has observed.

Former IDF Ombudsman Major General (Res). Itzhak Brik too has warned that Israel’s political leadership are “gambling with Israel’s very existence”:

“They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations [–] the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, [and, or, secondly] a continuing of the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long”.

Thus, as Zionism transforms to what Yossi Klein has defined as ‘late stage Barbarism’, the question arises, could ‘war without limits’ work, despite Hude’s and Brik’s deep scepticism? Could such Israeli ‘terror’ impose on the Middle East an unconditional surrender “that would allow it to change profoundly, militarily, politically and culturally, and to transform as Israeli satellites within an overall Pax Americana?”

The clear response that Dr Hude gives in his book Philosophie de la Guerre is that war without limits cannot be the solution, because it cannot deliver long-lasting ‘deterrence’ or de-radicalisation:

“On the contrary, it is the most certain cause of war. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational than it is, arousing opponents who are even less rational than it is, the Leviathan will fall; and even before its fall, no security is assured”.

Hude identifies too such extreme ‘will to power’ without limits as necessarily containing the psyche of self-destruction within it.

For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational, and angering opponents who are less rational than it is itself, the Leviathan then must – and will – fall.

This is precisely why Iran, even now, knows it must prepare for the Big War as Leviathan ‘arises’. And so too, must Russia – for it is one single war being prosecuted against recalcitrants to the American new order.

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

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August 1st marked the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords’ inking. The event’s golden jubilee passed without much in the way of mainstream comment, or recognition. Yet, the date was absolutely seismic, its destructive consequences reverberating today throughout Europe and beyond. The Accords not only signed the death warrants of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia years later, but created a new global dynamic, in which “human rights” – specifically, a Western-centric and -enforced conception thereof – became a redoubtable weapon in the Empire’s arsenal.

The Accords were formally concerned with concretising détente between the US and Soviet Union. Under their terms, in return for recognition of the latter’s political influence over Central and Eastern Europe, Moscow and its Warsaw Pact satellites agreed to uphold a definition of “human rights” concerned exclusively with political freedoms, such as freedom of assembly, expression, information, and movement. Protections universally enjoyed by the Eastern Bloc’s inhabitants – such as free education, employment, housing and more – were wholly absent from this taxonomy.

Helmut Schmidt, Erich Honecker, and Gerald Ford sign the Helsinki Accords

There was another catch. The Accords led to the creation of several Western organisations charged with monitoring the Eastern Bloc’s adherence to their terms – including Helsinki Watch, forerunner of Human Rights Watch. Subsequently, these entities frequently visited the region and forged intimate bonds with local political dissident factions, assisting them in their anti-government agitation. There was no question of representatives from the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, or Yugoslavia being invited to assess “human rights” compliance at home or abroad by the US and its vassals.

As legal scholar Samuel Moyn has extensively documented, the Accords played a pivotal role in decisively shifting mainstream rights discourse away from any and all economic or social considerations. More gravely, per Moyn, “the idea of human rights” was converted “into a warrant for shaming state oppressors.” Resultantly, Western imperialist brutality against purported foreign rights abusers – including sanctions, destabilisation campaigns, coups, and outright military intervention – could be justified, frequently assisted by the ostensibly neutral findings of “human rights” defenders such as Amnesty International, and HRW.

Almost instantly after the Helsinki Accords were signed, a welter of organisations sprouted throughout the Eastern Bloc to document purported violations by authorities. Their findings were then fed – often surreptitiously – to overseas embassies and rights groups, for international amplification. This contributed significantly to both internal and external pressure on the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia. Mainstream accounts assert the conception of these dissident groups was entirely spontaneous and organic, in turn compelling Western support for their pioneering efforts.

