The good news is that there are growing voices in Congress that recognize the importance of peace with North Korea as a crucial step towards denuclearization. There are now 50 members of Congress who have co-sponsored House Resolution 152,
At last week’s presidential debate, the American people were presented with two widely divergent points of view on how to address North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal: Either engage with its leader (and thereby “legitimize” a “thug”) or apply more sanctions and pressure in order to “control” North Korea.
But this is a false dichotomy. Meeting or not meeting with the North Korean leader hasn’t been the failure of U.S. policy. And more pressure and sanctions will not convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons arsenal.
To make any substantial progress, the next administration must take a wholly new approach to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
Most urgently, the next administration should officially end the Korean War with a peace agreement. Contrary to the belief held by most Americans, the 70-year-old war never officially ended and was only halted by a fragile ceasefire signed in 1953. That means that the risk of an escalation (intentional or accidental) that triggers a full-scale — potentially nuclear — war remains, endangering us all.
Both the Trump and Obama administrations depended on a mixture of sanctions, political isolation, and the threat of military force to try to compel North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. But both “maximum pressure” (Trump) and “strategic patience” (Obama) failed to make progress toward that goal. A positive step was the 2018 Singapore Agreement in which the United States and North Korea agreed to establish new relations toward a peace regime and a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. While North Korea has improved its military capability, it has not tested any long-range missiles or new nuclear weapons since then.
But since last year’s Hanoi Summit, talks between North Korea and the United States have stalled. That’s because engagement with North Korea was not accompanied by a fundamental change in U.S. policy. The United States keeps expecting that pressure will convince North Korea to unilaterally disarm without providing any sanctions relief or security guarantees.
What actually put the prospect of denuclearization on the table was the possibility of peace that began with the 2018 Olympics diplomacy between North Korea and South Korea. It manifested in the Panmunjom Declaration, in which President Moon Jae-in and Chairman Kim Jong Un declared “that there will be no more war and a new era of peace has begun on the Korean peninsula.” The Declaration calls for inter-Korean economic and civic projects and replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement. But the United States has impeded these reconciliation efforts.
Instead of further militarizing the region and applying more sanctions and pressure, which are harming innocent North Korean civilians, the next administration should engage in the hard work of sustained diplomacy based on specific, concrete next steps. Diplomacy isn’t a “gift” to North Korea; it’s what needs to happen to get to peace. Talking with North Korea should not be viewed differently from what Washington does with any authoritarian power. Ignoring North Korea only kicks the can down the road in addressing Pyongyang’s growing nuclear capabilities and arms proliferation. Furthermore, a majority of Americans support the United States negotiating with adversaries like North Korea to avoid a military confrontation.
Specifically, the next administration should replace the “all or nothing” stance with step-by-step, reciprocal, verifiable actions to advance denuclearization and peace. That could mean building confidence through opening liaison offices, easing sanctions, facilitating reunions between Korean-American families and their loved ones in North Korea, and formalizing a moratorium on North Korean long-range missile and nuclear testing and U.S.-South Korea military exercises.
But most crucially, we must end the Korean War. This continued state of war is not a mere technicality; it’s the root cause of militarism and tensions that must be resolved if there is to be real progress with North Korea.
The good news is that there are growing voices in Congress that recognize the importance of peace with North Korea as a crucial step towards denuclearization. There are now 50 members of Congress who have co-sponsored House Resolution 152, which calls for an end to the Korean War and a peace agreement. Notably, all of the Democratic contenders for the next chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — Reps. Brad Sherman, Joaquin Castro, and Gregory Meeks — are co-sponsors of this important resolution.
The status quo means more nuclear weapons, more human rights violations, more separated families, more suffering from sanctions, and the ongoing risk of nuclear war. It’s in everyone’s interest to change course with a realistic, concrete plan toward peace and denuclearization, but this is ultimately in the hands of the next U.S. president. Americans must urge him to choose wisely.
These lockdowns have nothing to do with public health. They have everything to do with maintaining the political health of the current ruling classes. Nothing more.
It finally looks like the four-and-a-half-year saga of Brexit is coming to an ignominious end. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the final bluff of the incompetent bureaucrats in Brussels, walking away from trade talks while leaving the door open.
But that door is only open if the EU is willing to crawl in on its knees and give the UK what it wants, a minimal free trade deal, Canada-style, which was offered by then President of the European Council Donald Tusk.
The EU played hardball giving zero ground for four years while undermining the UK from within its own political and bureaucratic structures. It was as transparent as it was cynical, but it couldn’t sway the British people and that gave Johnson the political will to just say no.
And it was this hardball negotiating stance that had worked in the past finally broke like waves along the Cliffs of Dover. The reason why it failed was that arrogance was fueled by powerful forces having their back,
They believed in the power of coercion being stronger than the will of the British people.
And they were wrong. Dead wrong.
In an instant this past weekend the entire façade of he the EU’s inevitability vaporized as Johnson went on TV and told the world to prepare for a No-Deal Brexit, regardless of whether that was the optimal outcome or not.
It signaled to the rest of Europe that no longer do you have to take the diktats of a bunch of feckless, unelected technocrats if you don’t want to. And this failure to secure submission of the Brits will have immense consequences during this next election cycle in Europe.
This is why the fiction of the Second Wave of the Coronapocalypse persists all across the continent. Germany, France, Spain and other countries are implementing the worst kind of draconian lockdowns on people hanging on by a thread while the pols in Brussels scheme as to how best to continue advancing their plans for a future with the people trapped in the neo-feudalism of the EU corporatocracy.
