The US-led war in Afghanistan looks to be ending, and not a day too soon. America’s father, Benjamin Franklin, wisely wrote: ‘No good war; no bad peace.’Yet for 20 years, the United States waged all-out war against this small, remote, impoverished state whose only weapons were old AK47 rifles and the boundless courage of its fierce people.In my first book about Afghanistan, ‘War at the Top of the World,’ written after being in the field with the anti-Soviet ‘mujahidin’ warriors, I called them...

Below is my column on the expanding role of corporations as surrogates for the federal government. The White House is openly calling for greater corporate action to address censorship, health care, and other issues. That call is being supported by a growing list of Democratic members, journalists, and academics who have discovered the advantages of shared corporate governance. Here is the column: Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech in 1902, “The Control of Corporations,” which warned of the danger...

Parents across the country are fighting to stop government schools from indoctrinating their children with Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory is a form of Marxism that focuses on the “oppression” of racial minorities. Central to Critical Race Theory is the belief that free markets are a tool of racial oppression that must be abolished and replaced with socialism.This is dangerous nonsense. History shows that governments, not free markets, are and always have been the instruments of...

According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2020. That’s an all-time high, and the steepest year-over-year increase in thirty years. By way of comparison just over 72,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2019. Some 57,000 of those overdose deaths are estimated to have come from the use of opioids. Cocaine and methamphetamine overdose deaths expanded as well. But it’s not only that drug use (and abuse) rose: as stay-at-home orders were imposed,...

President Joe Biden slammed Big Tech companies this week for “killing people” by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic. It was a surprising condemnation of companies who have been loyal allies of Biden, including killing stories embarrassing to his family like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before the election. It also has censored stories questioning his victory in 2020. Nevertheless, Biden denounced the range of uncensored free speech...

So, it looks like GloboCap isn’t going to be happy until they have fomented the widespread social unrest — or de facto global civil war — that they need as a pretext to lock in the new pathologized totalitarianism and remake whatever remains of society into a global pseudo-medicalized police state, or that appears to where we’re headed currently. We appear to be heading there at breakneck speed. I don’t have a crystal ball or anything, but I’m expecting things to get rather ugly this Autumn,...

In what's surely the biggest "Imagine the outrage if Trump had done that" moment to date, the Biden administration has admitted that it is giving Facebook a list of accounts to censor for spreading "disinformation" about the Covid-19 response. "We've increased disinformation research and tracking," Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the press on Thursday. "Within the Surgeon General's Office, we're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We're working with doctors and...

RPI 2019 Scholars lunching with US Rep. John Duncan, Jr. ***Apply HERE***We're back! The Ron Paul Institute is pleased to announce the second Ron Paul Scholars' Seminar. The first Seminar, held in 2019, was a great success and thanks to generous sponsors we are able to again welcome upper division undergraduate students and graduate students to participate in a day-long foreign affairs and national security "boot camp."The Seminar will take place on September 3rd at the Dulles Airport Marriott...

Sixteen months into this virus, our government has nothing to offer us in terms of treatment in the hospital but remdesivir at $3,100 a dose and zero treatment options at the critical early stage, when serious complications can be pre-empted. Now, a new study from the University of Iowa shows what we knew all along – that remdesivir failed to reduce mortality one iota. Why are we to believe the same government entities about embracing the clot shots and shunning so many other cheaper and...

In less than six months in office President Joe Biden has already developed a national security policy that appears to lean strongly towards proactive use of military force in questionable circumstances, as if war is the answer to every problem. Biden should nevertheless be applauded for his persistence in withdrawing from Afghanistan after twenty years of ill-considered nation building, but even the departure from that country appears to be characterized by a lack of coordination, rather...

There are no fact-checkers for victory laps. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summarized his experience with the Covid-19 crisis: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.” Cuomo made that declaration in a speech concluding his one-year chairmanship of the National Governors Association. Because Cuomo’s spiel sought to rewrite history to exonerate politicians who ravaged Americans’ rights and liberties, it requires a rebuttal. Cuomo declared that “we maximized the moment...

On Monday, June 28th, Fox host Tucker Carlson dropped a bomb mid-show, announcing he’d been approached by a “whistleblower” who told him he was being spied on by the NSA.“The National Security Agency is monitoring our electronic communications,” he said, “and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”The reaction was swift, mocking, and ferocious. “Carlson is sounding more and more like InfoWars host and notorious conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones,” chirped CNN media...

While reading this week's Ron Paul Institute email newsletter, published by my colleague Daniel McAdams, I was struck by a quote that I've certainly read before, but it's just so relevant when reading it again today: “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn What is it about lies? Why are we constantly tasked with wading through a sea of lies? Well, part of...

“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”—Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis A federal COVID-19 vaccination strike force may soon be knocking on your door, especially if you live in a community with low vaccination rates. Will you let them in? More to the point, are you required to open the door? The Biden Administration has announced that it plans to send federal “surge response teams” on a “targeted community...

Progressives who work to end individual rights violations committed by the NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, and other federal agencies usually overlook, or even support, the routine violations of Americans’ rights by the IRS.For example, progressives rarely, if ever, speak out against the IRS’s targeting of the opponents of those in power. When liberal Democrats control the White House, the IRS targets advocates of free markets. When hawkish Republicans are in power, the IRS targets antiwar activists.The...