US lawmaker Dante Fascell has claimed the “demands” of “intrepid” Soviet citizens “made us respond.” However, there are unambiguous indications meddling in the Eastern Bloc was hardwired into Helsinki before inception. In late June 1975, on the eve of US President Gerald Ford signing the Accords, exiled Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn addressed senior politicians in Washington, DC. He appeared at the express invitation of hardcore anti-Communist George Meany, chief of the CIA-connected American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Solzhenitsyn declared:

“We, the dissidents of the USSR don’t have any tanks, we don’t have any weapons, we have no organization. We don’t have anything…You are the allies of our liberation movement in the Communist countries…Communist leaders say, ‘Don’t interfere in our internal affairs’…But I tell you: interfere more and more. Interfere as much as you can. We beg you to come and interfere.”

‘Political Aberration’

In 1980, mass strikes in Gdansk, Poland spread throughout the country, leading to the founding of Solidarity, an independent trade union and social movement. Key among its demands was the Soviet-supported Polish government distribute 50,000 copies of Helsinki’s “human rights” protocols to the wider public. Solidarity founder-and-chief Lech Walesa subsequently referred to the Accords as a “turning point”, enabling and encouraging the union’s nationwide disruption, and growth into a serious political force. Within just a year, Solidarity’s membership exceeded over 10 million.

Lech Walesa addresses Polish workers in Gdansk, August 1980

The movement’s inexorable rise sent shockwaves throughout the Warsaw Pact. It was the first time an independent mass organisation had formed in a Soviet-aligned state, and others would soon follow. Undisclosed at the time, and largely unknown today, Solidarity’s activities were bankrolled to the tune of millions by the US government. The same was true of most prominent Eastern Bloc dissident groups, such as Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77. In many cases, these factions not only ousted their rulers by the decade’s end, but formed governments thereafter.

Washington’s financing for these efforts became codified in a secret September 1982 National Security Directive. It stated “the primary long-term US goal in Eastern Europe” was “to loosen the Soviet hold over the region and thereby facilitate its eventual reintegration into the European community of nations.” This was to be achieved by; “encouraging more liberal trends in the region…reinforcing the pro-Western orientation of their peoples…lessening their economic and political dependence on the USSR…facilitating their association with the free nations of Western Europe.”

In August 1989, mere days after Solidarity took power in Poland, marking the first post-World War II formation of a non-Communist government in the Eastern Bloc, a remarkable op-ed appeared in the Washington Post. Senior AFL-CIO figure Adrian Karatnycky wrote about his “unrestrained joy and admiration” over Solidarity’s “stunning” success in purging Soviet influence in the country throughout the 1980s. The movement was the “centerpiece” of a wider US “strategy”, he revealed, having been funded and supported by Washington with the utmost “discretion and secrecy.”

Vast sums funnelled to Solidarity via AFL-CIO and CIA front the National Endowment for Democracy “underwrote shipments of scores of printing presses, dozens of computers, hundreds of mimeograph machines, thousands of gallons of printer’s ink, hundreds of thousands of stencils, video cameras and radio broadcasting equipment.” The wellspring promoted Solidarity’s activities locally and internationally. In Poland itself, 400 “underground periodicals” – including comic books featuring “Communism as the red dragon” and Lech Walesa “as the heroic knight” – were published, read by tens of thousands of people.

Karatnycky boasted of how the Empire was intimately “drawn into the daily drama of Poland’s struggle” over the past decade, and “much of the story of that struggle and our role in it will have to be told another day.” Still, the results were extraordinary. Writers for Warsaw’s NED-funded “clandestine press” had suddenly been transformed into “editors and reporters for Poland’s new independent newspapers.” Former “radio pirates” and Solidarity activists previously “hounded” by Communist authorities were now elected lawmakers.

Signing off, Karatnycky hailed how Poland proved to be a “successful laboratory in democracy-building,” warning “democratic change” in Warsaw could not be a “a political aberration” or “lone example” in the region. Karatnycky looked ahead to further neighbourhood insurrection, noting AFL-CIO was engaged in outreach with trade unions elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, including the Soviet Union itself. So it was, one by one, every Warsaw Pact government collapsed in the final months of 1989, often in enigmatic circumstances.

