NATO Response to Ukraine Invasion Proves U.S. Military Should be Cut Drastically

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Whatever one thinks about Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there are no denying two things: Russia has invaded a European country and U.S.-led NATO will not respond militarily.

President Biden’s reason for not intervening is technically that Ukraine is not a member of NATO. But the United States and NATO have launched military interventions in plenty of countries that are not members.

The real reason the U.S. won’t engage Russia to defend Ukraine is Russia is a nuclear power and nuclear powers cannot fight a war that isn’t destined to end with the possible extinction of the human race.

Thankfully, both President Biden and President Putin are keenly aware of this. That’s why you also won’t see Putin expand his military operation beyond Ukraine.

This begs the question: why are U.S. taxpayers paying for a worldwide standing army built to fight First World powers that can never be used?

The U.S. has over 50,000 troops deployed in Europe, not counting the over 9,000 in the United Kingdom. These troop levels were maintained or increased after World War II as a deterrent to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. When the Soviet Union dissolved, American taxpayers were promised a “peace dividend.”

The peace dividend would naturally be centered around bringing home those troops deployed to Europe. But over time, the story eventually evolved that Russia under Vladimir Putin – elected by the Russian people as a direct reaction against the disrespect Russia had been shown by the U.S. and NATO – was a threat that necessitated keeping those troops there, now thirty-one years since the USSR dissolved and almost eighty years since the end of WWII.

The events of the past two weeks just proved this was all either a delusion or a lie. Push has come to shove and those troops are not going to be sent into action against Russia. Some have been moved to the borders of NATO countries, but this is merely for appearances. Putin will not breach NATO, not for fear of tens of thousands of U.S. troops deployed in Europe, but because he doesn’t want to risk nuclear Armageddon any more than Joe Biden does.

So, why keep the troops there?

Ditto the 56,000 troops warehoused in Japan. These are ostensibly a deterrent to rising power China, but they are never going to fight the Chinese army for the same reasons U.S. troops in Europe will never fight the Russian army. If they do, it won’t matter much who wins.

Russia’s military budget is somewhere between $61 billion and $150 billion per year, depending upon which source you consult. Somehow, Russia is able to maintain a larger nuclear arsenal than the United States and conduct a full-scale war in Ukraine on anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent what the United States spends on “defense.”

North Korea and Iran, also perennial boogeymen, manage to threaten the whole world on less than $20 billion per year.

The $750 billion per year (not counting military spending hidden in other departments) American taxpayers have been fleeced for produced a military that couldn’t defeat the Taliban.

As I wrote eight years ago, conventional warfare is largely obsolete in the nuclear age. The days of generals like Patton triumphantly marching into enemy capitals and accepting their counterparts’ surrenders are over. No nuclear power is going to let that happen without firing its nukes first.

If war is truly a last resort, only justifiable when one’s country faces an existential threat, then nuclear weapons are always justified before surrender. When they aren’t, the war wasn’t justified in the first place.

American taxpayers are going to be regaled with propaganda about the need to increase military spending in reaction to Putin’s invasion and accede to even more troops deployed overseas. The logical conclusion to draw from all this is precisely the opposite.

U.S. military spending should be cut drastically, and its overseas deployments ended as obsolete relics of a bygone age. America’s nuclear deterrent, air force, and useful portion of its navy could be maintained at a fraction of the gargantuan rip off currently being perpetrated against American taxpayers.

Since this bloated military won’t ever be used against a First World power and has already demonstrated its inability to defeat a Third World one, we have nothing to lose but runaway deficits and a massive debt that will eventually destroy our currency and way of life.

While we’re in cost-cutting mode, it’s time to clean house at the U.S. State Department and within the “intelligence community,” too, rooting out all the career “foreign policy experts” who get us into so much trouble around the world.

Call it “American Taxpayers First.” Someone ought to run for high office on that.

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?

Putin is Not at War with Ukraine

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Yes, Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to invade Ukraine. His troops have captured key cities and are methodically surrounding the rest. But he’s not at war with the Ukrainian people. He’s at war with the D.C. empire and its puppet president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Contrary to the propaganda put out by the usual suspects, it is not going badly for the Russians. They are conducting the operation patiently and methodically, reflecting the disposition of their leader. And they’re killing far less civilians and destroying far less civilian infrastructure than the U.S. does during a typical war crime.

Oh, was that unpatriotic? Sorry, not sorry.

The power of the propaganda machine is impressive. Suddenly, everyone has amnesia. Putin has attacked Ukraine “for no reason.” It is an “unprovoked attack” serving only Putin’s imperial wish to reconstitute the Soviet empire or perhaps preserve his own power within Russia.

How can anyone believe this?

For the record, Putin gave two speeches which spell out his reasons for going to war. They are lengthy and full of historical context. For those interested, links are below.

Vladimir Putin: Full Text of February 21, 2022 Speech

Full Transcript of Putin address February 24, 2022

Putin’s argument generally aligns with the story I’ve been writing about for many years. Back in 1991, when Gorbachev agreed to pull his troops out of East Germany and allow reunification of the nation that had invaded his country four decades earlier, killing tens of millions of Russians, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and a host of other NATO leaders promised Gorbachev that NATO “would not move one inch eastward.”

