An Endless Stream of Scary Official Enemies by Jacob G. Hornberger June 15, 2022 Any government that is a national-security state needs big official enemies — scary ones, ones that will cause the citizenry to continue supporting not only the continued existence of a national-security state form of government but also ever-growing budgets for it and its army of voracious “defense” contractors. That’s, of course, what the current brouhaha about Russia is all about. It’s really a replay of the Cold War decades, when Americans were made to believe that the Reds were coming to get them, take over the federal government and the public schools, and indoctrinate everyone into loving communism and socialism. Red Square in Moscow. Licensed under Creative Commons. In those Cold War years, Americans citizens were so scared of the Reds that they were willing to ignore — or even support — the dark-side powers that were being wielded and exercised by the Pentagon, the ...
Musical Chairs in Washington, D.C. by Jacob G. Hornberger June 22, 2022 Republicans are licking their chops over the Federal Reserve’s ostensible plans to raise interest rates aggressively in the months ahead to combat soaring prices. They view a coming big recession as a grand opportunity to win control over Congress in the upcoming November elections. Of course, we have gone through this political musical-chairs nonsense for decades. If the Fed is filling the balloon with newly printed money, the economy appears prosperous. Whoever is president claims credit for “good management of the economy.” Voters reward him with reelection. They also elect members of his political party to Congress. But woe to any president who happens to be in office when the Fed starts to reverse course, especially in a big way, as it is ostensibly now doing. Make no mistake about it: When the inevitable recession hits, Republicans will castigate Biden for “mismanaging the economy” and call on ...
The Stultification of American Conscience by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2022 One of the fascinating consequences of public (i.e., government) schooling is that it molds the minds of children in such a way that by the time they become adults, their minds inevitably mirror whatever narrative the authorities happen to be advancing at any particular time. In fact, the indoctrination is oftentimes so effective that most of them have no idea what has been done to them. They end up with consciences that are stultified, characterized by a lack of ability to recognize evil or moral wrongdoing within their very own government. One of the major distinguishing characteristics of libertarians is that we have succeeded in breaking through this indoctrination. I recall the day that happened to me. It was the day I discovered libertarianism. As I was reading a series of pure, principled, unadulterated libertarian essays, I could tell that the several inches of thick indoctrination that encased my mind were shattering apart. Suddenly, I could see reality for what ...
You Can’t Count on the Police by Jacob G. Hornberger June 23, 2022 At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the police inaction during the mass killing of children in a public school in Uvalde, Texas, provides one more argument against gun control: You just can’t count on the police to keep you safe from a mass killer. Sometimes you have to rely on yourself or on other armed private individuals ...
Coming Full Circle with a Renewed Cold War Racket by Jacob G. Hornberger June 30, 2022 With Turkey now removing its objection to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, it is a virtual certainty that the two countries will join this Cold War dinosaur military alliance. In practical terms, that means that the lives of young Americans will now be pledged to come to the automatic defense of Swedes and Finns in the event Russia ...
The Supreme Court Is Turning America Into a Constitution-Free Zone by John W. Whitehead July 8, 2022 “No one should get used to their rights. Predicting with certainty which ones, if any, will go, or when, is impossible.”—Mary R. Ziegler, legal historian The Supreme Court has spoken: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality. Although the Court’s 2021-22 rulings ...
No Need to Meet With Dictators by Jacob G. Hornberger July 18, 2022 By now, most everyone knows about President Biden’s famous “fist bump” with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi dictator who has been accused of orchestrating the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi when he visited a Saudi consulate in Turkey. The fist bump took place during Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia to meet with bin ...
Border-Control Fallacies by Jacob G. Hornberger July 21, 2022 A writer at Substack named David Ferguson writes: Robert Frost once wrote “good fences make good neighbors.” Very true. Isn’t there any private property on the U.S. side of the border? Doesn’t a property owner have the right to defend his justly obtained property? How about hiring private police to keep intruders from trespassing on your property? The ...
Digital Authoritarianism: AI Surveillance Signals the Death of Privacy by John W. Whitehead July 21, 2022 “There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.” ― Philip K. Dick Nothing is private. We ...
The Pentagon Is Behind Pelosi’s Trip by Jacob G. Hornberger August 4, 2022 Joe Biden wanted to make it clear that the Pentagon was opposed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, a trip that was obviously intended to gin up a crisis with Red China. The notion that the Pentagon opposed Pelosi’s trip is sheer nonsense. In my opinion, there ...
Immigration Socialism, the Drug War, and a Police State by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2022 I grew up on a farm a few miles outside Laredo, Texas, which is located on the U.S.-Mexico border. Our farm was situated on the Rio Grande, so we irrigated our fields from water taken from the river. When we would drive down to the river to fix our irrigation pump, we could see Mexico and would oftentimes wave ...
Help FFF Restore Sound Money by Jacob G. Hornberger August 11, 2022 Gas prices are at an all-time high. Rents are skyrocketing. Prices at the grocery store are surging. Prices of new and used cars are spiraling out of control. That’s what happens when the Federal Reserve debases the currency by inflating the money supply, which the Fed has been doing for the past several years and, actually, since its inception ...