‘Shock Therapy’

The “revolutions” of 1989 remain venerated in the mainstream today, hailed as examples of successful, largely bloodless transitions from dictatorship to democracy. They have also served as a template and justification for US imperialism of every variety in the name of “human rights” in all corners of the globe since. Yet, for many at the forefront of Western-funded, Helsinki Accords-inspired Warsaw Pact dissident groups, there was an extremely bitter twist in the tale of Communism’s collapse across Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1981, Czechoslovak playwright and Charter 77 spokesperson Zdena Tominová conducted a tour of the West. In a speech in Dublin, Ireland, she spoke of how she’d witnessed first-hand how her country’s population had benefited enormously from Communism. Tominová made clear she sought to fully maintain all its public-wide economic and social benefits, while purely adopting Western-style political freedoms. Given she’d risked imprisonment to oppose her government with foreign help so publicly, her statements shocked audiences.

“All of a sudden, I was not underprivileged and could do everything,” she sentimentally recalled of the eradication of Czechoslovakia’s class system. “I think that, if this world has a future, it is as a socialist society…a society where nobody has priorities just because he happens to come from a rich family,” Tominová declared. She moreover reiterated her vision and mission was global in nature – “the world of social justice for all people has to come about.” But this was not to be.

Czechoslovakia’s late 1989 ‘Velvet Revolution’

Instead, newly ‘liberated’ ex-Eastern Bloc countries suffered deeply ravaging transitions to capitalism via “shock therapy”, eradicating much citizens held dear about the systems under which they’d previously lived. Thrust into a wholly new world, hitherto unknown homelessness, hunger, inequality, unemployment and other societal ills became commonplace, rather than prevented by basic state guarantee. After all, as decreed by the Helsinki Accords, such phenomena didn’t constitute egregious “human rights” breaches, but instead an unavoidable product of the very political “freedom” they had aggressively promoted.

This article was originally published on Global Delinquents.

The post How ‘Human Rights’ Became Western Weapon appeared first on LewRockwell.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has called President Trump “the gravest threat to American democracy.”  Nonetheless, Schumer wants to erase the Second Amendment.  House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries calls Trump a “racial arsonist” and urges supporters to “fight” the Trump administration “in the streets.”  Still, Jeffries wants to limit gun ownership and confiscate Americans’ firearms.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz claims Trump is a “tyrant” who “finds new ways to trample rights” each day.  Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia says, “President Trump is a tyrant.”  Senator Alex Padilla of California insists that Trump is a “tyrant.”  Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon calls Trump a “tyrant.”  Democrat lawmakers across the country have repeatedly described President Trump as a “dictator,” a “racist,” a “white supremacist,” a “Russian agent,” and a “Nazi.”  They have compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and other genocidal maniacs.  They swear that Trump is the greatest “threat to democracy” that Americans have ever faced.

Yet every one of these Democrats wants gun control.  Even after taking oaths to defend the Constitution, they actively work to undermine the Second Amendment.  They believe that only the U.S. military, federal agents, law enforcement officers, and private security details for the well-to-do should be permitted to carry firearms.

Consider this another example of why leftists sound insane to normal people.  Rational individuals don’t prance around complaining about “dictatorship” and “tyranny” while looking for every available excuse to disarm the public.  Historically, when alert citizens feared that a government had become too powerful or an official had become too authoritarian, they encouraged their fellow citizens to be well-armed and prepared to defend themselves.  They did not make long-winded speeches in the town square insisting that the time had come for the people to hand over their weapons so that the “tyrant” could provide for their safety.

In leftist-globalists’ upside-down world, “men” get pregnant, free speech requires censorship, we’re all about to die from “climate change,” and the best way to oppose “fascism” is to relinquish your guns to the government.  As the kids like to say, make it make sense.

