It’s difficult to know exactly when it happened, but not long ago many Americans suddenly looked around and discovered that they inhabited completely different moral universes from their neighbors.
Whether it’s Black Lives Matter, or teaching gender theory to children, or the usefulness or otherwise of the COVID restrictions, or a wide variety of other subjects, people on one side of the divide have exerted a moral imperialism over the other, refusing even to acknowledge that there can be another side on issues like these, and have instead tried to drive their opponents from polite society through intense social pressure and the outright suppression of dissident voices.
The same people who lecture us day and night about how we shouldn’t “impose our morality” on other people think absolutely nothing of demonizing half of America and imposing their ideas on other people’s children.
Scarcely anyone stops to ask: is this arrangement making us happy? Is it contributing to human flourishing?
To the contrary, it’s causing conflict, suspicion, anger, and frustration – and everyone knows it.
Yet for some reason we carry on, as if continuing down this path will somehow lead to a different result, even though any fool can see that things are only going to get worse.
The media, meanwhile, are happy to fan the flames of social conflict, but never urge us to consider the humane possibility of a world in which we simply don’t do this anymore.
My new eBook National Divorce, which I am giving away for free, offers a radical proposal: how about we just stop?
As I show in the book, there is nothing unconstitutional or “extremist” or unthinkable about national divorce.
What holds people back from considering it is a combination of status-quo bias and the superstitious reverence we’ve all been taught to have for “the Union.”
But as Thomas Jefferson correctly conceived of it, the Union is merely a means to an end. It is not an end in itself. Much less should it be treated as an object of religious reverence. If it does not promote liberty, then we should discard it and try something else.
Now, fair warning: the ideas you will encounter in this book are not to be found on the three-by-five card of allowable opinion. We are not even supposed to discuss the subject matter of this book, dear reader. Why, the New York Times hasn’t approved it for us!
But I’d say the time has come to steel our resolve and be willing to consider – radical though this may sound – ideas that the New York Times tells us are not allowed.
The very nature of totalitarianism involves the intoxicating temptation to create the perfect society through a combination of propaganda, centralized power, and the demonization of dissidents.
Against such a project we ought to set that couplet with which Michael Oakeshott concluded his essay on the Tower of Babel:
Who in fields Elysian would dwell Do but extend the boundaries of Hell.
In a free society, there should be no suits for “defamation.” You don’t own your reputation, and people should be free to determine what they think of you, based on their own assessment of the evidence.
Earlier this month, a jury issued a $49 million judgment against the heroic Alex Jones for defamation. This is a chilling blow to free speech in our country. As John Frahm puts it, “This massive 49 Million Alex Jones trial award is corrupt and is a harbinger against free speech of all sorts. And he had two other trials to go. This is really serious. Pure evil. They declared their intent. Free speech of every sort has just been targeted for destruction and lock down under a social credit system. If you offend someone you can be destroyed. If you question a narrative you can be destroyed.
Beware.”
In a free society, there should be no suits for “defamation.” You don’t own your reputation, and people should be free to determine what they think of you, based on their own assessment of the evidence. As the great Murray Rothbard explains, “0ur theory of property rights can be used to unravel a tangled skein of complex problems revolving around questions of knowledge, true and false, and the dissemination of that knowledge. Does Smith, for example, have the right (again, we are concerned about his right, not the morality or esthetics of his exercising that right) to print and disseminate the statement that ‘Jones is a liar’ or that ‘Jones is a convicted thief’ or that ‘Jones is a homosexual’? There are three logical possibilities about the truth of such a statement: (a) that the statement about Jones is true; (b) that it is false and Smith knows it is false; or (c) most realistically, that the truth or falsity of the statement is a fuzzy zone, not certainly and precisely knowable (e.g., in the above cases, whether or not someone is a ‘liar’ depends on how many and how intense the pattern of lies a person has told and is adjudged to add up to the category of ‘liar’ -an area where individual judgments can and will properly differ). Suppose that Smith’s statement is definitely true. It seems clear, then, that Srnith has a perfect right to print and disseminate the statement. For it is within his property right to do so. lt is also, of course, within the property right of Jones to try to rebut the statement in his turn. The current libel laws make Smith’s action illegal if done with ‘malicious’ intent, even though the information be true. And yet, surely legality or illegality should depend not on the motivation of the actor, but on the objective nature of the act. If an action is objectively non-invasive, then it should be legal regardless of the benevolent or malicious intentions of the actor (though the latter may well be relevant to the morality of the action). And this is aside from the obvious difficulties in legally determining an individual’s subjective motivations for any action. lt might, however, be charged that Smith does not have the right to print such a statement, because