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About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

Is Life Worth Chains and Slavery ?

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“It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

– Patrick Henry, Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia (23 March 1775)

Frank Chodorov, Part II

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Chodorov’s rejection of war was motivated largely by the growth of the state that accompanied it and that savaged individual freedom. Chapter 11 of his autobiography, entitled “Isolationism,” summarized his position:

When the enemy is at the city gates, or the illusion that he is coming… the tendency is to turn over to the captain all the powers he deems necessary to keep the enemy away. Liberty is downgraded in favor of protection. But, when the enemy is driven away, the state finds reason enough to hold onto its acquired powers.… It is inherent in the character of the state.

Chodorov stressed war’s devastation of economic liberty as well:

Taxes imposed ostensibly “for the duration” have become permanent, the bureaucracy built up during the war has not been dismantled, and interventions in the economy necessary for the prosecution of war are now held to be necessary for the welfare of the people. Whichever side [of the war] won, the American people were the losers.

The American people were burdened with permanent bureaucracy, more restrictive laws, higher taxation, militarism, and inflation because interventionism’s main goal was to expand the state’s sphere of control. Why did people accept such violations of freedom during peacetime? In large part because the state instilled constant fear of an “enemy” into them.

The Cold War and McCarthyism

Chodorov saw the Cold War for what it was: a continuation of interventionism in a different guise. The Cold War is generally dated from the 1947 Truman Doctrine through to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine was a foreign policy measure that sought to contain the Soviet Union and communism, which were viewed as quintessential threats to America. Direct military involvement was not its primary strategy. Instead, it provided financial and other assistance to regimes that appeared vulnerable to communism; this led America to support oppressive regimes that were perceived to be anti-communist.

The analysis (Chodorov’s journal) immediately began to attack the Truman Doctrine as “dangerously imperialist” and futile because “communism is already the religion of Europe.” Why? The April 1947 issue explained. American involvement in Europe had nourished communism through war and post-war policies that caused hopelessness and poverty. People were prevented “from producing by destroying the tools of production, by condoning wholesale robbery and the rooting up of populations.” The solution: embrace a laissez-faire attitude toward Europe; that is, leave Europeans alone to reconstruct their markets and their lives.

Chodorov’s main reason for a laissez-faire approach was not benevolence toward Europe, although he certainly felt genuine compassion. His purpose was to spare Americans the domestic impact of interventionism.

There is … an even more vital argument in favor of minding our home affairs. If we go along with this poking into the business of Europe, what will happen to the liberty we have left in America? Already there is a “Red” witchhunt afoot, and experience tells us that … the definition of Red will include every person who raises his voice against the going order. Mass hysteria will conveniently support such a definition.

The “Red Scare” — also known as “McCarthyism,” named after Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin — was a tool of interventionism; it stirred up politically useful fear of “the enemy” and rage toward him. The fear became hysteria in 1949 when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic device, eliminating America’s nuclear monopoly.

McCarthy’s ostensible goal in his Senate investigations in the early 1950s was to expose communist infiltration of the American government and society by which radicals sought to overthrow the system. Suspected communists were generally subpoenaed and asked to turn over the names of other so-called subversives.

A favored tactic of persuasion was to blacklist an uncooperative person, which often led to this person being fired and rendered unemployable. Since most hearings were based on unsubstantiated charges and flaunted due process, the term “McCarthyism” has become a synonym for character assassination and unjust proceedings that damage or destroy its target. The hearings were akin to the show trials for which the Soviet Union was rightfully condemned.

Chodorov viewed the hearings as heresy trials and hypocritical. They were heresy trials because people were being persecuted for their beliefs, not for any harm they had inflicted on the person or property of another. Moreover, the act of punishing beliefs was extraordinarily dangerous on a domestic level. “If men are punished for espousing communism,” he warned, “shall we stop there? Once we deny the right to be wrong we put a vise on the human mind” and turn to “ruthlessness.” On a foreign level, using force against an idea was futile because ideas cannot be killed no matter how many people die or accept bribes.

The trials were hypocritical because the “judge” believed in an all-powerful state; they simply wanted the power to be in the right hands — theirs. The men who sat in judgment never asked those in the hot seat if they advocated state power, Chodorov observed. This was because they too “worship power.” He interpreted the question, “Are you or were you a member of the Communist Party?” to mean “Have you aligned yourself with the Moscow branch of the church?” To the extent federal agencies had a communist problem, Chodorov offered an easy solution. “The only thing to do, if you want to rid the bureaucracy of Communists, is to abolish the bureaucracy.”

After a few years, McCarthyism abruptly halted. A turning point came in 1954 with a nationally televised 36-day hearing on accusations against U.S. Army officers and civilian officials. The American public watched McCarthy’s savage tactics with disgust. When Joseph Nye Welch, special counsel for the army, proclaimed to McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency,
sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy lost public support. Unfortunately, at this point, interventionism and bureaucracy were so embedded into the American fabric that McCarthy’s fall from grace did not diminish them.