The U.S. government spent years denying this promise was made until declassified documents proved it clearly was. Now, the official story is that since there wasn’t a formal “treaty,” the promise could be broken. But it doesn’t change the fact that the U.S. government lied about this for decades, to the Russians, who knew they were lying, and to U.S. citizens, who didn’t.

If there wasn’t something wrong with what they were doing, why did they lie?

U.S.-led NATO spent the next 30 years admitting country after country into an alliance whose sole purpose is to make war on Russia. This map shows the progress over time.

During the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. government declared an intention to admit Georgia and Ukraine, instigating color revolutions in both countries for that purpose. The coup in Georgia sparked renewed hostilities between Georgia and the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Putin briefly invaded Georgia in defense of South Ossetia and Russia eventually recognized the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, drawing a rebuke from President Bush and other western leaders but no more.

What else could Bush do? As I wrote in 2014, conventional war between nuclear powers is not a possibility. That makes the gargantuan U.S. military a giant rip off of American taxpayers, since it can never be used to fight a major power, but that’s a subject for another day.

The D.C. empire backed off for a few years, but they basically ran the same drill in Ukraine in 2014. Democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed with John McCain literally on the streets of Kiev encouraging the revolution Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland had been caught planning on a leaked phone call.

That’s when Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine, populated almost exclusively with ethnic Russians, broke away. Note this was a reaction to the U.S. interfering in Ukraine’s elections so overtly that no two-year investigation was necessary. We have firsthand video and audio evidence.

For the next eight years, three successive U.S. presidents have sent arms to Ukraine, ostensibly to put down an internal rebellion and aid Ukraine in its defense against Russian invasion, but in reality to ethnically cleanse Ukraine’s population of its Russian population. The smaller the Russian population within Ukraine, the more unified it is as an anti-Russian state.

As Putin said accurately in his speech, Ukraine has behaved as a de facto member of NATO over the past eight years, with NATO conducting military exercises within Ukraine’s borders.

On Russia’s borders.

Now, we can wax philosophical about what constitutes aggression all we want. Everyone knows if Russia or China tried anything remotely similar in Mexico or Canada, we’d be bombing them before the day was over.

Putin made a last ditch effort appeal for a diplomatic solution via a proposed treaty that amounted to two very reasonable requests: 1) a guarantee Ukraine is never admitted to NATO and 2) stop deploying troops and weapons (including missiles that could carry nukes) in areas of eastern Europe where they could be a threat to Russia’s national security.

President Biden responded with a lukewarm verbal assurance Ukraine wouldn’t be admitted to NATO within the next ten years. Given the history of U.S. promises outlined above, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that wouldn’t be good enough, especially coming from the U.S. Vice President put in charge of Ukraine by the Obama administration when it carried out the 2014 coup.

That was confirmed on February 24, 2022 when Putin invaded Ukraine. He has now gone to war against Washington, D.C. in the country Washington weaponized against him, casting the Ukrainian people as unfortunate pawns.

President Biden has said consistently throughout the current crisis that the United States would not go to war to defend Ukraine. Yet, he has repeatedly ratcheted up the tension and has been dismissive of Putin’s very reasonable proposal to end the conflict diplomatically. One can only assume Biden and NATO just couldn’t conceive that Putin might do what the “exceptional nation” has claimed prerogative to do with far less (or any) justification over the past several decades.

So, we’re now in a situation where Biden and Europe are desperate to keep people from figuring out what Putin’s invasion means: the empire has no clothes. Multiple narratives are being put out in desperation.

One of the more striking is the image of Zelenskyy as the rugged comedian-turned-military hero, bravely standing his post in Kiev. Russian sources say Zelensky left Kiev on February 23, the day before the invasion, and the photos and videos of him in military garb were all taken in advance.

That sounds more likely to be true, but it doesn’t really matter. What is really interesting is the empire’s portrayal of Zelensky as compared to Bashar Al-Assad. It has literally made mirror images of them after running essentially the same operations in their respective countries.

The U.S. ran regime-change operations in both Syria and Ukraine at roughly the same time during the early to mid-2010s. Both countries have economic importance in terms of planned pipelines. Each is home to one of Russia’s only two warm water ports besides Vladivostok, which is on the Sea of Japan.

In Ukraine the regime change was successful; in Syria, it was not. The leaders of both countries spent the next several years fighting civil wars, meaning they necessarily had to make war upon portions of their own populations.

Assad is condemned as a brutal dictator for doing so. Americans are asked to accept that portrayal unconditionally and they mostly do. Anyone who questions it can expect to be assailed by their fellow citizens who are so emotionally attached to this narrative they are unable even to consider evidence to the contrary.

This after no less than General James Mattis admitted there was no evidence Assad perpetrated the alleged chemical attacks that inspired multiple U.S. airstrikes on Syria.

The amnesiac effect of propaganda is at least as impressive as its emotional effect.

Forgotten also is that until February 24, Zelensky was doing precisely the same thing Assad had been vilified for: making war against his own population. In addition, he tried to arrest his political opponent, who is still facing charges, and shut down opposition news media. He has been at least the dictator Assad is accused of being and his abuses are not disputed by anyone.