Jones has a ‘right to privacy’ (his ‘human’ right) which Smith does not have the right to violate. But is there really such a right to privacy? How can there be? How can there be a right to prevent Smith by force from disseminating knowledge which he possesses? Surely there can be no such right. Smith owns his own body, and therefore has the property right to own the knowledge he has inside his head, including his knowledge about Jones. And therefore he has the corollary right to print and disseminate that knowledge. In short, as in the case of the ‘human right’ to free speech, there is no such thing as a right to privacy except the right to protect one’s property from invasion. The only right ‘to privacy’ is the right to protect one’s property from being invaded by someone else. In brief, no one has the right to burgle someone else’s home, or to wiretap someone’s phone lines. Wiretapping is properly a crime not because of some vague and woolly ‘invasion of a ‘right to privacy’, but because it is an invasion of the property right of the person being wiretapped. At the present time, the courts distinguish between persons ‘in the public eye’ who are adjudged not to have a right to privacy against being mentioned in the public press, and ‘private’ persons who are considered to have such a right. And yet, such distinctions are surely fallacious. To the libertarian, everyone has the same right in his person and in the goods which he finds, inherits, or buys—and it is illegitimate to make distinctions in property right between one group of people and another. If there were some sort of ‘right to privacy,’ then simply being mentioned widely in the press (i.e. previous losses of the ‘right’) could scarcely warrant being deprived of such right completely. No, the only proper course is to maintain that no one has any spurious ‘right to privacy’ or right not to be mentioned publicly; while everyone has the right to protect his property against invasion. No one can have a property right in the knowledge in someone else’s head.” See this.
Regardless of what you think about Sandy Hook, though, it’s clear that Alex Jones is an authentic hero. Jon Rappoport has a good account of the essential facts about his public activities. “Let’s start here. While Jones was supporting Trump, he also mercilessly attacked the horrifically destructive COVID vaccines. In the process, he forcefully awakened millions of Trump followers to a truth they were unaware of or didn’t want to face. In the process, lives were saved.
Decades ago, long before it was fashionable to do so, Jones explained and righteously attacked Globalism, the Rockefeller Empire, . . .
Perceived by the public as living on the political Right, Jones confounded that perception by attacking both big government and big corporations, while so-called conservatives were routinely and conveniently letting criminal corporations off the hook.
About 20 years ago, the day after George Noory interviewed me about those corporations, Jones called me out of the blue and insisted I come on his radio show and talk about the subject at length.
Very early in his radio career, he saw the gathering clouds of medical dictatorship on the horizon and spoke about it compellingly. His audience got a strong dose of something they’d never thought about.
“The primordial interest of the United States, over which for centuries we have fought wars– the First, the Second and Cold Wars– has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united there, they’re the only force that could threaten us. And to make sure that that doesn’t happen.” George Friedman, STRATFOR CEO at The Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs
The Ukrainian crisis has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s about Germany and, in particular, a pipeline that connects Germany to Russia called Nord Stream 2. Washington sees the pipeline as a threat to its primacy in Europe and has tried to sabotage the project at every turn. Even so, Nord Stream has pushed ahead and is now fully-operational and ready-to-go. Once German regulators provide the final certification, the gas deliveries will begin. German homeowners and businesses will have a reliable source of clean and inexpensive energy while Russia will see a significant boost to their gas revenues. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.
The US Foreign Policy establishment is not happy about these developments. They don’t want Germany to become more dependent on Russian gas because commerce builds trust and trust leads to the expansion of trade. As relations grow warmer, more trade barriers are lifted, regulations are eased, travel and tourism increase, and a new security architecture evolves. In a world where Germany and Russia are friends and trading partners, there is no need for US military bases, no need for expensive US-made weapons and missile systems, and no need for NATO. There’s also no need to transact energy deals in US Dollars or to stockpile US Treasuries to balance accounts. Transactions between business partners can be conducted in their own currencies which is bound to precipitate a sharp decline in the value of the dollar and a dramatic shift in economic power. This is why the Biden administration opposes Nord Stream. It’s not just a pipeline, it’s a window into the future; a future in which Europe and Asia are drawn closer together into a massive free trade zone that increases their mutual power and prosperity while leaving the US on the outside looking in. Warmer relations between Germany and Russia signal an end to the “unipolar” world order the US has overseen for the last 75 years. A German-Russo alliance threatens to hasten the decline of the Superpower that is presently inching closer to the abyss. This is why Washington is determined to do everything it can to sabotage Nord Stream and keep Germany within its orbit. It’s a matter of survival.