These lockdowns have nothing to do with public health. They have everything to do with maintaining the political health of the current ruling classes. Nothing more.
And I include the UK in this as well but for different reasons. It’s my feeling that even though Johnson may have given the EU ‘two fingers up’ the EU and those behind it aren’t done with the Brits yet.
Walking away from narcissists inevitably invokes anger. There is too much at stake for the European Project for the annoying Brits to just walk away from it and give everyone else the wrong idea.
So, I feel very strongly we should be watching for more signs of the same color revolution tactics on display in the U.S. to depose Donald Trump showing up in the UK I don’t rule out an attempted coup against Johnson in the next seven weeks.
This is why I think he’s imposing similar lock downs in the UK to manage the inevitable activation of ‘ground forces’ once things get down to the wire later this year.
Brexit has exposed a myriad of fault lines within the EU, most notably between the two heavyweights, Germany and France. And Johnson, for all his shambolic organization, understood this perfectly, playing Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron off each other capturing their agendas in amber so when crunch-time came, they were paralyzed with inaction.
Weasels on both sides of the channel refused to accept the vote for any number of reasons but it didn’t matter.
The UK always had the upper hand in this situation if it stood its ground, made its demands known and negotiated like an equal rather than a wayward child.
Ever the abusive parent, the EU Council and its Chief Negotiator continue to treat the Brits like they treated Greece in 2015 and are now openly furious that no one is taking them seriously.
But why should anyone take Brussels seriously, other than because it is backed by the failing and sclerotic post-WWII institutions revealed to be complicit in the wholesale destruction of Western culture and economic vitality who are pushing a Great Reset on them whether they want it or not?
One need look no further than the insipid way Merkel has handled the obvious intelligence job surrounding Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Navalny is a nobody outside the halls of the CIA and MI-6 who, through the media, sell him to the West as a major thorn in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s side.
But he’s nothing of the sort. He has fewer people show up to his ‘rallies’ now than Joe Biden. So, the idea that Putin would poison this bozo is laughable. And yet, because the EU, and specifically Germany, are so scared of angering the U.S. they entertained this fantasy hoping the Russians would bail them out and play along with the fiction, publicly threatening the completion of the Nordstream 2 pipeline over it.
Putin told Merkel to go scratch, and why not? She’ll be out of the picture in a year.
So, now she has personally lost Russia as a potential ally for Germany. Instead of finally choosing a side, Merkel, ever the dutiful soldier, kept playing the U.S. and Russia off each other alienating both.
Germany will get no help from Russia when a vindictive second-term Trump tightens the screws on her even more. Because stop looking at polls designed to gaslight you and look at what’s happening in the U.S. People will walk over broken glass to vote for Trump. The biggest worry about Biden is whether he’ll soil his Depends.
Merkel ham-fistedly played for time hoping to run out the clock on Trump and Johnson both over the U.S. election and it will cost Germany everything in the long run. She has a chance post-election to make things right with Putin but don’t bet on it.
Once she loses Russia, she’ll lose the Visegrad nations as the U.S. abandons Europe and the 21st century will turn most unkind on a hubristic and vainglorious European elite.
If the EU leadership want to be taken seriously then they need to act like world leaders and not like a bunch of vindictive high schoolers vying for class president. That these incompetent people are leading some of the most powerful countries in the world should frighten you.
They also reflect very poorly on the people who stand behind them, who I like to call The Davos Crowd, whose policies they were chosen to implement.
And now that the best of all possible Brexits is near at hand, the rest of Europe is going to get an object lesson in just how much it costs to keep them around as the UK thrives in the post-Brexit world and why they shouldn’t be afraid of their wrath.
Are you against the principle of free speech? The Democratic Party is. They used to be champions of the First Amendment; now they want to make it conditional on ideas and sentiments they support. Contrary ideas are to be labeled “hate speech,” and suppressed, along with anything that might hurt somebody’s feelings. How did you come to such a complete misunderstanding of what free speech means?
The USA is headed into a terrible ordeal of economic disorder that I call the long emergency. Mr. Trump won’t stop it, and it may yet make a fool out of him. But the Democratic Party’s agenda would add an extra layer of tyrannical and sadistic insanity to the process that will only bring more suffering to more people, and I don’t want that to happen.
I have some questions for former friends who have dumped me on account of my support for Mr. Trump’s re-election — which is mostly a vote to prevent the Democratic Party and its fellow travelers from running the government. On the whole, these former friends are college-educated, mature in experience, and cultured. Some of them are well-acquainted with history, which is to say, they ought to know better than to support the obviously illiberal motives of the political Left.
Are you against the principle of free speech? The Democratic Party is. They used to be champions of the First Amendment; now they want to make it conditional on ideas and sentiments they support. Contrary ideas are to be labeled “hate speech,” and suppressed, along with anything that might hurt somebody’s feelings. How did you come to such a complete misunderstanding of what free speech means? Namely, that a free society is obliged to tolerate the expression of disagreeable ideas up to the limit, as the Supreme Court put it, of “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”
I will answer my own question partially by saying: you have been programmed against free speech by what used to be the very vehicles of it, the newspapers and TV News channels, which have, amazingly, come out against freedom of the press and turned into propaganda outlets for Woke Progressivism and its illiberal agenda — thereby inadvertently committing suicide of the entire profession. We’ve seen this acted-out most vividly just the past week in the social media companies’ efforts to suppress all news of the Biden family’s global business operations, along with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and other leading news organizations that Americans used to depend on to know what was happening in the nation. This is especially unforgivable during a national election.