Yet, upon Putin’s invasion, all of this is forgotten. He is now and presumably forever the gallant hero in military fatigues, on the side of all that is good and just, against a dictator attacking his country “for no reason.”

Americans are asked to believe all this without question by a government that has lied to them over the past several years on a scale that would make Goebbels blush. They are asked to accept as genuine the manufactured, uniform opinions flooding news and social media. They are asked to reject all nuance, all dissent, and to completely forget well-document facts from recent history that flatly contradict the empire’s narrative.

What do you believe?

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?

Blaming elites is childish; It’s time to put aside childish things

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First, let’s debunk a loudly trumpeted fiction: “corporate power.” There is no such thing. Power is the ability to use force and violence with impunity. No corporation has that. Only the government has power and only as much as the citizenry will allow it.

Yes, very wealthy people have more influence over the government than everyone else. You should have known that before you built a government with such enormous power to begin with.

And it was you, who identify yourselves with the deceptively innocuous name, “We the People,” who constructed the monstrosity that now demands you take any injection it decrees and refrain from speaking any word or even thinking any thought that threatens it.

You didn’t build it all in one day. It took decades. But every brick in this edifice of evil was made of the same clay: invading the property of your neighbors to obtain what you believed was additional safety. Before each brick was laid, voices of reason warned you of the danger. You not only refused to listen but derided all who appealed to your common sense.

It’s one thing to disregard the morality of respecting the life, liberty, and possessions of your fellows. It’s another to refuse to recognize the obvious results.

You told healthcare providers they could charge anything they wished, regardless of their customers’ ability to pay, and taxpayers would pay the difference. Then, you were outraged by how quickly healthcare prices rose.

You told colleges and universities they, too, could charge whatever they wished, financed by loans guaranteed by taxpayers. You were again outraged not only at the artificially high prices, but the students inability to pay back the loans. What did you expect?

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in economics to recognize these obvious cause and effect relationships. Anyone with a sixth-grade education and control over his emotions could spot them a mile away. Unfortunately, people meeting both criteria are in the minority.

One can trace the beginning of the problem as far back as one wishes. The Constitution itself was an enormous expansion of government power, passed much like the infamous Patriot Act. But even its powers didn’t satisfy you.

Throughout the following century you participated with your banks in the fraudulent practice of fractional reserve banking, resulting in periodic “panics.” You didn’t need government to protect you from these. Arrangements wherein you earned interest by foregoing use of your money while the banks lent it out were available to you. But you wanted to “have your cake and eat it, too.” When the inevitable result occurred, you screamed for the government to protect you.

You had been warned as early as the first Congress against allowing the government to incorporate a bank. You were told it was unconstitutional and economically destructive by none other than Thomas Jefferson himself. You ignored the warning and supported the bank. Ditto the second version.

You were again provided loud and vociferous warnings against the Federal Reserve System, a scheme that transfers wealth from everyone in society straight to those “elites” you are always complaining about. But you supported it overwhelmingly because it promised you safety from the aforementioned panics caused by your own refusal to accept reality.

When the bank caused the Depression you were also warned it would cause, you demanded the government save you from that, too. Your so-called “greatest generation” elected a fascist who transferred the legislative power from Congress to the executive branch and built the modern administrative state. The New Deal regulatory structure is a barrier to new competition for the established corporations that write its rules.

Having demanded this structure be built, you now complain corporations are too big and don’t have enough competition.

The same dictator also granted your demand to be released from responsibility to save for your retirement. He and his accomplices in Congress created a program that takes 15 percent of your income – money you could otherwise save – and spends it immediately, promising to tax others in the future for a monthly pension doled out to you.

For running similar schemes, you imprisoned Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff. But the architect of this criminal scheme was rewarded with four terms as president.

The history of rewarding tyrants and vilifying benefactors is long. The Federal Reserve was conceived in secret by a cabal of corrupt government officials and representatives of the Rockefeller and Morgan financial empires.

Rockefeller had built his fortune honestly, foregoing larger dividends to reinvest profits in his oil company, resulting in growth for the company and decades of falling oil prices for consumers. When his competitors appealed to the government for help, you overwhelmingly supported breaking up Standard Oil, resulting in higher oil prices for you, unearned wealth for Standard Oil’s competitors, and enormous new powers for the government.

Considering how his honest effort was rewarded by those it benefited, it’s hard to blame Rockefeller for throwing in with the government in a scheme to make dishonest money at the same peoples’ expense.

Several decades later, Bill Gates built a software company that refused to send money to Washington. You rewarded that with full-throated support for the government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft, based upon the ridiculous premise that Microsoft had an obligation to design its product for the convenience of its competitors.

Gates learned the same lesson Rockefeller did. That mob self-styled “We the People” can’t be trusted with freedom. Better to collude with the government and try and control them. Who knows what they might do next?

Yes, very wealthy people with names like Schwab, Gates, Bezos, and Benioff get together with government officials at meetings like the World Economic Forum and the Bilderberg Group, where they make all sorts of nefarious plans for running your life. Guess what? That’s just talk, something they have every right to do. Only power you gave the government gives it any teeth.

Like Frankenstein, only you can destroy the monster you created. The Canadian truckers are showing you how. Even if the government physically removes the truckers (which may not be as easy as it sounds), the truckers still have the power. By simply refusing to drive they can bring the global elites’ managed economy to its knees. If they remain resolved and people support them, they will win.