One thing seems certain: Democrats don’t really believe President Trump is a “tyrant,” but they are pretty sure that they will soon be back in power.  Democrat officials are deliberately riling up their political followers and legitimizing violence against Trump and his supporters.  At the same time, Democrats expect to exercise exclusive authority over which Americans will be disarmed in the future.

Why wouldn’t they?  Even with Trump in the White House, we live under a two-tier “justice” system right now in which Democrats commit crimes without consequence and Republicans are criminally punished for their political beliefs.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Jim Comey, James Clapper and so many other co-conspirators spied on Republican presidential campaigns, defrauded the American people with the Russia Collusion Hoax, and attempted to overthrow President Trump in a coup d’état.  Those traitors will most likely never be so much as charged for their high crimes.  Meanwhile, corrupt prosecutors and judges in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions have engaged in the worst kinds of lawfare against Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, political advisor Roger Stone, policy strategist Steve Bannon, economic advisor Peter Navarro, and numerous attorneys (including Rudy Giuliani) who litigated 2020’s fraud-filled mail-in-ballot presidential “selection.”

Five years ago, Antifa domestic terrorists and Black Lives Matter shock troops for the Democrat Party burned down entire neighborhoods and caused billions of dollars in property damage across the nation.  Few of these Democrat foot soldiers have ever been prosecuted.  Meanwhile, when Trump voters showed up in D.C. to protest 2020 election fraud and demand secure elections, the FBI and DOJ dedicated unprecedented resources to hunt down every patriotic granny and selfless veteran for the “crime” of walking around the Capitol.  The information warfare specialists in the corporate news still treat Antifa and BLM as if they were peaceful, virtuous organizations.  Those same propagandists have spent the last four-plus years defaming Trump voters as “racists,” “terrorists,” and “insurrectionists.”

When it comes to Democrat plans for gun control, there is no doubt that those who want to deprive Americans of their natural right to self-defense anticipate favorable and continuing two-tiered “justice.”  Although public debate routinely centers around Americans’ Second Amendment right to own weapons, the heart of the issue also concerns the Fourth Amendment — the right of all Americans to be protected against unreasonable government searches without judicially-sanctioned warrants first establishing probable cause.  If Democrats were serious about disarming dangerous criminals, after all, they would go door-to-door in every American neighborhood with an extensive gang presence and arrest anyone illegally in possession of a firearm.  But Democrats have no interest in disarming known criminals.  They have no interest in infringing upon known criminals’ Fourth Amendment rights.  They prefer to target the Second and Fourth Amendment rights of Americans without criminal records.

So-called “red flag” laws aren’t used to disarm urban gangs (that’s racist!) or mentally ill men who pretend to be women (that’s transphobic!).  They are used to target law-abiding gun owners with the “wrong” political beliefs.  Democrat officials routinely ignore violent individuals with the right skin color or sexual fetishes.  Democrats look the other way when illegal aliens are found to be in possession of weapons.  Conversely, Democrats force citizens to jump through hoops to secure concealed carry permits.  Criminals get a pass; citizens are forced to fight the bureaucracy for their constitutional rights.  The more authority that Democrats obtain to confiscate Americans’ firearms, the more certain it becomes that Democrat-aligned foot soldiers will be the only people “entitled” to a weapon.  Like two-tiered “justice,” two-tiered self-defense is the Democrats’ favorite kind of “progress.”

Since the Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis, Democrats and the propaganda press have done everything they can to hide the fact that this anti-Christian attack marked another instance of “trans” terrorism and have instead exploited the tragedy by renewing calls for gun confiscation.  Democrat talking heads ignore the fact that Minnesota already has “red flag” laws that would have permitted Democrat officials to disarm the shooter had his “trans” delusions been considered a sign of troubling mental health.  Because Democrats and the propaganda press have spent the last decade trying to convince normal people that mentally ill “trans” people “deserve our respect,” they cannot now admit the obvious — that violent men who believe they are women are a growing threat to society.

