Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | The Libertarian Institute

The Public School Exodus Will Revolutionize Education

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Nov 2, 2022 | Featured Articles

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, America’s parents have shifted nearly 2 million students from public schools to alternatives that include private schools and home schooling. For public schools, that represents a loss of about 4% of their enrollment. Expect the exodus to grow larger, as the United States is undergoing a major change in philosophy regarding publicly-funded K-12 education, away from funding government-run school systems and toward funding individual students—with parents getting to choose where their children learn. In June, Arizona put itself at the leading edge...

Correcting Another Corporate Media Lie About Hero Edward Snowden

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Oct 3, 2022 | Featured Articles

When Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, the news revived a long-simmering debate about the propriety of his revelations of U.S. government secrets. At the same time, it prompted reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood: that Snowden “fled to Russia.” That disinformation-trafficking wasn’t limited to random people on social media. Among others, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, Christian Science Monitor and Canada’s CBC all asserted in the past week that Snowden “fled to Russia” in 2013 after revealing that the United...

Halfway To a New Constitutional Convention; But Is It a Good Idea?

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Sep 1, 2022 | Featured Articles

Though it’s received relatively little attention, a conservative-led drive to call a convention to consider amendments to the U.S. Constitution has been making steady progress, and is now more than halfway toward realizing its goal. At a time when Americans are increasingly polarized—to the extent that 43% think a civil war will erupt in the next decade—should you be alarmed or enthused? Article V of the Constitution provides two avenues for amendments. Under the first one, Congress proposes amendments that are enacted if three-fourths of the state legislatures approve them. That’s the way...

Concerned About the Fentanyl Crisis? Blame the Government

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Aug 1, 2022 | Featured Articles

As drug overdoses continue rising in the United States, one drug has emerged as the most notorious killer of our day: fentanyl. Unfortunately, those clamoring loudest about fentanyl’s death toll support policies that actually bolster its position in the illicit drug trade. First approved for U.S. medical use in 1968, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid used to counter severe pain after surgery, and chronic severe pain. Though similar to morphine or heroin, it’s 50 to 100 times more potent. Most of the fentanyl circulating on the streets doesn’t come from pharmaceutical companies. According to the...

Activity at Saudi Embassy Coincided with Arrival of 9/11 Hijackers

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Jun 27, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

This is my second article based on an examination of several hundred recently-declassified documents from the FBI’s investigation of Saudi government links to 9/11. The first was FBI Mistakenly Names Saudi Consulate Employee Eyed in 9/11 Investigation. FBI agents investigating Saudi ties to 9/11 discovered a troubling set of phone calls among Saudi embassy and consulate officials, an extremist American cleric and a Saudi agent in San Diego—calls that took place in the weeks leading up to the first two hijackers’ arrival in Los Angeles and while they were settling in. The timing raises...

Released FBI Document Asserts Saudi Embassy Employee Connected to 9/11

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | May 10, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Over the past several months, the FBI released thousands of pages of material relating to its investigation of Saudi government links to the 9/11 attacks. This wave of declassifications was pursuant to Executive Order 14040, which President Biden issued on Sept. 3 under pressure from more than 1,800 survivors, family members and first responders who threatened to protest his presence at memorial events if he didn’t make good on a 2020 campaign promise to boost 9/11 transparency. The published documents are riddled with redactions, but a Stark Realities review of the trove has uncovered two...

Florida Judge Uses Compelled Speech to Perpetuate Pulse Nightclub Myth

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | May 2, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In a jaw-dropping example of government imposing woke mythology on an individual citizen, a Florida judge has ordered a man who defaced an LGBT mural to write a 25-page essay centered on a thoroughly false premise—that the 2016 massacre at the gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando deliberately targeted the LGBT community. Though that baseless narrative is still embraced by opportunistic activists, pandering politicians, lazy journalists and those they’ve misled, it’s been well-established since 2018 that self-described “Islamic soldier” Omar Mateen chose the club at random and that he viewed his...

Backdraft: How U.S. Sanctions on Russia May Burn the Dollar

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Apr 11, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

There’s much to despise about economic sanctions. Aside from the fundamental immorality of making innocent individuals suffer for the sins of governments, sanctions almost universally fail to achieve the goals of those who inflict them. Nonetheless, sanctions have become the knee-jerk U.S. government response to any real or claimed foreign misdeed. According to the U.S. Treasury department, the number of U.S.-imposed sanctions soared 933% between 2000 and 2021. Where today’s Ukraine invasion-prompted sanctions are concerned, civilians in Russia and all around the world are already feeling...