Aggregatore di feed

Dear Secretary Bessent,

I read with great interest your July 21 comment at the Federal Reserve Capital Conference that: “What we need to do is examine the entire Federal Reserve institution and whether they have been successful. . . . All of these Ph.D.s over there, I don’t know what they do. . . . This is like Universal Basic Income for academic economists.”

Having been an academic Ph.D. economist for forty-one years I believe I can offer a little insight into whether the Fed has been successful (it unequivocally has not), as well as what “All of these Ph.D.’s over there” do. There is a mountain of academic research that shows that the Fed has failed on all counts. It has not only failed, but has made the economy far more unstable and with more price inflation than there was before the Fed existed, for one thing.

As for what all those Fed economists do, well, their Job Number One is to obfuscate these failures with their writings and speeches and to do their best to censor Fed Critics. Furthermore, since every Fed economist is a government bureaucrat, they all do what all government bureaucrats do: They are relentless lobbyists for bigger budgets, more power, a bigger staff, and more pay and perquisites for Fed employees. They also focus much of their research on the left-wing political fads of the day, such as “climate change,” racism, gender, inequality, and other projects of the political Left.

As for perquisites, I understand that you are a bit critical of the Fed’s spending $2.5 billion on renovations to its headquarters building in Washington, DC. Not for a new building, but for renovations of their already palatial headquarters. To put this into perspective, the cost of building Trump Tower (in the early 1980s), adjusted for inflation, was about $921 million. That’s building, not renovating. And people wonder why the Fed has never acquiesced in being audited. There is a large literature in the economics subdiscipline of public choice about how government bureaucracies tend to be budget maximizers, for that it show bureaucrats can personally benefit from the growth of government—bigger budgets means more prospects for higher pay, promotions, larger staffs, and myriad perquisites such as multi-billion-dollar buildings to work in. The Fed would appear to be the Mother of All Budget-Maximizing Government Bureaucracies. (Note that “budget maximizing” is a synonym for “cost maximizing,” the opposite of what every successful private business strives to do).

Secretary Bessent, I recommend that you read a study by Lawrence H. White, William Lastrapes, and George Selgin “commemorating” the centennial of the Fed entitled “Has the Fed Been a Failure?” These authors surveyed 195 peer-reviewed academic publications about the Fed’s performance from an historical perspective. On the Fed’s obligation to control inflation, they concluded that the Fed “has allowed the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar . . . to fall dramatically. A consumer basket [of goods] selling for $100 in 1790 cost only slightly more, at $108, than its equivalent in 1913 (the year of the Fed’s founding). But thereafter the price soared, reaching $2,422 in 2008.”

The highest annual rates of price inflation since the Civil War occurred “under the Fed’s watch,” these authors point out, referring to the high inflation rates of 1973-1975 and 1978-1980. They also concluded that prices became less predictable after the Fed was created, making economic calculation more difficult. Such uncertainty tends to stifle business investment because many businesses delay their plans if they are unsure of what their costs are going to be.

They cite the research of President Obama’s chief economist, Professor Christina Romer of the University of California at Berkeley, which shows that the business cycle was more volatile after the Fed was created than it was in the previous decades after the Civil War. The Fed is also responsible for the never-ending economic crises caused by its own policies, such as the ones we saw in 1953, 1957, 1960, 1969, 1973,1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008, and 2020. Not to mention causing a depression in 1920 shortly after it was created, and fueling the stock market crash of 1929 less than a decade later. The Fed’s response to these crashes caused by its explosive monetary growth is always even more explosive monetary growth that fuels the next crash down the road.

The Fed employs around 500 of those academic economists you alluded to, and they compose a large army of Fed apologists and propagandists whose job is to invent fanciful theories in defense of the Fed, and to ignore research that is critical of the Fed. In 2005, Professor Lawrence H. White published a peer-reviewed journal article that highlighted the dominance of Fed-related (and often paid) economists in the field of monetary economics. In addition to its 500 or so academic economists on the Fed payroll, the Fed invites hundreds more to its conferences. Professor White found that 74 percent of all academic articles on monetary policy published by American economists in the year of his study were either in Fed-published journals or co-authored by Fed economists. As Milton Friedman once said, “If you want to advance in the field of monetary research. . . you would be disinclined to criticize the major employer in the field.”

Today’s Fed is just another Washington, DC, government-funded appendage of the Democrat party for the most part. In an Independent Review article entitled “Political Affiliations of Federal Reserve Economists,” Professor Emre Kuvvet found that the Democrat-to-Republican ratio at the Fed’s Board of Governors is 48.5:1. The Democrat-to-Republican ratio of Fed Board of Governor economists “in leadership positions” is 45:1. The Fed’s district banks are just as biased. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has twelve Democrats and one Republican economist. The Dallas Fed has sixteen Democrats and two Republican economists. The Philadelphia Fed has thirty-nine Democrat and five Republican economists. It is little wonder that Professor Kuvvet reports that research published by the regional Fed banks has become dominated by the topics of “race, gender, climate change, and inequality.” All of this is done by an institution that doggedly claims to be independent of politics!

When Fed economists are not busy publishing papers about climate change and “gender issues,” they are defending the massive central planning machinery of the Fed that regulates virtually all financial transactions of any kind, Soviet style. You mentioned in your July 21 speech that just one regulatory change in the Community Reinvestment Act recently included 60,000 words.

Perhaps the best example of this Soviet-style, central planning mindset that is inherent in the Fed is its insistence that one man—the Fed chairman—should have such influence as he has on interest rates. Interest rates should be set by supply and demand of loanable funds, incorporating the rates of time preference of individuals, and not by a Wizard-of-Oz-type character whose pronouncements keep the entire financial world sitting on the edges of its seats for every utterance of The Great Oz.