That’s where Ukraine comes into the picture. Ukraine is Washington’s ‘weapon of choice’ for torpedoing Nord Stream and putting a wedge between Germany and Russia. The strategy is taken from page one of the US Foreign Policy Handbook under the rubric: Divide and Rule. Washington needs to create the perception that Russia poses a security threat to Europe. That’s the goal. They need to show that Putin is a bloodthirsty aggressor with a hair-trigger temper who cannot be trusted. To that end, the media has been given the assignment of reiterating over and over again, “Russia is planning to invade Ukraine.” What’s left unsaid is that Russia has not invaded any country since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and that the US has invaded or toppled regimes in more than 50 countries in the same period of time, and that the US maintains over 800 military bases in countries around the world. None of this is reported by the media, instead the focus is on “evil Putin” who has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border threatening to plunge all of Europe into another bloody war.
All of the hysterical war propaganda is created with the intention of manufacturing a crisis that can be used to isolate, demonize and, ultimately, splinter Russia into smaller units. The real target, however, is not Russia, but Germany. Check out this excerpt from an article by Michael Hudson at The Unz Review:
“The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” (“America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies”, The Unz Review)
There it is in black and white. The Biden team wants to “goad Russia into a military response” in order to sabotage NordStream.
You see, nothing would make Democrats happier than dissolving all local and state police departments and replacing them with a centralized federal police force they can control and corrupt. Democrats would love to do to policing what they have already done to education, as well as environmental and fiscal policy — which is to nationalize it into a one-size-fits-all Utopian hellscape for anyone who doesn’t kneel before Black Lives Matter, trade beef for bugs, hand in their guns, accept gay porn in elementary schools, and believe 2+2=5.
A majority of 53 percent of Americans now see the FBI for what it really is: Joe Biden’s personal Gestapo.
This is according to the latest polling of Rasmussen Reports, which found only bad news for America’s fascist FBI:
Rasmussen Reports finds that 44% of Likely U.S. voters say the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home made them trust the FBI less, compared to 29% who say it made them trust the bureau more. Twenty-three percent (23%) say the Trump raid did not make much difference in their trust of the FBI. …
Fifty percent (50%) of voters have a favorable impression of the FBI, including 26% who have a Very Favorable view of the bureau. Forty-six percent (46%) now view the FBI unfavorably, including 29% who have a Very Unfavorable impression of the bureau.
Roger Stone, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, has said there is “a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI … as Joe Biden‘s personal Gestapo.” A majority (53%) of voters now agree with Stone’s statement – up from 46% in December – including 34% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree with the quote from Stone, including 26% who Strongly Disagree.
Only 50 percent view the FBI favorably. That is stunningly low. In May 2020, even after the FBI’s corrupt role in protecting Hillary Clinton and launching the Russia Collusion Hoax against Trump, that number sat at 60 percent favorable. But it’s today’s “trust” and “Gestapo” issues that are the FBI’s real problem.
Using the judicial system to punish your political enemies, which is what His Fraudulency Joe Biden and embittered Attorney General Merrick Garland almost certainly did with the Trump raid, is as ugly, corrupt, un-American, and norm-violating as it gets. Raiding the home of a former president just months before a national midterm election… Well, that’s something a political party would only dare do when they know they have billions and billions of corporate media dollars on alert to protect them against any outrage they commit.
Had there been no CDC at all, could the U.S. response have been any worse?
I am reminded of what Thomas Sowell said about what should replace the Federal Reserve: when you remove a cancer, he said, you don’t replace it with anything.
Walensky is pushing for what the government always does with failed agencies. Give it more money.
When the New York Times writes an article on the need for an overhaul of the Centers for Disease Control, you know it’s not going to be the kind of overhaul you and I, dear reader, would favor.
It’s called “Walensky, Citing Botched Pandemic Response, Calls for C.D.C. Reorganization.”
You can be sure that Walensky doesn’t think the “pandemic response” was “botched” because it involved crazy recommendations based on nothing, and that the people in charge seemed to be making the “guidance” up as they went along.
No, the problem was that the CDC didn’t get its contradictory, science-free, panic-mongering lunacy out to us quite fast enough.
The Times says that Walensky “delivered a sweeping rebuke of her agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had failed to respond quickly enough and needed to be overhauled.”
