Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2359

Debt and Taxes and Perdition

Should the government borrow against the future? Should it guarantee higher taxes for your children and grandchildren in return for lower taxes for you?

If government’s moral legitimacy depends on the consent of the governed, as Thomas Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence, can the federal government morally compel those who haven’t consented to its financial profligacy — because they are not yet born — to pay higher taxes?

These questions are at the base of the debate — such as...

The Jewish Scholastic

Scholasticism: is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics (“scholastics,” or “schoolmen”) of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100 to 1700, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending dogma in an increasingly pluralistic context.

I have just completed reading the 2 volume Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought by the Jewish/Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard. This is a magisterial (the edition sold by th...

Chicken Soup Still Works

Unfortunately, everyone’s least favorite season is upon us—cold and flu season. It’s those few months where everyone around you is sniffling, coughing, or sneezing. Everywhere you turn, someone is fighting something and you’re on the defense to ensure you don’t catch what they are giving out. The problem with cold and flu season is that those pesky germs are invisible to the eye, and so unknowingly to you, you are allowing those germs to enter your body and temporarily take over leaving you f...

Killer Robots, Using Facial Recognition To Slaughter People

Killer robots capable of using facial recognition before slaughtering people ‘will be devastating to humankind’, a top professor warned.

Professor Stuart Russell, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) expert at the University of California, said allowing machines to kill humans would endanger freedom and security.

He remarked on the chilling vision following an appearance at the end of a short film which explores how AI could be used to take out targeted individuals.

The film, entitled Slaug...

Study: Women Are Attracted to White Men

A study at Coventry and Aberystwyth universities in the United Kingdom, published in Feminist Media Studies in August, drew a completely unremarkable conclusion; women (and gay men) are attracted to men with muscles and money.

That this has been true throughout human history appears to have escaped the feminist researchers.  And therein lies the real story.  The feminists believe that women should be attracted to emotionally engaged men who may be awkward around women but exhibit the politica...

The Pentagram’s Ally in Fact

Americans have been living in a country that has not known peace since 9/11, when President George W. Bush and his posse of neoconservatives delivered the message to the world that “you are either with us or against us.” The threat was coupled with flurry of hastily conceived legislation that opened the door to the unconstitutional “war on terror” carried out at the whim of the Chief Executive, a conflict which was from the start conceived of as a global military engagement without end.

Bush...

What Happened to My Profession?

Car journalist were – once upon a time – car guys. They were not Safety Nags, indistinguishable from Ralph Nader or Joan Claybrook.

Today, they are indistinguishable. Might as well be Ralph. Or Joan.

Keith Crain, for example. He is the editor of Automotive News – which isn’t really. It would be more accurate to style it, Automotive Hate – because Crain doesn’t much like cars or driving them.

He likes saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.

And wants more of it to be mandated. Automated emergency braki...

Repeal the Second Amendment?

After the horrific shooting in Las Vegas last month, congressional Democrats, progressive pundits, and liberal activists, predictably and immediately, began calling for more, and more draconian, gun-control laws.

“It is long past time for Congress to take action on gun safety to save innocent lives,” said Bernie Sanders. According to Igor Volsky of Guns Down and the Center for American Progress: “It’s not enough to just limit the kind of people who own guns. You have to go after the guns them...

America a god-Nation?

How stands John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” this Thanksgiving?

How stands the country that was to be “a light unto the nations”?

To those who look to cable TV for news, the answer must at the least be ambiguous. For consider the issues that have lately convulsed the public discourse of the American republic.

Today’s great question seems to be whether our 45th president is as serious a sexual predator as our 42nd was proven to be, and whether the confessed sins of Sen. Al Franken are as grea...

Explaining Postmodernism

In listening to Jordan Peterson over the last few months, he has often commented on the destructive philosophy of post-modernism, a philosophy that – in his view – is the force behind the cultural destruction underway in the west.

Prior to hearing this from him, my knowledge on the matter went to the cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School and, before this, Antonio Gramsci.  Peterson is aware of these influences, but for him the Post-Modernists are today’s driving force.

What is meant by po...