According to a new report by the Prison Policy Initiative, “1 in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for a drug offense” and “374,000 are incarcerated for drug offenses on any given day.” And Americans sing that this is the land of the free?

I am seeing people once again wear two face masks—outside. I think I have finally figured out the reason why: one mask is to protect against Covid and the other is to protect against Monkeypox.

Adds, “[FBI] better have smoking-gun proof, which I don’t see happening…”

Two interesting earlier cases: Sandy Berger and James Comey.

David McCullough was one of the quintessential establishment court historians. Like the Bushes, Bundys, and Buckleys, he was a member of Skull and Bones (also known as The Brotherhood of Death) at Yale, where he became a “made man” set for life. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian award. He was the authoritative narrative voice of the Public Broadcasting System’s American Experience series, which is as close to official state-sanctioned history there is. McCullough had been awarded more than 40 honorary degrees.

McCullough, with his clear, resonant voice and reassuring presence personified “history” for millions of Americans much as veteran broadcaster Walter Cronkite personified “news.” It only goes to show you how far a privileged Skull and Bonesman can go if connected. He was in the same elite class as historians Barbara Tuchman, Arthur Schlesinger Jr,, and Margaret Macmillan in terms of career advancement connections due to ancestral ties or political pull of elite establishment institutions.

“Court historians” are the intellectual bodyguards of the State. They shape and defend the “official line” or interpretation on the State’s wars, its presidential regimes, or other key historical events and public policies. As a result they enjoy high esteem and recognition in the mainstream media and academia. As defenders of the status quo they frequently attack and label their critics as “conspiracy theorists,” “revisionists,” “isolationists,” “appeasers,” “anti-intellectuals,” or other boogie men, rather than engage in civil discourse or discussion.

As the late economist/historian Murray N. Rothbard noted:

All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of “Court Intellectuals,” whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public. The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimize, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public.

The War On Dissent, by Whitney Webb

Online censorship is becoming increasingly normalized as growing restrictions, deplatforming and its other manifestations have become so pervasive that many have simply come to accept it.

As there are ages of cultural renaissance and enlightenment, so are there, on the critical evidence of history, ages of cultural sterility and degeneration.

Today’s mass youth Rock/Rap culture, with its consecration of the trivial, the sexually perverse, and the infantile, is characterized by the debasement and corruption of language.

In his book, The Second Sin, Thomas Szasz observes:

‘To concepts like suicide, homicide, and genocide, we should add ‘semanticide’ – the murder of language. The deliberate (or quasi-deliberate) misuse of language through hidden metaphor and professional mystification breaks the basic contract between people, namely the tacit agreement on the proper use of words. Thus it is that the ‘great’ philosophers and politicians whose aim was to control man, from Rousseau to Stalin and Hitler, have preached and practiced semanticide; whereas those who have tried to set man free to be his own master, from Emerson to Kraus and Orwell, have preached and practiced respect for language.’

Social Media and the Internet, hailed by some as visionary tools of liberation and empowerment, are the new digital Platonic caves of false reality and noble lies. They are the vehicles where vulgar manipulation of a generation formed linguistically around the primitivism of tribal Rock music by atavistic poseurs and the monotonous dirge of Rap by nihilistic gangsters, will not be a difficult generation to enslave politically, socially and culturally.

We have seen endless examples of willfully ignorant cybervultures leading thuggish illiterates rioting, looting and murdering mobs via Facebook and Twitter. Historically there has been a symbiotic correlation relationship between agent provocateur groups, infiltration by police informers, and the counter-terrorism forces of the deep state. The repressive security state has molded and used such witting (or unwitting) terrorist pawns or drones in covert activities to create a “strategy of tension” to instill fear and consolidate repressive power and control which would enhance strident calls for more intense police repression and clandestine surveillance of its subject general population. With countless decades of real-world experience and clinical research, masters of psychological warfare and mind control, expert manipulators and programmers of cult-like behavior, recruit those alienated arrested development post-adolescents and anti-social disillusioned vicarious thrill seekers who fit a susceptible psychological profile matrix and who relish vandalism, violence and destruction as a means of striking out at a world beyond the control of their misshapened lives. An ideological construct of direct action “anarchism” or “propaganda by the deed” is put forth as a purported justification for their aberrant thug-like terrorist behavior.

For five decades my mentor in political and culture matters has been the magnificent Albert Jay Nock, while Nock himself turned to the high Tory essayist Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy as his seminal guide.

But Nock and Arnold did not always see eye-to-eye.

Arnold, as a second generation educational bureaucrat, believed that in order to move his sterile Victorian culture towards ‘sweetness and light,’ the defining civilizational appreciation of the best cultural achievements that the West had produced, a vast network of state-sponsored schools must be created to educate the ‘barbarians,’ ‘philistines,’ and ‘populace,’ (his famous labels for the aristocracy, the middle class, and the toiling masses of his day).