It’s much the same with social media censorship. Facebook’s stock recently lost almost 30 percent of its value in a single day after its total user base declined for the first time in its history. Imagine tens of millions of American Facebook users making a coordinated effort to delete their accounts on the same day and join Gettr, Gab, or MeWe.

That would be game over for Facebook. And it would be both morally superior and vastly more effective than trying to regulate Facebook through the political process. It could be done with a fraction of the time, effort, and organization it took to get Trump or the “Freedom Caucus” elected, which accomplished nothing.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: People like Gates, Bezos, and Benioff would be far richer than most people in any political system, whether capitalist, socialist, fascist, or our present combination of all of the above. If thousands of years of history hasn’t taught you that yet, then you’ll just have to take my word for it. But they only have power over you because they can collude with a government that has that power.

If you want your life and your freedom back, you’re going to have to change your behavior. Stop electing demagogues who promise to protect you from elites by making the government even more powerful. Start electing representatives who will do the opposite.

Stop demanding more “taxes on the rich” and instead demand repeal of capital gains taxes, especially on gold, silver, cryptos, and other competition for the Federal Reserve’s currency. Stop demanding more regulation of corporations and start using your economic power as consumers to support their competition. Elect people who will outlaw executive branch agencies usurping the legislative and judicial powers.

These suggestions share two things in common: 1) they are realistically attainable and 2) they are less emotionally satisfying than trying to “stick it to the elites.”

Children make decisions based on their emotions. Adults make them based on reason. For over one hundred years, you’ve demanded society be run based on the childish notion that anything about reality that displeases you can be rectified by giving the government the power to prohibit it, mandate it, or subsidize it. Playing this sucker’s game has resulted in people like Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates being poised to literally rule the world.

It’s time to put aside childish things.

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?

Did Omicron Really Kill the Economy or Was It Something Else?

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I canceled cable in June 2020. I made that decision for two reasons:

1. It no longer provided value to me. Until Coronasteria, I was able to watch the so-called news programming, filter out the spin and propaganda, and obtain some knowledge of things happening in the world. As of the beginning of the Covid Regime, that was no longer possible.

2. I didn’t want to subsidize evil. That may sound like hyperbole, but it isn’t. And I don’t want a single dollar of mine helping to perpetuate it.

But I still need to know what they’re telling everyone else. So, virtually every morning, I dutifully visit the websites of CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, etc. and see what today’s menu of falsehoods has to offer.

I’ve noticed what hasn’t been on the menu the past few days: Covid. At least not the screaming headlines we’ve grown accustomed to over the past two years. Instead, most are leading with the news that Old Man Biden killed a BIG TERRORIST (it turns out he blew himself and his family up during a raid by US special forces).

But the most interesting story featured near the top of a mainstream news site was on CNN, which said, “America’s economic recovery is about to go into reverse.”

The White House is preparing for a dismal jobs report on Friday following ADP’s report earlier this week that the economy lost 301,000 jobs in January. The booming Biden economy seems to have hit a speed bump.

The media want to blame the Omicron virus, but that doesn’t make much sense. No businesses were closed because of Omicron. If you want to blame the knock-on effects of the 2020 lockdowns, or perhaps the disruption caused by Biden’s attempted vaccine mandates, that might be more plausible.

Or maybe it’s because the Federal Reserve is so far keeping its promise to slow down quantitative easing (QE) by $30 billion per month through March and end it completely by March 31.

If Jay Powell doesn’t blink first, we may be about to see how much of the post-lockdown recovery was real and how much was merely malinvestment caused by monetary inflation. The answer might be frightening.

If you want to know who really runs the economy (hint: it ain’t presidents or the free market), download a free e-book copy of It’s the Fed, Stupid here.

It’s also available in paperback here. It’s priced at a pre-hyperinflation level so grab a few copies for friends if you can.

It makes a great introduction to the government’s most economically damaging institution for liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, and independents alike.

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?

Why is Fauci suddenly acknowledging B cell and T cell immunity?

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Since early in the pandemic, Americans have been led to believe immunity to Covid-19 acquired from previous infection – to the extent natural immunity has been acknowledged at all – fades after three or four months. Why? Because after that time period, antibodies to the virus are no longer detected in the blood.

That was an immediate red flag for me because that’s not how the immune system works. Antibodies don’t stay in the blood indefinitely after infection or vaccination for any virus. If they did, your blood “would be thick as molasses,” as Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco, put it.

Rather, after natural infection or an effective vaccine, your body “remembers” the infection. B cells produce new antibodies upon encountering the same or a similar enough virus again and T cells kill virus-infected cells directly.

Having done my undergraduate and graduate work in English, I’m not sure where I acquired this knowledge. Perhaps it was a high school biology or health class, but the first time I heard Anthony Fauci or another “expert” imply immunity went away with antibodies I knew it was wrong.

I had the same experience when I went to my own physician after testing positive for SARS_COV-2 antibodies in January 2021, following an infection the previous December. The physician’s assistant made the casual statement that I should have antibodies for at least three months and left it there. I had to challenge the statement with, “but that doesn’t mean I no longer have immunity to the disease, right?

