Category Archives: Featured

Trump and MAGA predictably dump their few libertarian positions

Well, that didn’t take long.

The Trump administration, which won the 2024 election promising libertarians smaller government and an end to endless wars, has summarily dumped its libertarian promises. Elon Musk has split from the administration after spending several months identifying myriad opportunities to cut federal spending under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The “Big, Beautiful Bill” has replaced those cuts with spending increases that will outpace those under the previous Democratic administration, as every Republican administration of my lifetime has done. Funding the Ukraine War is also back online.

History isn’t just rhyming here; it’s repeating. It is the mirror image of the post-Revolutionary War split between Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian libertarians after their common enemy, the British, was defeated. Today, the MAGA Republicans embody classic Hobbesian/Burkean conservatism, while modern libertarians carry the torch of Jeffersonian principles rooted in John Locke’s property based inalienable rights. The defeat of the modern “British”—the progressive left—has exposed this divide, revealing that the MAGA movement’s heart beats closer to Hobbesian control than Lockean liberty.

Many conservatives may object to my identification together of Hobbes and Burke, given the quite different visions they had for the form of government. But they both agreed on the purpose of government: to hold back man’s savage instincts at any cost, including liberty.

In my book, Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From?, I argue that conservatives, at their core, believe that the “inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection,” as Burke said in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Men are entitled only to what liberty the government allows after fulfilling this primary purpose. Burke agreed with Hobbes on this essential point, quoting Hobbes directly in explaining the problem with natural rights: that they give men “a right to everything.”

Burke’s only departure from Hobbes was the means for this thwarting. Hobbes argued that only a unitary, all powerful central government could achieve it. Burke argued that what he called “prescription” – the power of long-established traditions to restrain the savage impulses – could also play a part.

MAGA Republicans are a striking combination of both visions. Their rhetoric often champions “law and order,” a Hobbesian call to maintain societal stability against perceived threats. They have no problem with a massive military establishment, although they reject wars of choice for the purposes of benefiting the peoples of foreign nations rather than purely for domestic security.

The culture wars, on the other hand, are rooted in Burkean prescription. The overturning of long-established norms and traditions – standard ops for the revolutionary left – are a direct threat to civilization that must be reversed. Here there is some overlap with libertarianism. If those traditions are the non-involvement of government in certain areas of human activity, libertarians are all for it. But even if the particular tradition is inconsistent with libertarian principles, those traditions must be maintained, similar to the conservative insistence on maintaining primogeniture in Jefferson’s day.

The natural economic system of conservativism is mercantilism. Since the natural state of man is a state of war, economic activity must have winners and losers. Recall Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. His constant complaint was “we don’t win anymore” when speaking of international trade. He promised instead that Americans would “get tired of winning.” Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists saw the economy precisely the same way and made the same promises.

Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Democracy IS the problem

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A Wisconsin judge has been arrested for allegedly helping an illegal alien evade immigration authorities. The case has added gasoline to the fire blazing in the wake of several recent court rulings against the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport illegal aliens more expeditiously than customary due process procedures would allow.

The administration argues the judiciary is deliberately obstructing its attempt to execute the clear will of the people, expressed in the last election, to reverse the trend of mass illegal immigration into the United States. Its opponents argue the administration is violating established law and basic constitutional protections of individual rights, especially the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Both sides accuse the other of being “a threat to our democracy.” This has been a mantra repeated about political opponents for many years now, by everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Tucker Carlson. Carlson railed against suppression of free speech as incompatible with “a democracy.” Democrats wailed that we must “save our democracy” from their Hitler-cartoon version of President Trump, even after he’d left office.

But to paraphrase a popular 20^th century president, democracy is not the solution to our problems. Democracy is the problem.

If Americans should have learned one thing, it is to be suspicious of anything the media repeat over and over, through every medium. And what they’ve heard night and day for the past decade, from conservative and liberal media alike, is some form of the message “democracy is in danger.” They’ve heard it so much that they’ve forgotten what it is they should be desperate to protect. And it isn’t democracy.

Before the progressive era, the American political system was generally referred to as “republican” rather than “democratic.” This may seem purely semantic and to some extent it would be if the Constitution merely described a simple republic. In that case, representatives would be elected by popular vote and would generally be expected to do what those who elected them want them to do.

But the Constitution isn’t even that democratic. Once elected, the representatives are not permitted to do anything the people who elected them want. They are limited to a short list of powers they are authorized to exercise, regardless of the supposed “will of the people.”

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Like Covid lockdowns, a tariff recession would punish and reward the wrong companies

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Equity markets continued to sell of Monday morning as Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro told CNBC that even a 0% tariff offer from Vietnam would not be enough for the Trump administration to change its tariff policy toward that country.