We have abolished central banks three times in our history—the Bank of North America, the First Bank of the United States, and the Second Bank of the United States. Today’s central bank is infinitely more insidious than the first three, for it is armed with armies of regulators, central planners, and propagandists and is arguably the largest governmental central planning bureaucracy on the planet, three-and-a-half decades after central planning was finally and conclusively discredited—or so we thought—with the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Finally, you were right to include that the Fed’s large stable of academic economists is a good example of “Universal Basic Income for academic economists.”

Sincerely,

Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, President, The Mises Institute

The post An Open Letter to Treasury Secretary Bessent appeared first on LewRockwell.

Never underestimate the incoming tsunami of disruptive “analysis” and predictive programming already embedded in the Hybrid War on China – and the larger war on BRICS.

Never underestimate the incoming tsunami of disruptive “analysis” and predictive programming already embedded in the Hybrid War on China – and the larger war on BRICS.

Cue to the latest 128-page report by the Hudson Institute in D.C. titled oh so prophetically, China After Communism: Preparing for a Post-CCP China.

You are fully entitled to react in a “Knights Who Say ‘Ni!’” Monty Pythonish way when confronting this inane absurdity. But make no mistake, they take it very seriously. US Think Tankland is a master of telegraphing regime change dreams and existential fears years in advance, in excruciating detail.

That was the case of that tawdry RAND report on blowing up Russia on several fronts, or that tawdry Brookings report on dismembering Persia, actually Iran. Now it’s the turn of the most powerful of the new Primakov triangle (RIC) in BRICS: China.

They are really playing ‘Light my Fire’ on steroids, believing a “sudden regime collapse in China is not entirely unthinkable.” They hark back to the old OSS – the precursor to the CIA – and its ops in China during WWII to suggest that “US special operations forces (SOF) can help stabilize a post-CCP China.”

Mediocre Sinophobe Extraordinaire Gordon Chang advises D.C. to “get American businesses and citizens out of China” and to “remove” Beijing “entities” from important sectors of the US economy.

There’s the inevitable call for the US to “protect human rights during a transitional period” and US intervention “to prevent ethnic violence, civil wars, and political retribution, with a special focus on China’s five autonomous regions – Guangxi, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia.” Yes, let’s build a Disneyland in Tibet.

After the color revolution/regime change op is on a roll, “post-Communist China can establish a constitutional democracy and draft a new constitution”. All supervised by the Empire of Chaos, of course, which will define “China’s relationship with Taiwan” and even “what the new country’s name should be”.

The high-speed train of yuan internationalization

It will be a blast to observe the reaction of Chinese citizens on Weibo, Tik Tok and Guancha to this oh so benign demolition enterprise. Of course this document cannot be taken seriously as a recommended strategic policy. It barely qualifies as shabby psy ops/shallow propaganda, carrying several embedded PhDs in Cognitive Dissonance.

The target is not Chinese public opinion, but actually masses of semi-illiterate Americans – brainwashed 24/7 for eons on the threat posed by evil commies. And evil Russkies. And “the ayatollahs”.

Talk about Clash of Civilizations for sub-dummies.

I propose as a realist antidote our recent conversation hosted by Guancha in Shanghai, involving Professor Huang Jing, Tricontinental founder Vijay Prashad and myself on the larger war of the Empire of Chaos against China and BRICS.

Add to it some fine observations by Miao Yanliang, who’s now chief strategist at the CICC investment bank, formerly with the China State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), part of the People’s Bank of China, and a connoisseur of the Empire, as he got his PhD in Princeton.

Miao recently delivered a quite intriguing speech at Peking University, published as a CICC report in early June.

So let’s start with de-dolarization. Miao argues that “building a multipolar currency system requires policy coordination and exchange rate flexibility among major currency-issuing economies.” Now ‘two key obstacles that once constrained the internationalisation of the renminbi—high US interest rates and persistent depreciation expectations during periods of trade tension—have begun to reverse.”

Translation: from now on China has a wealth of possibilities to leverage its global trade to promote the internationalization of the yuan.

On the American ability to maintain the US dollar’s reserve currency status, Miao points to two factors: “whether the United States can continue to lead the technological revolution”; and “whether it can preserve the advantages of its financial system, such as the Federal Reserve’s independence and the self-regulating and corrective capabilities of its financial markets.”

Yet what’s accelerating now is rather the “fragmentation of the international monetary system”. So we should expect increased use of yuan in payment settlements and as “a store of value”; that’s already happening all across BRICS.

Miao points to the key vector: the yuan is now “a low-interest currency, while the US dollar is high-interest.” Trump 2.0 tariffs “on all countries have contributed to the appreciation” of the yuan.

This high-speed train is now leaving the station: “By leveraging China’s manufacturing strengths in sectors such as machinery, electronics, and new energy equipment”, China is encouraging BRICS nations and partners to use the yuan “for trade settlement, thereby creating a self-sustaining cycle” driven by “real trade demand.”

This is the system those clowns want to regime-change.

They never learn

Well, they did not learn anything out of the collective West humiliation in the proxy war in Ukraine. A top old school hand of the Deep State, now retired, and familiar with the glory days of the OSS, sums it all up. Relevant excerpts of our conversation:

“The US and Europe are already at war with Russia and they are losing it. The US has 20,000 armed troops in Europe to face Russia. NATO forces are largely a figment of the imagination.

Ukraine is nothing but a front in the US battle for control of the Eurasian land mass a la Mackinder. The US cannot supply both Israel and Europe at the same time. It has overstretched itself. As for Europe, it has no army of any consequence and most of its equipment is antiquated. All of it is pure bluff.”

He adds, “the Europeans are waking up to the fact that the US has a moat around it so that it can be reached only by ICBMs and submarine missiles but Europe is in itself indefensible as short range conventional missiles can destroy it. Nukes are not required to destroy Europe in one day but a rain of Russian missiles.”

