The RPI Challenge

“People want to be safe,” Joe Biden repeatedly declared in Tuesday night’s debate. The 2020 presidential race could turn into a referendum on whether vastly increasing government power can provide “freedom from fear.” This has been a recurring theme in recent American history that consistently brings out the worst in both politicians and voters.  The 2020 presidential campaign thus far has plenty of unpleasant parallels to 9/11 and the 2004 election. The terrorist attacks on September 11,...

Coronavirus crackdowns have been devastating to live music performances. Venues have been shut down. Large gatherings have been banned. Even when venues have been allowed to reopen, they have been subjected to occupancy limits and other restrictions that can prevent profitable operation. Watching a show while wearing a mask and trying to “social distance” can be a drag. Van Morrison and Eric Clapton are two marquee musicians who are saying enough already with the restrictions — let venues...

Politicians have destroyed more than 13 million jobs this year in a deluge of edicts aimed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 200,000 Americans still died from the coronavirus, but the anti-COVID government crackdowns probably did far more damage than the virus. The COVID crisis has also shown how easy it is for politicians to fan fears to seize nearly absolute power. In March, Donald Trump proclaimed that “we are at war with an invisible enemy.” He also declared, “I’m a wartime...

Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee grilled Michael Pack, who President Trump recently appointed to head the US government’s state propaganda arm, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Pack was appointed in June and started a big shakeup at the US state media outlets run by the USAGM, like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. Pack fired senior staffers, pushed out management, and froze funding. During last week’s hearing, Democrats and Republicans on the committee teamed up to...

When Dr. Ron Paul suffered a health scare during his live Liberty Report show last Friday, I was perhaps less worried than most of his friends, family, and fans. His remarkable vitality, vigor, and energy are well known to those around him, along with his penchant for exercise, clean living, and light eating. Having known him thirty years, I simply had no recollection of him ever being sick or out of commission. This is a man who had never missed a day of work or an event, at least in my...

I remember watching Walt Disney’s film Dumbo’s Feather as a kid. Released in 1941 the story is about a cute baby elephant born with huge ears and forced to perform as a Circus clown. Dumbo is befriended by a mouse who confidently proclaims Dumbo can use his big ears to fly if he will only hold a magic feather in his trunk. Leaping off the high-dive platform with his magic feather Dumbo indeed flies! But he soon discovers the feather isn’t magic at all because he could fly without it. So what...

We have been discussing a crackdown on some campuses against conservative columnists and newspapers, including the firing of a conservative student columnist at Syracuse, the public condemnation of a student columnist at Georgetown, and a campaign against one of the oldest conservative student newspapers in the country at Dartmouth. Now, The Badger Herald, a student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin Madison, has dismissed columnist Tripp Grebe after he wrote a column opposing the...

How many times have we been told that the information we send to the Internal Revenue Service in our federal income tax returns is guaranteed to be kept confidential? So much for that myth, as President Trump can now attest. The New York Times somehow secured a copy of Trump’s income tax returns and is excitedly telling the world what they contain. One thing is for sure: If the president of the United States can’t keep his income tax returns private, no one else can either. From the very start...

Governor Ron DeSantis has proven it: it is actually possible for a politician to wise up and do the right thing. In a sweeping order announced September 25, the governor has opened up the entire economy. He has even limited the ability of local governments to impose more restrictions and collect fines for mask violations.  Inevitably, the announcement was decried by the lockdowners, even though, as the governor pointed out: - Covid+ hospitalizations have declined by 77% since the July peak.  -...

In the Soviet Union it was forbidden to dispute the wisdom of the “party line.” That’s because Marxian communism was viewed as the scientifically inevitable progression of mankind. For Marx and Lenin, the “science was settled.” Therefore anyone speaking out against “the science” of the Soviet system must be acting with malice; must actually want destruction; must want people to die.Anyone voicing opposition to the “settled science” of Marxism-Leninism soon found their voice silenced....

As many of you have already heard, YouTube (owned by Google, with deep roots in the deep state), inexplicably removed our Ron Paul Liberty Report from 23 September, titled "Covid Whistleblowers Expose Narrative As 'Total Fraud,'" and officially delivered a "warning" to the Ron Paul Liberty Report You Tube channel. They claimed in the notice that the program, which you can watch for yourself here, violated their "community guidelines" regarding "spam, deceptive practices, and scams." We are in...

We have been discussing the rising intolerance for conservative, libertarian, and Republican students and faculty on campuses across the country. Faculties rarely hire conservative or libertarian professors; journals rarely publish studies from conservative authors. As the number of conservative faculty members diminish or disappear on faculties, schools appear to be carrying out the same bias in student admissions. The Harvard Crimson has finished its annual survey of the incoming class of...

The US Supreme Court will not save us. It doesn’t matter which party gets to pick the replacement to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the US Supreme Court. The battle that is gearing up right now is yet more distraction and spin to keep us oblivious to the steady encroachment on our rights by the architects of the American Police State. Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. Although the courts were established to serve as Courts of Justice, what we have been...

Let’s face it, Americans love convenience! Big box stores like Home Depot, Walmart and Target have ridden the convenience train to untold wealth. Amazon has tapped into the love of convenience by enabling us to “shop” from our couches. No more pesky hunting for the credit card and having to type in all that info. Just one click and you’re done! And yes I’ll admit I enjoy convenience too. But too much convenience can be a trap if we’re not careful. The American Revolutionary War was fought to...

The United States has always had a love affair with certain generals. George Washington, of course, was immensely popular, and thirteen US presidents were generals before they were president. But prior to the Second World War, generals as a group were not revered or treated with any particular veneration or respect. In fact, in the nineteenth century, full-time US military officers were often treated with suspicion and contempt. While state militia officers were regarded as indispensable night...

Like me, you got most of your news from PeaceData.net. It was what you looked to to form your opinions, including the all-important one about which way to vote. What you missed on PeaceData you caught up with via Facebook memes and Tweets from people you do not know. Or maybe not. Maybe like nearly everyone on planet earth you have no idea what I’m talking about and have never looked at the PeaceData site. That reality should pretty much end the discussion but this is 2020. So you must know by...