Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2283

Enemy of the State

Ludwig von Mises was the greatest economist and defender of liberty in the twentieth century. In scholarship and in passion for freedom, his rightful heir is Murray N. Rothbard.

Rothbard was born in New York City in 1926. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and studied for more than 10 years under Mises at New York University. However, his degree was delayed for years, and he came close to not receiving it at all, because of the unprecedented intervention of a faculty member.

Roth...

Mystical Viking Settlement

A long lost Viking settlement known as ‘Hop’ is located in Canada, a prominent archaeologist has revealed.

Seafaring Scandinavians built a settlement in North America more than 1,000 years ago, 500 years before Christopher Columbus, it is claimed.

Three key things identify this mystical settlement – an abundance of grapes, salmon and canoes made from animal hide – according to legend.

Now, one expert claims the only place that matches this description is the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area in nort...

Conservatism and Abortion

Big Conservatism, or the Big Con, having long ago fused with the GOP, embodies its vision in the Republican Party platform.  One of the planks of the latter is the Big Con’s “pro-life” position on abortion.

Now, the most fundamental reason for opposing abortion is that it consists in the killing of an innocent, defenseless human being, a yet-to-be-born child.  This being so, the circumstances in which a child in the womb is conceived are about as morally relevant to the fate of that child as...

What Is Courage?

In the Parkland high school shooting in South Florida, just a few miles from my home, we saw the extremes of human fortitude in the persons of Coach Aaron Feis and Deputy Scot Peterson. Peterson, a trained security professional, stayed outside while a shooting was in progress in the area he was hired to defend. Feis, a man not charged with the safety of others, protected them with his body at the expense of his own life.

I have thought about the idea of courage often; my writings on disaster...

How Virtual Should Cars Be?

Driving a simulated car – as in a game – is becoming more and more like driving an actual car – in reality.

At least in terms of the inputs.

The car in the game is steered remotely, via a gamepad. You accelerate and brake the car the same way. Soon real cars will be accelerated and braked the same way. Many already are, at least as far as acceleration. They have drive-by-wire throttle control. Your foot does not actually control the acceleration of the vehicle. A computer controls the acceler...

Prepare To Defend Yourself and Your Liberty

I will join with many of the other reviewers and say that this book is a must read for anyone who has any type of self-defense weapon on their person or in their home. After reading the book, I’ve come to the sober conclusion that the law doesn’t seem to favor the ordinary person who is simply trying to defend themselves. In order to prevail, it would seem that each person needs to have a law degree from Harvard, and the ability to slow down time in the event of lethal force situation. This i...

Poisoned British-Russian Double-Agent

On Sunday a former British-Russian double agent and his daughter were seriously injured in a mysterious incident in Salisbury, England. The British government says that both were hurt due to “exposure to a nerve agent”. Speculative media reports talk of Sarin and VX, two deadly nerve-agents used in military chemical weapons. Anonymous officials strongly hint that ‘Russia did it’.

New reports though point to a deep connection between the case and the anti-Trump/anti-Russia propaganda drive run...

Why Russia’s New Strategic Capabilities

The United States of America spends something like $80 billion annually on intelligence gathering and analysis. When the CIA was founded by the National Security Act in 1947 the intention was to create a mechanism that would warn about an imminent threat. The memory of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base was still fresh, and the legislation was popularized by the slogan “no more Pearl Harbors.”

In spite of the dedication of considerable resources and manpower, there...

Open Borders Equal Liberty?

Stockholm, Sweden: 63-year-old Daniel Cuevas Zuniga was peddling home after his night shift.  He stopped to pick up an object that he thought was a toy:

It was an M-75 hand grenade. Manufactured in great numbers for the Yugoslav national army, and then seized by paramilitaries during the civil war in the 1990s, the grenades are packed with plastic explosives and 3,000 steel balls, well suited for attacks on enemy trenches and bunkers.

So reports the New York Times.  Zuniga died; his wife, W...

The Monetary Breakdown of the West

[Excerpted from What Has Government Done to Our Money?]

To understand the current monetary chaos, it is necessary to trace briefly the international monetary developments of the 20th century, and to see how each set of unsound inflationist interventions has collapsed of its own inherent problems, only to set the stage for another round of interventions. The 20th-century history of the world monetary order can be divided into nine phases. Let us examine each in turn.

Phase I: The Classical Gol...