Now compare that with Russia’s top negotiator in the Istanbul kabuki, historian Medinsky, when asked whether Moscow fears new sanctions by the EU and the US:

“This is not a question for us, not for the negotiating group. I can tell you this. After the revolution and civil war in 1920, again, another historical reference, we had not only sanctions, we had an absolute diplomatic and economic blockade of Soviet Russia from everyone. Everyone! It did not prevent us from winning World War II (…) Nothing will prevent Russia from winning now, The only question is the price of victory and the time it takes to achieve it.”

This is something that will never sink in amongst Think Tankland in D.C. As much as the technological accomplishments – now visible – of the Made in China 2025 plan will never sink in.

Enter bluster, hubris, the regime change obsession – and worse. Because if the US ruling class psycho killers finally conclude they cannot maintain their unilateral world hegemony even via war, they will abandon their cherished Think Tankland “reports” for good and even resort, in despair, to a Samson option.

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

The post Destroy Russia. Fail? No Problem: Let’s Destroy China! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Every now and then, regardless of how difficult things are or how much you begin to doubt what you are doing, you will come across something that reminds you that what you are doing matters and you need to continue.

That happened to me today when I saw a recent JAMA study surveying pregnant mothers and parents of young children, which found:

That study, in turn, concluded with:

Given the high decisional uncertainty during pregnancy about vaccinating children after birth, there may be value in intervening during pregnancy to proactively support families with childhood vaccination decisions.

As COVID had been such a severe overreach, I had hoped that the COVID cartel’s greed would awaken people to the issues with vaccination and prompt significant skepticism against the existing pediatric vaccines. However, I did not expect such a large shift to occur so quickly. To briefly put this in context:

First, while there has been an overall loss of trust in vaccination (which I consider to be absolutely profound), the drop in confidence is much greater among the youngest generation, who are actually making the decisions to vaccinate their children. Consider for example, the results of this January survey, where far more than 37% of all Americans fully trusted and intended to follow the CDC schedule.

Second, a total of 37% of American parents fully trust the schedule, which represents a massive drop compared to the historical baseline. Specifically:

• In 2000, 19% of parents had “concerns about vaccines”
• In 2003, 28% of parents had “vaccine hesitancy,” of whom approximately two-thirds delayed or refused only certain vaccines.
• In 2009, 50% of parents had “concerns about vaccines” and 11.5% had refused at least one vaccine for their child (most commonly refusing the injurious HPV vaccine)
• In 2010, 89% of pediatricians reported at least one vaccine refusal by a parent each month, with yearly childhood flu shots being the most commonly refused vaccine.
• In 2011, 13% of parents followed an alternative vaccine schedule (e.g., skipping or delaying some vaccines)—most of whom had originally followed the CDC schedule, along with 2.2% skipped all vaccines.
• In 2013, 9% of parents declined or postponed all immunizations, and 32% had concerns about vaccine safety.

The key context to understand about these figures is that they were alarming to the medical field, as their baseline had been to expect almost all parents would vaccinate without complaining and if someone dared to step out of line by doing something as simple as delaying vaccines (as more vaccines close together at a young age increases the likelihood of an injury) they were crucified by the medical field and often lost their licenses. As such, if you consider the figures they were alarmed by, and then compare them to the current reality, the difference is essentially “night and day.”

Third, a major way vaccine compliance is enforced is through social pressure (e.g., “everyone else is doing it, so you must be crazy or a bad parent if you aren’t”) and mandates. Both of these are predicated on the majority of the population being vaccinated, which essentially is why the medical industry was so concerned about vaccine use dropping below 90%.

As such, I believe a key reason why so many unconscionable and aggressive childhood mandates were pushed across America in 2019 (e.g., the California ones), despite widespread public protest, was because the vaccine industry realized they were losing the majority necessary to justify (an unscientific and unconscionable) vaccine program and hence had to default to forcing them to vaccinate.

Note: in 2020, I realized a very aggressive marketing campaign was being made for the COVID vaccines which would “save us from the lockdowns.” Because of that, I concluded that the vaccine campaign would go through a series of escalating stages (e.g., mass promoting the vaccine as a miracle then selling it on scarcity, remove the scarcity to catch everyone else who’d been pulled in, give gifts for vaccinating, create soft mandates through social restrictions on visiting public areas or businesses, introduce hard mandates at certain companies, create nationwide mandates). This was because the later mandates were unviable unless most of the population was already vaccinated (e.g., if 10% of America was vaccinated, restaurants would never ban unvaccinated customers), so it was critical to vaccinate as many people as possible before trying to push the previously inconceivable workplace mandates. In parallel, one of the only things which has ever gotten California to back down on certain school mandates (e.g., for the COVID vaccines) was so many parents refusing and being willing to pull their kids out of the schools that the state could not afford to lose the Federal Education dollars that would have resulted in.

Fourth, if you look at the recent July results, you will notice that many parents are, to varying degrees, “undecided.” What this means is that we have a real chance to permanently change the vaccine paradigm if we can provide both direct stories of tragic vaccine injuries (especially if the injured party is within the parent’s community) and if we can continue to provide trustworthy and balanced information that clearly shows the actual risks and benefits of vaccinations.

Many like me are doing that, and I believe we are having a real impact. More importantly, RFK Jr. is working with the HHS to release the gold standard evidence on vaccine injury, and once that comes out, the foundation has been laid for those rejecting vaccines to become the majority. This is extremely important, particularly since many are still advocating for vaccine mandates (e.g., I’ve received numerous concerned emails from readers that Hawaii’s left-wing physician governor will soon remove religious exemptions and hence mandate them,1,2,3 just like California’s Dr. Pan did). However, none of that can happen if the majority of America does not trust the vaccines and hence sees vaccines as a corrupt assault on their health and liberty.

