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The first time I met Vladimir, my Russian college roommate freshman year, we got to talking about politics and it turned out he was all for the free market, and in fact went on to join the college investment club.

At that time Bill Weld was governor of Massachusetts and there was a referendum -- Question 3 -- on the ballot that fall that would have rolled back $2 billion in tax increases. I told Vlad about it.

His question to me, posed in all sincerity: "Why wouldn't the vote in favor be 100 percent?"

You would think it would be, wouldn't you?

Murray Rothbard was interested in the question of how an institution like the state, which creates nothing and can only expropriate and redistribute, bamboozles the public into thinking it can enrich them, that it is the one good guy in a sea of bad guys, that when something major goes wrong (think 2008) it was an innocent bystander and had nothing to do with it, etc.

That is a very interesting question, and the way the state and its cadre of intellectuals (if we can call them that) persuade so many people to believe absurdities in defiance of their own interests is indeed something to marvel at.

Beyond this deliberate obfuscation, it also fills some groups of its subjects with envy and resentment toward other groups of its subjects. After all, the more they fight among themselves, the less they take notice of what the state itself is doing, and as they fight among themselves they are likely to turn to the state for help (e.g., group A is oppressing us in group B, so please seize their stuff and make them miserable), thereby growing the state still further.

Genuine wisdom comes from realizing that (1) the kind of sociopaths who behave this way, and who lie through their teeth 24 hours a day about domestic matters and portray themselves as the heroes of the story while demonizing the builders and creators, are the kind of people who will lie 24 hours a day about foreign affairs as well, and (2) the sprawling "homeland security" fiefdom is just as much a racket as anything else the federal government gets up to.

This is another way of saying that nobody who was capable of seeing through the COVID fiasco should have fallen for the Iran debacle.

Dave Smith put it this way:

Trump has now restarted the most unpopular war in American history after walking away from every single original war aim last week. He conceded uranium enrichment, missiles development, their relationship with Hezbollah and the nuclear dust.

We’re now solely fighting over the strait and Lebanon, two non-issues before the war.

This thing is an indefensible disaster and all of the people who cheerlead it have been revealed for the clowns and traitors they are.

That is the full truth of the matter.

Almost everything many people think they know about Iran and the fuel cycle, or the so-called "47-year war" it is supposed to have been waging (without anyone noticing, naming it a war, or even mentioning it in the last presidential campaign or any presidential campaign), is propaganda that Pravda would have been embarrassed to publish.

Hence the value of what our friend Scott Horton is doing at the Scott Horton Academy.

Here you will find the real truth about all these things the liars have filled our heads with, whether it's ginning up a new cold war with Russia, or pursuing a useless and counterproductive "War on Terror," or promoting heterodox "Christian Zionism."

The Academy starts at ground zero and builds step by step until your brain is a bulletproof repository of truth and good sense on subjects most people speak about from ignorance.

If you believe as I do that the neocon war machine is doing terrible and lasting damage to the United States, you owe it to yourself to become a formidable, indeed practically invincible voice for peace and common sense. The Scott Horton Academy makes that easy, even enjoyable.

Scott's just added brand new courses that will have you salivating.

For a few days only, therefore, coupon code WOODS gets you a bigger discount than usual:
 
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