The Old Right was fading. Under the leadership of William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of the National Review, the New Right was ascending; it embraced a strong foreign policy of intervention. In The Freeman of August 1954, Buckley summed up the schism in conservative ranks through one question, “What are we going to do about the Soviet Union?” On one side were “containment conservatives” and isolationists who detested communism but believed the domestic consequences of a militant foreign policy were prohibitive. Chodorov fit into the later category, although he would have demanded to be labeled “an individualist”; in a 1956 letter to National Review, Chodorov wrote, “I will punch anyone who calls me a conservative in the nose.”

On the other side were “interventionist conservatives” who wanted to launch aggressive action to destroy Soviet power. Buckley correctly predicted the fissure would “ultimately … separate us.” The interventionist conservatives soon dominated and became the New Right.

The later Chodorov

Chodorov sharply differed from conservatives on several issues. He did not share their embrace of big business, for example, because it rushed to compromise with the state in return for privileges that harmed Americans. This not only betrayed true capitalism, it also opened the door to Marxism. Communism would arrive in the United States not on Main Street, he believed, but through Wall Street.

Nevertheless, Chodorov was held in high esteem by the conservative movement. One reason: In 1953, Chodorov founded the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), with Buckley serving as president. ISI was the first national organization designed for conservative students and campus outreach. ISI listed its core beliefs as limited
government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and Judeo-Christian values. It became very influential and had 50,000 members by the end of the twentieth century. Now it is known as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Another reason Chodorov garnered the respect of conservatives was because he wrote and edited prolifically, often debating prominent members of the New Right. In 1951, Chodorov became the associate editor of the then-isolationist periodical Human Events with which analysis merged. He held this post until June 1954, after which he resumed the editorship of The Freeman for a brief time. Books became his primary focus, however. They included One is a Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist (1952), The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), The Rise and Fall of Society: An Essay on the Economic Forces that Underlie Social Institutions (1959), and Out of Step (1962).

Chodorov died on December 28, 1966, after having a major stroke in 1961 while teaching at Robert LeFevre’s Freedom School. He had lived through America’s watershed period on foreign policy: World War I and II, the Truman Doctrine, and the Red Scare. After this, America abandoned the isolationism that had such deep roots in its history and soul. As Chodorov foresaw, the state swelled in size, and Big Business became its partner in interventionism through the military-industrial complex.

Chodorov’s legacy is best remembered for its many positive effects. Just as he looked to Albert Jay Nock as a role model and for inspiration, generations of libertarians have held Chodorov up as a paragon of intellectual integrity and indefatigable commitment to freedom. In an excerpt from One is a Crowd — entitled Time for Another Revolution — he wrote:

Were the disposition of the current crop of Americans comparable to that of their forbears, a new revolution, to regain the profit of the first one, would be in order. There is far more justification for it now than there was in 1776. But, people do not do what reason dictates; they do what their disposition impels them to do. And the American disposition of the 1950s is flaccidly placid, obsequious and completely without a sense of freedom; it has been molded into that condition by the proceeds of the Sixteenth Amendment [which imposed a Federal income tax]. We are Americans geographically, not in the tradition. In the circumstances, a return to the Constitutional immunities must wait for a miracle.

In a real sense, Chodorov created the miraculous revolution for which he longed. He was the man behind the man who sculpted modern libertarianism in the 1960s. And, true to Chodorov’s gentle nature, his revolution is both peaceful and persistent in its demand for individual liberty.

This article was originally published in the July 2021 edition of Future of Freedom.

Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster Proves: There Are No Accidents

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Biden badly bungled Afghanistan. He took the military out of the country without even first securing our weapons and technology. The Taliban, one of the primary groups responsible for 9/11, is back in power, free to strike again. It’s incomprehensible that the nation who won a Revolution, prevailed in the Civil War, World War I, World War II and over ISIS could reach this point. But here we are.

People are quick to label Biden incompetent. And demented. It’s true; he is both of these things. But Biden didn’t achieve high office through his own skill. He was put there by people and entities — tech giants, fascist billionaires like Soros and Steve Jobs’ widow, the Chinese Communists, and others — with both the will and the skill to do so.

Biden’s incompetence is no accident. His regime, like his party, is out to destroy the United States as we’ve known it. Whatever remnants or fragments of individual rights, private property, and fearless defense of liberty still exist must be eradicated. Biden’s party, Biden’s Congress, Biden’s Supreme Court (including paid off, blackmailed or otherwise terrified conservatives) and, most of all, Biden’s media are all on the same page: They want the United States to lose because they want freedom to end. They want capitalism to lose. But they only detest capitalism because it means economic freedom. They have no problem with “crony capitalism”, which is actually economic fascism, i.e., a way to control others through money; it’s FREEDOM they are after.