Note: these trends are also demonstrated by a recent large JAMA study of 443,445 Americans, which found that in April 2020, 71.5% of them trusted doctors and hospitals, while in January 2024, only 40.1% did

Vaccine Propaganda

The actual evidence against vaccines is atrocious (e.g., independent studies all show they make you 3-10x more likely to develop a variety of chronic illnesses, and there is over a century of literature showing they cause profound neurological injuries). Because of this, the only viable way to maintain the vaccine market has been to prohibit all independent research on vaccine safety (which is why RFK’s government studies are so important) and gaslight the country.

At its core, propaganda exists to sell “unsellable” ideas to the public. To accomplish this, the sale must be emotional rather than logical, as indefensible ideas quickly dissipate when exposed to debate. As such, propaganda relies upon a variety of tactics which are emotional in nature but often masquerade as being scientific.

For example, much of propaganda revolves around using words that elicit emotional responses in people and having the media collectively reinforce that emotional reaction. As such, many debates, regardless of the arguments put forward often devolve into those emotionally charged slurs (e.g., “you’re a racist,” “you are a climate change denier,” “you don’t believe in science” “you’re an anti-vaxxer” “you are a peddler of dangerous conspiracies” “you’re a quack”). Because of this:
• Non-scientific positions are often erected by having a few false slogans to defend them which are shouted until they drown out any competing arguments (rather than the arguments being seriously considered).
• A lot of work goes into sculpting the most emotionally manipulative phrase (or imagery) which can support a desired narrative, at which point it is blasted throughout the entire mass media and then adopted by everyday people who come to believe the phrases were their own ideas.

More importantly, propaganda takes advantage of the fact people are naturally hesitant to stray from the crowd, and as such, if they hear the same message everywhere (particularly if their peers also adopt it), most will quickly adopt it too. Because of this, the mass media will collectively parrot the same messages, collectively denounce those who deviate from them, have an endless stream of “experts” on to defend the status quo, and most importantly, never allow the other side to be heard.

In turn, many of the major problems with medicine in our country ultimately from from a 1997 decision by the FDA to legalize television pharmaceutical advertisements, at which point, the pharmaceutical industry became the mass media’s largest advertiser. Soon after, that financial influence was leveraged to suppress media scrutiny, gradually eliminating news reports questioning the pharmaceutical industry—especially those about vaccines—making it nearly impossible to imagine critical news programs like those that once aired existing today.
Note: news anchors who witnessed this shift, like Sharyl Attkisson have attested to it.

Because of the blank check this monopoly on truth gave them, the vaccine industry became increasingly brazen in its actions (e.g., pushing more and more injurious vaccines onto the market, enacting more and more censorship, and then implementing more and more mandates). Fortunately, like many who suddenly rise to power, they overstepped and created a significant backlash, which has arguably left the industry in its worst position ever.

This is because, in addition to the mounting injuries (as the more vaccines children get, the more injuries they will have), an even larger backlash was occurring against the mass media in general, making it much harder for them to maintain control over unpopular narratives like vaccination.

Note: in recent decades, especially the last one, the media has gotten more and more aggressive in asserting its narrative (regardless of how nonsensical it is) while suppressing all dissenting ones. Since the internet has become integrated into the fabric of society, and well produced content (e.g., those debunking mass media lies the public is against) can rapidly go viral, the existing model no longer works. If anything, the more that it is doubled down on, the more people lose trust in it.

Contorting Medical Injuries

One of my morbid hobbies has been studying how pharmaceutical drugs injure and disable people and within this spectrum, I find the ones that create psychiatric issues alongside physical ones to be particularly cruel.

For example, SSRI antidepressants have many common side effects (e.g. sexual dysfunction, bipolar disorder, emotional numbness, terrible withdrawals and at times psychotic violence), many of which cause the individual to feel as though they are “losing their mind” and desperately want to stop the drugs. However, rather than recognize the drug is injuring them, the doctor will often tell the patient those side effects are due to the patient’s own mental illness rather than being a commonly recognized side effect of the drugs.

As such, the patient will be told to continue taking their drugs. Furthermore, since “mentally ill” patients are often deemed to lack the capacity to make their own judgment, whereas psychiatrists are seen as authority figures, I have seen more cases than I can count where everyone (e.g., the patient’s family and the courts [which frequently mandate treatment]) side with the psychiatrist rather than the patient, in turn all insisting those side effects are due to the patient’s mental illness and force the patient to take even more psychiatric drugs.
Note: this gets even more challenging for the patient when they begin to lose their grip on reality from the side effects of the drug and start questioning their own judgment, or if they should give up on themselves and just blindly trust the authority figures around them.

Some of the classic ways psychiatry gaslights patients include:

• Telling them that any symptom that emerges is due to the pre-existing mental illness.

• When a patient experiences adverse effects from a drug, the dosage is increased rather than acknowledging the side effects.
Note: this is a story commonly seen immediately preceding catastrophic school shootings, but unfortunately, since there is widespread denial in the psychiatric field that SSRIs can make patients turn psychotic, it is rarely recognized (hence leading to it happening over and over again).

• When a patient experiences withdrawal reactions (which is very common and one of the most insidious issues with the SSRIs), telling the patient that those side effects prove the patient “needed” the drug (as it was treating their mental illness) rather than it being recognized as a dangerous withdrawal effect.

• When a patient develops new psychiatric symptoms (e.g., mania) patients are told the drug did not “cause” the symptoms, but rather, that the drug “unmasked” a psychiatric disorder that had always been there (even though it would have never been “unmasked” if the patient had not used the drug in the first place). For example, bipolar disorder is a debilitating condition which around 25% of longterm SSRI users develop (hence leading to an epidemic of bipolar disorder ever since we started mass medicating with SSRIs), and since it is so common, the “unmasking” story has become the party line most psychiatrists use to rationalize the harm being caused to their patients.

