Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 89

It’s Not ‘If;’ It’s ‘When’

Cicero had it right when he described the Sword of Damocles.

To be the leader of a country is like having a sword constantly dangling over your head from a single horse hair. You never know if or when the sword is going to cause your demise, but you know that the danger is ever-present.

That is just as true today as it was in Cicero’s time, but the modern-day Sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of not just the world’s leaders. It hangs over the heads of the populations as well.

If we rely on ...

The Tragedy of War

In seeking to understand why nations go to war, we often search for rational motivations such as the quest for money, or power, or territory, or that most elusive of goals—justice. But the truth is that often there is no reason behind descent into war other than the hostility and animosity between one nation and another.

In his essay “Separation of Reconciliation? The Nationalities Question in the USSR,” Igor Shafarevich identifies “resentment, malice and pain” as a predominant cause of conflict...

Rita Mary Rose Curtin

While days like Mother’s Day are corny, they do elicit memories.  I think of my mother. She died at the age of 100. Although she was quite debilitated at the time, she still kept asking me not to let her go, as if I had such power. She was afraid of death, but when I looked at her photo this morning, I felt she wasn’t dead or buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York where thirteen years ago we placed her next to our father and her husband Edward of sixty years.

“The dead don’t st...

Peace in the Valley: Pat Boone and Johnny Cash

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

For those of us who have opposed every war since Vietnam, or all wars, and whose hearts are broken and our sensibilities sickened by US foreign policy funding the bombs and weapons in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere, we need to be reminded sometimes that there will be peace in the valley when we are reunited with the Lord. Pat Boone was a guest on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969, and the two of them performed the beautiful gospel song, “Peace in the Valley.”

The post Peace in ...

Lessons from the 2025 European Power Grid Failure

In late April 2025, Europe experienced a catastrophic power grid failure that left millions without electricity, disrupted critical services, and exposed deep vulnerabilities in one of the world’s most advanced energy systems.

The blackout, which primarily affected Spain, Portugal, and parts of France, Germany, and Italy, was a stark reminder of our dependence on reliable power and the fragility of modern grids.

Let’s explore what happened, the major challenges revealed, and practical steps indi...

Can the Annual Theft of $521,000,000,000 From the Federal Budget Be Stopped?

Democrat politicians led a break-in at a New Jersey ICE facility.  In Worcester, Massachusetts, Democrat city council member Etel Haxhiaj led an assault on local police and federal officers in an effort to prevent apprehension by ICE of a violent immigrant-invader that the Biden scum permitted to illegally enter America in August, 2022.  Local police demand action agains Etel Haxhiaj for assaulting police officers, but of course the Democrats support Etel Haxhiaj’s violence against the police, a...

Habemus Papam Americanum

Well (as one meme announced this morning), I guess that’s one way for the Vatican to avoid Trump’s tariffs!

On Thursday the cardinals selected a pope who was “made in the USA.”

All else equal, I wish he weren’t. This is a personal preference, but I’d rather the pope seem more mysterious, ethereal, and distant.

I don’t want him to be my drinking buddy. Thinking of the pope as a Bears fan eating deep-dish at Ditka’s makes him easier to relate to, yet harder to respect.

Many might argue that, like ...

The Trump Administration’s Biggest Wins and Biggest Fails So Far

Back in 2016 I predicted a resounding win for Donald Trump in his election campaign against Hillary Clinton despite a chorus of voices telling me I was crazy. The argument from skeptics was that the establishment would never allow Trump into office. My position on the event was relatively straightforward – The conservative populist movement was far too strong to deny and the globalists might not see a Trump White House as a total loss if they could control it from behind the scenes, or sabotage ...

MAHA Hugger Mugger

One baseline truth in current American life is that our bodily well-being gets worse as the so-called health care industry gets ever-larger — it is now 17.6-percent of the economy (GDP). This is clearly the basis of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign that attached itself to the Trump 2.0 program. You hear almost no arguments against MAHA itself, even from the Party of Hustles and Hoaxes, but plenty of calumny and objurgation against MAHA’s chief advocate, Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Mr. Trum...

What Will Trump Find in the Middle East This Week?

President Trump’s return to the Middle East this week, the first since his first-term 2017 visit, will take place amidst great turmoil. It is a region that bears little resemblance to  the Middle East of 2017 and it appears, at least from media reporting this past week, that the Trump Administration has some understanding of this reality.

Syria has been over-run and is now controlled by the same al-Qaeda that the US government supposedly spent 20 years fighting in the “war on terror.” Violence a...