The Times further complains that the CDC “bent to political pressure from the Trump White House to alter key public health guidance or withhold it from the public — decisions that cost it a measure of public trust that experts say it still has not recaptured.”
So the reason the CDC has lost public trust is that it catered too much to Trump?
It hasn’t lost public trust because of its crazy, fact-free, and obviously politicized recommendations on schools? Or its ever-changing wear-a-mask, you-can-take-off-the-mask-if-vaccinated, vaccinated-people-need-to-wear-masks-too, two-year-olds-need-to-mask, the-guidance-for-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people-is-now-the-same craziness? Or its laughable studies showing the effectiveness of masking, which are a complete joke? Or its continued insistence on the effectiveness of lockdowns and other radical interventions despite zero differences between places that did these things and places that didn’t?
Then we read that there were too many health officials entering and leaving the federal government, and that this led to confusion. No sense that a far more serious problem was that virtually all of these people were singing from the same hymn book, and dissenting voices were nowhere to be found.
Had there been no CDC at all, could the U.S. response have been any worse?
Maybe that’s the key insight that should inform any “reform” proposal.
I am reminded of what Thomas Sowell said about what should replace the Federal Reserve: when you remove a cancer, he said, you don’t replace it with anything.
Now, for your weekend enjoyment:
I’ve been in public speaking for 27 years, but the best speech I ever gave wasn’t at a libertarian or conservative event, or to an academic audience. It was my speech to a business conference, where I explained to a room full of seasoned marketers how a small fry like me was kicking their rear ends.
No matter what field you’re in, you can learn from what I told them.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the FDA has admitted, for the first time, that government agencies, including the CDC, are recommending vaccines for pregnant women that have neither been licensed for pregnant mothers by FDA nor tested for safety in clinical trials. The CDC has actively recommended influenza vaccination during any trimester of pregnancy since 2004 and has told pregnant women to get Tdap shots (for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis) since 2011. The FDA is responsible for vaccine safety and licensing, but now admits that it has no safety data to back up the pregnancy recommendations.
Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. CHD is implementing many strategies, including legal, in an effort to defend the health of our children and obtain justice for those already injured. Your support is essential to CHD’s successful mission.
Do I want to support America’s Veterans? Of course! I am one. But after serving over eighteen years on active duty and, in some capacity, serving in the Army for a total of twenty-two years, I can attest that our service members, at an individual level, have largely become an economic drain on America. I have watched for years the transition of the great American military to a great American entitlement system.
Since the founding of our nation the American Soldier has valiantly stood on the battlefield facing evil to protect and defend the American way of life. He is willing to sacrifice everything, even lay down his life for this great nation. In the meantime, hard working Americans, those very Americans the service members have sworn to protect, are charged with the impossible duty of financing it all. Whether these Americans are paying with their taxes, or paying through inflation, they are definitely paying. In their own, very real way, they are also sacrificing to protect America by funding the military and they are feeling it big at the moment – perhaps even losing. The protection of the American way of life goes well beyond what takes place on the battlefields. The Soldier may ensure life and liberty, but there will be no pursuit of happiness if there is not any hope for Americans to ever attain it.
Military doctrine has long taught service members to conduct combat on land, at sea, and in the air. More recently, the domains of space and cyber have been added to the list signifying a tremendously more dynamic environment for service members to protect our nation in. In today’s modern age, we see that these domains are still not enough. A much more holistic approach must be taken. Battles against the American way of life are being fought, but there is no battlefield. The American way of life is being crushed economically. If the Soldier is willing to give his life on the battlefield to protect it, it would seem he should also be willing to sacrifice economically, along with his fellow Americans, to ensure its survival.
How are the military services contributing to protecting America from this perspective? At what point are the military services no longer ensuring the American way of life and instead, actually hindering it through massive costs? There must be some logical balance between cost and benefit. At the moment it feels like our beautiful America is teetering on the edge of major economic hardship and yet, we are so quick to pass major spending bills for military service members and veterans.
In combat, we “dig in” to defend ourselves, meaning we dig trenches and fighting positions for protection, place early warning systems and obstacles to impede our enemy, overlap our weapons systems’ fields of fire, map out surrounding terrain with range cards and communicate our defense strategy across our force. “Digging in” has become a term to indicate that we are doing the work required to ensure we endure and prevail over what comes ahead. As a nation, we are not “digging in” economically to protect ourselves. We are doing quite the opposite in fact. In the economic domain of protecting America, our service members and former service members are screaming “give me more!” rather than continuing their service to our nation.
MCViewPoint 