Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 469

The Myth of the Middle Class

In America, it came to mean: security. Financial security.

Locked in.

House, car, insurance payments—check. College $$ for the kids—check. Two, three weeks’ vacation a year—check. That kind of thing.

Of course, was the company Dad was working for secure? It sure as hell wasn’t, in the auto industry, once Japan entered the scene in the 1960s.

And nothing stays the same. A middle class worker (or anyone) should be GOING SOMEWHERE. Not just sitting in the same place for the rest of his life. He sho...

Biden Moving To Send Long-Range Ballistic Missiles to Ukraine

In one sense the Ukraine conflict is over.  In another sense it is dangerously expanding.

Biden and Putin are taking the path to nuclear war.  Biden by providing long range missiles to Ukraine, and Putin by refusing to use sufficient force to bring the conflict to an end before it spins out of control.  

To again repeat my warning, by allowing the war to drag on, Putin is inviting more provocations and more dangerous provocations.  Putin’s way of fighting the conflict has cost far more lives tha...

Remaining Respectful While Being Opposed by Ignorance and Inexperience

In this interview with Howie Mandel and his daughter, Jackelyn Shultz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s knowledge and poise shine through — even as his motives and integrity are questioned. Kennedy remains respectful and is eager to have an open, honest debate — a trait he says he learned as a child.

“I was raised in a milieu where we were taught every night to debate each other [and] hold opinions passionately,” Kennedy says.1 Now running for president of the United States, Kennedy says he’s a favorite ...

How Devastating Would a Modern-Day Nuclear War Be?

This article is from my grandparents perspective!

A nuclear war would be anticlimactic

Before the angry comments begin, I don’t mean anticlimactic in the sense of I hoped for more, or that I am attempting to downplay death and destruction. Rather in a sense of it being nowhere near the grand apocalypse what we’ve come to expect. I grew up in the 1980s and the prevailing opinion was that any nuclear war would be “the last war”. Humanity would be wiped out, all major cities would be struck, the Ea...

We’re Not Living in Ordinary Times

Aside from the felt sense (tactile gut feeling) that something is very different about what’s happening in our world, every day I see more and more examples of it.

More and more riots and protests are occurring in developed countries where people are fed up with the state of their lives or the actions of governments.

The existing political power in the US is trying to jail one of its opponents for similar level things virtually every other president has done. Isn’t this the type of thing Western...

The Dark and the Light

“‘The rule of law is under threat!’ the Regime shrieks, as it throws its political foes into the gulag — Benjamin Weingarten

The florid carbuncle of Woke-Maoist lawfare weeps its vile effluvium across the social landscape, poisoning whatever it touches, and nothing in the armory of reason, principle, or good faith avails to heal it. Sickness rages through the body politic. You have lost faith in all the doctors, and they have lost faith in themselves. The fever intensifies. The crisis is upon us...

The Awesome Punching Power of Thomas Paine

Most public school graduates have heard that Thomas Paine wrote something that convinced the colonies to declare their independence — though if they’re older than 21 their memory probably needs jogging.  A few can even name what he wrote: Common Sense.  And some can even incorrectly attribute a famous line to that pamphlet — These are the times that try men’s souls.

With rare exceptions most people don’t give a whit about Paine or what he wrote.  But then, most people don’t care much for America...

Guess Where Historians Rank Trump

From the Tom Woods Letter:

The New York Times just ran this headline:

“Poll Ranks Biden as 14th Best President, with Trump Last.”

Oh, really? Trump last, huh? What a surprise!

(I guess the silver lining here is that now they have to admit, at least comparatively, that Grover Cleveland and Franklin Pierce had at least some merits.)

These rankings of the presidents by historians are worthless and stupid. That’s the nicest thing I can say about them.

On what possible basis could these historians be...

Why the Excess ‘Savings’ Ice Cube Is Coming Out of Cold Storage

Even if you put a lot of stock in government manufactured GDP owing to unhinged spending and deficits, which we most definitely do not, it would be wise to be careful about what you are applauding. The allegedly resilient US economy, which is purportedly defying the Fed’s interest raising campaign, isn’t nearly what it’s cracked up to be.

There was a hint of this in Walmart’s Q4 earnings announcement yesterday in which it noted a “choiceful consumer” was spending less per trip and curtailing out...

Misunderstanding Both Lincoln and Basic Economics

Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
by Allen C. Guelzo
Alfred A. Knopf, 2024; 247 pp.

Allen Guelzo has been carried away by Abraham Lincoln’s magniloquent rhetoric. Guelzo, a historian who has written a number of books about Lincoln, would like very much to believe that his hero was a champion of individual rights and economic freedom. Lincoln’s ideal for America was of a nation with a large number of small businesses, allowing people to work independently of domin...