Did you support the movement on campus in recent years to shut down events featuring speakers such as Charles Murray (The Bell Curve), Heather Mac Donald of City Journal, Dinesh D’Souza, and many others who represented not-so-Woke ideas that “offended” you? Since when are your feelings so special that they negate the open exchange of ideas in the places that used to be dedicated to it, the universities? Should higher education only entertain ideas that you and your cohorts approve of? What if, in some future, a different cohort gains control of higher education and seeks to exclude your ideas on the grounds that they’re “offensive” (i.e. they just don’t like them)?
Are you in favor of a politicized Department of Justice and CIA? That is what the Democratic Party’s Resistance League deliberately brought about during the 2016 election, and they continue to promote it. Is it okay for bureaucrats to break the law to disable their political adversaries? That was the essence of the RussiaGate ruse. Former employees of those agencies, such as ex-CIA chief John Brennan and Andrew Weissmann, who ran the Mueller investigation, to this day still hype “Russian collusion” falsehoods to deflect attention from their own misdeeds. You let them get away with that.
Is it okay for these government agencies to spy on US citizens without any legal predicate, except their being political adversaries? Would it be okay if that were used against you in some future disposition of things? Is it okay for the FBI to withhold exculpatory evidence in federal court proceedings, thereby obstructing justice? Is it okay for the FBI and CIA to “leak” falsehoods to news reporters for political advantage? Do you not understand how by failing to oppose these actions you undermine the basis of political rectitude in a republic — bearing in mind the literal meaning of the word republic, from the Latin, res publica, the public thing, where civilization lives?
Are you against reason itself? For all your talk about the primacy of science, your agenda militates furiously against it: Math is “racist,” there’s no biological basis for understanding sex, all science is a “white colonial way-of-knowing,” masculinity is “toxic,” women can have penises and men can menstruate. Do you really believe these absurd fantasies manufactured in the graduate schools in the service of academic careerism at all costs — or do you just go along with them for the sake of protecting your own careers and perquisites?
Are you in favor of Antifa riots and the BLM hustle? They are staunchly supported by elected Democratic mayors and governors. These organizations looted and burned down shopping districts in many cities, and Democratic leaders did nothing to stop them. In Portland, Oregon, the nightly riots have continued for over 120 days under Mayor Ted Wheeler and Governor Kate Brown. The nightly riots have ceased to have any genuine political purpose or meaning; rather they’ve degenerated into a party space for energetic young people who can’t otherwise go to clubs, parties, concerts, cafes, or raves during the Covid-19 shut-down. So, rather, they’re enjoying a long-running game of “Cops-and-Robbers” out in the streets, busting things up, setting fires, getting chased around, and waking people up in their homes late at night with bullhorns and heavy metal music. They’re obviously having fun. The police have been forbidden to effectively disperse them, and the Multnomah County DA refuses to prosecute any of them — all of which just inspires the Antifas and BLMs to keep the game going. They have no real stake in the public interest. The net effect is terrible destruction of the city as a functioning civic organism. The Democratic Party has made it all possible. Wait until it comes to your town or city.
Are you in favor of cancel culture? The Democratic Party is addicted to it. Should livelihoods and reputations be destroyed for expressing an opinion, or telling a joke? Is asking someone for a date in the office a firing offense? Were Christine Blasey Ford and Michael Avenatti unimpeachable witnesses during the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings? Or was that just an instance of anything goes and nothing matters? How much sadistic pleasure do you suppose has been involved in the professional ruination of men in the media, the arts, and politics? How much of cancel culture and the Me-Too movement have been based on simple coercion, the wish to push other people around, and on vengeance for personal losses and slights?
By the way, did you notice that Jeffrey Toobin has not been fired from his positions at The New Yorker magazine and CNN for jerking-off on-screen during a Zoom meeting of his professional colleagues last week? None of them have even publicly criticized him. Why do you suppose that is? I suppose it’s because he is a favored member of the Woke Journalists club and enjoys special protection from professional ruin — though the truth is he’s thrown away his credibility as a legal commentator, whether the Wokerati like it or not, especially on matters of public conduct. But that’s just one example of the hypocrisy that Wokesterism is full of, and reveals its chronic disingenuous insincerity.
The Democratic Party supports all this pernicious mendacity and bad faith, and more. Joe Biden is the current figurehead of the Party. Mr. Biden pretty clearly has insurmountable defects of his own, first as an international grifter while holding national office, as well as the misfortune of his cognitive decline, which is not his fault, but disqualifies him for high office. As for everybody else in the party, I don’t want such a reliably dishonest gang to be in charge of running the American government. So, I’m voting for Mr. Trump. He’s far from my idea of an ideal candidate, but despite his defects, he’s managed to hold the country together during the greatest disruption of normal life since World War Two. I’ve also come to admire his resilience and, yes, his bravery, in the face of an opposition that has spared no effort of foul play to destroy him.
I’m under no illusions that Donald Trump will Make America Great Again in the way that many of his supporters understand that slogan. The USA is headed into a terrible ordeal of economic disorder that I call the long emergency. Mr. Trump won’t stop it, and it may yet make a fool out of him. But the Democratic Party’s agenda would add an extra layer of tyrannical and sadistic insanity to the process that will only bring more suffering to more people, and I don’t want that to happen. I believe that Mr. Trump will probably win the election, but we’ll have to see what kind of nefarious dodges his opponents will employ to prevent any resolution of that outcome.
This is standard operating procedure for political movements trying to seize power. After World War II, the Soviets arranged for mob violence in Hungary, Poland, and other countries they occupied as preparation for the imposition of a Communist dictatorship. This violence, authorities claimed, proved the need for a new order.