How many Americans have simply accepted that immunity goes away with the antibodies produced from the infection?

But in an interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC on Sunday, Fauci acknowledged that immunity does not go away simply because antibodies are no longer detected in the blood. He now says it is “quite natural” that antibodies go down after a few months (which it is) but that:

“There is an element of the immune response, B cell memory and T cell responses, where even though you see a diminution of antibody levels, it is quite conceivable, and I hope it’s true, that the third shot boost will give a much greater durability of protection. We’re following that very closely.”

I’m not sure why Fauci believes more durable immunity will be provided by a third shot that was not provided by the first two. He did not elaborate.

We have known since July 2020 that prior infection likely does elicit durable immunity, based on a study published on the NIH website (Fauci’s own agency). That study found that even people infected with the original SARS virus in 2003 had a strong T cell response to SARS_COV_2 seventeen years later. So, there is every reason to believe immunity from natural infection with SARS_COV_2 itself confers the long lasting, durable immunity Fauci hopes a second booster will produce.

So, why the sudden acknowledgment of the way the human immune system really works? We can only speculate. Perhaps Fauci is uncomfortable recommending a fourth dose of mRNA given the light shed on risk by high profile figures like Robert Kennedy and Dr. Robert Malone. He can certainly scoff at them in public and know they’re right in private. Or maybe he’s just reading the room politically and knows Americans are losing patience with the booster shots (and mandates).

Since more people get infected every day (although I’m not sure Omicron infection is relevant here), acknowledging B cell and T cell immunity and hoping to connect them to the vaccines rather than prior infection could be a way out once the Omicron wave is over.

Whatever his motives for telling at least half the truth, no one should listen to this man about anything ever again. Yet, I cringe when I imagine the way historians will treat him and this pandemic. The same schools presently teaching your children the government ended child labor, protected us from “robber barons” and their “monopolies,” or ended segregation – all falsehoods adopted as articles of faith in the progressive religion – will someday teach future children Dr. Fauci and the Covid Regime saved America from a deadly virus.

Strike a blow for freedom. Get your kids out of the school system.

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?

It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol Aren’t Just Stupid; They’re Evil

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If you’ve read my book, An Anti-State Christmas, you’re familiar with my critiques of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. If you haven’t, you can download a free copy at antistatechristmas.com.

One may have walked away thinking the writers of both stories were merely misguided, lacking understanding of elementary economic concepts. That’s true, but their stories aren’t just stupid. They’re evil. They instill in people, at a deep, emotional level, an idea that has led to more human suffering in the world than any other.

This is the perennial belief that a person acting in his or her own self interest not only doesn’t benefit others but harms them. This really is the basis for every slander hurled at Potter and Scrooge, respectively.

It contradicts one of the very first economic principles, which Adam Smith famously called, “the invisible hand.” He observed that in an environment where property rights are protected and exchanges of property are voluntary, people pursuing their own self-interest through peaceful market transactions will do more good for others than people supposedly sacrificing their self-interest.

The truth of this maxim has been proven so many times it’s astounding the lesson remains unlearned. As just one example, it is commonly known extreme poverty fell by 90 percent in the thirty years between 1990-2020. What’s less commonly acknowledged is that 100 percent of the progress occurred in countries that “reformed” their economies.

Let me translate “reformed” so you understand what the academics prefer you didn’t: they became less socialist and more capitalist.

China is the largest example, but the trend is consistent in economies large and small. Wherever a country privatized government-owned industries and allowed market forces to operate, poverty fell dramatically.

Yet another way to say this is poverty fell in countries where people were no longer forced to sacrifice their self-interest for some mythical “common good,” but were instead allowed to pursue their self interest in the only peaceful economic system yet discovered: the market economy.

The communists who wrote It’s a Wonderful Life take great pains to make the hero someone who does not pursue his self-interest. In addition to unsuccessful, this also makes George Bailey very unhappy.

We are supposed to admire him because he is selflessly miserable, which begs several questions:

Is the only “moral” system one in which everyone is miserable?

Or are some people morally required to be miserable so others may be happy?

How can the latter be true if “all men are created equal?”

The claptrap pedaled by these writers is absurd but effective because it appeals to people’s emotions – and not noble ones. When Potter tries to recruit George Bailey to work for him, the truth is told, although most viewers believe the truth is false, and falsehood is the truth.

“Now, take during the Depression for instance,” says Potter. “You and I were the only ones that kept our heads. You saved the Building and Loan and I saved all the rest.”

“Yes, well, most people say you stole all the rest,” answers George

“The envious ones say that, George, the suckers,” replies Potter.

Potter is telling the truth in this exchange and George Bailey is lying. Potter did not steal anything during the Depression. He acquired assets in voluntary exchanges with their owners, the very opposite of stealing.

Potter didn’t make those he bought the assets from worse off. He made them better off. If that weren’t true, the transactions wouldn’t have occurred. That Potter was acting purely in his self-interest doesn’t change that.

As he has all his life, Potter helped others during the Depression. While exchanging much needed cash for hard assets, Potter likely saved lives and certainly preserved the existence of Bedford Falls, all while acting entirely in his own self-interest.

Meanwhile, the “selfless” George Bailey doesn’t help his customers during the crisis. They are forced to help him.