They will not stop until there is no freedom left. They’re doing everything conceivably possible at home: outlawing fossil fuels; devastating the currency through inflationary spending; massively raising taxes; imposing crippling regulation; shuttering small business with mask mandates and by making people “show their papers” with vaccine passports; and driving up the cost of fuel to paralyzing levels. None of these policies are accidents; they are all deliberate. These are the actions of a regime and a movement HELLBENT on the utter obliteration of freedom.

So don’t call Biden’s disgraceful exit from Afghanistan an example of “incompetence”. In today’s world, there are no accidents. There are no conspiracy theories, either. It’s not a conspiracy to point out that every single action of this regime is the exact kind of action you would expect if a Nazi or Communist party had taken over the government, and was (1) setting the government at war with the people and (2) destroying all cultural and political remains of the previous government. The facts overwhelmingly, and with 100 percent predictability, support this assertion.

So why is the collapse of American military force, not just in Afghanistan, but everywhere, even a tiny bit of a surprise.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Evidence is in: The COVID Vaccine is a Failure

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In my efforts to provide good information in place of Big Pharma-serving propaganda about Covid and the vaccine, I have reported to you from the official databases the large number of deaths and health issues associated with the vaccine. For some age groups the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus.

I have also reported to you from official reports that the largest percentage of new cases are associated with those who are fully vaccinated. The question is: are these actually new cases or are they vaccine-associated illnesses?

Following the conclusions of a Nobel prize-winner in medicine and other top level experts, I have attributed what the medical establishment calls new cases, breakthroughs, delta variant, to adverse responses to the vaccine itself, thus questioning the existence of the delta variant. But after listening to Dr. Robert Malone, it appears that there are variants also, and will be more variants. Thus the new breakout of what are reported as Covid cases consists of both adverse reactions to the vaccine and illnesses from the new variants.

Dr. Malone is the inventor of the mRNA technology that was used to develop the mRNA vaccine. He is a member of the establishment. He is not a kook, conspiracy theorist, or anti-vaxxer. He is so solid a member of the establishment that the Department of Defense has relied on him for years. Where Dr. Malone differs from the establishment is in his unwillingness to keep quiet when he sees that the ruling Covid narrative does not fit the facts.

Dr. Malone explains (at the 50 minute mark) that what the vaccine is doing, in addition to killing and injuring people’s health, which he does not emphasize, is evolving the virus, in a manner of speaking, training it to escape vaccines. In other words, the vaccine itself amplifies variants that cannot be prevented by vaccines.

You can listen to his explanations in the first 57 minutes of this video address to a professional group of educated people in Silicon Valley. Even if you are not well educated, Malone speaks with a clarity that will allow you to understand the gist of the explanation. https://rumble.com/vl0zpf-dr.-robert-malone-the-liberty-forum-8-10-2021.html

The first 25 minutes are taken up with Malone’s explanation of who he is, his background and experience. He explains the origin and reason for the official public health policy that experts, no matter how distinguished, are censored when they depart from the official (and ever-changing) CDC, NIH, WHO, FDA narrative. In other words, the official public health bureaucracies have a monopoly on the explanation. He explains that the mainstream media is interlocked with the public health bureaucracies and acts as censoring agent. He speaks with humor. He describes being “fact checked” and deplatformed by a high school dropout employed to shutdown “misinformation,” which is everything that diverges from the official narrative of the day. We have reached the point in our absurdity where distinguished scientists are censored by total dumbshits.

Beginning at the 35 minute mark, Malone gets into the heart of the dilemma we face. He makes it crystal clear that the authorities were wrong and that there is no hope that vaccines are the answer. He makes it clear that the delta variant is going to run through the population and no amount of vaccination, masks, and lockdowns can do anything about it. The focus must be switched to treatment. There are known effective treatments, and more are under development and testing. Malone himself was cured by Ivermectin.

Fortunately, he reports, the delta variant is less serious than Covid-19, but future variants might not be if we continue to use a vaccine that trains new variants to escape immune systems.

For the first time in history, the world’s population has been used for mass clinical testing of an experimental vaccine. The evidence is piling up. Official reporting databases show extraordinary numbers of deaths and injuries associated with the Covid vaccine. The vast majority of new cases are associated with the fully vaccinated. The fully vaccinated spread the virus as easily as unvaccinated Covid patients according to the CDC and Dr. Fauci himself. The vaccine is associated with spontaneous abortions. These are all facts now quietly acknowledged by the bungling public health bureaucracies, but still mainly kept from the people.

The public health bureaucracies do not know how to respond to the vaccine failure as they bet the entire ball game on the mRNA vaccine. All the hopes and claims associated with the vaccine were mistaken. It is a long limb to climb back, especially when they have no other policy to suggest.