Sadly, gaslighting is not unique to psychiatry. For example, throughout many of the clinical trials for the more toxic drugs on the market, trial participants developed severe side effects, but to ensure the pharmaceutical’s approval, those reactions were hidden both from the trial participants and the government by the clinical trial investigators. For example, I’ve detailed the appalling degree to which this was done in:
• The SSRI clinical trials.
• The HPV vaccine trials.
• The COVID vaccine trials.
Note: many were appalled by what whistleblowers shared happened in the COVID vaccine trials (e.g., everyone telling them a clear injury they had wasn’t “real”), but as I tried to illustrate in those articles, these are actually long standing problems in clinical trials (as they cost so much money to conduct, the pharmaceutical sponsors will do everything they can to “prove” the trial showed the drug was “safe and effective”).

Since doctors are trained to believe an injury is only “real” (rather than an anecdotal coincidence or simply imagined in the patient’s mind) if the injury is proven to exist within “unbiased” clinical trials, the gaslighting you see in the clinical trials sets of a chain of gaslighting as doctors around the world will believe what the clinical trials showed is true and hence dismiss the same injuries in their own patients which were covered up the clinical trials (and hence never made it to the final clinical trial report).

Note: since many different drugs cause neurological injuries (particularly in susceptible people) that are misdiagnosed as psychiatric injuries, this creates a huge problem, particularly since those patients are often fed into the psyche funnel, at which point they get put on even more neurologically destructive medications.

Read the Whole Article

The post Ending Medical Gaslighting appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is important to debate ideas.  Debating those who disagree with you clarifies your own thoughts and shores up weaknesses in your reasoning.  Civil argument is wonderful exercise for the mind.  Healthy minds make good citizens.  Good citizens maintain strong societies.

It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to conclude that one of the first signs of a crumbling society is the inability of its people to argue peacefully among themselves.

I think most people born before 1990 would agree that public debate has disintegrated over the last three decades.  We are no longer able to argue passionately — perhaps even shouting at each other — and end our disagreements by shaking hands, smiling, and moving on.  Everything today is a vicious grudge match that participants treat as existential in nature — either I win this debate or my worth as a person is zero!

Ideological zealotry has replaced thinking.  Thinking requires a person to accept the limitations of his knowledge and the possibility that he might be wrong.  Ideological zealotry short-circuits the mind’s capacity for reason and prevents those so afflicted from enjoying true creativity.

In my experience, this affliction primarily torments those who would identify as being part of the political left.  No doubt they would call me a partisan and explain all the ways my Christian beliefs trap me in a mental prison.  They would be wrong.  People who are confident in their beliefs should welcome outside challenges.

At some point as we move from adolescence to adulthood, those with enough curiosity to chase answers in this life have an epiphany: Truth abides regardless of how vigorously it is tested.  It is only when we are willing to leave the relative safety of what we already know to ask questions about what we do not that we can intellectually, morally, and spiritually prosper.  A person’s convictions are only as strong as that person’s willingness to test those convictions daily.  Faith leads us to truth, and truth leads us to faith.

In this regard, modern leftists fail.  They are currently unwilling and unable to test their beliefs.  They are not capable of admitting past mistakes or acknowledging the limits of their knowledge.  Perhaps because so many reject the existence of God, they are more inclined to see themselves as gods in this world.  To question their beliefs, in other words, is to question their theology and their religious devotion to themselves.

This was not always the case.  There was a time when leftists debated me on many subjects, and when we were done, we shook hands and continued as friends.  What has changed?  Two observations stand out — one moral or philosophical and the other institutional.

First, it was not so strange to find Christian leftists in the past.  No matter how much they might depend upon Marx as a crutch, their charitable inclinations, suspicions of free markets, or anti-war worldviews was grounded in their Christian faith.  As such, they knew that they did not have all the answers and that the surest path toward truth required an acknowledgment of one’s limitations, a willingness to seek penitence, an eagerness to heed one’s calling, and a desire to obey God’s will.

In my estimation, scientists who believe in God are much more creative intellectuals than their atheistic colleagues.  I have long suspected that this is so because the former are certain that there is much that they can never know, while the latter are certain that they will know everything.  When one believes that man is master over everything, an intellectual dullness sets in.  When one knows that God is master over everything, scientific exploration is like getting a backstage pass to see some of God’s handiwork.

The second major change over the last few decades is that the political left cemented its control over the university campus, creative arts industry, and government bureaucracy.  Although this “march through the institutions” has been a century in the making, it wasn’t so long ago when non-leftist thinkers still occupied valuable territory in the worlds of academia, publishing, and government.  If for no other reason than ensuring their own professional survival in environments where diversity of thought continued to exist, leftists once interacted with non-leftists more civilly.

Any vestige of that past is now long gone.  As leftists came to dominate the institutions, they became much more vocal in pronouncing their beliefs as undeniable and much more adamant in imposing those beliefs upon everyone else.  In fact, leftists seem to have misinterpreted their present perch atop the institutions as veritable proof that everything they believe is the absolute truth.  They have no interest in debating people with contrary worldviews because they have convinced themselves that their current cultural superiority is unimpeachable evidence that all other worldviews are wrong.  They will not defend their beliefs with logical reason because they are certain that conflicting beliefs are ipso facto unreasonable.

For decades, Americans mocked “political correctness” as something foreign to our culture.  It was common to hear leftists and non-leftists alike preface a joke by saying, “This isn’t politically correct” before laughing about politically incorrect things.  One of the unifying elements of American society was a general agreement among Americans of all political stripes that free speech is invaluable and that self-censorship is anti-American.  I had many conversations with leftists and non-leftists over the years who all expressed a similar sentiment — that American society would demonstrate that it had grown beyond petty racial, ethnic, sexual, and class divisions when everyone learned to “take a joke.”

Tragically, nobody can take a joke this century.  Words must be analyzed with intense scrutiny.  Hidden biases must be diagnosed.  Innate privileges must be identified.  Language must be policed.  People are desperate to have their feelings hurt and to express publicly how they have been offended.  Were I to tell everyone with pronouns in his bio, “Toughen up, buttercup,” I would be guilty of various -isms, supremacies, and general “hate speech.”