Regardless of how people feel about it, this is the way the world works. And speaking of feelings, this supposed admiration of selflessness and condemnation of selfishness does not proceed from any noble place in the human heart. Rather, Potter speaks the truth when he says the proponents of this nonsense are “the envious.”

The poisonous idea of self-sacrifice to some illusory “common good” led to hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century, with starvation alone killing tens of millions in the midst of plenty. It appeals to the basest of human emotions and inspires a disregard of reason and observable reality.

In a society morphing into a pure democracy as constitutional limits designed to prevent that are whittled away, everyone who watches this supposedly heartwarming holiday film or reads any of Charles Dickens’ socialist propaganda and believes it becomes a threat to us all.

It is not a new threat. The central lie of both stories is what led to the revolutions in 1789 France, 1917 Russia, and 1949 China, just to name a few. If you’re wondering how to see it coming, consider a few common characteristics of those disasters: the tearing down of statues and other symbols of the past, the public shaming (and sometimes assault) of “politically incorrect” dissidents, the politicization of science (see “Lysenkoism”), and weaponization of the media by the state.

Surely that can’t happen here.

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?

The Gaping Hole in the Libertarian Immigration Debate

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I watched with interest the debate on immigration between Dave Smith and Spike Cohen. I encourage everyone, libertarian or not, to watch it as well. Neither participant called the other a fake libertarian, a racist, a communist, or (insert pejorative here). On the contrary, Smith hurt himself by spending too much time praising Spike during his opening.

Instead of dumb name calling, the debate included thoughtful and thought-provoking arguments for both positions, which were “open borders” and “not open borders.” As to who won the debate, I’ll leave that to the judgment of the viewer. There were no knockdowns.

Like Dave, Spike, and host Marc Clair, I am an ancap. So, my ideal solution would be privatizing everything. And as for my personal feelings about all three, I can only say:

However, especially since it was largely representative of most libertarian discussions on immigration, I am compelled to point out a startling omission in the debate. That was the apparent false assumption by both Dave and Spike that the only options were between the federal government regulating immigration and open borders. Neither even mentioned the constitutional, historical argument: state regulation of immigration.

I was waiting for the conversation to get there until Spike made a statement (about the 43:43 mark), unrefuted by Dave, that since there was no Ellis Island or similar federal immigration enforcement operation for the republic’s first one hundred years, the United States had “straight up open borders” during that time.

No, they didn’t. It is true the federal government wasn’t regulating immigration because the states were regulating it. As I explained in more detail here, the federal government only got involved in immigration as a result of Supreme Court decisions dealing with state immigration enforcement, particularly Chy Lung vs. Freeman, arguably the most spurious decision the Court ever issued on the constitutionality of a federal power.

Without rehashing the linked article above, they didn’t really make an argument the power was delegated. Their decision was based solely on the reasoning that it would be disastrous if the federal government didn’t have the power to regulate immigration, so therefore it must have it. They explained why the federal government should be delegated the power, not that it had already been delegated the power.

It wasn’t the first time the federal government attempted this usurpation. Most people remember the Alien and Sedition Acts for their suppression of free speech, but that was only half the problem. The other half, emphatically argued by both Jefferson and Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798, was that the Alien Act was unconstitutional because it exercised a power (regulating immigration) reserved to the states. Their argument for state nullification of the Alien Act amounted to the same argument made by “sanctuary cities,” only at the state level.

Conservatives often argue the power to regulate immigration is granted to the federal government because it is part and parcel of the power to regulate naturalization (becoming a citizen). This is ludicrous. The vast majority of people who cross the border have no intention of becoming citizens and the two powers are completely distinct.

Others point to the 1808 clause, which has slightly more superficial merit, but you can read my arguments against that in the linked article as well.

For the record, Jefferson addressed the 1808 clause in the Kentucky Resolution and Madison, who wrote the words of both the Naturalization and 1808 clauses, nevertheless stated regulating immigration was a power “no where delegated to the federal government.”

Since there hasn’t been an amendment to delegate this power since then, it must still reside with the states or the people.

The constitutional approach provides two alternative solutions to the immigration question that could work for both conservatives and liberals and be more tolerable to libertarians:

  1. Acknowledge the federal government does not posses this power and propose an amendment to delegate it to the feds.
  2. Acknowledge the federal government does not posses this power and allow the states to resume their authority as protected under the Tenth Amendment.

The amendment suggestion is more than just a formality. If an amendment were proposed, it would require a supermajority of states to ratify it. Out of the dogfight that would naturally follow, something agreeable to both sides might emerge.

If not, alternative #2 would be the default position. While that may appear unthinkable at first glance, allow me to point out that states are already availing themselves of this option right in front of our eyes.

Blue states are declaring “sanctuary cities,” meaning they won’t expend their own resources to enforce federal immigration laws. The governor of Texas says his state is building its own border wall. Florida governor Ron DeSantis wants $8 million from his legislature to “create a new program that would allow the state to contract with private companies to transport ‘unauthorized aliens’ out of Florida.”

Just like marijuana laws, states are beginning to nullify federal immigration laws and any honest proponent of strict construction of the Constitution should admit they have the right to do so.