Observers from the Right have been warning the Democratic Party is trying to establish a “one-party system.” Evidence for this prediction is so overwhelming that I wouldn’t even dispute it. From plans to pack the Supreme Court, to maintain a permanent Democratic-Left majority, to pushing for an open borders policy that would make it possible to enroll loads more Democratic voters, to enfranchising convicted felons, to using a Senate majority to create two new Democratic states—the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico—it should be clear where all this is leading.
We also find other items on the Democratic wish list that warrant attention, for example, measures taken in Democratic-run states to send out unsolicited ballots, which Democratic vote-harvesters could return, and a national ban on voter identification laws. Such demands may turn elections into meaningless rituals for legitimating a leftist stranglehold on government.
Riots by what Tucker Carlson aptly characterized as the “Biden voters” did not happen by chance. The Democratic Party and the overwhelmingly Democratic media condoned and even incited these “peaceful protests,” and former Vice President Biden’s staff labored mightily to bail out apprehended perpetrators of violence in order to put them back onto the streets. This is standard operating procedure for political movements trying to seize power. After World War II, the Soviets arranged for mob violence in Hungary, Poland, and other countries they occupied as preparation for the imposition of a Communist dictatorship. This violence, authorities claimed, proved the need for a new order.
The Nazi Brown Shirts wrought havoc in Weimar Germany that Hitler then insisted only his rule would end. While Brown Shirts battled with real Communists on the streets of German cities, our media have less credible street enemies. The best they can come up with is the mostly powerless, racially integrated Proud Boys, policemen who killed or wounded several black men with long criminal records, and President Trump’s indelicate phraseology. Apparently, these troublemakers, not the Democratic-friendly BLM and Antifa, were behind the mayhem and looting during the “Summer of Violence.”
Unfortunately, the party carrying out the coup enjoys a near-majority of voters. The electorate that is going along with the destruction of our constitutional order has responded favorably both to the media and what claims to be our educational system. We are also saddled with racial tensions that add to our political instability.
And perhaps even more unsettling, we have a mass media and a culture industry that are invested in the coup.
Please note that when Hitler took power, his party never exceeded 36.8 percent of the popular vote, which it reached in a Reichstag election in July 1932. (By the end of 1932 that total fell to 33.1 percent). Moreover, the German press was far more politically diverse in 1932 than what Trump denounces with some justification as our “lying media.” The action of electronic media giants, which now routinely suppress news that could harm the American Left, confirms the obvious. The media no longer even pretend to observe bourgeois niceties when they cancel the other side, any more than our “institutions of higher learning” hide their intolerance when they root out and shame dissenters.
Despite these ominous signs, it seems unlikely that the United States will actually become a “one-party system.” This will not happen even if the Left takes over. Instead, the leftist dictatorship that may befall us will try to preserve certain democratic arrangements pro forma.
Since democracies are supposed to have opposition parties, the new rulers will create such an opposition. It will look like the permissible political competition in the former German Democratic Republic, where the ruling Communists supposedly headed a “unity coalition.” At least on paper, the German Communists took power by merging with the Social Democrats. They then brought into existence Blockflötenparteien, parties that were invented to offer the appearance of opposition without causing the regime any trouble.
It is easy to imagine who will perform this function in the United States in a virtual leftist dictatorship. Where shall I begin? Perhaps with the editors and writers of The Dispatch, the funders of the Lincoln Project, and the “Obamacon” Andrew Bacevich, who now wants to “detoxify” the Republican Party by working to defeat Trump.
An authorized writer on conservative thought, Bacevich endorsed Obama against two weak Republican presidential candidates, before going on to support Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden against the putative populist corrupters of the true Republican faith. Now he is offering to “save the Republican Party from itself.” No doubt Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, and Bill Kristol could all be persuaded to join our Blockflöte, providing they would be allowed to implement a vigorously interventionist foreign policy.
We could also lure into this exceedingly friendly opposition James Kirchick, who combines anti-Trump neoconservative politics with vigorous advocacy of LGBT rights. This formal opposition should have no trouble convincing those in charge to embrace Kirchick’s crusade against the “homophobic” Vladimir Putin. The American Left has been pushing Russophobia since it began accusing Trump of “Russian collusion.”
Although our tolerated opposition would likely acquiesce in whatever measures against “prejudice” the new order introduced, it might also arrange favors for woke capitalist sponsors. After all, isn’t that what a “conservative” opposition is supposed to do?
About Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried is an American paleoconservative philosopher, historian, and columnist. He is a former Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, as well as a Guggenheim recipient.
Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives.”
~ Etienne de La Boetie, – “The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude” – Written 1552-1553
What has befallen humanity? Why are we facing an end to freedom, beauty, and happiness? Why are so many fooled over and over again? Why has stupidity replaced sanity and logic? Why are the masses bound to darkness instead of accepting reality and truth? Why do the many without resisting allow themselves to be controlled by the few? Even the weakest animal in the wild would muster a defense in order to protect life and home, so why is the human animal cowering in fear while their lives and families are being destroyed? Cowardice has replaced strength, ignorance has replaced intellect, blind obedience has replaced self-responsibility, and what remains is a society consumed by indifference. When this is the prevailing state of mind, servitude is the result.