When hate is criminalized, the powers that be need only adjust their hate knobs accordingly to censor all dissenting speech.  “Political correctness” in America is no longer a laughing matter.  Good people have been fired, canceled, stigmatized, and even prosecuted for offending the political left.  Free speech in America remains on life support because leftists have imported foreign self-censorship.

Perhaps most bemusing is how many leftists born before 1990 now embrace this malignant oppression.  Leftists who once would have laughed at the idea that men should compete in women’s sports or that kindergarteners should be forced to attend “drag queen story hour” now speak of “transgenderism” as if it were a sacred “truth.”  Leftists who once advocated for a “colorblind” society now obsess over race.  Leftists who once argued that free speech is worth any fight now demand that governments and social media companies censor everyone with whom they disagree.

Leftists will not debate because they cannot debate.  They are ideological zealots no longer capable of independent thinking.

In this regard, writer Michael Schwarz recently brought a hilarious video from The Babylon Bee to my attention.  In this satirical gem entitled “Liberal Goes Back in Time to Kill Hitler,” a “woke” social justice warrior reluctantly realizes that she and Adolf have much in common — including their love for socialized medicine, abortion, gun control, government censorship, environmental regulation, antisemitism, and authoritarian expertise.

The whole thing is a hoot.  But beware: This video is “politically incorrect.”  You might be “canceled” for promoting it.  And leftists certainly won’t understand it.  They are simply not capable of appreciating how much they now have in common with Hitler’s Nazis.  They no longer know how to think.  They know only how to repeat slogans, impose “correct” beliefs, and punish apostates.  Besides, it’s hard to laugh when you’re busy goose-stepping.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Leftists Can’t Take a Joke appeared first on LewRockwell.

“As for (German Chancellor) Mr. Merz, he has repeatedly said amusing things, including that his main goal is to once again make Germany the leading military power in Europe. He didn’t even choke on the word ‘again’.” -Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, July 11th, 2025

On Wednesday, May 14th, 2025, the German Chancellor Friedrch Merz made a statement in the Bundestag asserting that he was intent on transforming the Bundeswehr into “the strongest European army”. But while this policy announcement was welcomed by the United States administration led by Donald Trump which insists that its European partners within NATO take on more of the burden in military spending, as well as by most of the political leaders in the EU who remain steadfast in their resolve to weaken and destroy the Russian state, others, not least the government of the Russian Federation, have responded with concern. Fears that a militarisation of the German mindset would likely accompany the implementation of the Merz plan are not without foundation given the end results of two eras of German rearmament during the 20th century. Both disasters were foretold by the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

In his time Goethe had a relationship with the German people which transcended a reverence for his literary genius. As was the case with many other giants of German culture who operated in the spheres of philosophy, literature, poetry, art and music, he was greatly inclined to examine the German soul.

A defining point in his relationship with his people came at the time of the War of Liberation in the early 19th century when Napoleon Bonaparte was reeling from the defeat of the Grande Armée in Russia. A coalition of armies which included the German states of Austria, Prussia, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Hanover, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurttemberg took up arms to expel the French.

But Goethe, a child of the Enlightenment and an admirer of Napoleon who he believed embodied Enlightenment values, remained indifferent and cautioned his people about their embrace of nationalism and militarism. He felt that Germans could not be trusted to exercise restraint and rationality when energised by military ambition because of what he understood to be the psyche of a landlocked, ‘claustrophobic’ people. If they were stimulated to compete with other powers in the arena of international politics and war, they would, Goethe reasoned, seek to extend their frontiers and become embroiled in militaristic endeavours that would lead to overreach and eventual, predictable disaster.

Thus, Goethe called on Germans to invest in “culture and the spirit”. What he meant by this was that they should focus on conquering the world with their talents across the spectrum of music, philosophy, commerce and the sciences.

But his people were uncomprehending. They interpreted his anti-nationalist stance and renunciation of war as a form of betrayal. Goethe himself felt aggrieved at their lack of understanding which also negatively impacted on the well-being of his family.  August, his only child to survive to adulthood suffered from the accusation of cowardice because his father took steps to discourage him from undertaking military service.

Goethe was seemingly proven wrong when four decades after his death the rise of Prussia provided the impetus for the near total unification of the German-speaking people, and the creation of the German Empire at the time of the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. But the subsequent destruction of Germany in two consecutive world wars during the 20th century provided strong validation of Goethe’s fears.

These fears persisted after the Second World War. The Morgenthau Plan, which was drawn up in the latter stages of the war but later abandoned, proposed to de-militarise and de-industrialise those parts of Germany that would come under Allied control. Although the West created the Bundeswehr and incorporated it into NATO, Lord Ismay’s often quoted raison d’être for the North Atlantic Alliance being “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans down” reflected the belief among its European allies of the necessity of having German military power circumscribed.

Still later, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opposed German reunification because she believed that Germany would not continue to accept the Oder-Niesse line as the border between Germany and Poland.

The present aspiration to build a powerful army is set against the backdrop of a NATO-backed proxy war which pits Ukraine against Russia. In addition to the anti-Russian sanctions regime in which Germany has participated as an EU member state, the Germans have provided the Ukrainian military with weapons and equipment including Leopard tanks. In 2024, several senior officers of the Bundeswehr including the head of the Luftwaffe were recorded discussing potential attacks in Crimea including one directed at the Kerch Strait Bridge.

Belligerent remarks by the German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius and Chancellor Merz have rattled the Russians. Pistorius claimed that German troops were ready to kill Russian soldiers “if deterrence doesn’t work and Russia attacks”, while Merz told the Bundestag in July that the “means of diplomacy are exhausted.” And further to the announcement of plans to increase the German military budget to €153 billion by 2029 was a call for a national debate on the introduction of universal conscription by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

This state of affairs has led to a decision by Russia in July 2025 to withdraw from the military-technical agreement it signed with Germany in 1996.