Not knowing what to do, the CDC recommends more jabs with the toxic vaccine. https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/cdc-panel-recommends-third-covid-19-vaccine-dose-for-immunocompromised_3948012.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-08-13-3&mktids=092db3c2207e302e76724bb7ec9567e0&est=%2F8lqto%2B7%2BWPg%2BZW0EFu7j%2BNb4wY4dqytO%2FhsQbKFOqNMqq9OCLh7%2Fg%3D%3D

All the “fact check” mechanisms put in place to silence those who understand what is happening are still in place and still censoring the experts who have real solutions.

Clearly, the suppression of experts must now stop. The health dilemma that the ignorance and arrogance of public health officials, dumbshit politicians, and dumbshit media have trapped us in can only be resolved by open debate among the world’s experts. No more controlled explanations, or we may all die if not from the vaccine then from a variant created by the vaccine.

Ivermectin Has Stopped Covid in India and the Media Covers Up the Good News

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/indias-ivermectin-blackout

Covid Financed by NIH Has Brought Totalitarianism to the World

Pressure on Unvaccinated Intensifies

https://www.globalresearch.ca/pressure-unvaccinated-intensifies/5752891

Those Who Protest against the “Official” Covid-19 Narrative are Categorized as “Psychopaths”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/collective-narcissism-and-the-dark-triad-those-who-protest-against-the-official-covid-19-narrative-are-categorized-as-psychopaths-is-it-a-witch-hunt/5722151

CDC Is Murder Incorporated

CDC’s Own Statistics Show 1,270 Fetal Deaths Following COVID Shots but CDC Continues to Recommend Pregnant Women Get COVID Injections

https://www.globalresearch.ca/cdc-own-stats-show-1270-premature-fetal-deaths-following-covid-shots-recommend-pregnant-women-get-covid-injections/5752897

If you take the vaccine, this could be your fate

https://www.bitchute.com/video/8I4NlpjAsaL3/

Paul Craig Roberts

Who Lost America’s Longest War ?

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In April, President Joe Biden told the nation he would have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on the continental United States.

Given the turn of events of the past week, that 20th anniversary may be celebrated by a triumphant Taliban, now on the cusp of victory over the Americans and their Afghan allies, with gruesome public executions of their surrendered and captured enemies.

Sept. 11, 2021, could see U.S. Marines and diplomats fleeing Kabul to escape the retribution of the Taliban whom we ousted in 2001.

Consider. From Friday, a week ago, to today, the Taliban have overrun 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals.

Mazar-e-Sharif in the north is now surrounded. Kandahar and Herat, second and third largest cities, are under siege. The Kandahar-Kabul road has been cut. The defense minister escaped assassination in the capital. The government’s media director did not. The Taliban now control half of the 400 regions of Afghanistan and two-thirds of its territory.

Some Afghan soldiers have fought bravely. Others have retreated into their bases, surrendered, or fled into neighboring countries such as Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. An entire Afghan army corps with its U.S. weapons, equipment and vehicles was surrendered in Kunduz city.

U.S. military say the fall of Kabul could come within 90 days, with some saying privately the regime could fall to the Taliban within a month.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has summarized the situation:

“The complete, utter failure of the Afghan national army, absent our hand-holding, to defend their country is a blistering indictment of a failed 20-year strategy predicated on the belief that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars could create an effective democratic central government in a nation that has never had one.”

The reality of that grim assessment raises many questions.

Who is responsible for the colossal U.S. failure in Afghanistan? Who is responsible for America’s impending defeat in her longest war?

Over the last 20 years, the U.S. lost 2,500 troops with 20,000 wounded and invested $1 trillion to create an Afghan army, only to see that army crumble and disintegrate as soon as we departed.

Wednesday, Biden conceded that truth:

“Look, we spent over $1 trillion over 20 years; we trained and equipped … over 300,000 Afghan forces. Afghan leaders have to come together. They’ve got to fight for themselves.”

We are facing in Afghanistan a wipeout of the investment of a generation to convert Afghanistan into a democracy with the ability to hold the allegiance of its people and to defend itself.

Why did we fail?

Did the U.S. generals, statesmen, politicians and journalists who went to Afghanistan during these last two decades, and came back to testify to our steady progress, delude themselves? Or did they deceive us?

How many U.S. generals knew what was going on but declined to risk their careers by telling Congress or the country that the Afghan army and regime we had stood up would likely collapse like a house of cards once the Americans departed and they had to face the Taliban alone?

Today, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is in Qatar threatening the Taliban that if they overrun the country and impose a victor’s peace, they risk being denied diplomatic recognition by the U.S. and its Western allies and a forfeiture of future foreign aid.