It’s a far cry from a private property system, but it’s much closer than either federal enforcement of immigration laws or federal subsidization of immigration into the states. If we can’t have a libertarian solution, we can at least have a constitutional one.

Supporting this position checks all the boxes brought up by the participants in the debate. No libertarian candidate would have to support the disastrous federal immigration system. Instead, they could tell voters in each state they support their right to determine the rules themselves, without interference from Washington.

It would also be eminently more practical. It would not mean routine interstate travel would be disrupted by authorities attempting to physically stop people from crossing state lines. The federal government has already shown that to be futile.

State government immigration departments could focus on those people establishing residence within the state rather than attempting to prevent anyone from merely driving through. Those arriving at airports or ports from foreign countries could be processed the same way by state officials as they are now by federal officials, at each state’s discretion.

Not every state would regulate immigration the same way. Those states that wanted open borders could have them. Those that wanted border walls could build them. Those that wanted something in the middle could have that, too.

Nothing governments do can be truly called a market solution but allowing up to fifty different immigration policies would much more closely approximate one than the current one-size-fits-all approach. And it would allow a more scientific way to answer not only whether more or less immigration is good for the current state populations but how much or little regulation is optimal. There may be up to fifty answers to the latter question.

No, the constitutional approach is not perfect, just as neither solution proposed in the debate was perfect. But it beats a civil war between the very unlibertarian factions currently seeking control at the federal level. And it has the potential to evolve into something closer to a private property system than could ever emerge with Washington in charge.

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?

Washington’s stance on Ukraine is as divorced from reality as its Covid Regime

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Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

From, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I was a fourteen-year-old freshman at St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute in Kenmore, N.Y. when I was assigned my first term paper for Mr. Chaya’s World History class. The list of topics included the Charge of the Light Brigade. That’s the one I picked.

Like any boy that age, I still retained a belief in the glory of war, something Tennyson seems never to have outgrown. This despite being trained in grammar school to scurry from my desk and duck against the wall under the classroom window when the air raid siren sounded.

The possibility of being nuked by the Soviet Union at any moment had been a fact of life for all of my life at that point and would be for twelve more years.

The term paper assignment was the first time I was asked to research a historical event, rather than just read a textbook summary about it. By the time I finished, I had my first inkling that “military intelligence” might just be an oxymoron and perhaps war wasn’t the glorious affair Tennyson had cracked it up to be.

To this day, when I hear the lyrics, “a good old-fashioned, bullet-headed, Saxon mother’s son” in the Beatles song “Bungalow Bill,” I think of James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, who led the aforementioned six hundred light cavalrymen into the teeth of Russian artillery.

The Charge of the Light Brigade occurred during the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War (1853-56). Despite the Light Brigade disaster, the port city finally fell to the British and French allies, but not before the Russian Empire sank its entire Black Sea fleet in the harbor to prevent if from falling into enemy hands.

That desperate act should provide a warning to Washington.

The Russians had to fight for Crimea again during the Russian Civil War following the Bolshevik revolution. It fell to the Germans during WWII after a bitter 250-day siege, only to be regained by the Red Army in 1944.

I never dreamed I’d be writing about the same port city thirty-six years after that first term paper. In 2016, the new global empire, the United States, having successfully orchestrated a color revolution to oust Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, was in a stare down with Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin over his annexation Crimea.

Yanukovich had been falsely portrayed as “pro-Russian” by NATO in its haste to bring Ukraine into the European Union. The coup was the last straw for Putin after watching the U.S. break its promise to Gorbachev not to advance NATO “one inch eastward” in exchange for Gorbachev’s agreement to the 1990 reunification of Germany.

A look at a map of NATO in the ensuing 30 years since that promise puts a somewhat different light on Russia’s troop buildup on the Ukrainian border and at least calls into question just who is the aggressor in this situation.

As I wrote back in 2016, Sevastopol is one of the few reliable Russian ports that remain ice-free all winter. Syria is home to another. If that doesn’t inspire skepticism regarding Washington, D.C.’s humanitarian motives for orchestrating regime change operations in both countries – while remaining bosom buddies with the brutal regime in Saudi Arabia – then, as my friends in the American southeast would say, “bless your heart.”

President Biden told Reuters on New Year’s Eve that he had warned Putin, “if he goes into Ukraine, we will have severe sanctions. We will increase our presence in Europe, with our NATO allies, and there will be a heavy price to pay for it.”

Sanctions don’t sound too ominous if one has zero historical perspective, including, say, the “sanctions” against the Japanese Empire in 1941. It doesn’t really matter who was right or wrong. Sanctions eventually lead to war if their consequences become dire enough.

It doesn’t matter so much who is right or wrong on the matter of Ukraine, either. The reality is this: The Russians are never going to give up that port. They’ve bled for it in the past far more than any American army has ever bled for anything. It is an existential matter for them.

In 1856, they sank their entire Black Sea navy before giving up Sevastopol. What would they be willing to do today?

Meanwhile, it would make not one iota of difference to Americans living in the United States if Russia annexed all of Ukraine, much less Crimea. Washington’s interests in the region are purely imperial and contrary to those of most U.S. citizens. It is also questionable that the U.S. could win a limited conflict in the region against Russia, given the logistics.

