By Gary North.  “Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.”

As ugly as NFL opening week…well, every NFL week! Sorry Tucker, objectivists are not libertarians and your opening straw man was as pathetic as it gets. Unfortunately, despite a golden opportunity, Peikoff wasn’t that impressive either. Being American doesn’t obligate anyone to celebrate anything, never mind Jeff Bezos.

Actually more than 10, but the rest seem to be follow-ups to the main 10. I particularly like 4, 7, 9:

4. If your ideas are so obviously true why does anyone who questions them need to be shamed, silenced, and fired?
7. After spending more than a trillion dollars and thousands of lives attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and getting nothing for it, why does it now make sense to start new wars in Syria and Iran?
9. How is it fair to use public resources to bail out reckless financial institutions that caused the last economic collapse?

Another nice example to send to your conservative friends who say, “Why do you fear the ‘good guys?’  If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

Recently on LRC Pat Buchanan and Bill Sardi have outlined the ongoing efforts of the anti-Trump coup orchestrated by the deep state.  On October 4, 2015 I first raised the question of the relationship of presidential candidate Donald Trump and the deep state. I believed that this pivotal issue would become the central focus analysts should examine behind the superficial campaign rhetoric of the 2016  election.  How the establishment elites viewed the Trump candidacy would be the crucial subtext to note.  On the November election night in 2016 I issued this following prophetic warning of things to come. My dire prediction is still in the process of being fulfilled.

Steve Schmidt was a campaign strategist for Bush 2 and McCain. He has been a top-level Republican. In June of this year, he resigned from the Republican Party, citing the cowardice of its leaders who would not check Trump.

In June, Schmidt criticized Trump severely for 5 reasons; (1) Stirring up people with lies at rallies; (2) attacking minorities; (3) creating a sense of people being victimized; (4) alleging conspiracies, like the deep state; and (5) claiming to be above the law.

Three months later, Schmidt has radically altered his attack. He now says Trump is “psychologically unfit”. Even worse, he’s “mentally ill and mentally unfit”.

Why should anyone worry one whit about foreigners soiling the Snow White American electoral process when we have hundreds and thousands of Schmidts openly and anonymously trying to hound Trump from office?

Did Schmidt learn something between June and September that allowed him to conclude that Trump wasn’t just a racist, lying demagogue but indeed mentally ill and incapable of doing the job? Why hasn’t he told us what he saw? Why doesn’t he tell us how he missed such an important fact 3 months ago? He had plenty of time in the years preceding to see that Trump has some variety of mental illness. And what exactly is the illness he is suffering from? Couldn’t Schmidt fill us all in on that important detail? Is he paranoid? Is he schizophrenic? Is he depressed? Is he manic depressive? What is his disorder? Does he have delusions? Is he a megalomaniac? Is he taking medication for this illness? Has his doctor diagnosed this? Does Trump refuse his meds?

Schmidt and others who are making extreme statements like his have read the same tweets available to all. He has access to the same speeches and statements we all do. What can he point to that shows mental illness? The whole mental illness thing is as much a red herring as are such charges as misogyny, xenophobia, racism, consorting with the enemy and being a traitor. And we obviously cannot conclude madness in the White House from Bob Woodward’s gossip/hearsay or the babbling of Mr. Anonymous in his op-ed.

All the evidence points in one direction and one direction only. Large numbers of the Democratic-Republican Establishment intensely dislike Trump’s policies that threaten the empire, them and their positions. They are all trying to oust him from office without losing their own seats and positions. The attacks on Trump are inspired by political differences that impact upon the beliefs, the livelihoods and the positions of those who will lose out if Trump has a chance to follow his instincts and rein in the empire.

Schmidt’s charge of insanity like many statements about Trump are never proven or backed up by anything. There are incredibly baseless lies and false accusations like his constantly being floated by men and women inside Congress and out, which the brainless media do not dig into or question that could not stand up in court for 5 seconds.

If Mueller ever comes up with a report that suggests obstruction of justice, that will add to this travesty.

Obama has tossed in his entirely worthless two cents with his own version of these kinds of attacks on Trump. In a single speech, he manages to call Trump a Nazi or Nazi-sympathizer, an obstructor of justice, and a KGB asset who has left the American electorate open to attack. Obama manages to label Trump supporters as people who are fearful and resentful of people of color. Obama’s speech is truly ghastly politics. This is where this election stands this year. It is getting worse as the election approaches. Worse lies and false charges are ready to be sown in the near future. This spectacle is a truly nauseating example of democracy.