There is no virus pandemic due to what is referred to as ‘Covid-19,’ and there was never a virus pandemic. The virus plot is being used simply as a method to instill enough fear in the people so that mass compliance can be achieved. Once that compliance is at a preferred level acceptable to the claimed ruling ‘elite,’ the plan for future world governance can go forward without much resistance. That plan is openly being referred to as the “Great Reset.” At this time, we are entering into what could be the final stage of this long-planned coup, and that will be the most dangerous and critical time for this country and the world. Regardless of political rhetoric, the head of the snake is the United States. Even with the destruction of this economy as we know it, the most powerful in the U.S. will still be at the top of the technocratic pyramid of power. Globalization is certainly the goal, but there will still be a ruling hierarchy made up of U.S. individuals, powerful banks, corporations, and foundational entities in the most powerful positions.
The upcoming election will most likely prove to be the initiation of the next and most important stage of this vast conspiracy meant only to gain total control of all economic, monetary, and social constructs. This could lead to mass unrest, which in turn would lead to a much higher presence of enforcement agents including police, reserves, and even active military. This timing is also right at the beginning of flu season, and with all the false cases due to bogus PCR testing, the fake pandemic will again take center stage. Given that immune systems throughout this country have been greatly compromised and decimated over the past 8 months, and just in time for flu season, there will probably be more sickness and death than normal. Once a chaotic atmosphere exists, the claims by the political class will be that we are again in a state of emergency, and if enough fear can be mustered by all this pandemonium coming simultaneously, that fear will change the current antagonism toward this poisonous vaccine into not only more acceptance by a high percentage of the population, but a clamoring for it to be made available at the earliest time possible. While this scenario may seem somewhat complicated and unlikely to occur, that is not the case due to the fact that everything is set to fall into place in a systematic manner. This has been structured purposely and planned over a long period of time. There should be no surprise to see all these things happening at once which will cause much confusion and anxiety, and could quickly lead to a state-captured society worse than has been evident to date.
This is why hiding from reality, hoping things will turn out for the best, and expecting things to get back to normal without strong resistance, will cause the end of liberty. Weakness and apathetic attitudes are what the powerful expect and what they desire. If the people continue to acquiesce to all state mandates, refusing to say no to these tyrannical measures, and voluntarily shut down their lives and livelihoods for what will be falsely referred to as the “greater good,” we will all be doomed.
It seems apparent considering all the evidence and all that has happened this year, that we are facing the most dangerous time in our history. This is not an extreme position in my opinion, as there is more at stake than has ever occurred in the past. This country has been at war, and aggressively so, for 94% of its history, and much death and destruction has taken place. Much of that unnecessary carnage has been outside this country, and in most cases, the American population has been insulated from that carnage and terror not only from a psychological perspective, but also from a physical and geographic level. What we could face now is much different in every way, and could lead to any number of terrible situations.
Due to the likely economic collapse around the world, food shortages, aggression at every turn, and mass fear, wars could break out globally. Risk for every major country is heightened, but that may not even be the worst threat. War internally is certainly possible, and the state in order to gain total control will effectively be at war against all of us, and will prosecute that societal war by restrictions, medical and military martial law, violent enforcement, business closings, lockdowns, quarantines, tracking, tracing, forced vaccination, and possibly even holding camps. This is reality, and the ‘new normal’ that is being foisted on all is not to protect anyone from a non-deadly virus, but to claim kingship over the country and the world.
This is not a natural occurrence. It is not a game. It will not end without great harm. The state will not stop this insane takeover plan on its own, and nothing will go back to any semblance of normal unless the people of this country force that to happen. It is time for total disobedience, and it is time to stand up for those things that make us human; those things that are being systematically taken away from us every day. It has been said over and over, but it is time to wake up instead of being a country of cowards and fools.
“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.”
~ Etienne de La Boetie – “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude”.
The Family Jewels report was only partially declassified in June 25, 2007 (30 years later). Along with the release of the redacted report included a six-page summary with the following introduction:
“The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s.” [emphasis added]
Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best to “reform” its ways.
“Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
– Sir John Harrington.
As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to bottom.
This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet’s father. This is showcased in the play by reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with him.
Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the persisting “ruling system,” of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of affairs truly originate from?
The tragedy of Hamlet does not just lie in the action (or lack of action) of one man, but rather, it is contained in the choices and actions of all its main characters. Each character fails to see the longer term consequences of their own actions, which leads not only to their ruin but towards the ultimate collapse of Denmark. The characters are so caught up in their antagonism against one another that they fail to foresee that their very own destruction is intertwined with the other.
This is a reflection of a failing system.
A system that, though it believes itself to be fighting tooth and nail for its very survival, is only digging a deeper grave. A system that is incapable of generating any real solutions to the problems it faces.
The only way out of this is to address that very fact. The most important issue that will decide the fate of the country is what sort of changes are going to occur in the political and intelligence apparatus, such that a continuation of this tyrannical treason is finally stopped in its tracks and unable to sow further discord and chaos.
When the Matter of “Truth” Becomes a Threat to “National Security”
When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that goes back more than 60 years.
How much time needs to elapse before the American people have the right to know the truth behind what their government agencies have been doing within their own country and abroad in the name of the “free” world?
From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later.
If the American people really want to finally see who is standing behind that curtain in Oz, now is the time.
These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they are upholding in collecting their “intelligence,” that has supposedly justified the Mueller investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected government’s ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American people.
Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence (refer here and here), Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something “credible” to American intelligence.
In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on “terror,” that was justified with cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt that has been occurring within the U.S. for the last four years…over more cooked British intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this.
Neither the American people, nor the world as a whole, can afford to suffer any more of the so-called “mistaken” intelligence bumblings. It is time that these intelligence bureaus are held accountable for at best criminal negligence, at worst, treason against their own country.
When Great Figures of Hope Are Targeted as Threats to “National Security”
The Family Jewels report, which was an investigation conducted by the CIA to investigate itself, was spurred by the Watergate Scandal and the CIA’s unconstitutional role in the whole affair. This investigation by the CIA reviewed its own conduct from the 1950s to mid-1970s.