Today, there are few German philosophers who examine the German soul as did the likes of Goethe, Friedrich Holderlin, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann and others. Indeed, Thea Dorn (the pseudonym of Christiane Scherer), who co-wrote Die deutsche Seele (The German Soul) in 2011, bemoaned the present day lack of German thinkers soon after the publication of her book.

Yet, one need not rely on philosophical prognosis to understand the implications of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s comments in May 2025 about Germany’s direct involvement in the prosecution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict when he warned that

“Germany is sliding down the same slippery slope it already followed a couple of times in the last century.”

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post A Warning from History: Goethe and the Folly of German Militarism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Global News recently aired a three-part series about Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program. Here are my thoughts, after reviewing it (with clenched teeth): It’s a clever diversion tactic aimed at damage control.

The series underplays how many Canadians have died or been permanently disabled from the COVID-19 injection (most likely in the hundreds of thousands). Instead, the focus of their “investigative journalism” is on Oxaro, a crooked company which was hired by ultra-crooked Health Canada to compensate the injured, widowed and orphaned victims of their mRNA eugenics program.

So far, the government has given Oxaro $56 million. Only $16 million of that hefty sum has been paid out to the injured. The remaining $40 million has been funding an inexperienced staff who, whistleblowers say, spend their office time socializing, watching YouTube on their phones, streaming Netflix on their desktops and playing ping-pong. Fridays are extra special, as after a hard week’s work, alcoholic beverages are permitted on the job.

While they are goofing off, a widow who lost her 45-year-old husband to the clot shot has had to wait years for compensation. When they finally did pay up, they only gave her three years’ worth of her late husband’s salary (plus three months of weekly therapy for her and her kids).

Another mother has still not seen a penny, even though she is now paralyzed from the waist down since her third booster shot and has lost custody of her child.

Health Canada says they were expecting only 40 claims a year. They are getting thousands. Which is a surprise, as the criteria for applying are so strict, confusing and slow that most injured people aren’t up for the battle (or even aware the program exists).

One case worker at Oxaro even told a claimant that, “You didn’t have to get the vaccine.”

The injured, also — as insane as it may sound — are afraid they’ll be labelled an “anti-vaxxer” if they speak up.

Somehow, the government was able to waste $6 billion developing, procuring and distributing this toxic gene therapy, but hasn’t been able to manage more than $16 million in compensation.

Far better, they’d never bought the poison and simply sent the money back to the taxpayers they stole it from.

Global News’s attempt at hard-hitting journalism is not much more than a distraction from the hard-hitting questions they’ll never ask: Why did the government and media (including Global News) push this useless and deadly shot? Why did they lie each day, making the regular flu appear to be a deadly pandemic? Why did they destroy businesses and people’s livelihoods with their “stay home, stay safe” lockdown rhetoric? And… why do people still watch Global News and want government to have all the guns?

The story reminded me of Anita Krishna. Back in 2022, I heard an interview with her on The Iron Will Report. She had recently been fired from Global News, after working as a producer and newsroom director for twenty years. Why did they fire her? For asking questions. She thought that was what news organizations were supposed to do. I guess in journalism school they don’t teach you that mainstream news media is about controlling the public, not informing them.

Now, Anita Krishna has her own program, The Anita Krishna Show, where she’s able to ask any question she likes. Granted, she’s on YouTube, so she sometimes has to be careful how she words her questions, especially when talking about the… “the thing.” You know, the sharp pointy thing.

In a recent episode, strategically titled “What’s in these things?” she commented on the three-part vaccine injury special:

Well, lo and behold, now, Global News has come up with a three-part series… Mostly, the angle of this story is: Look over here, look over here at the Vaccine Injury Support Program and how awful they are and how they are not doing their job. Look over here. They are not saying, “Look at us, what we did to the public and all the fear-mongering we did that got people in that position in the first place.”

And when I brought that up, I got fired. So I am hella pissed off at them. I mean, I think it’s good that they are talking about this because it legitimizes (kind of) what has happened. But, in a way, they are getting you to focus on one part of the story instead of getting you to focus on all the abuse that they put the public through.

In another episode, “Global News Finally Covers What Got me Fired!!” she adds:

…they are actually saying the things that I used to say in 2021… and that just got me fired… In a way, I guess it’s a good thing they are saying the words out loud that they never said before, but I’m highly annoyed by this also…. I’m brimming with emotion about this.

You can watch her play the Global News three-part series, while giving her emotionally-charged, blow-by-blow insider commentary on The Anita Krishna Show YouTube channel. She echoes my position that this news feature is a clever way of acknowledging some of the side effects of the COVID shots, while redirecting the public’s timid outrage away from the media, medical system and government.

The post Global News’ Vaccine Injury Exposé Is a Distraction From the ‘Hard-Hitting’ Questions They Don’t Want You Asking appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last month, Detroit Archbishop Edward Weisenburger severely restricted the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass in his archdiocese—an archdiocese that has had some of the most flourishing Latin Mass communities in the country, if not the world. Not content, however, with one act of pettiness, this week Archbishop Weisenburger decided to double down on his attack on faithful Catholics, expanding beyond the typical traditionalist punching bags to target established and well-respected seminary professors.

On Wednesday night, news broke that Dr. Ralph Martin and Dr. Eduardo Echeverria had been removed from their positions as theology professors at Sacred Heart Seminary, which is based in Detroit but serves seminarians from dioceses and religious orders throughout the country. Sacred Heart, in fact, is considered by many Catholics to be one of the best seminaries in the country, and many of its faculty have served on Vatican committees over the years (including Dr. Martin, who served as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization).

Martin is well-known in the Catholic world and is one of the leaders of the Catholic Charismatic movement. He has written many books and is in high demand as a speaker at Catholic events. His book Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization is one of the best on a topic near and dear to my own heart: the salvation of non-Catholics.