Journalist Mark Steyn has an advance copy of the new Bob Woodward book on the allegedly “crazy” Trump White House, the new theme of the deep state, which dreams of using the 25th Amendment to get rid of Trump and replace him with another Clinton/Bush/Obama-style puppet of theirs.  Appearing on FOX News last night, Steyn read a passage from Woodward’s book to illustrate the author’s “evidence” of Trump’s alleged mental imbalance.  In a meeting with all of his top military generals, Woodward writes, Trump walked in and said (paraphrasing):  “So, when are we going to start winning some of these wars we’re involved in.”

That’s the “evidence” that Bob Woodward, longtime employee of the CIA-front Washington Post, has of Trump’s alleged insanity: questioning the decades-long abysmal failures of the military/industrial/spying/deep state complex.  How is this different from how the Soviets accused critics of socialism of being mentally ill, and sending them off to “mental institutions”?

Trump is isolated and up against powerful forces that favor interventions. He is assisting them in some arenas, which weakens his attempts in other arenas. He hasn’t rallied the public consistently and strongly in favor of a neutrality policy. This, after all, would be a huge shift, as the resistance to Trump from the Establishment shows. Such a shift calls for a radical rethinking of U.N. doctrines too, doctrines that undermine neutrality and call for collective uses of force that widen wars.

The basic issue is Interventionism vs. Neutrality. But even more basic is that our form of government does not effectively restrain capture of foreign policy by interventionist interests.

George Washington advocated Neutrality, and rightly so. But the federal government has again and again departed from neutrality, to the detriment of the public.

Why has this occurred? There is no check and balance in the political system to prevent this, as special interests and other factors occur that make interventions irresistible. Being unstoppable, they happen time and again. No amount of rational appraisal of the (bad) results or moral hectoring can bring this to a halt.

Is Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) taught in our schools? Sometimes. Clearly, it isn’t widely absorbed as sound. If it is taught, is it taught as something that’s right? Or taught as something dated and impossible in this day and age? Perhaps it’s parodied as isolationist. The forces of intervention are strong enough to influence history and education in their favor; or to prevent Washington’s advice from being implemented.

Washington wrote “The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.”

Washington saw neutral conduct to two opposing belligerents as a natural law, i.e., a condition conducing to peaceful relations with other nations. Why? With neutrality, one maintains peace with others, even if they conflict or fight one another. Consequently, one may learn their points of view, gather intelligence and influence them in peace. Once one takes sides, one enters a war. Given the many possible disputes, the country will be at war continually if it chooses sides between opposing sides. Choosing sides means an immediate escalation in threats to Americans and their interests, here and abroad. It means an immediate rise in costs that imperil our welfare. It means a loss in the possibilities of trade. It means destruction of American lives. It means developing long-term enmities. It means widening of conflicts, because other nations then may choose sides too. It means degrading the idea of self-defense by classifying aggression as a way to reduce phantom threats.

Washington’s Address provides many other perspectives on why neutrality is a policy calculated to assure peace for our nation, whereas intervention, which is non-neutrality, is not.

“The Quiet Resistance Inside the Trump Administration”, written anonymously and published by The New York Times, singles out Trump’s Russia policy for condemnation:

“On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”

With these words, the writer calls for foreign policy as usual and not as Trump would have it:

“Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.”

Trump is right to attack American foreign policy of the past 50 years and more. It’s too bad that he isn’t more consistent at it and doesn’t articulate a return to American neutrality, but let’s take what we can get.

Once the government abandoned neutrality, foreign policy became more and more reckless, dangerous, and costly. It became less and less done on behalf of U.S. interests properly judged and became more and more a vehicle for interventionists, unilateralists, moralists, neocons, deep-staters, special business interests, special foreign interests, power-hungry politicians, and all the beneficiaries of a huge military-industrial complex.

These groups, whose interests are not the vital national interests of the American people, designate Russia as an enemy because they need enemies to sustain their power and money grabs. They made terrorism an enemy. They made the Taliban an enemy. They made Iraq an enemy. They have made Iran an enemy. They made Gaddafi an enemy. The more enemies they can create, the better it is for them. The worse it is for us.

Trump is right to attack sanctions on Russia and to want not to be boxed into an anti-Russia posture.

