In a new interview at RT, Ron Paul, who seeks to advance a noninterventionist foreign policy through his Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, discussed the conflicting actions President Donald Trump is taking regarding Iran. On one side, Trump is engaging in conflict escalation and threats. On the other side, Trump is indicating support for conciliation, including by suggesting that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — Ron Paul’s son and an advocate for improving United States relations with Iran — could help reduce tension with Iran by talking with the nation’s foreign minister.
Continue readingBefore a packed house at the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s Mises University on Thursday, Mises Institute founder Lew Rockwell addressed an array of topics. On stage, Mark Thornton presented Rockwell with questions provided by attendees. Among the matters discussed during the Q and A, Rockwell explains why he believes there is reason for optimism in both the long term and the short term, discusses his time with the late influential libertarian writer Murray Rothbard who Rockwell says he still misses every day, and recounts some of the story of the early years of the Mises Institute.
Continue readingBack in a 2007 Republican presidential primary debate, then-presidential candidate Ron Paul sought to educate fellow presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and the American people about the concept of blowback. Paul did so after Giuliani claimed during the debate to be shocked to hear Paul’s “absurd” argument that people would attack Americans, such as in the attacks of September 11, 2001, in reaction to the US government’s interventions abroad. As Paul noted in reply, blowback is understood and taught by the Central Intelligence Agency and has occurred through American history, including with the 1979 taking hostage of Americans in Iran.
In a speech Wednesday in Greenville, North Carolina, President Donald Trump showed that, like Giuliani, he could use some education in regard to blowback. Among a series of criticisms of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that Trump stated in the speech was that “Representative Omar blamed the United States for the terrorist attacks on our country, saying that terrorism is a reaction to our involvement in other people’s affairs.”
Continue readingUnited States Department of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in a Monday press conference, attacked cryptocurrencies, including Facebook’s planned Libra. Mnuchin charged that Libra and other cryptocurrencies “could be misused by money launderers and terrorist financiers” and are a “national security issue.” Further stated Mnuchin: “Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have been exploited to support billions of dollars of illicit activity like cybercrime, tax evasion, extortion, ransomware, illicit drugs and human trafficking.”
Mnuchin, however, likely has no real reason for such concerns about Libra. It looks like backers of Libra are prepared to help the US government crack down on cryptocurrencies and financial privacy.
Starting off a new interview with Ron Paul at the Wall Street for Main Street show, host Jason Burack asked Paul, who served in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican from Texas and ran three times for US president promoting a noninterventionist foreign policy, about the extent of influence in favor of militarism in Washington, DC.
Continue readingA United States House of Representatives subcommittee held a hearing on Wednesday at which countrywide marijuana legalization was considered. The hearing of the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee appears designed to start off deliberative action in the House out of which the advancement of legalization legislation to the House floor will arise. However, the focus by Democratic majority House members on racial issues in the hearing titled “Marijuana Laws in America: Racial Justice and the Need for Reform” suggests the move toward legalization is off to a rocky start.
Continue readingOn Sunday, author Marianne Williamson did something very unusual for a political candidate. She sent out an email to raise funds for one of her Democratic presidential primary opponents — former United States Senator Mike Gravel. The stated purpose of her email was to help increase the number of contributors to Gravel’s campaign by 10,000 so he can meet the contributors threshold for participation in future Democratic primary presidential debates.
Continue readingIn a Friday editorial at the American Conservative, James Bovard examines a multitude of reasons why Americans rationally fear having an interaction with a cop. At the root, explains, Bovard, there are too many laws providing reasons for police to exercise force and too few restraints on when and how that force may be exercised.
Bovard writes his editorial as a response to South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s comment in a June Democratic presidential primary debate that Buttigieg is “determined to bring about a day when a white person driving a vehicle and a black person driving a vehicle, when they see a police officer approaching, feels the exact same thing — a feeling not of fear but of safety.”
Continue readingPhillip M. Baily reported Wednesday at the Louisville Courier Journal on a apparent effort by national Republican Party figures to defeat United States House of Representatives Member Thomas Massie (R-KY) in the 2020 Republican primary.
Why the effort to defeat Massie? Maybe it is because Massie has been a strong advocate for nonintervention overseas and respect for liberty in America since he won election to the House in 2012.
Continue readingThe Declaration of Independence, celebrated each July Fourth, does not speak of creating a powerful new government. Instead, it challenges the excessive power exercised in various ways by the British government in the American colonies. Over the many decades since the document’s publication, the increased rejection of the recognition that the colonies and then the American states are free and independent is tied to the growing of the United States government’s power and the decreasing respect for liberty in America.
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