Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 132

Americans Could Learn From Socrates

Most of us who studied philosophy when we were young think of Socrates as the guy who questions everything in Plato’s Dialogues. For a long time I suspected that if I had attended a dinner party in Athens at which he was present, I would have found him annoying.

During the dark days of the pandemic, I read about the plague that struck Athens in 430 BC, when the city state was under siege by Sparta during the Peloponnesian War.

Over the following three years, most of the population was infected, ...

The Catholic Artificial Intelligence Moment

Soon after his election, Pope Leo XIV revealed why he chose his papal name, and he noted that the rise of artificial intelligence was on his mind:

I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revo...

What Are Pope Leo XIV’s Priorities and Why Did He Choose That Name?

VATICAN CITY — What exactly will Pope Leo XIV’s papacy look like? The American Pope has given signs of his personal priorities, citing Vatican II and synodality alongside missionary activity and resistance to atheistic industrial developments.

Offering his inaugural address to the College of Cardinals on Saturday, Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate was presented to them in sum. He may have been less than 48 hours into wearing the white cassock, but Leo already had his priorities laid out in mind.

Key th...

In Saudi Arabia Trump Rejects Interventionism, Regime-Change Schemes

Foreign policy statements by the Trump administration continue to surprise.

At the end of January Secretary of State Marco Rubio made remarks that strongly diverged from decades of U.S. policy. He did away with ‘unipolarity’ – the assumed leading role of the U.S. in global policy – and acknowledged and endorsed a multi-polar world.

He set a limit to U.S. intervention by acknowledging the legitimate interests of others:

The way the world has always worked is that the Chinese will do what’s in the...

Trump Envoy Reveals NATO Troop Deployment Plans for Ukraine

I have been wondering if the Trump regime’s peace negotiations are sincere.  The plan revealed by Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg indicates that the negotiations are not sincere.  Putin, Lavrov and Security Council Secretary Shoigu, the former Minister of Defense, have all made it clear that NATO troops in Ukraine are unacceptable and could result in World War III.  So why has Kellogg supported, or arranged, a joint statement by the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the...

Donald of Arabia

Since 1898, the guys who developed and executed U.S. foreign policy have modeled it after British foreign policy during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries—that is, a policy of meddling in the affairs of the rest of the world in an effort to expand British domination.

On the whole, the British were considerably better at global meddling to their advantage than the Americans have been. This was because the guys who staffed the East India Company and later the Foreign Office tended to be educ...

Trump Is Making America Constitutionally Literate—By Violating the Constitution

“Donald Trump ran on a platform of relentless, thoroughgoing rejection of the Constitution itself, and its underlying principle of democratic self-government and individual rights. True, he never endorsed quartering of troops in private homes in time of peace, but aside from that there is hardly a provision of the Bill of Rights or later amendments he did not explicitly promise to override, from First Amendment freedom of the press and of religion to Fourth Amendment freedom from ‘unreasonable s...

The Illusion of American Generosity

Because of our strong Christian heritage, most Americans innately believe in being generous to their neighbors. Good neighborliness was central to our country’s founding ethos. Locally and nationally, there are a myriad of groups and organizations that provide support and assistance to people in need. This tradition is an important component of our culture. Consequently, much of our populace believes the United States government is a force for good around the world and an important contributor t...

Democracy Is the Problem

A Wisconsin judge has been arrested for allegedly helping an illegal alien evade immigration authorities. The case has added gasoline to the fire blazing in the wake of several recent court rulings against the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport illegal aliens more expeditiously than customary due process procedures would allow.

The administration argues the judiciary is deliberately obstructing its attempt to execute the clear will of the people, expressed in t...

The Final Backup Plan For All Americans

It is the final backup plan for a lot of us in the case of a disaster. A generous supply of cold hard cash to buy our way out of trouble, pick up as many last-minute supplies as possible or to acquire resources that are unavailable to anyone with a credit card in a world where the electricity is out and the internet is down. We frequently talk about having cash for emergencies, but how much cash should you have if the grid goes down? What will you be able to purchase with your doomsday supply an...