Author: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The very first votes of the 2016 presidential election season will be cast tonight in the Iowa caucuses. This is supposed to fill us with happy thoughts about self-government, civic virtue, rational deliberation, and about politics as the way the people’s will is put into effect. But to the contrary, we should spurn what the establishment would have us celebrate. Politics operates according to principles that would horrify us if we observed them in our private lives, and that would get us arrested if we tried to live by them. The state can steal and call it taxation, kidnap and … Continue reading →

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The US corporate state could be a great walled fortress, arrogant and impenetrable, all-powerful and unfeatable. But it’s not. It is vulnerable, and knows it. That’s why it spends so much time and resources propagandizing us, in public schools, in the media, in academia, in big banks and the big internet corporations. The feds consider LRC to be irrelevant, which is OK with me, given their crime rate! But those who deal in ideas are doing what they can to hamper us. That’s true of companies who spy for the regime, and neocon intellectuals, with all their power and pelf. … Continue reading →

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Think of a huge, bureaucratic military occupying a country. They march hither and yon on the plains, doing their daily damage. Though their every move burns vast sums of money, they seem undefeatable. But in the hills above are the guerrillas—fast moving, striking snd retreating before the occupiers can even react, and driving them crazy in the bargain. Their morale declines like their efficacy. Just a few irregulars can hold down a vast number of regular troops, physically and emotionally. All the guerrillas need is the support of enough good people. Of course, libertarians do not advocate violence, unlike our … Continue reading →

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Some years ago, the late Kent Snyder picked me up at National airport for a talk to Ron Paul’s caucus of libertarian-sympathetic congressmen. Kent, who would later manage Ron’s 2008 presidential campaign, never accepted an official story. As we drove past the Pentagon, he told me about his uncle, a senior pilot for a famous British airline, who held that it could not have been a commercial jet that hit that government building on 9/11.  Kent also warned me about a giant internet firm. He said it’s a brilliant enterprise, in search technology and many other other ways, but it’s … Continue reading →

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Some years ago, the late Kent Snyder picked me up at National airport for a talk to Ron Paul’s caucus of libertarian-sympathetic congressmen. Kent, who would later manage Ron’s 2008 presidential campaign, never accepted an official story. As we drove past the Pentagon, he told me about his uncle, a senior pilot for a famous British airline, who held that it could not have been a commercial jet that hit that government building on 9/11.  Kent also warned me about a giant internet firm. He said it’s a brilliant enterprise, in search technology and many other other ways, but it’s … Continue reading →

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This talk was delivered at the Ft. Worth Mises Circle, “Against PC,” on October 3, 2015. A sharp Martian visiting Earth would make two observations about the United States–one true, the other only superficially so. On the basis of its ceaseless exercises in self-congratulation, the US appears to him to be a place where free thought is encouraged, and in which man makes war against all the fetters on his mind that reactionary forces had once placed there. That is the superficial truth. The real truth, which our Martian would discover after watching how Americans actually behave, is that the … Continue reading →

Ronald Reagan used to be called the Teflon president, on the grounds that no matter what gaffe or scandal engulfed him, it never stuck: he didn’t suffer in the polls. If Reagan was the Teflon president, the military is America’s Teflon institution. Even people who oppose whatever the current war happens to be can be counted on to “support the troops” and to live by the comforting delusion that whatever aberrations may be evident today, the system itself is basically sound. To add insult to injury, whenever the US government gears up for yet another military intervention, it’s people who … Continue reading →

Ron has written many important books, but I think his latest is the most important for our time: Swords into Plowshares. Ron, movingly and eloquently, describes his lifetime of perpetual war, beginning with the horrific WWII, but shows us how to dream of, and achieve, a future free of war and other forms of state violence. Swords into Plowshares can change a nation and a world, if it gets into enough people’s hands. That is how persuasive this book is, which so brilliantly shows us the heart and mind of this great man and the great cause of peace, domestic and … Continue reading →

The release of the encyclical Laudato Si by Pope Francis last week had the predictable result of winning the Pontiff plaudits and huzzahs in the world’s press, and another round of bewildered head-shaking among observant Catholics. Whether in his formal remarks or his off-the-cuff observations, Pope Francis repeats many of the common objections to (and caricatures of) the market economy, objections we might encounter in the writings of any of the leftist thinkers who dominate the Pope’s Jesuit order. Meanwhile, so-called progressives in the Church, not normally so deferential to authority, triumphantly proclaim that matters of economics have been definitively … Continue reading →

Students in the state’s official propaganda institutions learn about the wonders of the ­­democratic process, so called, throughout their years of formal study. But the truth is on full display during a presidential election season. These are not wise statesmen, discussing matters of importance from a disinterested, platonic summit, but narcissistic power-seekers shoveling ill-gotten gains to favored constituencies. Elections have sometimes been compared to markets: just as firms compete for consumer dollars, political candidates compete for citizens’ votes. But the comparison is a superficial one. When the consumer spends his dollar, he is guaranteed to receive what he purchases. So … Continue reading →

As the financial crisis of 2008 took shape, the policy recommendations were not slow in coming: why, economic stability and American prosperity demand fiscal and monetary stimulus to jump-start the sick economy back to life. And so we got fiscal stimulus, as well as a program of monetary expansion without precedent in US history. David Stockman recently noted that we have in effect had fifteen solid years of stimulus – not just the high-profile programs like the $700 billion TARP and the $800 billion in fiscal stimulus, but also $4 trillion of money printing and 165 out of 180 months … Continue reading →

Two weeks ago Starbucks was forced to abandon a widely ridiculed campaign to promote discussion of race in America by writing “Race Together” on coffee cups. The Right criticized it as another self-righteous exercise in p.c., while the Left complained that a discussion starter introduced by a rich product of “white privilege” like Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wasn’t quite leftist enough. Over at EPJ, Bob Wenzel pointed out the not-exactly-unexpected finding that Schultz lives in a part of Seattle called Madison Park, whose 1,538 residents include a mere 80 black people. And in fact, Schultz lives in an especially exclusive … Continue reading →

[Excerpted from the inaugural issue of The Austrian.] For a century and a half, the idea of secession has been systematically demonized among the American public. The government’s schools spin fairy tales about the “indivisible Union” and the wise statesmen who fought to preserve it. Decentralization is portrayed as unsophisticated and backward, while nationalism and centralization are made to seem progressive and inevitable. When a smaller political unit wishes to withdraw from a larger one, its motives must be disreputable and base, while the motivations of the central power seeking to keep that unit in an arrangement it does not … Continue reading →

The presidency must be destroyed. It is the primary evil we face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture towards decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell schools kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat. The presidency — by … Continue reading →

For a century and a half, the idea of secession has been systematically demonized among the American public. The government schools spin fairy tales about the “indivisible Union” and the wise statesmen who fought to preserve it. Decentralization is portrayed as unsophisticated and backward, while nationalism and centralization are made to seem progressive and inevitable. When a smaller political unit wishes to withdraw from a larger one, its motives must be disreputable and base, while the motivations of the central power seeking to keep that unit in an arrangement it does not want are portrayed as selfless and patriotic, if … Continue reading →