On the toxic sewage dump known as Reddit, leftists are advocating for more attacks on “white Christians” in order to achieve their dream of national gun bans.  As one conservative notes, “If they are openly talking about killing you and your family WHILE you’re armed, imagine what they’ll do once they disarm you.”  Other leftists are actually happy that a “trans” terrorist murdered Catholic school children and hoping that more mass shooters target Christians.  The Minnesota Star Tribune seems primarily concerned about how “trans” terrorism and the murder of praying children will ultimately affect the “trans” community.

For all their talk that President Trump is a “dangerous tyrant,” it is Democrats who continue to embrace violence against political adversaries.  Eddie Scarry wrote an article for The Federalist last week entitled, “Democrats Keep Talking About A ‘Knife Fight’ And It’s Time To Take Them Literally.”  In that piece, Scarry argues that the political party responsible for inciting at least two assassination attempts against President Trump last year is “eager and ready to cross the point of no return.”  The Minneapolis Catholic school terror attack occurred the same day as the article’s publication.

This is no time for vigilant Americans to disarm.  We must defend our families, neighbors, lives, and liberties.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Vigilant Americans Should Be Armed appeared first on LewRockwell.

Dear western liberal,

Saying “I support a two-state solution” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying “I oppose Netanyahu” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying you find the Gaza holocaust “heartbreaking” and “terrible” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying “I want there to be peace” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying you think “both sides” should cease their aggressions does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying “it’s complicated and I don’t understand it” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying “Hamas attacked on October 7” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying “the Jews deserve a homeland” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying “I’m busy” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

Saying “I’m overwhelmed” does not release you from your moral obligation to ferociously oppose a genocide backed by your own government.

We are all morally obligated to do everything we can to oppose a live-streamed genocide that’s being facilitated, supported and defended by the western power structure under which we live. Nothing besides tooth-and-claw ferocious opposition satisfies that moral obligation.

Don’t tell me about your feelings. Don’t tell me what political positions you support. Don’t tell me what thoughts you privately think to yourself. Do everything you can to stop the genocide that’s being facilitated by your government and its allies.

Nothing else qualifies. Nothing else is defensible. Nothing else will satisfy the questions you’ll be asked by younger generations about what you did during the Gaza holocaust.

_____________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Dear Western Liberal, appeared first on LewRockwell.

Occasionally a song lyric hits just the right tone. I heard one recently that sang, “He’s with us while we wait.” The song was talking about God. Younger people might wonder, “what are we waiting for?” Older people know: we wait for peace and rest— and “the rest of the story”.

I recently spent a few months too happily busy to worry about waiting; there were no dull delays. Life was happening, and I had no time to linger, no leisure for unanswered longings. There were school things, sports things, home renovation things, new grandparent things, travel things. I needed to plan stuff, order stuff, tackle this and that. Waiting seemed irrelevant to a life bursting with healthy activity and cool deadlines and real-time excitement.

Well, soon enough, the world, the flesh and devil would have their doggone way. My emotional energy plummeted as serious concerns popped up amid our continued geyser of activity. We discovered our son had a pituitary tumor; meanwhile, my husband’s job had become nearly unbearable. We needed to move several rooms of furniture to clear out for a big renovation and somehow survive without a kitchen. Meanwhile, school was starting, with all its associated hype and demands (see a previous post on over-involved adults).

Aggravations piled up; interruptions marred my carefully engineered schedule. Exciting possibilities were swapped for boring responsibilities. With heavier worries, multiplying chores and no easy solutions in sight, and I slowly festered in an ugly stew of overwhelm.

My problem-solving instincts were still in full swing, though, so I just needed to keep moving. I’d proven my skill in navigating international travels, brain surgery, and home renovations; and for an extra display of multitasking, I would also decorate my college girl’s apartment, order my other kids’ textbooks and school uniforms, and join the special events for my high school senior. On the side, I will figure out how to manage my struggling, elderly mom.