But to brand the Taliban terrorists and pariahs is not new to them. What they seek is something for which they have proven they are willing to die.

What is critical for them is to restore the Taliban to their previous dominance; to create an Islamic Emirate; to make themselves the moral, social and political arbiters of a more purely Islamic Afghanistan.

And to be rid of the outsiders and their alien values.

They want to be able to stand up and say to the Muslim world: “We have shown you how to do it. We fought America, the world superpower, for 20 years until we forced the Americans, tails between their legs, to get out of our land, and then put their puppets up against a wall.”

While our strategic defeat will leave Americans reluctant to attempt any such future imperial interventions, there needs to be an accounting.

The questions that need answering:

Was not the attempt to transplant Madisonian democracy into the soil of the Middle and Near East a fool’s errand from the beginning?

How many other U.S. allies field paper armies, which will collapse, if they do not have the Americans there to do the heavy lifting?

Is what we have on offer — one man-one vote democracy — truly appealing in a part of the world where democracy seems to have trouble, from the Maghreb to the Middle East to Central Asia, putting down any deep roots?

The Taliban’s God is Allah. The golden calf we had on offer was democracy. In the Hindu Kush, their god has proven stronger.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

Why Inflation Now ?

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Inflation is back. In a big way. And, horrifying as it is to contemplate, it could lead to hyperinflation. Hyperinflation brought down pre-Nazi Germany and Venezuela, among other places. Hyperinflation, which involves the total devaluing of the currency, means the kiss of death for an economy, and a society.

How did we suddenly get so much inflation? To understand it better, I recommend the writings of the best economists. I have read Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt and George Reisman extensively. Also, read the works of Frederic Bastiat.

With inflation, the government “prints” or creates more money than the economy needs. This is what happened after the so-called pandemic of 2020, although it has continued into 2021 and, if Democrat Communists realize their dreams, indefinitely into the future. Through redistribution of wealth, and programs such as open-ended unemployment benefits at higher rates than the market pays for jobs, forgiveness of student loans, and all the rest, the government has poured funny money — thanks to the Federal Reserve’s virtually unlimited power — into the hands of consumers. Any economist will tell you this has the effect of artificially creating demand. “Artificially” means there is, thanks to this money poured into the citizenry for “free”, more demand for goods and services than there otherwise would have been in a pandemic and its aftermath, or any other context where there’s an economic downturn.

I saw a statistic yesterday that inflation in the United States is going up at 5 percent a year already, and climbing, while in other industrialized countries like Japan it’s way down at under 1 percent, or maybe 1 or 2 percent. There’s a reason: The United States, initially under Trump and the Republican Senate in 2020, and massively under Biden and the Democratic Congress in 2021, has spent like there’s no tomorrow. The debt and the deficits are piling up to incomprehensible levels, levels beyond what even ten years ago most would have considered acceptable for fighting a war to save the country from destruction. It’s clear that neither party intends to stop the spending. So we can expect more and more inflation.

Put simply: When the government creates more money than would otherwise have existed in a free market based on, say, a gold standard rather than a politicized Federal Reserve, then there’s more demand for goods and services than would otherwise have been the case. When the government hands out trillions in “free money”, it drives up demand relative to supply, which in turn raises prices. This explains the supply chain, lumber, housing, food and employment shortages, in part. These things are only going to get worse as the government continues to spend, and spend, and spend, and pour trillions of “free” dollars into the market. It’s like creating a fantasy economy; it’s the socioeconomic equivalent of heroin addiction.

Sure, the government could step in and impose price controls, as the government did back in the 1970s. Price controls lead to shortages. Why? Because the high demand remains, and the supply gets bought up by the artificially cheaper prices created by price controls. Without being able to raise prices, there’s no incentive for businesses to hustle and try to keep up with all the demand. That’s when you get, quite literally, a Soviet Russia, a Venezuela or a North Korea, where people eat their pets because the grocery store shelves are chronically empty, or a bottle of milk costs $75,000.

Read economics. Most Americans are clueless on the subject. They listen to people like Paul Krugman at the New York Times WHO IS ABSOLUTELY ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, yet they still trust him because … well, because he works for the New York Times and has an economics degree. How could he be wrong?

It’s all part of the ignorance that our media and government masters exploit so well. Ignorance and evasion are impoverishing us and, on our current road, are going to kill literally millions of us.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

COVID and its Consequences

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The adverse effects, that is, the illnesses and deaths associated with the Covid vaccines, are showing up in large numbers before the Big Pharma medical establishment can vaccinate everyone. Consequently, the medical establishment and the compliant presstitutes are ramping up the fear and pushing ahead faster to achieve their agendas before the dire consequences of the vaccine escape suppression.

Yesterday the Pentagon announced that Covid vaccination is mandatory for all active-duty military. https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/pentagon-to-require-covid-19-vaccine-for-troops_3940392.html

The White House Idiot says he fully agrees: “Being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world.” As the vaccine presents as most toxic to the young, we will have a force of sick and dying soldiers who can operate nowhere.