The op-ed writer supports the establishment foreign policy posture of the empire, which is interventionist. This is the posture that brought us wars in places of no vital interest to our nation: Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Serbia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen. This posture supports a military presence throughout Africa and further wars. It supports alliances that can bring on more wars.

What we should have as a foreign policy basis is NEUTRALITY. This is so far from the mind, the worldview, and the indoctrination of the op-ed writer that he considers Trump to be unfit for office. So strongly raised in the interventionist faith, the writer is unable to see the pervasive failures of U.S. foreign policy, decade after decade. He sees an anti-Russia posture as right, when it is could not be more wrong and dangerous.

The writer seeks Trump’s removal, accusing him of a long list of failings. These he sees as the source of Trump’s wrong attitude toward Russia and Putin. This Trump critic expresses absolutely no doubt that he’s right on Russia and that Trump’s wrong. He’s so sure of himself on this issue that he uses it as an example of how wrong Trump is, attributing it to Trump’s reckless instability or any number of his other alleged disorders. The writer has establishment blinders on. He literally cannot see the failures of U.S. interventionism when they are evident to millions and millions of Americans.

According to the op-ed writer, we are supposed to accept the hi-jacking of American neutrality by a foreign policy/national security/military/industrial establishment that has failed us time and again while enriching itself. He asks us to join him in his peculiar madness and incapacity to face the reality of the utter failure of interventionism, unilateralism and phony national security arguments as foreign policy principles.

It’s been two days since McCain was buried at the Training-Killers-for-the-State Academy in Annapolis, and still no resurrection!  I assume the network camera crews are all still there anxiously awaiting the Big Moment.

He now has to spend eternity with John McCain.

(An emailer writes:  Poor Megyn; she apparently inherited her father’s level of intelligence and his manners, such as thy were).

Recently I outlined what, after a lifetime of careful study and historical investigation, I believe to be the true face of the left. If one were to give a collective name for these barbarous thugs, predatory vandals, and destructive enemies of civilization, it would be Cultural Maoists. Here is an incisive article that further analyses these post-modern nihilists unleashed among us.

This outstanding piece on John McCain is perhaps the best I have encountered. It is must reading because of its comprehensive thoroughness and incisive depth and detail.

Are people invited and dis-invited to funerals.  Sick and demented.

A new type of superstition has got hold of peoples minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols! — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 11

Not every apparatus of compulsion and coercion is called a state. Only one which is powerful enough to maintain its existence, for some time at least, by its own force is commonly called a state. A gang of robbers, which because of the comparative weakness of its forces has no prospect of successfully resisting for any length of time the forces of another organization, is not entitled to be called a state. The state will either smash or tolerate a gang. In the first case the gang is not a state because its independence lasts for a short time only; in the second case it is not a state because it does not stand on its own might. — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 46

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 47

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says state means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: the police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 47

He who proclaims the godliness of the State and the infallibility of its priests, the bureaucrats, is considered as an impartial student of the social sciences. — Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos, p. 16

Statolatry has become the principal form of worship in contemporary America. People erroneously talk about “separation of Church and State” when “the State” has replaced “the Church” as the idolatrous venue for worship. As the Church had its calendar of Holy Days of Obligation and sacraments, so too the State has its own sacred holidays, icons, protocols and rituals.

Take a look at America’s most venerated monuments in the Nation’s Capital erected to this statolatry. You have a massive statue of the martyred Abraham Lincoln sitting in a temple of Zeus upon a throne replete with fasces (the symbols of imperium); the Jefferson Memorial consciously built as a modern Pantheon by the same eminent architect commissioned to design this other temple of worship in Washington, DC; or most telling, the apotheosis of George Washington in the dome of the rotunda of the US Capitol building, ascending into Heaven.

This is perhaps the most important topic those in the Liberty Resistance must address — that of statolatry — or worship of the State as a omnipotent and omniscient suprahuman entity preying parasitically on its faith community of acolytes and true believers.

Each day in rote, millions of captive children in government schools recite the Pledge of Allegiance, their solemn oath to this sacred creed, without giving it cursory reflection or thought.

Every day throughout the world, billions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims violate the First Commandment of God’s Holy Laws given to Moses on Mt. Sinai by their craven obeisance and worship of this bloody Moloch, with its graven idols and belligerent flags of war, symbolizing this predatory paganism.

Thus is born a new generation of blind worshipers at the Golden Calf of Statism.

