Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 326

Woke Culture Is Going To Be Wrapped in an American Flag and a MAGA Hat

The RNC Theater 

As the RNC came to a close in Milwaukee, many were simply focused on Donald Trump considering his assassination attempt on July 16. But taking a closer look at the other speakers, we can read a not-so-subtle theme of it all. Compared to the RNCs of the past, such as Mitt Romneys in 2012, this one presented many more entertaining characters, such as WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan, who ripped his shirt during his speech; even Trump’s own arrival gives the look of the beginning of a WWE m...

Materialism Is Endangered as Society’s Collapse Continues

The kind of materialism that was the bedrock of modern civilization that emerged in the 16th century and went on to foster capitalism as its most successful economic offspring, is deeply imperiled and is slowly vanishing in the 21st century. Five hundred years is about as long as any civilization can last.

To take one example of this collapse, let’s  look at the concept of realism as it burst forth so tellingly at the start of that civilization in the art of Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Durer, and c...

Hamas, Nazis, and the Right To Rape

A quarter-century ago in 1999 The Matrix entered our theaters and became an instant film classic as well as a colossal blockbuster, earning nearly $500 million at the box office. There were also interesting epistemological implications to the notion that our own world was merely the illusion created within a computer simulation, hiding the grim reality behind it. The word “redpilling” —breaking through those illusions into the underlying true existence—soon entered our popular political lexicon,...

Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit in Journalism

Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets.

The latest effort at rehabilitating it is an interview by Adam Rawnsley in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine of one Michael van Landingham, an intelligence analyst who is proud of having written the first draft of the cornerstone “analysis” of Russiagate, the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment.

The ICA blamed the Russians for helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.  It was released two w...

Presenting the Moral Case for Capitalism

There is a widespread perception that capitalism is a system designed to encourage greed, envy, selfishness, and other moral failings to flourish. Popular writing on capitalism, notably Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” recognizes the importance of addressing the moral case for capitalism. No economic system, no matter how efficient and productive, can flourish if it is widely regarded as the root of all evil. Given that the science of economics is value free and does not addre...

Tyranny in the UK – Can it Happen Here?

As the UK descends into tyranny, where just re-Tweeting something the government doesn’t like can land a person a multi-year jail sentence, Americans are wondering, “can it happen here?” After all, we have the guarantees of the First Amendment.

But while we shake our heads at UK authorities jailing people for their social media posts this past week, we should not kid ourselves. The answer is that silencing dissent can happen here and it is happening here.

Here are just three recent examples of h...

American Stasi: Tulsi Gabbard Confirms ‘Quiet Skies’ Nightmare

Tuesday night, while self-styled Democratic nominee Kamala Harris pledged to defend “freedom, compassion, and the rule of law” to cheers in Philadelphia, Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard described being tracked by teams of government agents in a surveillance regime more reminiscent of East Germany than a free country. Whistleblowing Air Marshals told Uncover DC Gabbard was singled out as a terror threat under the so-called “Quiet Skies” program, and the former presidential candidate says she noticed.

“The...

Remembering a Forgotten Poet

[Editor’s Note: This is the twentieth in a multi-part series on the unsung heroes of Christendom.]I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
   I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
   Of my own mind…

There was a time when the opening lines of Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven” would have been widely known. Today, as I discovered on a recent trip to England to film a documentary on Thompson, the poem and the poet are almost entirely f...

3 Reasons China Could Shock The World – an Early Warning For America .

China’s economy is plunging into an unprecedented and dire phase, sounding deafening alarms that the Chinese government hopes to muffle, but they are growing too loud to ignore. This looming collapse is an ominous warning to America and the entire world as we are witnessing this unsettling unraveling in real-time. So, what do we need to know about this? China isn’t exactly transparent, most recently halting economic data releases to keep the world in the dark, which is just not a good sign. What...

Our Future

Over the course of my life I have watched interest in ideas die. Ideas have been replaced by agendas, and emotion has taken the place of reason.

American political campaigns have always been burdened with mudslinging and misrepresentations, but I can remember when presidential campaigns also involved contrasting ideas about domestic and foreign policies. The issues might have been false ones, like John F. Kennedy’s “missile gap,” but candidates were supposed to have some idea of issues at home a...