Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2342

The Travesty of Political Psychiatry

Psychiatry possesses a built-in capacity for abuse that is much greater than in any other area of medicine. Politicians realized that and abused psychiatry for blaming their opponents as mentally sick, retarded and dangerous. It was happening all around the world but was mostly prominent under authoritarian and totalitarian socialist regimes. Now it became a part of the arsenal of the political Left here which is completely crazed about the counterrevolutionary results of the last presidentia...

Copy Lincoln

For the second time in two months, someone who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State has plotted to kill innocents in New York City and has executed his plot.

According to police, at the height of the Monday morning rush hour this week, in an underground pedestrian walkway that I have used many times, in the middle of Manhattan, a permanent legal resident of the United States named Akayed Ullah detonated a bomb he had strapped to his torso in an effort to kill fellow commuters and disru...

Failed Attempts to Overvalue Money

On July 12, 1722, William Wood (1671–1730), who was a hardware manufacturer, ironmaster, and mintmaster, received a contract from the British Crown to strike an issue of Irish coinage from 1722 to 1724. He also struck the ‘Rosa Americana’ coins of British America during the same period. Wood’s coinage was extremely unpopular in Ireland for being overvalued in monetary value compared to the intrinsic metal value. It was seen as the King attempting to create money from nothing or fiat despite...

The Secret US Death Plan

A brilliant and alarming book, beautifully written by America’s greatest whistle blower.

Before the Pentagon Papers, before Watergate, before his involvement as an advisor in Viet Nam, Daniel Ellsberg worked in the U. S. national security system as a nuclear planner. It’s a memoir of that time, of the still classified policies of nuclear strategy, and of the secret, often reckless protocols that had been developed for their implementation.

Much of the information and revelations in this book...

NRA Silent as States, Feds Ban Gun Sales

The National Rifle Association (NRA), which fancies itself a champion of the Second Amendment and gun rights, is nowhere to be found as state governments are moving to confiscate firearms from medical marijuana patients.

Police in Honolulu, Hawaii, recently sent out a letter to 30 medical cannabis patients warning them they had 30 days to hand over their guns. When medical cannabis becomes legal in Ohio in 2018, patients will not be permitted to own or possess firearms. Similar restrictions h...

The Deep State’s Xmas Present to All of Us

“He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!”
—“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

Just in time for Christmas, the Deep State wants to give America the gift that keeps on giving: never-ending mass surveillance.

I’m not referring to the kind of surveillance carried out by that all-knowing and all-seeing Jolly Old St. Nick and his informant the Elf on the Shelf (although, to be fair, they have helped to acclimate us...

Make America Neocon Again

Back during the admittedly brief shock and awe period that immediately followed on the Trump electoral victory, it appeared that there might be an actual realignment of American foreign policy. The neoconservatives virtually unanimously had opposed Donald Trump in the most vile terms, both in the GOP primaries and during the actual electoral campaign, making clear that Hillary was their choice for a future full of unrelenting, ideologically driven warfare to convert the world to democracy. By...

The Case for Ebenezer

My interest in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol began one Christmas eve when, as a small child, my parents turned on network radio to listen to what, even then, had become a classic Christmas eve festivity: Lionel Barrymore’s presentation of the Dickens story.

Radio was a medium that required the imagination to paint scenes far more colorful, and to concoct monsters far scarier, than anything motion pictures or television have ever been able to present. With radio, the listener was the stag...

Economic Fallacies Rampant

Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum, two professors at the University of Chicago Law School, have written an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Let’s Agree on an Age to Retire; Current antidiscrimination law hurts businesses and both younger and older employees” (September 23-24, 2017, p. C4;). These two professors should be ashamed of themselves for writing this bit of economic illiteracy. The University of Chicago Law School, which prides itself on its economic sophistication, should...

What I Learned at Murray’s Knee

…or Principled Libertarianism from a truly Principled Libertarian.

Any resemblance between the characters in this picture and any persons, living or dead, is a miracle

–        The Three Stooges

Nations by Consent, by Murray Rothbard

I preface this essay: almost every time I read Rothbard I am struck by how he has resolved countless issues of libertarian theory and application decades ago, issues that I have only recently worked through.  The man developed many concepts and applications ass...