I survived the inner turmoil and household tension by maintaining a neutral facial expression, remaining too busy, and avoiding topics that could spark angry conversations. That worked for a while, but the enemy never sleeps, and he soon capitalized on unguarded moments. We also had a ready supply of needs and complaints—highly combustible materials for his Molotov cocktails.

At the end of our impressive resources, and after weeks of quietly exulting in my endurance and imagined strength—against my very best efforts—I was breaking down; actually, we were breaking down. The summer of multitasking glory was over; it was finally time to wait.

Wait for what? I would now wait for all sorts of elusive things—logistics, healing, direction, and a working kitchen, among them. I waited while resuming the marching orders of motherhood and its school year routines. I waited through days when, surrounded by dangling cords and construction debris, no work crews show up. I still wait through teenage drama, uncertain paths, and my own middle-aged insecurities. Is this big renovation worth it, will my kids get into the right college, and what about my husband’s job? Some of these are luxurious “first world” issues, but they disrupted my peace and forced me to wait.

I recently discovered a contemporary, reformed confession written in the early 1980’s. It’s called “Our World Belongs to God,” and it starts with this:

As followers of Jesus Christ,
living in this world—
which some seek to control,
but which others view with despair—
we declare with joy and trust:
Our world belongs to God!

What an accurate picture of life this presents; it’s the life we want to control, or the life we mourn in despair. If we are honest about our situation, we must admit that it doesn’t conform to the utopian dreams of our youth, and our proud stoicism is cold comfort. We see human misery, we’re bored, and disappointments plague us—and yet, this bold confession proclaims that our world belongs to God!

Biblical truth always cuts deep across our broken human perspective. When things get out of our control, and when dark things conceal our sun, a sense of despair lingers close at hand. Under the enemy’s diabolical suggestions, our circumstances feel hopeless and empty. We deny or forget God, mistake his character, and imagine that this world actually belongs to humans; we imagine that we are the center of a tragic cosmic story.

The devil is a liar, as he has been from the beginning, yet we believe his lines again and again. Contrary to his claims, though, our world does belong to God, and that same God speaks into our chaos through his truthful word. He does not speak through our lying emotions, experts, or astrologers; he chose the written word to communicate his redemptive kingship to a sinful and needy world that sits squarely within his control.

The God who made heaven and earth promises us peace through Jesus Christ, who provides authentic, purposeful and eternal life, even in the midst of our guaranteed troubles. He brings order to spiritual chaos. His timeline extends into eternity; and nothing—not today’s sin, disease, addiction, weather, political revolution or collapse—can thwart this beautiful cosmic will.

Before I move on, if you’re not familiar with how God reveals himself in scripture, look over these verses that speak of his character and purposes, from creation to our present darkness.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.” Genesis 1:1-4

Why do the nations rage, and the people plot in vain?…..He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Psalm 2:1, 4

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers. Psalm 24:1-2

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

The thief comes only to steal and skill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16:33

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!” Revelation 5:13

For those who are intimidated by the biblical language, its truth can be summarized by metaphor. The architect of our cosmos has designed us to fit within his master plan; the author of truth wrote our chapter to fit within his epic storyline. History is truly his story, and for those who know its author, it won’t disappoint.

We can’t always decipher our circumstances, but without a doubt we can know they are accomplishing eternal plans. For believers, these struggles must conform us to the character of Christ, work everything for our good, and point to his glory. For nonbelievers, they expose persistent voids that will only be satisfied in our creator; ultimately, they reveal a cosmic chasm only Jesus Christ can bridge.

Back to my own construction dust, I see God is as busy as ever, even if the drywall guys still haven’t arrived. He hasn’t laid out blueprints that would satisfy my cravings for control, but he has promised to complete his perfect work in me. God’s purposes aren’t held up by permits, surgeries or school schedules. He will accomplish everything written in his scroll.

How can I know that? It’s written in his word: Many are the plans in the mind of man, but it’s the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

This article was originally published on Restoring Truth.

The post While We Wait appeared first on LewRockwell.