Biden’s statement and the Pentagon’s policy make no sense whatsoever. Evidence is pouring in from around the world that the so-called “delta variant” is most prevalent among the fully vaccinated. Public health authorities are saying that the fully vaccinated must protect themselves by wearing masks! What then is the point of mandatory vaccination of the armed services and anyone else as the vaccine does not protect but does cause death and serious adverse effects?! How can it be that the American “superpower” has a president and Secretary of Defense too stupid to put two and two together?

Everywhere vaccine-indoctrinated medical personnel and politicians are calling for the return of mask-wearing whether you are vaccinated or not. NBC News like the rest of the presstitutes is ramping up the fear. Susan Hassig at Tulane University’s School of Public Health says: “I think it’s critical to be masking indoors no matter where you live.” The Democrat governor of Louisiana announced an indoor mask mandate through at least Sept. 1 for anyone 5 and older who enter places like schools, businesses and churches, no matter their vaccination status. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/even-vaccinated-people-now-time-masks-testing-public-health-experts-n1275979

Fear! Fear! The hospitals are said to be full of vaccinated delta variants, and we are urged to get vaccinated in order to be safe!

As many experts have pointed out, there is no delta variant. The so-called “breakthrough” cases are illnesses caused by the vaccine itself.

More fear! More fear! “As the super-transmissible Delta variant marches across the US, more mutant versions are developing.” In addition to Delta we now also have AY.1 or “Delta-plus.” health.com sets out the propaganda: https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/delta-plus-variant

Note the point one. Soon AY.2, AY.3, AY.4 will be announced. More vaccines, more booster shots. As vaccine deaths and injuries mount, more invented “variants” will be blamed. With this game plan in operation you can see why the price of vaccine stocks have shot up. The share prices reflect the expected profits from endless vaccination.

As we are learning, there are more agendas associated with Covid than profit. The institutionalization of tyranny is another associated agenda. The CDC has come up with a plan to shield “high-risk” people by moving them into “green zone” camps where “they would have minimal contact with family members.” Who is designated “high-risk”? The front people for the internment camp plan are the elderly with co-morbidities. But the vaccination propaganda defines “high-risk individuals” as the unvaccinated. The camps will be for the unvaccinated. You will be able to stay out of the camps by getting vaccinated. No, this is not a “conspiracy theory.” Here is the CDC document on the CDC’s own website: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/global-covid-19/shielding-approach-humanitarian.html

Why the desperate push for universal vaccination when the evidence is clear, and the CDC even admits, that vaccination does not protect against the delta variant, and more unprotected “variants” are on the way. The desperation to jab everyone with a “vaccine” that does not protect but does kill and bring health injuries implies a darker agenda. The evidence is now clear that the “vaccine” impairs human fertility. See, for example, https://rumble.com/vkopys-a-pathologist-summary-of-what-these-jabs-do-to-the-brain-and-other-organs.html

Covid’s victims are limited to a small number of people with co-morbidities and weak immune systems who are denied treatment by known cures such as HCQ and Ivermectin. These deaths were needed and desired in order to generate fear that would stampede people into accepting an unapproved, untested experimental technology never before used, the consequences of which were unknown. We now know that the consequences include death and permanent health impairment; yet the rush to vaccinate marches forward.

Clearly, the agenda operating is not public health. The Covid virus funded by Fauci in Wuhan has brought tyranny to America, and the “vaccine” is bringing death and impaired health to millions of people.

Liberalism Drops its Mask

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Sanders (I-VT) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) today, one hears the same claims, with the socialist Left arguing that government should run health care to serve those who cannot afford it, or that the Postal Service should provide banking to serve those whom commercial banks do not.

But the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the truth behind this mask: modern liberalism, progressivism, democratic socialism, whatever else one wishes to call it, does not serve the people. Instead, It serves a set of defined special interest groups that often bear little resemblance to “the people” Sen. Sanders, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, and their allies invoke. null

Since March 2020, Americans have seen liberals shutter schools and run the ones they allow to open as prison camps to placate teachers’ unions; they’ve seen their right to travel held hostage to the comfortable idleness of federal civil servants; they’ve seen well-heeled champagne socialists push the election of prosecutors who explicitly fail to do their jobs, unleashing a crime wave unseen since the 1990s.

The level of suffering government school systems have inflicted on children since March 2020 was unwarranted by the danger. Across most of the northeast and Pacific coast, teachers’ union industrial action (or the threat of it) led to school closures that lasted for most of the 2020-2021 period as “Apple ballot”-endorsed school board members did the bidding of the teachers’ unions who funded their campaigns and let “educators” pretend to work from home. The consequences to students were devastating; the year of “remote learning” put students at a massive disadvantage to those whose schools were open.