It is equally unrealistic that Russia could win a full-scale conventional war against NATO. The U.S. alone had a military budget in 2020 more than ten times that of Russia. That would leave Russia with only one alternative before surrender.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington has thought of itself as the “shining city on the hill” leading a “new world order” of democracy and peace. Considering its recent exploits in the Middle East and Ukraine, in 2021 it more resembles a drunk bully stumbling around the world slurring its words (literally) and picking fights with smaller opponents.

That Russia can be treated likewise is as divorced from reality as Washington’s belief it can stop the spread of a respiratory virus with lockdowns and vaccine mandates. But as damaging as the Covid Regime has been to American society, Washington’s delusions about bringing Russia to its knees could result in far worse.

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?

It’s the Fed, Stupid

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The 21st century has seen two political movements replace the bipartisan status quo of the century before. The left moved away from the centrist liberalism of the Bill Clinton years to the Occupy Wall Street movement following the 2008 financial crisis. It now marches under the banner of “democratic socialism,” championed by two-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Senate and “The Squad” in the House of Representatives.

The right rejected the Bush administration’s neoconservatism in favor of smaller, more constitutionally limited government during the Tea Party years, electing a “Freedom Caucus” to Congress beginning in 2010. Now, this same caucus often runs afoul of the economic nationalists of the dominant movement on the American right today, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement led by Donald Trump.

Both the democratic socialists and economic nationalists seek roughly the same ends via different means. However, both fail to see the true cause of disproportionate income inequality, the erosion of the middle class, and the concentration of political power in the hands of a billionaire global elite. Rather than “unfettered capitalism,” decried by both movements, it is the distinctly anti-capitalist Federal Reserve System that is chiefly responsible for the societal ills they seek to cure.

Tom Mullen has appealed for over a decade to both sides of the political spectrum to cease being distracted by policies that make little difference – what he calls “blow dryers in a hurricane” – and focus on the true cause of most of America’s economic ills. He has one message for MAGA conservatives, Bernie Bros, socialists, libertarians, and independents: It’s the Fed, Stupid.

Download a free copy of It’s the Fed, Stupid, here!

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Tom Mullen hosts the Tom Mullen Talks Freedom podcast an 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? His writing has been featured in Newsweek, The Huffington Post, The Washington Times, RealClear Markets, LewRockwell.com, and The Foundation for Economic Education. His podcast episodes and writing can be found at www.tommullentalksfreedom.com.

It’s Not the Elites’ Fault; It’s Yours

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My fellow liberty broadcaster Alan Mosely put out a humorous tweet that read, “Who knew Omicron would be such a hero?” He was retweeting an announcement that the World Economic Forum in Davos had been called off due to the Omicron variant.

Certainly, no good ever comes from a bunch of billionaires hobnobbing with the heads of national governments. Ditto the Bilderberg Group, The Council on Foreign Relations or any of several other such elitist gatherings.

But here’s the part most people miss: No bad really comes from them either. Sure, the Federal Reserve was cooked up at a secret meeting of elites on Jekyll Island. But it only became reality because of overwhelming support from the public after it was pitched as a way to protect them from the “elites.”

There was plenty of opportunity to hear opposition to the Act from the minority of Congressmen and Senators who voted against it. But the public ignored their warnings and supported the Act anyway.

Ditto the 16th Amendment. This was also pitched as a way to shift the burden of taxation away from the middle and poorer classes to the rich, the “elites.” The public swallowed this bait and switch hook, line, and sinker, and today clamor for the so-called elites to pay even more income taxes.

But whom do income taxes really hurt the most? The super-rich, making millions or billions in income? No. It’s those middle-income earners, especially those who work the hardest to get ahead, for whom that extra $10,000 – $20,000 paid in income taxes could represent significant capital accumulation over a period of years.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that this provides a barrier to competition for those above. Does it really matter if it’s intentional or not, since it does?

Right down the line, the public overwhelmingly supports policies that harm them when pitched as protection from the elites. The god-awful Teddy Roosevelt styled himself the “Trust Buster.” His even more awful cousin sold the New Deal to protect the public from the “greed” of the rich.

Everyone was outraged by the EpiPen scandal a few years ago. This was the direct result of the FDA having legislative power, acquired during the New Deal without any amendment to the Constitution, and using it to keep competitors of the EpiPen off the market.

That’s just one little product protected by just one of scores of federal agencies but it’s representative of how the entire New Deal regulatory structure works. And the public not only approves of it but constantly clamors for more.

I don’t care how many private jets Elon Musk or Bill Gates owns. Their getting richer doesn’t make me poorer. Quite the opposite, in fact. But here’s what does make me poorer: government intervention that purports to protect me from “the elites.” That the elites overwhelmingly support it should tell you something.

No system in the past has ever resulted in economic equality; nor will any system in the future. But here is one thing history should have taught you by now: If you set up a system where the property of the elites and yours is subject to disposition by majority vote, you shouldn’t be surprised when the elites end up with all of yours.

Most people on my e-mail list get this. For all those who don’t, I offer these thoughts as some you can pass on to counter so-called “populist” arguments for further “regulating” or plundering the elites. It’s a sucker’s game.

Don’t forget my new e-book, It’s the Fed, Stupid, is also available in paperback here. It’ll cost you less than a sawbuck and is great for introducing friends to our ideas.

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