Nock was adamantly opposed to this compulsory imposition of coercive egalitarianism and regimentation. He believed (gleefully standing Karl Marx upon his head) the much-heralded ‘universal literacy’ of the statists would bring further immiseration of Arnold’s ‘populace,’ while lowering the cultural common denominator of the hapless bourgeoisie and the predatory ‘barbarians.’

‘As a state-controlled enterprise maintained by taxation, virtually a part of the civil service (like organized Christianity in England and in certain European countries) the system had become an association de propaganda fide for the extreme of a hidebound nationalism and of a superstitious servile reverence for a sacrosanct State. In another view one saw it functioning as a sort of sanhedrim, a leveling agency, prescribing uniform modes of thought, belief, conduct, social deportment, diet, recreation, hygiene; and as an inquisitional body for the enforcement of these prescriptions, for nosing out heresies and irregularities and suppressing them. In still another view one saw it functioning as a trade-union body, intent on maintaining and augmenting a set of vested interests; and one noticed that in this capacity it occasionally took shape as an extremely well-disciplined and powerful pressure group. ‘(The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, pages 263-264)

In this day of the triumph of the Idiocracy, Nock has the last haughty and disdainful laugh at the naiveté of Arnold and the progressive educational reformers who followed in his wake.

In the Arts, the modernist and postmodernist projects are exhausted. No more tiresome Épater la bourgeoisie (Shock the middle classes). The avant-garde novelty of Rimbaud, Klimt, Schoenberg, Joyce, Dada, Ligeti, Pollock, Sartre, and Mapplethorpe has degenerated into boorish louts such as Greta Van Fleet, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Kanye West.

Yet in a measured bow towards the underclass lumpenproletariat, mainstream media moguls market this filth as the authentic, spontaneous outpouring from “the streets.” But then, so is dog excrement.

Good music should be an elevating celebration of the human spirit. It is an affirmation of life, of the richness and texture of being.

Much contemporary literature and music is an unintelligible exercise in the pathetic and the phallic performed by “trousered apes” (to use Duncan William’s excellent descriptive title from his now woefully archaic exposition on related cultural and literary subject matters.)

Weaken, corrupt, dissolve the cohesive authority of language in a society and the rest follows rather easily – a life nasty, brutish, meaningless; an existence void of beauty or purpose.

I have spent my lifetime surveying the endless nihilistic parade of savage wars, genocides, butchery, atrocities, persecutions, massacres, pogroms, insurrections, and slaughter. Today we are deluged daily with yet another senseless array of mindless acts of individualized cruelty and criminal barbarism in the media. People have become desensitized, complaisant, and compliant to the banality of tyranny and repression.

Progressives have always insisted upon rule by an elitist professional class of credentialed experts removed from the populist majority of everyday Americans, who they regarded as “deplorables,” “white trash,” or “the unwashed masses.”

Eugenics is at the epicenter of implementation of a corporatist Social Credit economy (based upon the Chinese Communist model) with centralized political control in an elite totalitarian technocratic entity, with all pervasive mass surveillance by facial recognition databases and coercive regimentation. These invasive actions are running parallel with the transition to a cashless society with all financial transactions monitored through digitalized biometric identification using such technologies as fingerprints, hand geometry and retina scanning — ultimately a microchip electronic device implanted subcutaneously (subdermally).

Today the heroic battle is against identity politics and racial biological collectivism, of conformist cancel culture by the totalitarian leftwing destroyers of Western civilization and its basis in Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment principles — the declared enemies of freedom of speech, the rule of law, the integrity of biological science, the two person nuclear family of male and female, personal sovereignty and self-defense, individual human rights and civil liberties, and the capitalist free market economy.

Perhaps this old misanthropic curmudgeon could be tragically wrong in my baneful prognostications, but I seriously doubt I am.

The True Face of the Left Revealed, by Charles Burris

The Left’s Final Objective Is Subversion of Western Civilization, by Vasko Kohlmayer

The above scene from the movie Idiocracy is becoming a reality in our American medical system.

It seems like the recent medical school graduates, in general, have no idea how to diagnose anything.  They are technicians at best, pushing buttons and hoping the computer readout will make the call for them.  They don’t listen to the patient.  They run up testing bills only to pass the patient around like a hot potato, hoping they just go away or die before they have to commit to some kind of diagnosis or treatment protocol.  The only part of the equation that is reliable is the slew of bills that will come in for months.

But watching young doctors “diagnose” is like observing a group of monkeys trying to inflate a football.

One of my relatives had a kidney stone.  She was in pain, and concerned that it might be appendicitis, and unable to see her doctor right away, went to the local clinic – who then sent her to the hospital ER for CT scan.  The recent medical school graduate at the hospital, a nice young lady who seemed clueless, told the patient that the scan did not reveal a kidney stone, but rather her problem was probably a disk in her vertebrae, “degenerative spine disease” in the official argot of this medical “expert.”

