Blog 226 | The Libertarian Institute

Commissar Weiss Quits the Times

by Scott Horton | Jul 15, 2020 | Blog

Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton remind us that Bari Weiss made her entire career trying to silence Palestinians and those who care about them.

However, they suspect that she only quit to drum up publicity for her next big project which will surely be about how the only reason anyone would ever criticize Israel is because they’re gay or hate themselves or Jews or some nonsense.

Credit to the social justice crybaby mob if they really did force her out. Picking on someone with, uh, actual power for a change is a good look.

NYT Still Joking Around About Dead Americans in Afghanistan

by Scott Horton | Jul 15, 2020 | Blog

Do they have editors at this paper anymore, or it’s all just pre-packaged in Langley?

In an article about three marines who should have never been in Afghanistan in the first place getting killed there in a suicide truck bombing last year, they 1 try to push their Russian bounties hoax some more, while 2 admitting that they’ve got no case to make even though this is their 9th or 10th article in a series on this obvious lie:

“American intelligence agencies are investigating whether that car bomb was detonated at the behest of a Russian military agency paying bounties to Afghan militia groups for killing American troops. Such a possibility, if true, would be a staggering repudiation of Mr. Trump’s yearslong embrace of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Thus far, there is no conclusive evidence linking the deaths to any kind of Russian bounty.”

Yeah, yeah. “If true”; the story of the last four years of Russiagate lies in two words.

They then helpfully remind us:

The investigation into the deaths of the three Marines continues. Although Mr. Trump has dismissed the suspected Russian payments as “fake news,” Congress has begun hearings into the matter. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while the government so far lacks proof that any Russian bounties caused specific military casualties, “we are still looking.”

As that famous liar Donald Rumsfeld said about Iraq’s unconventional weapons, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Good enough for the newspaper of record, of course.

Cross-posted at Antiwar.com.

Reason Magazine Interview

by Scott Horton | Jul 15, 2020 | Blog

Zach Weismueller from Reason interviewed me about Trump’s foreign policy.

Some of it ended up in this report:

Trump’s Failed Promise to Stop America’s ‘Endless Wars’

BLM Protesters Sit In at Kentucky AG’s House, Arrested

by Scott Horton | Jul 15, 2020 | Blog

87 people were arrested and charged with felonies(!) for sitting in at the Kentucky Attorney General’s house to let him know that he better charge the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor. (ACLU is protesting against the felony charges. They’re almost sure to be dropped.)

This — accountability for killer cops — is exactly the point and these are exactly the tactics that the Black Lives Matter movement should be focusing on. The actual individual human beings sitting in the positions as judges, DAs, AGs, mayors, police chiefs, etc. must be made to understand that they personally will be held accountable, and not just maybe-someday at the ballot box. “Your neighbors are all going to hate your guts for bringing all these chanting black people to your neighborhood every day,” is certain to be far more effective.

Just look how they’ve shaken the black female DA in L.A.: She’s terrified because they want to force her to jail murderer cops. So far she’s more afraid of the police than the people, but that’s clearly beginning to change.

Congratulations to the protest leaders who are focusing their efforts in this way. Blaming everybody who’s not a cop for being “racist” is a massive waste of effort, when it’s not downright counterproductive. Focusing on the individual people of all colors who *actually* help cops get away with murder is surely the way to go.

Keith Preston on: American Secession The Looming Threat Of National Breakup

by Steven Woskow | Jul 14, 2020 | Blog

From Keith Preston at Attack The System: A review of F.H Buckley’s book American Secession (available on Amazon)

51x8obbjphl Americans have never been more divided, and we’re ripe for a breakup. The bitter partisan animosities, the legislative gridlock, the growing acceptance of violence in the name of political virtue—it all invites us to think that we’d be happier were we two different countries. In all the ways that matter, save for the naked force of law, we are already two nations.

There’s another reason why secession beckons, says F.H. Buckley: we’re too big. In population and area, the United States is one of the biggest countries in the world, and American Secession provides data showing that smaller countries are happier and less corrupt. They’re less inclined to throw their weight around militarily, and they’re freer too. There are advantages to bigness, certainly, but the costs exceed the benefits. On many counts, bigness is badness.

Across the world, large countries are staring down secession movements. Many have already split apart. Do we imagine that we, almost alone in the world, are immune? We had a civil war to prevent a secession, and we’re tempted to see that terrible precedent as proof against another effort. This book explodes that comforting belief and shows just how easy it would be for a state to exit the Union if that’s what its voters wanted.

But if that isn’t what we really want, Buckley proposes another option, a kind of Secession Lite, that could heal our divisions while allowing us to keep our identity as Americans.