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Featured Articles

Foreign Aid Isn’t

Foreign Aid Isn’t

by | Feb 14, 2025 |

Here are two personal stories about foreign aid. Some 20 years ago when Slow Food asked me to be part of the U.S. delegation attending the International Slow Food Convivium in Turin, Italy hosted by Carlo Petrini, I went with Michael Pollan. Every time I wasn't speaking, I attended presentations by a delegation from an African country. Every single one started with something like this: "We have plenty of resources. We can feed ourselves. You western countries need to leave us alone. Your cheap...

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The Cost of Freedom: Confronting Military-Industrial Profiteering and Restoring Fiscal Integrity to Preserve Our Republic

The Cost of Freedom: Confronting Military-Industrial Profiteering and Restoring Fiscal Integrity to Preserve Our Republic

by | Feb 14, 2025 |

Our government is drowning in multi-trillion-dollar financial corruption and debt while a fear-peddling national security state has reached deeply into the personal lives of each and every American, justifying its existence through endless wars cooked up by a deep state which has become the most corrupt marching band and chowder society in American history. That deep state of permanent governance, entrenched media, think tanks, NGOs, and multi-billion-dollar government contractors,...

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The Myth of Emergency Powers

The Myth of Emergency Powers

by | Feb 13, 2025 |

“The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.”-- Ex Parte Milligan, Supreme Court of the United States, 1866. Last week, President Donald Trump in one...

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Biden Finally Did Something Right

Biden Finally Did Something Right

by | Feb 13, 2025 |

Come see Rep. Duncan speak at the Ron Paul Institute Spring Conference! Many years ago, during a hearing on a request for some new federal courthouses, Rep. (later Senator) Jim Inhofe whispered to me: “You could shoot a gun down the hall of almost any federal courthouse at 3:00 on any weekday and never hit anyone.” I don’t know why he said that, but it is even more true today. Jury trials have almost become a thing of the past in both federal and state courts. I thought of this when President...

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The Era of ‘Standing’ With Foreign Nations Must End

The Era of ‘Standing’ With Foreign Nations Must End

by | Feb 13, 2025 |

America’s Founders were very explicit on how our relationships with foreign nations should be conducted. George Washington: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…” Thomas Jefferson: “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none." John Quincy Adams: “America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.” We’re all familiar...

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Gaza on the Riviera Going Nowhere

Gaza on the Riviera Going Nowhere

by | Feb 12, 2025 |

Well, I was wrong again. I thought that Donald Trump’s scheme to take control of Gaza and send the Palestinians to some great, new homes in Egypt and Jordan was just a negotiating ploy. Nope. He is serious about it and persists insisting that it is a great idea and has the backing of Arab nations in the region. Nope. That dog won’t hunt. Trump met today with Jordan’s King Abdullah and reiterated his pitch at a lengthy impromptu press conference in the Oval Office. King Abdullah sat...

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Crimson Tide: Only One-Third of Harvard Students Feel Comfortable Speaking About Controversial Subjects

Crimson Tide: Only One-Third of Harvard Students Feel Comfortable Speaking About Controversial Subjects

by | Feb 12, 2025 |

Harvard has long been accused of fostering an anti-free speech environment and quelching viewpoint diversity. That was the subject of my recent debate with Law Professor Randall Kennedy at Harvard. A new report confirms many of the objections raised in that debate, including a chilling environment where only a third of Harvard’s most recent graduating class expressed comfort in discussing controversial subjects. Some 89 percent of the graduating class responded to the...

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From Oversight to Overlooked: The Government’s Failure to Control Trillions in Misspent Funds

From Oversight to Overlooked: The Government’s Failure to Control Trillions in Misspent Funds

by | Feb 12, 2025 |

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), created more than a century ago to assist Congress in its constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities, issued a report just last year which estimated that in a span of 20 years, including 2023, that the US Government made $2.7 TRILLION dollars in improper expenditures resulting from overpayments, inaccurate record keeping, and fraud. In fiscal year 2023 alone, GAO determined the federal government improperly dispensed $269...

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Putin Dumps Bucket of Reality-Cold Water on Trump

Putin Dumps Bucket of Reality-Cold Water on Trump

by | Feb 11, 2025 |

The diplomatic tango between Washington and Moscow is underway, but Trump’s promise to bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine on Trump’s terms appears more unlikely with each passing day. Prior to the conversation between the two leaders during the last four days, diplomats representing Moscow and Washington in their respective embassies did the detail work of arranging the phone diplomacy. But, according to Borizzkman, there were two, not one, conversations (this is Borizzkman’s concise...

