Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2490

The Mouse That Roared

Tiny Qatar, the mouse that roared, has now managed to enrage the larger part of the Arab world and defy the newly-minted Mideast expert, Donald Trump.

This month, an angry alliance of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, with some background support from the puppet regimes of war-torn Libya and Yemen, declared an embargo of Qatar for ‘supporting terrorism.’  They immediately cut off food and goods deliveries to the sandy peninsula on which Qatar sits, boycotted its oil a...

Germany and Austria Denounce More US Aggression

“Unacceptable” new anti-Russian sanctions approved by the US Senate violate international law, affect European companies and have a real aim of benefitting the US oil and gas sector, Berlin and Vienna said in an angry joint statement.

The new anti-Russian sanctions are outlined in an amendment to a bill imposing sanctions against Iran. It was approved by the US Senate on Thursday by a majority of 98 to 2, but still needs to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by the US president t...

College Degrees Are Becoming Useless

Students are running out of reasons to pursue higher education. Here are four trends documented in recent articles:

Graduates have little to no improvement in critical thinking skills

The Wall Street Journal reported on the troubling results of the College Learning Assessment Plus test (CLA+), administered in over 200 colleges across the US.

According to the WSJ, “At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence...

The 8-Hour Workday Doesn’t Work

The eight-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.

The eight-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual labor that workers were forced to endure on the factory floor. This breakthrough was a more humane approach to work 200 years ago, yet it possesses little relevance for us today.

Like our ancestor...

Barbarians at the Gate

As a libertarian I am firmly against violence directed at functionaries of the State, as a strategy or tactic to produce positive change.

This doesn’t work (like killing cockroaches with your shoe, there’s always many more) and causes a tremendous blowback. Nearly everyone in the US believes in democratic voting for change rather than victory by killing your opponents. Violence can only intimidate, not convince.

This is why the recent anti-Trump/GOP, progressive Democrat shooter in Virginia w...

The Feds Want To Muzzle Us

My hometown of Charlottesville, Va., has become the latest poster child in a heated war of words—and actions—over racism, “sanitizing history,” extremism (both right and left), political correctness, hate speech, partisan politics, and a growing fear that violent words will end in violent actions.

In Charlottesville, as in so many parts of the country right now, the conflict is over how to reconcile the nation’s checkered past, particularly as it relates to slavery, with the present need to s...

Tear Down Lord Acton’s Statue?

Bologna November 4, 1866 .

Sir,

The very kind letter which Mrs. Lee wrote to my wife last winter encouraged me to hope that you will forgive my presuming to address you, and that you will not resent as an intrusion a letter from an earnest and passionate lover of the cause whose glory and whose strength you were.

I have been requested to furnish private counsel in American affairs for the guidance of the editors of a weekly Review which is to begin at the New Year, and which will be...

Imperial Decline

Nothing is as permanent as we imagine–especially super-complex, super-costly, super-asymmetric and super-debt-dependent state/financial systems.

Identifying the tell-tale signs of Imperial decay and decline is a bit of a parlor game. The hubris of an increasingly incestuous and out-of-touch leadership, dismaying extremes of wealth inequality, self-serving, avaricious Elites, rising dependency of the lower classes on free Bread and Circuses provided by a government careening toward insolvency...

Blurred Vision in One Eye?

Blurred vision can be temporary or chronic, and in some cases, people can experience blurred vision in only one eye. To properly manage blurred vision, you have to understand the underlying cause. Here we examine what causes blurred vision in one eye as well as the symptoms and potential home remedies.

Blurred vision is best described as a loss of sharpness or a foggy view. Some people are lucky in that their blurry vision can be corrected by simply wearing glasses. For others, it isn’t that...

Consent of the Governed

Last week, when former FBI Director James Comey gave his long-awaited public testimony about his apparently rough-and-tumble relationship with President Donald Trump, he painted a bleak picture. The essence of Comey’s testimony was that the president asked him to drop an investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — Trump’s former national security adviser — and then asked him to do so in return for keeping his job as FBI director and then fired him for not obeying his order.

On the other...