Kym Robinson | The Libertarian Institute

‘Best of the Best’: A Karate Team of Individuals

by Kym Robinson | Apr 14, 2022 | Featured Articles

“A team from the United States is going to compete against Korea in a Tae Kwon Do tournament. The team consists of fighters from all over the country - can they overcome their rivalry and work together to win?" The 1980s gave us a wave of action movies like no other decade. The martial arts genre was especially popular, filled with montages, mullets, listenable soundtracks, and individuals overcoming the odds. They kicked ass. The 1989 film Best of the Best was a celebration of all of those things. A simple plot about the U.S. karate team forming, training, and then travelling to Korea to...

The ‘Threat’ of the Big Bad Bear

by Kym Robinson | Apr 6, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

At the height of the late Cold War period, Andrew Cockburn wrote The Threat, a book that explored the bear cave of assumed Soviet military dominance. Challenging the narrative of Soviet supremacy—the belief that the Red Bear not only had greater numbers in their favor but also technological marvels that were capable of ensuring swift victory in time of war—Cockburn exposed myths that had been invented: a perceived supremacy that helped justify NATO, the Pentagon’s spending sprees, and a military-industrial complicated nation state that continues to grow long after the Berlin Wall fell and...

Medusian Liberty

by Kym Robinson | Mar 24, 2022 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

“A home might be a pretty little house Filled with people and things Comfort and ease A home might be a lean to on the beach Nothing but waves rolling in The sun on my skin A home might a tent filled with friends And wherever I go I’m home with them A home might be nothing at all Just the trees up above Songs and the stars I love Don’t tell me what my life needs to be All that I need to be home Is to be me and be free I just want to be free Living free “ Freedomcat – “Living Free” Myths are not real. They are stories that are told to convey morals and lessons. History and culture is rife...

An Indictment of ‘Public Health’

by Kym Robinson | Mar 16, 2022 | Featured Articles

We live in an age of public health. Even in countries with private sector health care, government regulates and steers the practice of medicine. On the surface this may seem a positive. In theory it's an established framework to protect the patient and practitioners from injury and risks. It exists to coordinate in times of widespread crisis and can act as an impartial entity to protect those who are vulnerable. It can also act as the moral heart of a nation, determining the ethics and values in such a manner to guide those who are at times pragmatic or emotionally exposed when decisions...

Warmongers Against Putin’s War

by Kym Robinson | Mar 8, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Revulsion to war is inconsistent for some. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought critics of this particular war to the antiwar movement, though they likely will return to their pro-war instincts when current headlines fade. For now, in the West, Vladimir Putin has been labelled as the next Adolf Hitler. Ironically Hitler was a product of the West and led a terrible invasion of Russia (a memory that lingers and moulds present day Russian foreign policy). Twenty years ago Saddam Hussein was the next Hitler. Colonel Qaddafi, Slobodan Milosevic, Mahmoud Ahmanddinejad and so on were all...

Remembering the Men Who Avoided Nuclear Apocolypse

by Kym Robinson | Mar 1, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is remembered for its frightful brinkmanship, when the United States and Soviet Union danced close to the furnace of global destruction. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and a war of the worst kind was averted. One such cool head was Soviet naval officer Vasili Aleksandrovich Arkhipov, who was aboard a submarine at the height of the crisis. The nuclear torpedo armed submarine he was a crew member of came under depth charge attack from the U.S. Navy. Soviet doctrine at the time determined that if such a submarine came under attack, three officers needed to...

Reinhard Heydrich: Nazi Hero, Moral Monster

by Kym Robinson | Jan 26, 2022 | Featured Articles

Martyr of the State Known as “The Butcher of Prague,” Reinhard Heydrich was for the government of Nazi Germany an accomplished senior figure. He had the preferred look that many racialists enjoyed, clean cut and Germanic. A man that Adolf Hitler had described as having an “Iron Heart." For many of the monumental events in the history of the Nazi government, Heydrich had helped organize or participated in them. From the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the Kristallnacht persecutions, he was a crucial element of the prewar government and its growth. Heydrich was an excellent administrator and would be...

The Sapper in the Sewer

by Kym Robinson | Jan 12, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“The enemy was nowhere, but everywhere.”- Dan Rather, CBS News Report, Saigon, 1968 As the world approaches a period of unmanned systems, automation, and perhaps in many fields human obsolescence, warfare marches into its own future of certain uncertainty. Despite the great leaps in technology, warfare is very much the domain of the imperfect human. Perhaps in the not too distant future artificial intelligence will guide and “man” killing machines against one another and human beings. Engineers and geniuses will create and devise such killing machines to ensure that governments stay standing...