“The billionaire scam, like every other scam, hides its lies behind truths. Today’s fascists, like yesterday’s and tomorrow’s, point toward some virtue for which they have nothing but contempt in order to justify their demolition of that virtue. So we see that the current ransacking of the federal government by the world’s richest man and his (allegedly) Hitler-admiring pet president — perhaps the single greatest instance of open corruption in my nation’s history — is being enacted in the name of efficiency and anti-corruption. And suppression of speech is being enacted in the name of free speech, and institutional racial police brutality is enacted in the name of peace and self-defense, and the eradication of diversity from public life is being enacted in the name of racial equality, and so on. We in the emerging counterculture aren’t opposed to these virtues. We simply recognize different priorities.” (02/23/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Marcos Falcone
“When Argentines go abroad, they usually go shopping. Many of the products they want cannot be bought at home, ranging from clothes to smartphones and all kinds of home appliances. Because of this, it has become a tradition to return from a trip with one or two extra suitcases filled with smuggled goods. Did you know that it is more expensive to buy an outdated iPhone in Argentina than it is to fly from Buenos Aires to Miami, stay for three days, and get the newest one? Paying higher prices and accessing lower-quality products are the natural consequences of adopting tariffs, one of US President Donald Trump’s favored economic policies. Argentina has already gone down this road.” (02/23/25)
“My first encounter with poetry was a haiku by my father. He would say to me, ’You can write them, too!’ After his death, I finally ventured into writing those short poems and realized they were all about breath, how we breathe the world in and out, in moments of inter-being. When Eric Garner and George Floyd were blood-choked to the point of being definitively deprived of breath, poetry became a legitimate weapon, enabling us as a death-bound people to breathe, whatever the pressure. After October 7, the haiku I wrote became longer …. There is no breath, no poem long enough to say the solidarity we, Black American people, feel ancestrally for our brothers and sisters in Palestine. The tragedy of children, babies born into the genocide who survive for a time only to die from it, is almost impossible to ’poeticize.'” (02/24/25)
“Almost everything taught about the Whiskey Rebellion stems from a coverup. The prevailing myth presents an unbeatable federal government easily crushing resistance, discouraging any modern challenge to centralized power. But the real history tells a very different story – one of widespread tax resistance and successful nullification that forced the federal government to abandon its hated excise tax.” (02/23/25)
“‘Chaos.’ That seems to be America’s go-to descriptor for the federal government since January 20. Depending on who you ask, US president Donald Trump, ‘special government employee’ Elon Musk, and their ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ are either cutting a bunch of government waste and inefficiency, or gutting a bunch of useful and necessary government functionality. Some people are very sure of which, but nobody seems very clued in to how. So I asked Grok, the generative AI chatbot associated with Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) platform, to ‘suggest the most efficient organizational chart for the federal government’s executive branch.'” (02/23/25)
“The only reason this thing called Trump’s triumphant return to the scene of the crime is even possible is because the imbeciles who replaced him were too busy facilitating a genocide in Gaza to even begin to clean up his mess. So, now Nero is out, and Caligula is back in but this time that soiled lunatic has gathered a posse …. As an unrepentant libertarian localist, I support this kind of small government destabilization even when I’m not the target. By all means, throw everything you can get your fucking hands on into the guts of the machine and encourage every form of local government not to comply with the department of anything. Think local and sabotage nationally.” (02/23/25)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“Since Trump’s election to his first term in 2016, Reason has mostly minimized Trump’s authoritarianism and has devoted more energy to dismissing and patronizing people for their fears than reporting on Trump himself. … Reason’s rightward drift is itself part of a broader phenomenon, which has worsened since the rise of the paleolibertarian movement and Hoppeanism in the 90s, and culminated in the takeover of the Libertarian Party by the far-right ‘Mises Caucus’ … to be clear, the problem is not just with right-wing libertarians abandoning the primary libertarian duty of denouncing and resisting the authoritarian state. There is also a serious problem of those on the so-called left who devote more energy to fighting liberals and Democrats than fighting actual fascists, and in some cases actually seek common ground with fascists while denouncing the center-left as enemy number one.” (02/23/25)
“‘We cannot make a heaven on Earth, though we may make a hell.’ That’s from the great conservative political philosopher Russell Kirk …. I always had my issues with Kirk, as my political journey led me to a more libertarian worldview given my distaste for the incompetence, abuses and wastefulness of governments. Kirk had no time of day for libertarians. He believed they advocated policies that would lead to social collapse. I wish he were around to comment on the current goings-on in America as conservatives are leading efforts to tear down the existing system to rebuild whatever it is they have in mind. Frankly, libertarians have been all over the map as Trump tramples on established democratic norms, obliterates international alliances, praises brutal dictators and treats immigrants with unnecessary cruelty.” (02/21/25)
“On Inauguration Day, I was flying home from India, where I had attended Gandhi 3.0, a retreat that brought together 40 people from around the world to explore how Gandhian principles can be meaningful in today’s world. I returned to the U.S. just as my country was erupting in turmoil. … I felt strangely grounded with a deep sense of love for, well, everyone. But I was also aghast, frightened for so many, and startled by those who were delighted by the sledgehammer upheavals, the head-spinning international proclamations, and the unconstitutional decrees. I certainly understand the desire to upend ‘the system’ (something I’ve been trying to do with multiple unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems my entire adult life) but what was unfolding was inchoate, cruel, and chaotic destruction rather than carefully considered interventions that would reduce waste and corruption.” (02/22/25)
