Kym Robinson | The Libertarian Institute

The Savior and Revenge

by Kym Robinson | Oct 25, 2023 | Featured Articles

Righteous vengeance often spurs rage that spills blood endlessly. In the 1998 film Savior, revenge and the brutality of war steers our "hero" Joshua Rose, played by Dennis Quaid, into his redemption. After losing his family in a terrorist attack, Joshua walks into a nearby Mosque where he suspects those responsible to be and guns down a group of praying men. He escapes to join the French Foreign Legion where he learns to be a sniper. After his six years in the Legion are up, Joshua declares that he would like to "kill people that he hates for a change." Cut to Bosnia, 1993. He fights for the...

Rage and the Meme Effect

by Kym Robinson | Oct 18, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“People shouldn’t expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the ‘fringe’ media.”- Ted Koppel It’s called the fog of war for a reason, and yet it is with viciousness, fortified by bias and outrage, that we witness a certain eagerness to kill thousands, if not millions. Media and government officials have always been unreliable sources before and during a war, especially when public relations are a crucial weapon. Deception and lies to control the narrative and simplify affairs into a good versus evil struggle is key. To dehumanize and alienate the foe and...

Watching Us vs. Them Through a Digital Keyhole

by Kym Robinson | Oct 10, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“Soldier and civilian, they died in their tens of thousands because death had been concocted for them, morality hitched like a halter round the warhorse so that we could talk about 'target-rich environments' and 'collateral damage'—that most infantile of attempts to shake off the crime of killing—and report the victory parades, the tearing down of statues and the importance of peace. Governments like it that way. They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, 'them' and 'us,' victory or defeat. But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and...

Losing a Plane? Try Losing a Nuke

by Kym Robinson | Oct 2, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Recently, the U.S. Marine Corps lost (and later found) an F-35 aircraft. The circumstances are mostly undisclosed or rumor based, though that is to be expected in regards to such a sensitive matter. While it has become a comical example of incompetence, it’s not the worst thing that the U.S. military has lost. They've also lost nuclear weapons...on a few occasions. The U.S. term for it is “Broken Arrow." There have officially been 32 reported incidents involving Broken Arrows. Lost ‘nukes’ outside of the United States are unknown, given that not all national governments are as open with...

Goldfish in Chief

by Kym Robinson | Sep 19, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Former U.S. President Barack Obama recently put out a tweet with a link to organizations that may be of some help to the people of Libya due to recent floods. NATO was absent from the list. Whoever runs the former president's social media is likely unaware why some responded with sarcasm or dismay that the former commander in chief who presided over the intervention that caused the ruination of Libya would post such a token tweet. That is, after all, the nature of politics: a distinct disconnect from outcomes and consequences by those who lie, cheat, and charm their way to the top of the...

The COVID Times

by Kym Robinson | Sep 11, 2023 | Featured Articles

“I never wanted it, I didn’t need it. I just gave in, it’s my biggest regret." The words of an Australian man in his mid-thirties who spent most of the "COVID years” active on social media challenging the narrative. Referring to the vaccination as the “clot shot," he knew other men who had suffered injury from the vaccinations. Despite his hesitancy and lack of fear for the COVID-19 virus itself, he succumbed. That is how many Australians were motivated to roll up their sleeves. With a rabid media campaign, a government that bullied and restricted life, and a community of familiars and...

The Prussian Nights of War

by Kym Robinson | Aug 31, 2023 | Featured Articles

It’s not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning, by the walls half muffled: The mother’s wounded, still alive. The little daughter’s on the mattress, Dead. How many have been on it? A platoon, a company perhaps? A girl’s been turned into a woman, A woman turned into a corpse. It all comes down to simple phrases: Do Not Forget! Do Not Forgive! Blood for Blood! A Tooth for a Tooth! The mother begs, Tote mich, Soldat! - Prussian Nights, Captain Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet Red Army, World War II “Things happen in war," we are often told. It is a blanket that drapes across atrocities, and...

Biographies of Empire

by Kym Robinson | Aug 16, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Many books have been written about the rise and fall of great powers. Authors after the fact speculate on what went wrong and how the decline started, while those contemporary writers during the ascendance promise a future of brilliance and endless prosperity. For every Edward Gibbon who looks back fondly on empire and diagnoses blame to alien infections, there are those who imagine the future glory of a thousand year Reich. In our own time we are witnessing the decline of a mono-polar moment of a solely American dominated international order, perhaps returning to the tradition of competing...