The Family Jewels report was only partially declassified in June 25, 2007 (30 years later). Along with the release of the redacted report included a six-page summary with the following introduction:
“The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s.” [emphasis added]
Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best to “reform” its ways.
On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the “family jewels”. This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of U.S. citizens.
Largely as a reaction to Hersh’s findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate.
The Church Committee also published an interim report titled “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders”, which investigated alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Ford attempted to withhold the report from the public, but failed and reluctantly issued Executive Order 11905 after pressure from the public and the Church Committee.
Executive Order 11905 is a United States Presidential Executive Order signed on February 18, 1976, by a very reluctant President Ford in an attempt to reform the United States Intelligence Community, improve oversight on foreign intelligence activities, and ban political assassination.
The attempt is now regarded as a failure and was largely undone by President Reagan who issued Executive Order 12333, which extended the powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and directed leaders of the U.S. federal agencies to co-operate fully with the CIA, which was the original arrangement that CIA have full authority over clandestine operations (for more information on this refer to my papers here and here).
In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled “Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973“. The rest were kept secret at the CIA’s request.
Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK, in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List.
In 1975, the Church Committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this operation, against the objections of President Ford’s administration (refer here and here for more information).
The Church Committee’s reports constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over 50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22nd, 1963. Two days before his assassination a hate-Kennedy handbill (see picture) was circulated in Dallas accusing the president of treasonous activities including being a communist sympathizer.
On March 1st, 1967 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of David Ferrie and others. After a little over a one month long trial, Shaw was found not guilty on March 1st, 1969.
David Ferrie, a controller of Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be a key witness and would have provided the ”smoking gun” evidence linking himself to Clay Shaw, was likely murdered on Feb. 22nd, 1967, less than a week after news of Garrison’s investigation broke in the media.
According to Garrison’s team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy’s assassination but access to classified material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an investigation.
Though Garrison’s team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison’s book for further details and Oliver Stone’s excellently researched movie JFK]
To date, it is the only trial to be brought forward concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created in 1994 by the Congress enacted President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection within the National Archives and Records Administration. In July 1998, a staff report released by the ARRB emphasized shortcomings in the original autopsy.
The ARRB wrote, “One of the many tragedies of the assassination of President Kennedy has been the incompleteness of the autopsy record and the suspicion caused by the shroud of secrecy that has surrounded the records that do exist.” [emphasis added]
“Asked about the lunchroom episode [where he was overheard stating his notes of the autopsy went missing] in a May 1996 deposition, Finck said he did not remember it. He was also vague about how many notes he took during the autopsy but confirmed that “after the autopsy I also wrote notes” and that he turned over whatever notes he had to the chief autopsy physician, James J. Humes.
As the recently released Palace Letters illustrated, the CIA staged a coup to oust Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam because he was prioritizing the nation’s self-sovereignty. Journalist John Pilger wrote in 2014 after Whitlam’s death:
I don’t know about you, but I never consented to a world where powerful nuclear-armed forces wave Armageddon weapons at each other while fighting for planetary domination and subverting less powerful nations if they don’t play along with their Cold War games. Detente and peace must be sought and obtained, and we must all work to live together on this planet in collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem.
By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz
The US-centralized empire functions like a giant blob that absorbs nations and turns them into imperial client states. Once absorbed, it is rare for a country to escape and rejoin other genuinely sovereign nations.
The new president-elect of Bolivia, Luis Arce, has told the Spanish international news agency EFE that he intends to restore the nation’s relations with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. This reverses the policies of the US-backed coup regime which immediately began closing embassies, kicking out doctors and severing relations with those nations after illegally seizing power last year.
Arce also spoke of warm relations with Russia and China.
“We are going to re-establish all relations,” he told EFE. “This government has acted very ideologically, depriving the Bolivian people of access to Cuban medicine, to Russian medicine, to advances in China. For a purely ideological issue, it has exposed the population in a way that is unnecessary and harmful.”
Arce expressed a willingness to “open the door to all countries, the only requirement is that they respect us and respect our sovereignty, nothing more. All countries, no matter the size, who want a relationship with Bolivia, the only requirement is that we respect each other as equals. If that is so, we have no problem.“
If you know anything about US imperialism and global politics, you will recognize that last bit as brazen heresy against imperial doctrine.
Bolivia will restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, said President-elect Luis Arce in an interview with EFE. He will also re-establish good relations with China & Russia.Arce condems the coup govt for its ideological & pro-US approach to foreign policy. pic.twitter.com/3ATXjSVbuF— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) October 20, 2020
The unofficial doctrine of the empire-like cluster of international allies that is loosely centralized around the United States does not recognize the sovereignty of other nations, much less respect them as equals. This empire takes it as a given that it has every right to determine what every nation in the world does, who their leaders will be, where their resources will go, and what their military posture on the world stage will be. If a government refuses to accept the empire’s right to determine these things, it is targeted, sabotaged, attacked, and eventually replaced with a puppet regime.
The US-centralized empire functions like a giant blob that slowly works to absorb nations which have not yet been converted into imperial client states. It is rare that a nation is able to escape from that blob and rejoin the unabsorbed nations like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba in their fight for self-sovereignty, and it is encouraging that it was able to do so.
We saw the dynamics of the imperial blob explained quite vividly last year by American political analyst John Mearsheimer at a debate hosted by the Australian think tank Center for Independent Studies. Mearsheimer told his audience that the US is going to do everything it can to halt China’s rise and prevent it from becoming the regional hegemon in the eastern hemisphere, and that Australia should align with the US in that battle or else it would face the wrath of Washington.
