Fake Concern for the Taiwanese by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2022 President Biden, Nancy Pelosi, the Pentagon, and the CIA assure us that their machinations regarding Taiwan are motivated by their deep concern for the welfare of the Taiwanese people. How ridiculous is that? What amazes me is that they honestly believe that people are going to believe such nonsense. What amazes me even more is that there are still people around who do believe such nonsense. The U.S. provocations regarding Taiwan are for one — and only one — purpose: to gin up another crisis. What better way to justify the continued existence of the U.S. national-security establishment and the vast “defense” industry and their ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess? A national-security state always needs crises and official enemies. It has to keep people agitated and afraid. In that way, people will say, “Oh, my gosh, thank goodness we have the national-security establishment to keep us safe. Please give them more of my income and please let them take more ...
Why Not Just Abolish the IRS? by Jacob G. Hornberger August 31, 2022 While some conservatives are criticizing President Biden for hiring 87,000 new well-armed IRS agents under the guise of fighting inflation, I’ve got a better idea: Let’s just abolish the IRS and, at the same time, end the federal income tax. The idea is actually not as radical as it sounds. It certainly wouldn’t have sounded radical to Americans who lived here in the United States from 1776 to 1913. For virtually that entire period of time, Americans lived without federal income taxation and an IRS. That’s right — for more than a century, Americans were free to keep everything they earned, and there was nothing the federal government could do about it. No deductions to keep track of. No income-tax returns to file. No withholding. No IRS to audit, terrorize, and send Americans to jail. That’s what it once meant to be an American. That’s what it once meant to be free. That’s the freedom that ...
Are You Attending the RPI Conference This Saturday? by Jacob G. Hornberger August 29, 2022 The Ron Paul Institute is holding its annual conference at the Westin Washington Dulles Airport this Saturday, September 3. It stands to be another outstanding one. I have the honor and pleasure of again speaking at it. I will also be speaking at the conference’s program for young scholars the day before. The theme of this year’s conference is “Anatomy of a Police State.” As the conference’s web page states, “Authoritarianism on the march. The police state advances. In near-darkness we find the greatest opportunity to make the case for liberty!” The conference will feature several speakers with whom FFF readers are familiar. John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, is one of them. Practically very week, we feature John’s article in our FFF Daily. Chris Coyne is professor of economics at George Mason University, which has the best overall free-market, Austrian-oriented economics program in ...
The Government Wants to Silence the Opposition by John W. Whitehead August 18, 2022 “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” — President Harry S. Truman Militarized police. Riot squads. ...
Help FFF Restore Sound Money by Jacob G. Hornberger August 11, 2022 Gas prices are at an all-time high. Rents are skyrocketing. Prices at the grocery store are surging. Prices of new and used cars are spiraling out of control. That’s what happens when the Federal Reserve debases the currency by inflating the money supply, which the Fed has been doing for the past several years and, actually, since its inception ...
JFK’s War Against the Military Industrial Complex by Jacob G. Hornberger August 8, 2022 A question I often receive in response to my articles and books on the Kennedy assassination is: What difference does it make? The assassination took place almost 60 years ago. My answer: Look at three things: (1) the current budget of the military-industrial complex; (2) the perpetual foreign-policy crises into which our nation has been plunged; and (3) ...
The Pentagon Is Behind Pelosi’s Trip by Jacob G. Hornberger August 4, 2022 Joe Biden wanted to make it clear that the Pentagon was opposed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, a trip that was obviously intended to gin up a crisis with Red China. The notion that the Pentagon opposed Pelosi’s trip is sheer nonsense. In my opinion, there ...
America’s Culture of Death by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2022 In the wake of another mass shooting, this one in Uvalde, Texas, there have been the standard, predictable calls for gun control. The idea is that if more stringent gun-control laws are enacted, there will be fewer mass shootings. That’s simply ludicrous reasoning. When a person wants to kill a lot of people, he is going to be able to ...
Out of Control Government and Isaiah’s Job by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2022 It is very difficult to be a classical liberal or libertarian and not experience bouts of disappointment, frustration, and outright pessimism. The world around us seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. Government continues to grow and, apparently, is out of control. For example, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its semiannual Budget and Economic Outlook, 2022-2032 in ...
Moral Blindness on U.S. Evil by Jacob G. Hornberger July 29, 2022 One of the big problems we face in America is the unwillingness of all too many Americans to identify and confront evil within their own government, especially when that evil is centered within the Pentagon and the CIA, both of which are considered godlike by many Americans. As I point out in my new book An ...
Digital Authoritarianism: AI Surveillance Signals the Death of Privacy by John W. Whitehead July 21, 2022 “There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.” ― Philip K. Dick Nothing is private. We ...
Border-Control Fallacies by Jacob G. Hornberger July 21, 2022 A writer at Substack named David Ferguson writes: Robert Frost once wrote “good fences make good neighbors.” Very true. Isn’t there any private property on the U.S. side of the border? Doesn’t a property owner have the right to defend his justly obtained property? How about hiring private police to keep intruders from trespassing on your property? The ...