“Let’s take Vietnam. When they come to us and say ‘we’ll go to zero tariffs,’ that means nothing to us because it’s the nontariff cheating that matters,” said Navarro.

Non-tariff cheating refers to subsidizing domestic manufacturers, currency manipulation, and other measures designed to give a country’s domestic producers an advantage over potential exporters to that country.

Navarro’s comments seem to indicate the administration is committed to maintaining tariffs not only until trading partners lower or eliminate their own, but rather until no trade deficit at all exists between the U.S. and that country. This means that even countries with a natural comparative advantage in some export – or no need for many potential U.S. imports – may see U.S. importers of their products taxed indefinitely.

Stock market selloffs don’t always mean a recession is imminent, but they usually precede one. And to the extent that the input costs may be artificially higher for not only importers of finished goods but also of components for products manufactured in the U.S., a recession would be natural result.

While recessions are always painful those who go out of business or lose their jobs, they can be healthy for the economy as a whole in terms of liquidating malinvestment. According to the Austrian theory of the business cycle, recessions are the market’s way of redirecting unproductive deployments of capital to product ends. The mistakes are made during the artificial boom caused by monetary inflation by the central bank.

Artificially low interest rates and an overabundance of currency mislead entrepreneurs into expanding production more than real savings will support or investing in ventures that would not be profitable at all under natural market circumstances. The market eventually forces these mistakes to be acknowledged, and entrepreneurs must make the necessary adjustments – cutting production or filing for bankruptcy – so that the misallocated capital can flow to profitable projects.

Since all this takes time, recessions are painful. But at the end, capital is redirected towards better use instead of continuing to be wasted on unprofitable endeavors.

The problem with the tariff recession, if there is one, is that it is not being driven by natural market forces. As with Covid lockdowns, it is being imposed by government edict and therefore, also like Covid lockdowns, it has the potential to do the opposite of what a market-driven recession would do.

Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Trump’s Executive Order on the Department of Education is a Good First Step

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President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to “shut down” the federal Department of Education, keeping the same campaign promise President Reagan failed to keep over forty years ago. The order goes as far in eliminating the department as the executive branch has the power to go without a successful bill in Congress, which created the department in 1979.

The purpose of the order is to transfer most of the administrative and management functions over public education back to the states while not decreasing or eliminating federal funding of education, including subsidies and guaranteed student loans. It is a good first step but does not address the massive economic distortions in the education industry created by federal financial interventions.

The order is not specific on which functions will be transferred back to the states or eliminated. It simply states, “The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Since Congress created the department in 1979 and the bill creating it was duly signed by President Carter, it cannot be formally abolished without a new bill passed in Congress and signed by Trump. Therefore, what functions, if any, the law permits eliminating or transferring to the states is unclear. The administration may decide to find out by trial and error.

Ironically, the order exercises a power it is theoretically written to eliminate: the use of federal funding as leverage to dictate to the states what they may or may not do in terms of how they manage public education:

“Consistent with the Department of Education’s authorities, the Secretary of Education shall ensure that the allocation of any Federal Department of Education funds is subject to rigorous compliance with Federal law and Administration policy, including the requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”

This is based upon the conservative viewpoint that all affirmative action, including the newest branded under “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal civil rights legislation. It’s hard to dispute this since the thrust of all those laws is to prohibit the consideration of race, sex, or religion when hiring employees, granting admission to universities, etc. and the stated goal of DEI is to do precisely what the laws prohibit.

The problem with this is that a subsequent Democratic president could write an order requiring any educational institution receiving federal funding to have a DEI program and meet quotas for racial or gender categories. So, the order doesn’t really even attempt to abolish or reduce this aspect of federal interference in state and local public education.

Neither does the order affect the tremendous economic harm done by federal subsidization, especially the guarantee of student loans for college tuition. As I’ve covered in a previous podcast, this intervention has resulted in an absurd artificial rise in college tuition prices. Most of the money has not gone into hiring more teachers but rather to an explosion in the number of administrators in higher education. And, as Trump and other conservatives point out, this has not led to better educated students. Quite the contrary.

Even if the administration were successful in getting a bill through Congress to completely abolish the Department of Education and truly return public education to the states, it would not be a panacea for the ills of government schooling. While an electoral map may indicate more red states than blue states and one may be tempted to think that would translate into a more conservative perspective prevailing in public education in those states, it likely would not.

Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

What are the goals of Trump’s tariffs?

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President Trump announced Friday another pause on some tariffs on products imported from Canada and Mexico after a rocky week for equities markets trying to price in their effects. At the same, he says that tariffs could go higher than 25% in the future.