Echeverria is less well-known than Martin, but he is also a formidable scholar. I have interviewed him on my podcast twice (here and here), and I found him to be a deep thinker who takes seriously all theological perspectives before reaching any conclusions. He has written many valuable books, including one on religious relativism titled Jesus Christ, Scandal of Particularity: Vatican II, a Catholic Theology of Religions, Justification, and Truth.

So why would two distinguished theologians, with no hint of scandal associated with them, be unceremoniously fired from their positions without warning or even explanation? Simply put, they dared to criticize the regime, and for that they must be purged.

What do I mean when I say “they dared to criticize the regime”? More specifically, what do I mean by “the regime”? By that I mean the men who rule the day-to-day workings of the Church, including many bishops and Vatican officials. I’m not speaking of the divine nature of the Church or of her infallible teachings. I’m speaking of petty men—like Archbishop Weisenburger, like Cardinal Cupich, and yes, like Pope Francis—who see their role not as keepers of a tradition handed down to them, but as tyrants who crave power and control. Men who abuse their authority in their attempts to remake the Church in their image, jettisoning thousands of years of tradition to slavishly imitate the surrounding cultural fads of the day. These are the men who make up the “regime” I’m talking about.

Through the years, both Martin and Echeverria have been willing at times to speak out in defense of the Catholic faith against these regime men. They have always been charitable and measured in their criticisms, always focused on explicating theological truth rather than attacking personalities. But for the regime men, that’s not enough. Men like Archbishop Weisenburger demand total submission to the regime (but not to Catholic teaching), and woe to anyone who dares step even slightly out of line. They must be eliminated, even if it means kicking two honorable and dedicated husbands and fathers to the curb with no warning or official reason given. Despicable.

Sadly, Weisenburger’s actions likely mean that the days of Sacred Heart Seminary being a beacon of orthodoxy are numbered. It is my hope that bishops from around the country—particularly bishops who send their seminarians to Sacred Heart—will speak out against this injustice and even send their men elsewhere if it appears that Sacred Heart no longer values faithfulness and orthodoxy in its professors.

One final thought: What about Pope Leo? Do these actions by Weisenburger mean that it’s true that “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”? I think it’s far too premature to say that. Weisenburger was one of Pope Francis’s final episcopal appointments, and like Bishop Michael Martin in Charlotte, he was clearly one of the late pope’s more ideological appointees. He was given a job by Francis, and he’s doing it. The question is: will Pope Leo intervene? And if he does not, does that mean he supports these actions?

Like I said, I think it’s too premature to come to conclusions in this regard. Popes traditionally don’t get involved in local affairs like the hiring and firing of seminary professors, so it’s highly unlikely that Leo will say or do anything about these specific firings, even if he personally thinks they are a bad idea. Yet it will be interesting to see what his own episcopal appointments do going forward: will they be regime men like Weisenburger, or will they cut a different path? Time will tell, but it is a good reminder that we need to continue to pray and fast for Pope Leo and also beg God to convert the hearts of the regime men to become true shepherds who care more about souls than power and control.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post The Purging of Faithful Catholics Continues appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  Saleh Abdullah.

The post The Truth About The Fall of Rome- Stefan molyneux appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.  

The Cantillon Effect

The post How Ancient Rome’s Elite Exploited its People appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  Tim McGraw. 

The WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) Yankees who run the USA and the world can’t stand Catholics. Following Christ’s teachings is anathema to the WASP Yankees.

Jason Jones

The post Guinness, Gaza, and the Gospel: Jason Jones appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Eric Zuesse

The post Republican House Leader Tries to Stifle Epstein Investigation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

I LOVE insane conspiracy theories like this — the crazier, the better.

(I looked it up and this Bob Joyce is a pastor in Arkansas and this video is from Feb. 2023, when Elvis would’ve just turned 88. So, unless “Elvis” also has some secret aging-reversal technology that apparently only he has, we’re done here — but I’ll still gladly watch any other video about this that I can find.)

The post Bob Joyce Channels the King: Singing Like Elvis Presley appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump visited the Fed yesterday, seemingly to shakedown Jerome Powell for lower interest rates. Is this how interest rates should be derived in a so-called “capitalist” society? Two men, disagreeing over price fixing? That’s the Soviet way of doing things. Also, is President Trump, who continues to run-up government spending and debt, really in the position to accuse the Fed of “cost overruns”? Once again, both are guilty. End the price-fixing. End the government spending us into bankruptcy. End The Fed.

The post Trump Visits The Fed To Shakedown Powell appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Brian D. O’Leary

The post The Dying Republic appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donations to NPR and PBS stations have reportedly exploded since Congress cut federal funding. So, I guess that NPR and PBS can pay their own pay and survive on donations instead of government handouts. But, of course, there is still the issue of “public broadcasting” that conservatives miss the point about.

The post Pay Your Own Way appeared first on LewRockwell.

Wrestler Hulk Hogan has died.

The post Hulk Hogan R.I.P appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Paul Ronzheimer meets Tucker Carlson appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Bruce McLane. 

See here.

The post Atheists, Christinas, and the constitution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

The post Kevin O’Leary: I would fire Colbert in four seconds appeared first on LewRockwell.

Robert Barnes’ most thorough explorations of the deep state and its sinister origins and the deviant psychosexual cultural milieu surrounding some of its acolytes and functionaries

This study of fascist men shows their terrifying fascination with sex, death, and authority ‘Male Fantasies’ examined the inner lives of German fascists and reached a horrifying conclusion

Here are the Red Nurses, White Nurses volumes to which Robert Barnes referred:

Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. 1: Women Floods Bodies History

Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. 2: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror

And this related title: The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party

American War Machine : Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan, by Peter Dale Scott

(Above volume excellent on elite Wall Street/CFR background of early CIA leadership hierarchy)

The post Robert Barnes on the Deep Background of the Deep State Up to the JFK Assassination and Beyond appeared first on LewRockwell.