Lindsey Graham will now be stuck playing the role of “Mini-Me” to John McCain’s “Dr. Evil.” O tempora o mores!

. . . by supporting the latest eco-commie fad of calling for the banning of plastic straws in restaurants.

Today is  Hans Hoppe’s birthday. He is an outstanding libertarian theorist, in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, and his strikingly original work ranges widely over philosophy, history, and economics. Among his many contributions are a defense of self-ownership and property rights through argumentation ethics and a trenchant criticism of democracy.  He is a scholar of the highest integrity and courage, and all lovers of liberty are in his debt.

The home of left civil libertarian Nat Hentoff for half a century shuts down a year after his death, facing a rapidly dwindling demand for its content. Nat would be an anomaly in today’s left that sees civil liberties as no longer convenient to its agenda.

Goes golfing, that is.  Once again President Trump dared to play golf while everyone else in Washington was still sobbing uncontrollably a week after McCain kicked the bucket.  A real president would have spent the entire weekend on his knees praying for McCain’s reincarnation.  I assume that’s what “President Hillary” has been doing with all her “Wicca” friends and supporters.  The (Dis) Associated Press, CBS News, etc., etc. is pretending to be oh, so upset about this.

Interesting BBC podcast not just for details on UK covert ops but also for discussion of the historiographical and investigative challenges in this area of research. Related books of interest: here, here, and here.

“American greatness” has passed, said Meghan McCain at a memorial service for her father, John McCain. Sounds more like American nonsense.

Here is the America of John McCain, according to his daughter:

The America of John McCain is, yes, the America of Vietnam, fighting the fight, even in the most grim circumstances, even in the most distant, hostile corner of the world, standing for the life and liberty of other peoples in other lands.

In other words, the America of John McCain is perpetual war, interventionism, military offense instead of defense, intervening in civil wars, bombing, maiming, killing, invading, and occupying. Too bad this nonsense won’t pass with McCain.

I heard some of the remarks that some members of Congress made when McCain’s body was lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. More American nonsense.

A central theme I have emphasized repeatedly at LRC is the phony ideological nature of the political spectrum of opinion as reflected in Congress, the media, and in academia. Both contemporary “liberalism” and “conservatism” are the synthetic creations of the deep state intelligence community.

The video above is a very disturbing and perceptive analysis of the deep state’s contemporary usage of “soft power,” psychological warfare, and front group manipulation of the internal political affairs and elections of other nations. A covert activity is “an activity or activities of the United States government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” Plausible deniability is the rule of this disinformation game. The video confirms and demonstrates this continuing bipartisan elite consensus in this long running interventionist strategy which had its roots decades ago in the intelligence community’s Cold War efforts to create a parallel, mirror image network to that of the Soviets’ master propagandist Willi Munzenberg.

Munzenberg manipulated thousands of European and American progressive intellectuals in the inner-war period of the 1920s and 1930s by his vast publishing network, espionage apparat, and interlocking front organizations under the covert direction of the Communist International (Comintern) and the Soviet secret services of the NKVD and the GRU.

In 1948, former OSS agent and Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner first headed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), which was soon absorbed into and became the covert espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the newly-created Central Intelligence Agency. From the beginning, these activities have been funded clandestinely by the CIA’s black budget, from diverted funds such as the Marshall Plan, and NGO foundations and think tanks.

This strategy initially targeted the anti-Stalinist left and was guided by former Trotskyists such as James Burnham. Burnham, who had been a leading Trotskyist communist, WWII consultant for the Office of Strategic Services, was later head of the Political and Psychological Warfare division of the Office of Policy Coordination. He was a central figure in the the CIA front, the Congress for Cultural Freedom and later in the creation of the CIA’s synthetic conservative movement’s principal publication, the National Review. National Review editor William F. Buckley Jr. was initially recruited for the CIA by his Yale professor Willmoore Kendall, a former Trotskyist and OSS/CIA consultant. But it was the other former Trotskyist communist, OSS/CIA consultant, and pioneer Cold Warrior James Burnham who was the dominant influence on CIA agent Buckley and National Review since the magazine was founded.

As the video details the legacy of this interventionist strategy continues under different auspices such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), but is still guided in its overarching synthetic ideology derived from Trotskyism which today is most identified as Neoconservatism.

