Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2191

The Values Underlying Independence Day

The Declaration of Independence — which was signed on July 3, 1776, for public release on July 4 — was Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece. Jefferson himself wrote much about the declaration in the 50 years that followed.

Not the least of what he wrote offered his view that the declaration and the values that it articulated were truly radical — meaning they reflected 180-degree changes at the very core of societal attitudes in America. The idea that farmers and merchants and lawyers could secede f...

The Constitution Is Not Neutral

“The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.”—Justice William O. Douglas

For those still deluded enough to believe they’re living the American dream—where the government represents the people, where the people are equal in the eyes of the law, where the courts are arbiters of justice, where the police are keepers of the peace, and where the law is applied equally as a means of protecting the rights of the people—it’s time to wake up.

We...

‘Propaganda Organization’

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As Trump ‘Goes Nuclear’ Against Iran and China

At least it is clear; it’s explicit. The “We’re America, Bitch” formulation by an American official strips away the humbug of soft power. It’s not about ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’: the global universal order never was. And, President Trump, to his credit, makes no bones about it: Why apologise over American power? It’s use it, or lose it – and America is still strong enough to get its way: to remain the Dominant One, he asserts.

China begs to differ. It has already surpassed the US in 2013 in p...

Vaunted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Voters hate phoniness.

And, well, the Democrats’ new golden girl, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now embodies it, with revelations that “Sandy from the block,” “the tough girl from the Bronx,” isn’t quite what she said she was.  Actually, far from the gritty streets of the Bronx, Ocasio grew up in leafy Westchester, home of the upper-middle class, and exactly the sort of place a cosseted Democratic Socialists of America member headed to an Ivy League college is likely to come from.  Bleagh.

This i...

Your ‘Expectation of Privacy’

If you’re an American, you have no constitutional right to privacy. And in the internet age, our need for privacy has waned. We routinely release information once considered intensely personal for public consumption. We document every moment of our lives via webcams or blogs. And we live vicariously through participants in reality television shows. Anyone can build an audience on social media and publish minute-by-minute updates of their most mundane activities.

But over the years, the Suprem...

My July 4, 1996, Hell-Raising

On July 4 twenty-two years ago, I riled up folks at the Libertarian National Convention.  I talked about the EEOC’s war on Hooters, House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s pig paranoia, zoning idiocy, and other boondoggles. Commenting on a recent idiotic asset forfeiture decision, I noted, “The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court did not explain the equivalency of piracy in the 1820s and oral sex in the 1990s.”  I noted that nothing could “justify granting federal agents the power to seize your house, s...

Washington’s Spinelessness

I have just spent a couple of days in New York City. Returning to Virginia on Wednesday morning, I had a somewhat strange experience. I cleared through my emails before leaving the hotel and also read through a number of the featured news articles. One, in particular, caught my eye. It described how the Democratic Party primary in Queens New York had returned a startling result. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won over mainstream incumbent Joe Crowley, signaling that not everyone in the Democratic P...

The Forgotten and Peculiar War

“Strange indeed did it appear to me to find so many names, familiar household words, as enemies—the very names of officers in our own army. … How uncomfortably like a civil war.” —British Lt. John Le Couteur upon visiting an American Army camp (1813)

Americans, sadly, know little of their own history. Who among us recalls anything about the War of 1812? Few, if any. What those few do tend to remember are patriotic anecdotes from a long-ago war: Andrew Jackson mowing down foolish redcoats at t...

The Fourth of July Has Nothing To Do

The Fourth of July is supposed to be celebrated as Independence Day—the day when the thirteen American colonies officially dissolved the political bands that connected them with Great Britain. As the Declaration of Independence concludes:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solem...