The rules based human rights defending democratic order, ladies and gentlemen https://t.co/ZEfxGm6LFi— RaHoWarrior Steve Bannon, 1st Boomer Division (@healingbyhenry) October 8, 2020
“The question that’s on the table is what should Australia’s foreign policy be in light of the rise of China,” Mearsheimer said. “I’ll tell you what I would suggest if I were an Australian.”
Mearsheimer said China is going to continue to grow economically and will convert that economic power into military power to dominate Asia “the way the US dominates the western hemisphere,” and explained why he think the US and its allies have every ability to prevent that from happening.
“Now the question is what does this all mean for Australia?” Mearsheimer said. “Well, you’re in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows what the quandary is. And by the way you’re not the only country in East Asia that’s in this quandary. You trade a lot with China, and that trade is very important for your prosperity, no question about that. Security-wise, you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense, right? And you understand that security is more important than prosperity, because if you don’t survive, you’re not gonna prosper.
“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “Right, you have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.
“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”
Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer’s more incendiary observations. The CIA is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro.
If you’ve ever wondered how the the US is so successful in getting other nations around the world to align with its interests, this is how. It’s not that the US is a good actor on the world stage or a kind friend to its allies, it’s that it will destroy you if you disobey it.
Australia is not aligned with the US to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the US to protect itself from the US. As a Twitter follower recently observed, the US doesn’t have allies, only hostages.
As the recently released Palace Letters illustrated, the CIA staged a coup to oust Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam because he was prioritizing the nation’s self-sovereignty. Journalist John Pilger wrote in 2014 after Whitlam’s death:
Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution.” Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.
The primary difference between the coup in Australia and the one in Bolivia was that the Bolivians refused to roll over and take it while we shrugged and said ‘No worries mate.’ We had every option to become a real nation and insist on our own self-sovereignty, but we, unlike the Bolivians, were too thoroughly propagandized and placid. Some hostages escape, some don’t.
The US empire got rid of Whitlam, and then when we elected in 2007 a prime minister who was considered too friendly with China they did it again; in order to facilitate the Obama administration’s “pivot” against Beijing the pro-China Kevin Rudd was replaced by the compliant Julia Gillard. World Socialist Websitereports:
Secret US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in December 2010 revealed that “protected sources” of the US embassy were pivotal figures in Gillard’s elevation. For months, key coup plotters, including senators Mark Arbib and David Feeney, and Australian Workers Union (AWU) chief Paul Howes, secretly provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and divisions within the leadership…
Rudd had proposed an Asia-Pacific Community, attempting to mediate the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China, and opposed the formation of a quadrilateral military alliance between the US, India, Japan and Australia, aimed against China.
Gillard, who had cultivated her pro-US credentials through Australia-US and Australia-Israel leadership forums, was literally selected by the US embassy as a reliable replacement to Rudd. In her first public appearance after knifing Rudd, she demonstrated her devotion to Washington by posing for a photo op with the US ambassador, flanked by US and Australian flags. She soon had a phone call with Obama, who had previously twice postponed a planned visit to Australia under Rudd.
The centrality of Australia to the US preparations for war against China became apparent in November 2011, when Obama announced his “pivot to Asia” in the Australian parliament, rather than the White House. During the visit, Gillard and Obama signed an agreement to station American Marines in Darwin and allow greater US access to other military bases, placing the Australian population on the front line of any conflict with China.
Gillard’s government also sanctioned the expansion of the major US spying and weapons-targeting base at Pine Gap, agreed to the US military’s increased use of Australian ports and airbases, and stepped up Australia’s role in the US-led top-level “Five Eyes” global surveillance network, which monitors the communications and online activities of millions of people worldwide.
Rudd’s removal marked a turning point. US imperialism, via the Obama administration, sent a blunt message: There was no longer any room for equivocation by the Australian ruling elite. Regardless of which party was in office, it had to line up unconditionally behind the US conflict with China, no matter what the consequences for the loss of its massive export markets in China.
This is what we’re seeing all around the world now: a slow motion third world war being waged by the US power alliance against the remaining nations which have resisted being absorbed into it. As the most powerful of the unabsorbed nations by far, China is the ultimate target of this war. If the empire succeeds in its ultimate goal of stopping China, it will have attained a de facto planetary government which no population will be able to oppose or dissent from.
I don’t know about you, but I never consented to a world where powerful nuclear-armed forces wave Armageddon weapons at each other while fighting for planetary domination and subverting less powerful nations if they don’t play along with their Cold War games. Detente and peace must be sought and obtained, and we must all work to live together on this planet in collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem.
This omnicidal, ecocidal way of living that the oligarchic empire has laid out for us does not suit our species, and it will drive us to extinction along with God knows how many other species if we do not find a way to end it. Rulers historically do not cede their power willingly, so we ordinary human beings as a collective are going to have to find a way to destroy their propaganda engine, force an end to imperialism, and build a healthy world.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Left to their own devices, the people “do not feel any call to impose their own customs and values on strangers.” Declining to dodge the scare word, Chodorov urged a “return to that isolationism which for over a hundred years prospered the nation and gained for us the respect and admiration of the world.”
The King of Prussia, Frederick II (“the Great”), confessed that he had seized the province of Silesia from the Empress Maria Theresa in 1740 because, as a newcomer to the throne, he had to make a name for himself. This caused a war with Austria that developed into a worldwide war (in North America, the French and Indian War), and went on to 1763. Of course, many tens of thousands died in that series of wars.