When the issue of President Donald Trump appointing the next US Supreme Court Justice was first raised with the retirement of Justice Kennedy, I observed that it is imperative that the next Supreme Court nominee is questioned on vital national security matters.

Here is an excellent concise summation of nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s views and record in this regard by Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project.

Kavanaugh does have a well-developed record in cases involving national security, civil liberties, and human rights from his time on the D.C. Circuit. That record shows extreme deference to presidential claims to act unchecked in the name of war or national security. It also demonstrates hostility to international law as a constraint on government action as well as an unwillingness to hold the government to account when it violates the constitutional and human rights of U.S. citizens and noncitizens.

It is imperative that the American people not acquiesce their grave responsibility but forcefully press their elected Senators and the news media to question and hold fully accountable this nominee for his viewpoint on vital national security issues such as the Constitutional power to declare war, Habeas Corpus, warrantless detention, warrantless surveillance, torture, rendition, national security letters, and the constitutionality of Continuity of Government (COG) and covert operations of the intelligence agencies.

Does the judicial nominee hold that the Constitution established a federal decentralized compact or republic of sovereign independent states granting explicit delegated powers to the general government for specific purposes while retaining their reserved powers for themselves? Or does the United States simply pose as a sham elective democracy but is in fact a militarized despotism with actual power residing in the hands of a secret oligarchy that is arbitrary, capricious, and unaccountable, a tyranny lacking transparency, justice, or restraint?

Which is precisely why we must move now to raise these crucial questions for the Supreme Court nominee before hearings are held. We must organize in our neighborhoods and families, in our clubs, churches, and with colleagues from work, pressing hard the media and our elected officials, cutting across all  ideological and demographic divisional lines of left or right, of race and class, as a broad national referendum on what America has become and what we want her to be for the future. This informal coalition of interest could serve multiple purposes but it should primarily bring into the sunlight the nature and origins of the national security state and the spurious props and fallacious notions which have continued to foster its cancerous growth.

Lew Rockwell once said that all governments would be totalitarian if they could get away with it. “Ours” is definitely trying. With an imperial presidency, an acquiescent Congress, a complaisant and compliant judiciary, an officious and intrusive bureaucracy, and a national security state that is making us less secure at home by its reckless interventionism abroad, plunging us toward tyranny and civilizational collapse. Their solemn oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution were either hollow empty words they mumbled with their fingers callously crossed behind their backs or uttered with an arrogant hubris they misbelieved to be patriotic zeal regarding the true meaning of duty, honor, and fidelity towards that decaying parchment document at the National Archive and what it stands for.

Lew today has a link to a social justice booklet in the Portland, Oregon schools. Its leftist purpose is clear: to promote leftist ideology through public schools. The universities are already largely captured by leftists.

The publisher of the booklet is the Education for Liberation Network. What does it stand for?

“The Education for Liberation Network is a national coalition of teachers, community activists, researchers, youth and parents who believe a good education should teach people—particularly low-income youth and youth of color—how to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face.” It also says it wants to “build a movement to develop and promote education as a tool for liberation.”

This sounds like the Chinese Communist Youth Movement. Young people were prominent in Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The aim is an American leftist revolution.

The goal is not education in the common sense. They are not promoting the 3 R’s, which is what people need to get ahead. They are not promoting hard work and ethical behavior, which is what people need to get ahead. They are not promoting marketable skills. They are not promoting character-building. They are promoting politics, based upon ideas of race, income and social injustice. That is why it’s called Education for Liberation.

Education into liberation politics is a dead end. Producing Red Guards is a dead end. It doesn’t put bread on the table. It does a disservice to youth, and particularly the youth that this group emphasizes, “low-income youth and youth of color.” It directs their time and energy in fruitless directions. Youth is not going to get ahead by telling themselves that they are disadvantaged, plundered by colonialists of the past, burdened by imperialists, and savaged by oppressors. Discovering racism in every nook and cranny of a word, a glance and a paycheck is not going to cut it. Looking for insults based upon sexual gradations cannot be a way of life or support a civilization. If revolutionary youth or their communist leaders took over, paradise would not burgeon. Bread would not suddenly appear.

Youth, including poor youth and youth of color, have a tremendous amount of material goods to lose through liberation politics. Bread covers a lot of ground. These goods cannot continue to appear without constantly being replenished. Were it not for our forefathers in past generations, imperfect as they were, we’d be scrambling to produce crops, dying in childbirth and foraging for fish and game.