She has no back problems, but she did, in fact, have a kidney stone.  It had just been broken up by this time.  Her old-school doctor knew what was going on without running her through an expensive battery of scans.

But here is a more serious matter – one that readers may well want to file away for future consideration…

A friend of mine, whose husband is in his eighties, suddenly began to behave erratically, becoming forgetful and moody.  He was diagnosed with dementia by multiple doctors and placed in a nursing home.  His wife was dubious of the diagnosis.  His daughter, an attorney, considered her father’s symptoms, and suggested that he may be suffering from a urinary tract infection (UTI), as dementia does not just suddenly appear out of nowhere.  The medical “experts” did not check him for that.  And they continued to resist doing so.

Finally, and I suspect it was because of his daughter’s status as an attorney, they relented.  Lo and behold, after he had been in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair for three months – he was tested for a UTI.  And that was his problem all along.  They put him on a treatment protocol, and miracle of miracles, his “dementia” suddenly went away, and he was able to return home in a couple days.

The moral of the story is to stay away from doctors if possible, and if you must go to one, find one with experience in actual diagnosis, and not one of those hacks who just pushes buttons and reads a printout.  If one of your loved ones is diagnosed with a sudden case of dementia, consider that he or she may simply be suffering from an infection.  UTI’s are common in older folks.

Finally, if you have not seen Idiocracy, you might want to.  It used to be considered a comedy.  But today, I’m afraid it is a documentary.

Lightning strike at the White House.  

It’s Free-Form Friday where we get to see Mark Groubert and @Robert Barnes riffing madly about whatever comes to mind. @Viva Frei and Eric Hunley will try to hang in there as the firehose of culture and trivia is unleashed. Buckle up! It’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes off-the-rails, but always fascinating!

America was never meant to be an empire. After all, empires go broke! Why would any nation ever want that? Human life is much (much) too complex for one nation, or one government, to rule them all.

Sadly, in the early 1900’s, Americans ditched sound money, with the creation of the Fed, and ditched the belief of non-intervention in the affairs of other nations. It’s been all downhill ever since.

Recently at LRC I posted two extensive backstory articles, It Is Time for an Authentic Nationwide Populist Movement to Take Back America, and Populist Realpolitik, which received wide acclaim and praise. I sincerely believe this is the most principled and effective transpartisan strategic direction the broad base of Americans seeking substantial change and transformation of addressing politics must undertake. And is why I describe myself as a Rothbardian Paleolibertarian Populist.

Although I have not been active in Libertarian Party activities or electoral affairs for decades, I hail and heartily commend recent triumphant turns toward a focus upon what was once described by Lew Rockwell as “paleolibertarianism” as part of the strategic vision of the Party and the movement as a whole. Below are two source material items which speak to these crucial directions of strategic vision and public policies.

The Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party

The Ten Points of the Libertarian Party Rothbard Caucus

With the current electric grid you can have your HVAC or electric cars but not both, at least to some of the Biden greens.

Even in 2006, scientific literature showed lockdowns were ineffective and purely destructive.

When government claims that it’s going to make something (anything) “more affordable” or “more accessible” … watch out! Their attempt to tilt the tables in a certain direction always backfires. It ends up ultimately hurting those who they intended to help. There are countless examples, but on today’s program, we discuss how the government (and Fed) created the student loan mess.

Lessons Learned Investigating the JFK/RFK Assassinations with researcher Mark Groubert and attorney Robert Barnes

Michael Rectenwald discusses the Marxist-Gramscian long march through the institutions, the dominant Deep State that’s ideologically homogenous, and the Great Reset with Vinay Kolhatkar. This discussion is particularly appropriate since this week is the 75th anniversary of the formal creation of the modern deep state with President Harry S Truman signing the landmark statute which established the CIA, the NSC, and the foundations of the Department of Defense – the Underpinnings of the Modern National Security State.

This wide-ranging law contributed to a “complete overhaul” of the Executive Branch, transformed U.S. foreign policy making, and empowered America’s global engagement through the Cold War and beyond.

If you ever want to peer into the future, look at the names of the bills passed by Congress, and then assume the opposite results for their intended goals. The “Inflation Reduction Act” will be yet another example. You can expect much more inflation if such an act is ever implemented.

So says the New York Times.

“The world has already warmed to dangerous levels. Heat waves, wildfires, droughts and severe storms have become more common. The Arctic is melting, and seas are rising. If countries do not act quickly to slow their emissions of greenhouse gases — and, by extension, slow global warming — the damage could be catastrophic, scientists have warned.”

Talk about fake news.