In general, though, states have been much more circumspect about revealing the true reasons for their wars as well as the methods by which they conduct them. Pretexts and evasions have proliferated. In democratic societies, these are endorsed—often invented—by compliant writers and intellectuals.
The unmasking of such excuses for war and war-making is called historical revisionism, or simply revisionism.
Revisionism and classical liberalism, today called libertarianism, have always been closely linked.
The greatest classical liberal thinker on international affairs was Richard Cobden, whose crusade against the Corn Laws, brought free trade and prosperity to England in 1846. Cobden’s two-volume Political Writings (reprinted by Garland Publishing in 1973) all deal with British foreign policy.
Cobden maintained that, “The middle and industrious classes of England can have no interest apart from the preservation of peace. The honours, the fame, the emoluments of war belong not to them; the battle-plain is the harvest-field of the aristocracy, watered by the blood of the people.” He looked forward to a time when the slogan “no foreign politics” would become the watchword of all who claimed to be representatives of a free people. Cobden went so far as to trace the calamitous English wars against revolutionary France—which ended only at Waterloo—to the fear and hostility of the British upper classes to the anti-aristocratic policies of the French.
Castigating the aristocracy for its alleged war lust was standard for liberal writers of earlier generations. But Cobden’s views began to change when he observed the intense popular enthusiasm for the Crimean War, against Russia and on behalf of the Ottoman Turks. His outspoken opposition to that war, seconded by his friend and co-leader of the Manchester School, John Bright, cost both of them their seats in the Commons at the next election.
Bright outlived his colleague by twenty years, witnessing the growing passion for empire in his country. In 1884, the famous liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone, ordered the British Navy to bombard Alexandria, to recover the debts owed by the Egyptians to British investors. Bright scornfully dismissed it as “a jobbers’ war,” and resigned from the Cabinet. But he never forgot what had started him on the road to anti-imperialism. When Bright passed with his young grandson in front of the statue in London, labeled “Crimea,” the boy asked the meaning of the memorial. Bright replied, simply, “A Crime.”
Herbert Spencer, the most widely read philosopher of his time, was squarely in the classical liberal tradition. His hostility to statism is exemplified by his assertion that, “Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression and by aggression.” While noting the state’s inborn tendency towards “militancy”—as opposed to the peaceful intercourse of civil society—Spencer denounced the various apologias for his country’s wars in his lifetime, in China, South Africa, and elsewhere.
In the United States, author and activist Lysander Spooner was a renowned abolitionist, even conspiring with John Brown to promote a servile insurrection in the South. Yet he bitterly opposed the Civil War, arguing that it violated the right of the southern states to secede from a union that no longer represented them. E. L. Godkin, influential editor of The Nation magazine, opposed U. S. imperialism to the end of his life, condemning the war against Spain. Like Godkin, William Graham Sumner was a firm proponent of free trade and the gold standard and a foe of socialism. He held the first professorship in sociology (at Yale) and authored a great many books. But his most enduring work is his essay, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain,” reprinted many times and today even available online. In this ironically titled work, Sumner portrayed the savage U. S. war against the Philippines, which cost some 200,000 Filipino lives, as an American version of the imperialism and lust for colonies that had brought Spain the sorry state of his own time.
Unsurprisingly, the most radical of the liberal revisionists was the arch-radical Gustave de Molinari, originator of what has come to be known as anarcho-capitalism. In his work on the Great Revolution of 1789, Molinari eviscerated the founding myth of the French Republic. France had been proceeding gradually and organically towards liberal reform in the later eighteenth century; the revolution put an end to that process, substituting an unprecedented expansion of state power. The self-proclaimed liberal parties of the nineteenth century were, in fact, machines for the exploitation of society by the now victorious middle classes, who profited from government contracts, state-subsidies for railroads and other industries, state-sponsored banking, tariffs, and the jobs available in the ever-expanding bureaucracy.
In his last work, published a year before his death in 1912, Molinari never relented. The American Civil War had not been simply a humanitarian crusade to free the slaves. The war “ruined the conquered provinces,” but the Northern plutocrats puling the strings achieved their aim: the imposition of a vicious protectionism that led ultimately “to the regime of trusts and produced the billionaires.”
Libertarian revisionism continued into the twentieth century. The First World War furnished rich pickings, among them Albert Jay Nock’s The Myth of a Guilty Nation and H. L. Mencken’s continuing, and witty, exposés of the lies of America’s wars and war makers. In the next generation, Frank Chodorov, the last of the Old Right greats wrote that “Isolationism is not a political policy, it is a natural attitude of a people.” Left to their own devices, the people “do not feel any call to impose their own customs and values on strangers.” Declining to dodge the scare word, Chodorov urged a “return to that isolationism which for over a hundred years prospered the nation and gained for us the respect and admiration of the world.” Chodorov broke with the “New Right” (aka, the neocons of the that era) over his opposition to the Korean War.
Murray Rothbard was the heir to this whole legacy, totally familiar with it and bringing it up to date. Aside from his many other, truly amazing contributions, Murray and his colleague Leonard Liggio introduced historical revisionism to the burgeoning American libertarian movement. This is a work now carried on with great gusto by Lew Rockwell, of the Mises Institute, and his associated accomplished scholars.
The Best of Ralph Raico Ralph Raico (1936-2016) was Professor Emeritus in European history at Buffalo State College and a senior fellow of the Mises Institute. He was a specialist on the history of liberty, the liberal tradition in Europe, and the relationship between war and the rise of the state. He is the author of The Place of Religion in the Liberal Philosophy of Constant, Tocqueville, and Lord Acton.
