There is a charming scene in the film Clerks (1994) in which the sidekick character Randall discusses his misgivings about the film Return of the Jedi (1983) with the protagonist Dante. Randall is upset that the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Empire’s new military space station (the Death Star) while it was under construction, thereby slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent independent contractors. Return of the Jedi is the third film (and sixth episode) of the Star Wars franchise, a saga about how a republic becomes an empire and its people lose their freedom. The original Death Star was...

American libertarians, regardless of their preferred faction, understand the state is a monster. We view the state the way Karl Marx viewed capitalism (demonic) or William Lloyd Garrison viewed slavery (cannibalistic). Sadly, American libertarians live under the most powerful state in recorded history. The social order is not aligned with our values, so we advocate where we can. Lower taxes over here, less war over there, a little more liberty around the way. Earlier this month we almost got some good news. Lt. Col. Daniel Davis (U.S. Army-retired) was almost appointed as deputy director of...

The central character Satan in John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost has been interpreted as closely aligned with the complexities of the human faculty of reason. The link between Satan and rational cognition was demonstrated in Lucifer and Prometheus, by R.J. Zwi Werblowsky. Lucifer (Satan’s pre-rebellion “dead name”) carries the meanings of morning star, brightness, and light-bringing. Prometheus was a demigod who stole fire from the gods, gave knowledge of its use to humans, and was then punished for it by Zeus. Thus, the two figures of Lucifer and Prometheus are conceptually linked...

Washington DC is an imperial city. It masks as Athenian democracy housed within Roman republicanism and underpinned by Judeo-Christian values. But behind the mask is a cold monster: the “interagency.” And the monster is committed to global domination. The imperial agenda has met with great resistance, most stunningly in Ukraine, where Russia has been degrading Washington’s proxy forces with extreme lethality. But the most poetic resistance has come from a group of Zaidi Shi’ites in Yemen, the Houthis. Formally known as “Ansarullah (a.k.a. Ansar Allah),” the Houthis control Yemen’s central...