Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

FacebookTwitter “Woke” people claim that they want to wake up racial and sexual minorities to the way they are being discriminated against. Because of past and present exploitation, blacks and other “protected” groups are not getting what rightfully belongs to them. The solution to this is that the better off, especially if they are white, should have their wealth and income seized and given to those they are exploiting.

FacebookTwitter In a free society, people have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies. If you want to take something that “orthodox” medicine says you shouldn’t, this decision should be up to you. If the government can ban “dangerous drugs,” why not dangerous ideas too? As the great Ludwig von Mises points out, “Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government’s benevolent providence to the protection of the individual’s body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs.

The recent assassination attempt against President Trump at his golf course in Florida leads most people to think that an organization is out to get him, and people are right to think so. The fact that it was the second assassination attempt in a very short time certainly lends credence to this. But, we are told by the leftwing mass media, we must not think so. Each assassination attempt was the work of a “lone nut,” and the lone nuts had no connection with each other. To think otherwise would be the product of a “conspiracy theory of history,” and … Continue reading →

These days, supporters of President Trump and others on the right are often smeared as “fascists,” and what is meant by this is that they support the Nazis. For example, the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat says: “To get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. That’s what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the ‘black parasites of the nation’ in a 1920 speech. By the time Hitler got into power in 1933 and translated dehumanizing rhetoric into repressive policies, Germans had heard these messages for over a decade. … Continue reading →

FacebookTwitter Most readers of my weekly column already favor a libertarian society, with either a strictly limited government or no government at all. They realize what a disaster the state has been. What are the philosophical foundations of this outlook? There are many possible answers, but in this column, I’m going to discuss three of the most important of these, the way Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe address this issue. I’m not going to take a stand on which is best but just set forward the different views and leave the choice to you.

FacebookTwitter Many people oppose the free market because it leads to inequality of wealth and income. It is unfair, they say, that some people have vastly more money than others. Some defenders of the free market respond that these inequalities, while undesirable in themselves, make the poor better off than they would be otherwise, and so should be accepted. Another argument made by defenders of the free market is that restricting inequality would interfere liberty, so that, although inequality is bad, we have to put up with it.

In recent years, a disturbing development has taken place in America’s universities. People who apply for faculty positions, and those who are on the faculty and want to be promoted are required to make “diversity statements,” in which they declare their commitment to DEI—diversity, equality, inclusion—and detail their activities on behalf of this goal. Here is an example of this: at UCLA, applicants to the faculty have to sign this: “Diversity statements usually are no more than two pages and speak to your experience, capabilities, and commitment to working with people from different backgrounds and to advancing a more inclusive, … Continue reading →

The election is upon us. We wonder whether we have to have war, tariffs, and deficit spending, regardless of whom we support. What are we to do? Faced with the intractable problems of misgovernment, we need to look deeper. Following the great Murray Rothbard, we should ask, do we need a State at all? Rothbard’s answer was a clear “No.” And not only do we not need a State; the State is a menace. Following Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock, Rothbard identified the State as a predatory organism. It is the “organization of the political means.” The State produces … Continue reading →

FacebookTwitter Like many of you, I was happy that Donald Trump won the election. Kamala Harris is a committed Marxist, supporter of baby killing, and passionate advocate of the woke ideology. In foreign policy, she would have been guided by the neocons who control brain dead “President” Joe Biden.

FacebookTwitter Donald Trump is a strong believer in protective tariffs, and this is very bad news for those of us who support the free market. In Trump’s opinion, tariffs are a great idea. Here is what he said about them in an interview last month: “Trump has proposed a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all imports and 60 percent on goods from China. During Tuesday’s remarks, he singled out imported cars for higher trade duties, saying he would slap a100, 200 or 300 percent tariff on cars made in Mexico. He also floated imposing 50 percent tariffs on goods to force companies to relocate operations to the U.S. to avoid the penalty.