Trump’s stated reason for imposing the tariffs on the two USMCA partners is their failure to control illegal immigration and drug trafficking across their borders into the United States. Apparently, the president believes tariffs are the cure for just about anything, including illegal immigration.

But in a Q&A aboard Air Force One, Trump returned to the more traditional mercantilist arguments in favor of tariffs that he campaigned on. Asked if he is worried about a recession, Trump replied no, adding,

“All I know is this. We’re going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs and we’re going to become so rich, you’re not going to know where to spend all that money, I’m telling you, you just watch. We’re going to have jobs, we’re going to have open factories, and it’s going to be great, and the plane is landing, and thank you for a lot of good questions. Thank you very much.”

There is a lot to unpack in that relatively short answer.

First, the president seems to believe taxing and spending are the keys to a strong economy. He tells the reporter “you’re not going to know where to spend all that money.” But it won’t be the reporter or anyone else in the private sector spending the money. It will be the government.

He also says the tariffs will collect “hundreds of billions of dollars.” As the president has also suggested tariffs could replace the income tax, it is worth noting that would require thousands of billions of dollars, not hundreds. Three thousand billion, to be exact, when counting the $500 billion in corporate taxes collected last year in addition to $2.5 trillion in personal income taxes.

But the last part of his answer carries the main foundation of Trump’s economic vision.

Candidate Trump promised tariffs would protect domestic manufacturers and their employees from cheaper foreign competition. Indeed, imposing tariffs similar to those imposed upon U.S. imports to its trading partners would cause manufacturing productions and jobs lost to China and other, lower labor cost countries would return to the United States. All this begs the question: What is the goal of the tariffs? Are they meant to collect revenue, perhaps enough to replace the income tax, or to protect domestic production? “Both!” Trump and his supporters would probably answer. It’s win-win. Americans will be so tired of winning some might be hospitalized for exhaustion. But tariffs can’t do both. It’s physically impossible.

Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Trump’s treatment of Zelensky mirrors the Genet affair

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President Trump confirmed a major foreign policy shift in dramatic fashion on Friday when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to leave the White House after a heated public argument that included both presidents and U.S. Vice President Vance. Zelensky was in Washington to sign a mineral deal with the U.S that was aborted, at least for the moment, after both Trump and Vance took exception to Zelensky’s criticism of the Trump administration’s position regarding negotiations with Russia.

The incident was cheered by Trump’s supporters and condemned by all the usual suspects among his detractors, expressing outrage and embarrassment that a foreign head of state would be treated this way. But the real question it raises is whether it will mark the beginning of Washington’s return to the foreign policy bequeathed by the man whose name it bears.

No American alive today has known firsthand any other foreign policy than the one the U.S. government maintained throughout the 20^th century, which is active involvement, both military and by other means, in the affairs of foreign nations, especially in Europe. Washington’s worldwide standing army of over 200,000 troops deployed overseas has become a norm taken for granted, as has the so-called “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and the “alliance” with Israel (the U.S. has no formal treaty with that country).

But it wasn’t always this way. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that their country became rich and powerful enough to be capable of affecting global geopolitics with precisely the opposite foreign policy. More surprising still might be that 19^th century U.S. foreign policy was launched with an incident eerily similar to Friday’s.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Trump’s cuts could cause (necessary) economic pain

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On Sunday, President Trump posted the following to his Truth Social account:

ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE. REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE, BUT ULTIMATELY, TO MAKE GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. MAGA!

For any supporters concerned Trump’s resolve to cut federal spending might moderate that would seem to allay those concerns for the moment. And despite all the wailing coming from beneficiaries of federal largesse, the cuts made so far don’t even amount to a haircut for the federal leviathan.

To put them in perspective, the cuts proposed so far by the administration, based upon recommendations by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are all within a the category of the federal budget called “Discretionary Spending.” Discretionary spending for fiscal year 2025 is projected to be $1.848 trillion. Overall spending is projected to be $7.028 trillion.

So, DOGE is only looking to make cuts to about one quarter of total spending. About half of that one quarter is Defense spending at $859 billion. Trump has said he wants to cut military spending, but that appears to be contingent upon China and Russia agreeing to cut theirs in a future, theoretical deal.

Meanwhile, the Senate just passed a spending bill that increases defense spending by $150 billion.

That leaves about one eighth of the budget affected by DOGE cuts. And DOGE certainly isn’t even trying to cut all of that one eighth.

Still, what cuts are made have the potential to punch far above their weight. Closing down USAID, for example, even if a lot of its funds are eventually spent, constitutes a major policy change given the revelations about what the agency was doing with those funds. Opponents of everything from covert regime change operations to censoring domestic political speech may be quite pleased with the difference firing just a handful of federal employees might make.

