The RPI Challenge

The main reason we are seemingly so accepting of lockdowns and vaccine mandates is that we have been conditioned to view a pandemic or an epidemic as a war being waged on our society. In wartime we naturally expect civil liberties to be suspended. Likewise, the reasoning goes, during a pandemic we need to act in a unified way under some central command to fight this viral existential threat. Individual rights and freedoms must be curtailed for the sake of the greater good. But that’s a false...

According to the CDC, as of April 26, 2021, 3,427,321 people died from all causes in the United States in 2020. In comparison, 2,854,838 people died from all causes in the US in 2019 of which the CDC says 345,323 died from Covid-19. Trouble is we know a large percentage of these deaths were “with” Covid, not necessarily “from” Covid. Yes, the total number of deaths was up in 2020 but the fact is we really don’t know exactly how many were attributable to Covid alone. Some estimates suggest the...

The newly released ‘Profits of War’ report from Brown University has revealed in staggering detail the full extent of the corruption unleashed by Washington’s profligate defense spending during the 20-year War on Terror. It notes that since the start of the intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001, Pentagon spending has totalled $14 trillion, with the US war budget increasing between 2002 and 2003 by more than the entire military spending of any other country. Between one-third and one-half...

The Biden administration on Thursday announced sweeping new mandates. The new mandates require that all employers with more than one hundred workers require workers to be vaccinated or to test for the virus weekly. The mandates also require covid vaccinations for the 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid. Moreover, vaccines are mandated for all employees of the federal government’s executive branch, and for all contractors who do business with the...

Remarks delivered to the Ron Paul Institute Student Seminar, September 3, 2021 I accepted the invitation to speak with you today only with great trepidation. This was for at least three reasons. The first is that, both for self-protection in an increasingly unfree country and my growing sense that nothing I or anyone else can say will make much difference in averting the horrors I believe are coming our way, I had ceased my public writing and speaking life, such as it was. I reluctantly have...

The Constitution of the United States represents the classic solution to one of humankind’s greatest political problems: that is, how does a small group of states combine into a strong union without the states losing their individual powers and surrendering their control over local affairs? Although the Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, a “bill of rights” was demanded and became an eventuality in order to protect the citizenry’s fundamental rights or “first liberties” against...

Shortly before 9/11 the National Security Agency (NSA) asked Thomas Drake to join its senior staff. As things turned out, Sept. 11 was his first day on the job. Already au courant with key NSA programs via his earlier contract work, Tom was immediately tasked to find out how much information NSA had on terrorist attacks before 9/11. Drake found an embarrassing abundance of such information. But when he told top NSA management, his investigation was abruptly shut down. On Jan. 7, 2014 in a VIPS...

Nothing upset the Washington Beltway elites more than when in a 2007 presidential debate I pointed out the truth about the 9/11 attacks: they attacked us because we’ve been in the Middle East, sanctioning and bombing the civilian population, for decades. The 9/11 attackers were not motivated to commit suicide terrorism on the Twin Towers and Pentagon because they dislike our freedoms, as then-President Bush claimed. That was a self-serving lie.They hated – and hate – us because we kill them...

More than eight months after the worst attack on Washington since the Civil War, as Joe Biden describes it, not a single American has been charged with sedition or treason related to the alleged “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.As Ben Boychuk explained in his Thursday essay, despite many harsh warnings insisting the government would build sedition cases, so far Biden’s Justice Department has failed to live up to its promise.That’s not to say, of course, that the abusive “Capitol breach” probe...

This is it. This is why our founders created a layered approach to government — for this very nightmare scenario we are confronted with today. The question is whether the Republican governors and legislators will rise to the occasion.We all knew this was coming. Yesterday, the Biden regime announced a full federal requirement to get the waning, leaky, and risky COVID shots that are so ineffective that they already need a third shot. In following Israel's lead, the Biden administration is not...

“There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool's paradise.” -Winston Churchill On Thursday, our newfound Dear Leader, Joe Biden, gave one of the most tyrannical speeches in American history. For 30 minutes, he declared that the federal...

President Biden has decided to go hard on the virus. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Sadly for him, those tiny little pathogens don’t pay taxes, don’t vote, don’t have Social Security numbers, can’t be drafted, and don’t answer phone calls from poll takers, which is to say that he and his agencies cannot really control them. That must be frustrating, poor man.Instead his plan is to control what he can control: people, and, most immediately, federal workers and the employees of large regulated companies....

Crime is surging in American cities, but the official data leave out the most frequent source of highway robberies. More than 400 cities have set up red light cameras that are institutionalized racketeering that subverts public safety. Tens of thousands of American drivers have been injured and many people killed as a result of reckless revenue pursuit by local governments. Local governments have partnered with private companies to build, deploy, and maintain the cameras that bring bounty...

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”—Osama bin Laden (October 2001), as reported by CNN What a strange and harrowing road we’ve walked since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) surprised even many of its harshest critics this week when it strongly defended coercive programs and other mandates from the state in the name of fighting COVID. “Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties,” its Twitter account announced, adding that “vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public."If you were surprised to see the ACLU heralding the civil liberties...

Some of you may know the name Alex Berenson, the former New York Times journalist who comes from a left-liberal background. He has been absolutely fearless and tireless on Twitter over the past eighteen months, documenting the overreach and folly of covid policy—and the mixed reality behind official assurances on everything from social distancing to masks to vaccine efficacy. He became a one-man army against the prevailing covid narratives. Mr. Berenson is famous for creating a viral (no pun...