John Weeks | The Libertarian Institute

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and Our Societal Detachment from War

by John Weeks | May 27, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Modern nation states have developed an impressive symbolic innovation to memorialize their war dead, the tomb of the unknown soldier: “No more arresting emblems of the modern culture of nationalism exist than cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers. The public ceremonial reverence accorded these monuments precisely because they are either deliberately empty or no one knows who lies inside them, has no true precedents in earlier times…The ancient Greeks had cenotaphs, but for specific, known individuals whose bodies, for one reason or another, could not be retrieved for regular burial."...

The Anti-Capitalist Social Order in Hollywood, and Our Campuses

by John Weeks | May 23, 2024 | Featured Articles

The historian of reason Mark Ajita once described college as the place where young people go into massive debt and enslave their future selves so “they can go there and read books about how it shouldn’t be this way.” Never has this been more apparent than this spring as the state turned on American college students like a kindergarten version of the USSR: “The opaque [Soviet] regime had originated as a conspiracy and had never ceased being one, while fighting against what one scholar has aptly called the ‘omnipresent conspiracy.’ The plots could be so convoluted that many of those involved...

The Imperial Lamb: America, Israel, and Ritual Substitution

by John Weeks | May 9, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“And for you, here are these ritual substitutes…And may they die, but I will not die.”- Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi XXIV 5 I 15-16 The relationship between the United States Imperial Government (USIG) and the state of Israel is what the kids call “wtf!?” The dean of the Realist School of foreign policy, John Mearsheimer, put it this way: “We have a special relationship with Israel that bears no resemblance to any relationship between any two countries in the history of the world.” Until now the deep structural reality of this relationship has not been fully grasped. Israel is America’s...

The Creature From Palestine

by John Weeks | Apr 30, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The state is a monster that eats itself, along with individuals within its domain, its spheres of influence, and beyond. Citizens typically don’t perceive this due to the crafty rhetoric generated by the state’s intellectuals. Sometimes the rhetorical machinery breaks down and we get to see the monster in all its gruesome majesty. This has happened in Israel due to its “plausibly genocidal” savagery in Gaza, coupled with its structurally flawed, adolescent dependence on the United States’ information warfare apparatus. Much as Israel created a “Palestine Laboratory” for the workshopping of...

Diagnosing Israel’s Imperial Narcissism

by John Weeks | Apr 9, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

As it continues to engage in a “plausibly genocidal” mass murder spree in Gaza, the state of Israel has embraced the most psychotic and psychopathic interpretation of one of the most violent narratives from the Hebrew Bible. This is fueling a narcissism that puts the very existence of Israel at risk. On October 28, as Israeli ground forces began turning Gaza into a free-fire zone, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his nation. He vowed to destroy Hamas for “our existence” and also “for the benefit of all of humanity.” During the speech he said, “You must remember what Amalek...

Imperial Assisted Suicide

by John Weeks | Mar 11, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The United States Imperial Government (USIG) claims to be keeping the peace, underwriting the liberal, rules-based international order and safeguarding the global security architecture. This is not true. What the USIG is actually doing is killing people, helping get lots of people killed, and assisting foreign states as they commit corporate suicide. Israel’s ongoing, “plausibly genocidal” slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank is the latest example of this. The United States is an empire and empire is murder-suicide. Since 9/11, U.S. soldiers have directly killed more than 400,000 civilians...

Imperial Tilt

by John Weeks | Nov 20, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The Imperial U.S. Government (IUSG) and its “greatest ally,” the state of Israel, are in full psychotic & psychopathic Tilt. Together, these governments are confronting the entire planet as they reinforce each other’s fundamental and inverse mythologies. Tilt is a phenomenon in which agents lose control of their emotions and begin making bad decision after bad decision. It is commonly associated with poker, which is fitting since our imperial elites are gambling with our civilization and the very existence of the human species. The U.S. government began tilting hard during the American...

Canceling Taylor Swift Concerts Won’t Uplift California’s Workers

by John Weeks | Aug 29, 2023 | Featured Articles

California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis is concerned about the hotel workers in her state. Their days are too long, their lives are too short, and they aren’t even paid “decent wages” for their services. Here’s what Kounalakis did about it: she asked Taylor Swift to cancel six concerts in the Golden State. Kounalakis endorsed the Unite Here Local 11 “Open Letter From Hotel Housekeepers to Taylor Swift” at the end of July. The letter said, in part: “We are hotel housekeepers across Los Angeles. We make beds, clean bathrooms, and take care of every guest need. Your shows make our...