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Why Did Republicans Fund ‘Transgender Dance’ in Bangladesh?

Why Did Republicans Fund ‘Transgender Dance’ in Bangladesh?

by | Feb 10, 2025 |

For years, the Republican Party-aligned International Republican Institute’s (IRI) agenda in Bangladesh has been dominated by ethnic minority and transgender issues, with leaked documents revealing the Institute sponsored “the largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh” and that a full 24% of the 1,868 Bangladeshis who participated in IRI programs in 2019 and 2020 were transgender. The IRI’s cultural activities were conducted with explicitly subversive objectives, aiming to recruit...

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The Most Dramatic Narrative Shift in Modern History

The Most Dramatic Narrative Shift in Modern History

by | Feb 10, 2025 |

The most dramatic narrative shift in this post-lockdown period has been the flip in the perceptions of government itself. For decades and even centuries, government was seen as the essential bulwark to defend the poor, empower the marginalized, realize justice, even the playing field in commerce, and guarantee rights to all.  Government was the wise manager, curbing the excess of populist enthusiasm, blunting the impact of ferocious market dynamics, guaranteeing the safety of products,...

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The US Should Not Take Over Gaza

The US Should Not Take Over Gaza

by | Feb 10, 2025 |

This week, President Trump upended US Middle East policy by announcing that the United States would “take over” war-ravaged Gaza and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” President Trump also said the Palestinians living in Gaza would be (temporarily?) relocated to Jordan or Egypt. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul came out strongly against the proposal. Senator Paul pointed out that the plan contradicted the American people’s vote for “America First.” What was more surprising was that South...

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Signs that President Donald Trump Is Preparing for War on Mexico

Signs that President Donald Trump Is Preparing for War on Mexico

by | Feb 9, 2025 |

Will Donald Trump’s presidency bring a United States war on Mexico? There are indications that it may. In November of 2019, nearly three years into his first term as US president, Trump was declaring his desire for the US military to attack in Mexico. Trump expressed his desire to, with the approval of Mexico’s president, “wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.” But, this action did not materialize as Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was not...

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Make The Ukraine Truce, Then Cut Europe Loose

Make The Ukraine Truce, Then Cut Europe Loose

by | Feb 8, 2025 |

Come see David Stockman speak at the Ron Paul Institute Spring Conference! Exactly 177 days after being sworn to office, America’s greatest peace president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, announced that the demolition derby on the Korean peninsula would be halted, and that an armistice would prevail henceforth—which armistice remains in place to this very day.  Unfortunately, Ike’s truce in the hot war never got translated into a permanent peace treaty or normalization of relations between the two...

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The Greatest (Geopolitical) Showman’s ‘Inside Out’ Political Solution

The Greatest (Geopolitical) Showman’s ‘Inside Out’ Political Solution

by | Feb 7, 2025 |

How to do the impossible? America is instinctively an expansionist power, needing new fields to conquer; new financial horizons to master and to exploit. The US is built that way. Always was. But – if you are Trump, wanting to withdraw from wars on the empire’s periphery, yet nonetheless wanting too, to cast a shiny image of a muscular America expanding and leading global politics and finance – how to do it? Well, President Trump – ever the showman – has a solution. Disdain the now-discredited...

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Tariffs and the Constitution

Tariffs and the Constitution

by | Feb 6, 2025 |

The taxing power in the federal government resides in the Congress. The Constitution states that Congress has the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts” of the federal government. Indeed, in order to emphasize the location of this power in the Congress, the Constitution also requires that all legislation “for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” So, if only Congress can impose taxes, how can the president impose tariffs?...

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Peace & Prosperity Blog

Ayn Rand, Stamps, and Inflation

Ayn Rand, Stamps, and Inflation

by | Jan 18, 2024

Ayn Rand was a novelist and philosopher. Less well known is that she was also a stamp collector. In her 1971 Stamp Journal essay “Why I Like Stamp Collecting,” Rand discussed why...

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Going for the Gold in Texas

Going for the Gold in Texas

by | Jan 12, 2024

This March, voters in the Texas Republican primary election will see on their ballots a proposition calling for the state government, utilizing its Texas Bullion Depository that...

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