As the political winds shifted, even Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, conceded that perhaps schools needed to reopen. But the teachers’ unions’ ideal of “open” is not the liberal ideal of a school operated at public expense to teach classrooms of students in reading, writing, and arithmetic that many parents remember from their youths. Instead, classrooms have three-foot isolation, drinks of water taken facing a wall in the schoolroom corner, mandatory muzzles, and “critical race theory” indoctrination. Meanwhile, in the largely conservative states that have resisted teachers’ unions’ demands, schoolrooms have been open five days a week since fall.

Unionized teachers aren’t the only “public servants” denying rights to citizens by their pandemic-excused idleness. Applying for or renewing a U.S. passport has become a Kafkaesque nightmare because passport agencies and processing centers have not reopened at full capacity despite employees being prioritized for vaccination. Citibank, the contractor that operates document lockboxes that prepare applications for processing, is also operating below capacity, ostensibly due to COVID reasons. 

Does “for the people” liberalism care that its inability to operate a bureaucracy denies Americans’ right to travel? Nah, not really. A Biden administration State Department official told the press: “U.S. citizens who wish to travel overseas this summer and do not currently have a passport may need to make alternate travel plans.” The liberal State Department, like the liberalism in school systems, operates not for the benefit of the people, but for its own elite class.

But at least the passport fiasco is one of mere idleness, not deliberate intention. In big-city prosecutors’ offices from San Francisco to Philadelphia, abdicating the responsibilities of government is not idleness, but a party platform. A class of “progressive prosecutors” were backed for election by the scions of Big Philanthropy, including George Soros and his family, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskowitz, and Cari Tuna. Their platforms? Don’t prosecute and don’t jail. 

The results are entirely predictable. In San Francisco, progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin presides over a surge in violent crimes against Asian Americans and shoplifters stealing with impunity. Philadelphia’s progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner presides over a 33 percent year-on-year surge in homicide that drew attention from the city’s liberal mayor. Other cities have similar Big Philanthropy-chosen prosecutors and similar spikes in crime.

The path of decadent-phase Great Society liberalism is clear. Unless “the people” have a checkbook or thousands of votes to give to the left-wing political leadership, the people don’t matter. The mask has fallen.

Frank Chodorov’s Peaceful, Persistent Revolution, Part 1

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by Wendy McElroy

Part 1 | Part 2Chodorov spoke out loudly against the economic interventionism of the New Deal and the political interventionism of entering the war.
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It is easy to imagine the libertarian icon Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) modeling himself on his mentor, the Old Right icon Frank A. Chodorov (1887–1966), in the same manner as Chodorov undoubtedly looked to his mentor, Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945). As a young grad student Rothbard stumbled across Chodorov’s pamphlet Taxation Is Robbery. His reaction: “I shall never forget the profound thrill — a thrill of intellectual liberation — that ran through me.” As a voice of the Old Right, Chodorov advocated the free market, individual rights, free trade, isolationism, and a perpetual skepticism toward the state. He and Rothbard were a perfect fit.

In a 1967 tribute to the recently deceased Chodorov, Rothbard described their subsequent meeting at a cocktail party where the intelligentsia of the American right wing engaged in “windy rhetoric” about the free market. Meanwhile, “on the back stairs they dicker[ed] with the brokers of Big Government for an increase in their subsidies and privileges.” Chodorov “stood out like a blaze of radiant light.” He was “the only person alive … amidst the whole gaggle of one-dimensional and identical men around him. There he stood, his tie askew, his balding head disheveled, the ashes from his beloved pipe flying all around, his intelligent and merry eyes twinkling as he scored some outrageous, logical, and beautifully penetrating point to some clod who couldn’t tell the difference between the host of cardboard ‘individualists’ and this one genuine article.”

Sans the pipe, that could describe Rothbard and his intellectual blaze of light. Through a fusion of Austrian economics, Old Right foreign policy, the radicalism of 19th-century individualist anarchism, and natural-law theory, Rothbard forged a path to modern libertarianism in the 1960s. In this achievement, few influences were as important as Chodorov.

Who was he? Fishel Chodorowsky was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in the Lower West Side of New York City. As a young man, the anti-statism of anarchism intrigued Chodorov, but he stumbled over the collective mentality of left-anarchism, which was his exposure to the tradition. He gravitated instead toward Georgism — the political philosophy of Henry George — to which Nock also adhered. George is sometimes viewed as a heretic within libertarianism because he advocated a “Single Tax” on land. He believed the mere act of owning or claiming land rendered no productive service and that one man’s claim was as valid as another’s. Otherwise, George was a staunch advocate of traditional capitalism. In adopting the Single Tax position, however, Chodorov argued for enforcement on a municipal level because centralizing it could strengthen the state at the expense of the individual.

