Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 30

Does President Trump Talk Too Much?

I found myself on a recent Judging Freedom episode saying that Trump as statesman tweets too much.  In retrospect, who am I to tell the President or anyone else to stop talking; it’s anti-liberty and rude.  Yet, it may be good advice; saying too much can help “enemies” to shape public opinion, and even to target Trump specifically.

Getting the dirt on a country’s leader – the intentions, the predilections, their secrets and their open confessions, tweets and threats – and using that dirt strateg...

Yes, It’s a Genocide

Correct nomenclature, as I have long argued, is essential for our understanding of things, people, events. Unless we name something properly we will not know how to judge it or what the right course of action may be in response to what it does. This is why our public discourse is so mixed up in the matter of what to call things: Naming something rightly is powerful; so is naming something wrongly, or refusing to name it all.

We are now urged — and required by law in many jurisdictions — to accep...

The Happy Penny

Scott Daniels wrote:

Hi Lew,

Why stop at the penny or even the nickel? We should drop everything less than a dollar. Based on silver value, a quarter is the new penny, and based on gold value, the two dollar is the new penny. Let’s make it simple – make the dollar the new penny.Personally, I would prefer a return to coins, best done by redenominating the dollar by 100x, making a penny the value of today’s dollar. Other countries do it, why can’t we? Is it too dangerous to point out the emperor h...

The Secondary Sanctions Squeeze

U.S. President Donald Trump is now largely following his predecessors hostile policy towards Russia.

If the war in Ukraine continues on its current path Russia will end it with an outright victory. The U.S. and its European vassals are trying to impose a ceasefire to prevent that. It would give time to rebuild the Ukrainian army and to restart the war at a more convenient time. But Russia won’t budge until its war aims are met.

A hoped for countermeasure is to pressure Russia’s oil customers, to...

How The 1987 Ban Came About in America and What It Means to Your Food Security Today

A “scientific” ideology banned raw milk and vilified mothers who chose it anyway. Behind this, was a wealthy philanthropist pushing his agenda and setting the stage for the demise of the small farmer and food security in America.

An age-old food

In the opening scenes of the famous musical Fiddler on The Roof, our hero–Tevye–arranges his milk cart.

As the overture plays, drawing us into the scene and his inner musings on “Tradition!” he and his horse drive through the village serving his communit...

Eighty Years After the Atomic Bombs

“It will not be long before we are reduced to savagery. We are the barbarians within our own empire.”

—Russell Kirk

Eighty years ago today, the U.S. government committed one of the awful acts in human history. Three days later, it did it again.

Harry Truman insisted the decision to vaporize or fatally irradiate almost a quarter million civilians (plus a dozen American prisoners of war) was his and his alone.

Whether meant as acknowledgment or confession, this assertion was correct. The buck stop...

As America Soul Searches, the Rest of the West Is Falling Apart

In terms of geopolitics one could argue that allies don’t have to like each other, they just have to provide a mutual benefit that serves the greater purposes of peace. One could also argue that through cultural exchange the good habits of one country could easily influence the bad habits of another, but that kind of influence can also happen in reverse.

Though we might think of American culture as the content driver of the planet, the reality is that our ideals are an exceedingly rare dynamic f...

They Lied to You About Rerum Novarum

In his first address to the College of Cardinals, Leo XIV explained his choice of name was inspired by “Pope Leo XIII [who] in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”

I knew of Rerum Novarum as the foundation of Catholic Social Teaching, and I had accepted the common claim that it rejects both socialism and capitalism. But there was a certain dissatisfaction about this understanding, a sense that I must have be...

Starving Little Children Creates Global Outrage

When I began to think about what I would write about in this week’s column, my first thought was that I hoped everyone saw the gruesome photographs of the tiny five-month-old girl in Gaza who had starved to death.

She had weighed six pounds, six ounces at birth. Five months later, at her death, she was skin and bones with legs thinner than an ordinary pencil.

My second thought, though, was that I wished nobody had had to see those photos, because I wish neither she nor anyone else had starved to...

Nathaniel Macon: The Forgotten Prophet of States’ Rights

Nathaniel Macon was one of the most significant figures during the first half century of American history. Yet Macon is basically unknown in the contemporary United States, and his role and importance in American history, so appreciated before the War Between the States, are largely ignored or glossed over. Mention the name “Nathaniel Macon” to a contemporary politician, and the response is usually a blank stare, betraying ignorance, a lack of basic familiarity.

Years ago, while researching Maco...