From: J

Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2022 6:21 AM

To: Walter Block <[email protected]>

Subject: asking for an advice

Dear Professor Block,

I have one question for you as a more experienced colleague: my University is starting an Economics Major program and for the first time this Fall I will be teaching Intermediate Microeconomics. I am torn between doing what I think they should be learning (“Man, Economy and State” by Sensei) and what might be opportune for them to learn (standard stuff, probably Varian textbook). Any advice?

J

From: Walter Block <[email protected]>

Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2022 10:51 AM

To:  J

Subject: RE: asking for an advice

Dear J:

Do the Varian type text. Why?

1.you won’t get in trouble

2.the Rothbard will be unfair to your students who go on to grad school. There, Varian, not Rothbard, will help them

But, in addition to the Varian as your main text, also include several Rothbard, Mises, etc., shorter essays. Also, you don’t have to cover ALL of your main text. Three quarters will do just fine.

Best regards,

Walter

Ron Unz is one of the good guys. No, scratch that: one of the very, very, very good guys. However, his position on the minimum wage law is highly problematic.

Dear Ron:

You are truly a mensch. Very few people in your position would have published our essay, given that it is a frontal attack on your position. My co author and I are very grateful to you for that.

How shall we proceed? Shall you write a rejoinder to what you have just published of ours, and invite us to respond? Or, shall we respond to this material you just sent us beginning with the words: “Finally, the CBO conclusions seem to totally demolish…” If you have published other material on the min wage, perhaps you could send it to us (if it would take less than 2 minutes of your time) and we could respond to that, also. I think the best way to get to the truth of this matter, any matter at all for that matter, is via this sort of back and forth dialogue. Perhaps such a debate might also be of interest to your readership.

I rereading what we wrote, I regret that material about your “genius.” That was impolite and uncalled for. We promise not to do that sort of thing any more. Thanks for putting up with us despite that.

Best regards,

Walter

(more…)

From: Brandon
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2022 9:55 PM
To: Walter Block <[email protected]>
Subject:

Dear Professor Block,

This is less of a professional email concerning Austrian Economics or Libertarianism and more concerning personal matters that I have no one else to go to for. I’m absolutely terrified that the state is gonna reimpose COVID-19 restrictions. This was something I never thought I’d have to worry about again, but recently, there has been a surge in cases caused by the BA.5 COVID strain, which has a very high transmissibility and reinfection rate, though doesn’t pose the threat of serious illness. Nevertheless, I’ve heard that the CDC is already advising several counties in Tennessee to mask up and San Diego is already planning on imposing mask mandates. I feel as if the past few months of relative freedom are coming to a close and the state is ready to renew its absolute control over the population. For the past four days, I’ve found myself in a very dark place, absolutely horrified of the prospect of going back to masking and social distancing. I can still remember suffering daily from March of 2020 to November of 2021, sometimes sitting in the corner of my room and either sobbing or silently huddling in agony. I don’t wanna go back. I don’t wanna suffer again. I just don’t know what to do. On the bright side, I live in Florida, but I feel that even my state will somehow end up imposing restrictions. I’m sorry if this is personal, but I have absolutely no one to go to and I’m wondering whether my fears are warranted.

Thank you.

Yours truly,

Brandon

(more…)

From: Brandon

Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2022 3:33 PM

To: Walter Block <[email protected]>

Subject: Another personal matter

Dear Professor Block,

I have another personal matter. This time, it relates to a moral dilemma as a libertarian. My mother and grandma are pressuring me to take a paid job as a poll worker for my local county. This concerns me, as I feel it is clearly unethical to accept money that my local government has confiscated through property taxation. However, I don’t want to disappoint either my mother or my grandmother, as I love them deeply. This has placed me in quite a dilemma. My mom insists that this will make me look good in my resume and give me a start in politics. What do you think?

Yours truly,

Brandon

(more…)

From: David

Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2022 12:23 PM

To: Walter Block <[email protected]>

Subject: Question about educational regulations

Dear Walter:

I hope you´re well. At this moment I´m developing a research on costs for private schools.

In my country, although private education is allowed, it is highly regulated. In fact, schools are classified into three freedom regimes: “regulated freedom”, “monitored freedom” and “controlled regime”. A real madness…

Based on this classification, the national Department of Education authorizes maximum percentages for the increase in tuition. For example, the regulated freedom regime, which is the most “beneficial”, allows schools to increase their prices by up to 5%.

My idea is to propose dismantling these maximum percentages, as well as those three “freedom regimes”, but of course I must make a solid theoretical defense, for which I am consulting the opinion of various experts in the economics of education, like you, with respect to this issue.

How should it be justified that private schools make their charges without taking into account maximum authorized limits?

Thanks a lot for your comments.

Best regards,

David

Dear David:

I think the best way to pursue this is to go basic: attack public education at its very roots. Without public education, there is only private education. Then, with its virtues more clear, the case for regulating it will be lessened. I think the best way to do that is to attack this book:

(more…)