Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | The Libertarian Institute

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...

Caution or Catastrophe: Public Health’s COVID Response

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Feb 23, 2022 | Featured Articles

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, proponents of lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, mask mandates and other coercive government interventions have characterized these measures as benevolently “erring on the side of caution.” Now, as the grim toll of those public health measures comes into ever-sharper focus, it’s increasingly clear those characterizations were terribly wrong. What’s less readily apparent, however, is how the very use of the “erring on the side of caution” framing was injurious in itself—by thwarting reasoned debate of public health policies, diverting attention from...

Without An Enemy, NATO Has Become Its Own

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Feb 1, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In his farewell address, George Washington said, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” What an offensive notion to Pentagon generals, weapon industry execs, DC think tankers and State Department bureaucrats, who, rather than avoiding permanent alliances, have been relentless in their quest to pile on new ones. That impulse is vividly exemplified by the dangerously provocative post-Cold War expansion of NATO, and its consequences are apparent in today’s Ukraine-centered tensions with Russia. NATO was created to oppose a Soviet...

Inflation Is Robbing Your Pocket, Whether You Realize Or Not

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Jan 5, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles

All across the economic dashboard, inflation indicators are blinking red. Most recently, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, rose 5.7% from November 2020 to November 2021. That’s the biggest year-over-year surge since September 1983. Many mistakenly attribute today’s rising prices solely to supply chain woes, and government officials are happy to fertilize that mythology—as Kamala Harris reflexively did last week in her rambling, didn’t-do-the-reading response to a question from Margaret Brennan: The truth is, in the words of...

The Ticking Time Bomb of Social Security

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Nov 24, 2021 | Featured Articles

At a time when President Biden and congressional Democrats are pushing to expand the breadth of entitlements to include free preschool and subsidized child care, little attention is given to the fact that the country’s biggest existing entitlement program—Social Security—is a financial wreck. The program’s payouts have exceeded revenue since 2010, but the recent past is nowhere near as grim as the future. According to the latest annual report by Social Security’s trustees, the gap between promised benefits and future payroll tax revenue has reached a staggering $59.8 trillion. That gap...

Texas Is Not Free: A Case of Civil Asset Forfeiture

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Oct 18, 2021 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

On May 14, 2019, Ameal Woods drove from rural Mississippi to Houston with $42,300 in cash. He was ready to achieve a major goal he and his wife had worked, saved and borrowed for: Purchasing a second semi truck for the fledgling trucking business he operated with his brother, and perhaps a trailer, too. Along Interstate 10 in Texas, however, his entrepreneurial dream turned into a nightmare. It started when Woods was pulled over by a Harris County sheriff’s deputy who claimed Woods had been following too closely behind the truck in front of him. The deputy asked Woods if he was carrying...

Raising the Debt Ceiling Is Raising Your Taxes

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Oct 4, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles

With Thursday’s passage of a continuing resolution that funds government operations until December 3rd, Congress dodged one fiscal cliff, but a bigger one looms ahead. The federal government has maxed out its credit, and if Congress doesn’t raise the statutory debt ceiling by October 18, the Treasury won’t be able to cover all of Uncle Sam’s obligations. With Democrats controlling the House, Senate and White House, Republicans have declared they’re leaving it entirely up to the Democrats to raise the ceiling through the budget reconciliation process. Democratic leaders and their...