In 1937, at the age of 50, Chodorov became the director of the Henry George School of Social Science. In the same year, he and Nock revived Nock’s then-defunct 1920s periodical, The Freeman, under the school’s aegis. Thus began Chodorov’s remarkable career as a publisher of periodicals and an active contributor to them. His many articles in The Freeman eloquently argued against war and the resulting statism that he believed was the greatest threat to freedom and human happiness. Arguably, he became the most effective voice of isolationism.

Chodorov is often remembered for his hardcore advocacy of the free market and his vigorous criticism of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” But he should be remembered most for two positions about which he was passionate: his opposition to America’s entry into World War II and his early rejection of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Chodorov, anti-war crusader

Every day we must repeat to ourselves as a liturgy, the truth that war is caused by the conditions that bring about poverty; that no war is justified; that no war benefits the people; that war is an instrument whereby the haves increase their hold on the have-nots; that war destroys liberty.

— Frank Chodorov, “When War Comes”

Ralph Raico — a member of Rothbard’s inner circle and a historian specializing in the two world wars — called Chodorov “the last of the Old Right greats.” Raico was referring specifically to Chodorov’s foreign-policy stance of “isolationism.”

In chapter 11 of his last book — Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962) — Chodorov explained the term. “Isolationism has been turned (by our politicians, our bureaucracy, and their henchmen, the professorial idealists) into a bad word.” It had been twisted to mean Americans should ignore the broader world. Quite the opposite was true. “Long before interventionism became a fixed policy of the government, American students went to Europe to complete their education and immigrants introduced their exotic foods to the American table. But these were voluntary adoptions….”

The key word for Chodorov was “voluntary.” Embracing different cultures was part of the American character, and isolationism did not mean America should become provincial. It meant America should not impose its policies or self-interest on other nations, especially not through military force. Nor did America accept such impositions from other nations. This was a moral principle for Chodorov, but it was also a realization of human nature. “Isolationism is inherent in the human makeup,” he explained. “It is in the nature of the human being to be interested first in himself and secondly in his neighbors.” If one neighbor should not trespass on the property of another or make threats rather than requests, then neither should nations. That was the core of the political isolationism, which Chodorov distinguished from the economic.

Economic isolationism made Chodorov distance himself slightly from America First — an isolationist organization that sought to avoid American involvement in World War II. Chodorov wrote, “One flaw in the America First program was a tendency toward protectionism; the anti-involvement became identified with ‘Buy American’ slogans and with high tariffs — that is, with economic, rather than political, isolationism.” Free and unfettered trade, not protectionism, was true economic isolationism.

Interventionism is the mirror image; it occurs whenever one nation uses political interference, tax money, or military might to secure a political or financial benefit from a second. Interventionism is interference with the domestic affairs of another nation through force or bribery.

In 1933, the interventionist Roosevelt assumed leadership of a nation with a strong tradition of isolationism. In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington had warned that a nation “prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes … adopts through passion, what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.” Washington believed that official attachments with or animosity toward other nations would lead to foreign-policy blunders and damage freedom. In 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams famously declared, “[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Roosevelt also inherited a competing tradition of interventionism, however. He economically intervened immediately on entering the White House by prohibiting the private ownership of gold. And then there was his New Deal for America. This Deal consisted of a series of economic programs, public works, drastic financial reforms, and labor regulations revolving around the three “Rs”: Relief, Reform, and Recovery. It constituted the greatest rise of statism and violation of economic freedom that peacetime America had ever experienced.

Roosevelt also wanted to politically intervene during World War II. America was no stranger to war. From the American Revolution to World War I, it had fought in no fewer than six wars. But World War I (1914–1918) had left many Americans weary of conflict and disillusioned with European politics. After the war ended, an enthusiastic Woodrow Wilson had tried to “sell” the United States on membership in the League of Nations (1920) — the first worldwide intergovernmental organization. He met such stiff resistance from the American public and isolationists within Congress that the United States did not officially join. Roosevelt’s desire for America to enter World War II faced the same obstacles; he was able to enter it only after a direct military attack on American soil — the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Chodorov spoke out loudly against the economic interventionism of the New Deal and the political interventionism of entering the war. In 1942, he was forced to resign as director of the Henry George School because of his anti-war views. He later admitted to being so distraught that he might have committed suicide if not for the comforting presence of Nock. Instead, Chodorov poured his anti-war passion into a new periodical, analysis (sic), a four-page monthly broadsheet of which Chodorov was the owner, publisher, editor, distributor, and the source of most material. Rothbard considered analysis (1944–1951) to be one of the best “little magazines” ever published in America. Certainly, it was the publication of which Chodorov was most proud, calling analysis “the most gratifying venture of my life.”

This article was originally published in the June 2021 edition of Future of Freedom.