There is also the potential for outsized economic pain from cutting a relatively small percentage of the federal budget. Given the Federal Reserve’s $5 trillion tsunami of new money created since 2020, the U.S. economy is in an “everything bubble” and even marginal cuts to federal spending might be the pin that pops it.

Bubbles represent capital deployed for nonproductive ends and need to be popped. But no one is happy when it happens. Typically, bubbles blow up under one president and pop under the next. Guess who gets the blame?

Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Trump’s Cultural Counterrevolution

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On Friday, President Trump posted on his social media network Truth Social a promise to rescind former President Biden’s executive order phasing out plastic straw use in the federal government.

“I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!” wrote the president.

Some might interpret Trump’s attention to this matter as frivolous, just another example of an undisciplined president who still hasn’t learned how to pick his battles. Certainly, his detractors in the media will present it this way, whether they believe it themselves or not.

But there is another way to look at Trump’s tirade, which is likely far more calculated than its presentation may appear. It is a clear message to his adversaries that no stone will be left unturned in what can only be described as the beginning of a cultural counterrevolution the Trump administration has begun during the opening weeks of his second term in office.

This counterrevolution has been launched with a “shock and awe” approach. In the space of a few weeks, Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, dismantled USAID, begun the process of abolishing the Department of Education, and ordered schools to cease allowing biological men to compete against women in sports or lose their federal funding. He has even committed to siccing DOGE on the Department of Defense, something Trump 2016-20 would never have considered.

Oh, and the straw nonsense. That’s over, too. No stone unturned.

The cultural counterrevolution’s goal, of course, is to overturn the cultural revolution which began in the 1960s, accelerated during the Obama administration, and reached its climax during the Biden administration. Its philosophical roots in the Frankfurt School, transplanted to the United States during the 1930s, it set out overthrow what was left of classical liberal America after the New Deal and WWII.

Read the rest on Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

RFK, Jr. is Half Right

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. faced a tough first round of questions from U.S. Senators today who voiced concerns over Kennedy’s views on vaccines and abortion. His opponents claim that he would as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) enact policies based on what they consider fringe views Kennedy holds that many vaccines or other pharmaceutical products are not properly tested, are not as safe or effective as advertised, and are only approved by the FDA (part of HHS) because of its corrupt ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile, due to those same corrupt relationships, the FDA often refuses to approve safe, effective, less expensive alternatives.

His supporters claim all of the above would be a feature, not a bug, of his administration of HHS.

Kennedy is certainly half right. The FDA should not be banning safe, effective, inexpensive drugs. But neither should they be banning drugs or vaccines Kennedy or any other bureaucrat thinks is unsafe. People have a right to buy and sell food, drugs, or anything else the government claims to be unsafe just as they have a right to work in an “unsafe” environment.

Individuals with an inalienable right to liberty have a right to make those decisions themselves, either on the advice of a physician, their plumber, or no advice at all. It’s the government’s job to secure that right, not violate it.

Many libertarians, including the leadership of the Libertarian Party, libertarian Republicans like Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, and Paul’s thought leader father Ron Paul, also support Kennedy’s nomination. There is certainly a lot to like about Kennedy’s steadfast opposition to lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates during “the pandemic.” This writer had an opportunity to shake his hand and congratulate him on a stirring speech at the Ron Paul Institute’s annual conference in 2021.

Given the unlikelihood the administrative state will be eliminated anytime soon, libertarian support for Kennedy is certainly pragmatic. It is unlikely anything like what happened 2020-22 would happen again under his leadership – something Americans of every political persuasion have good reason to worry about.

However, much like President Trump on foreign policy, Kennedy could only make marginal improvements to the system. There is no chance of fundamental change because, like Trump, Kennedy believes in the federal leviathan. He just thinks the wrong people have been running it.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

What the Ukraine War and Pearl Harbor have in common

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“Yesterday, Decembuh seventh, nineteen fawty-one, a date which will live in infamy…”

I first heard that speech on television in the 1970s during a special promoting the official myth. You couldn’t pull it up on your phone whenever you wanted as I did just prior to this writing. My father remembered first hearing the news Pearl Harbor had been bombed and either hearing the speech live on radio or shortly after in a movie theater newsreel.

Like most people, no one in my family had any reason to question FDR’s assessment of the attack as “dastardly and unprovoked.”

It was certainly dastardly, but not unprovoked. Nor was its provocation unprecedented. FDR had employed a strategy with a long tradition among American presidential administrations seeking a casus belli while not wanting to appear the aggressor. Roosevelt wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last to execute this strategy.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?