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As the dust clears a bit, the present war continues to raise questions, to say the least.

For example, it looks as if Steve Witkoff, who had little background in previous Iranian negotiations and agreements, and even less in the subject of nuclear enrichment, did not understand Iranian proposals, to the point that he took them to mean the opposite of what they did mean.

When the discussion turned to the research reactor in Tehran that the United States itself built for Iran nearly 60 years ago, Iran's negotiators said they wanted to keep it. That reactor is incapable of nuclear enrichment. Witkoff, not realizing this, evidently took this demand as evidence that the Iranians intended to push toward nuclear weapons.

The Omani foreign minister who mediated the agreements in fact flew to the United States to try to explain to JD Vance that in fact significant progress had been taking place in terms of what Iran was consenting to.

The whole thing is an embarrassing mess.

It's hard to talk to some Americans about this subject, though. You can tell them all day long that their government is corrupt and does awful things and rips them off and lies to them and they'll nod their heads in agreement.

But when you say their government does exactly the same things when it comes to foreign policy, well now, that is not allowed! USA! USA!

I used to be the same way, dear reader. Not anymore. I'm done making excuses for these people, domestically or otherwise.

I'll never forget when I first started reading Chronicles magazine as a college student in the early 1990s. These were the most conservative thinkers I had ever encountered (and they published the best libertarians, like Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell), and they were contemptuous of the imperial foreign policy that the neocons were cheering. Absolutely contemptuous. That sure woke me up.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, is evidently looking for some kind of off-ramp here. Israel doesn't seem to be in the mood to give it to him, and his fair-weather friends Senator Lindsey Graham and Never Trumper Mark Levin will turn on him in an instant if he doesn't carry through with full regime change.

Regime change has never been effected by air power alone, and that lesson of history is not going to be overturned here. "Ground troops," though, are an impossibility if you know anything about Iran's mountainous terrain. So where does the U.S. regime go from here? I'll get to that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here in the United States we live in a fantasy world in which the resources to wage these campaigns seem to come from nowhere. So our people can go on cheering for war like it's a cool video game they can watch on TV, as I used to do when I was growing up (I was sure this was the "conservative" point of view!), and not have to weigh that against their own material interests. They never feel a pinch in the pocketbook.

Of course, they do pay for all this indirectly, through price inflation, but they don't associate the one thing with the other. They think high prices are caused by greedy corporations.

I could come up with a dozen topics like this about which Americans know next to nothing, and where their ignorance does them great harm, but money would be toward the top of that list if not at the very top.

Almost nobody knows anything about what money is, how it's created in the U.S., and how the present monetary system (as I mentioned yesterday) deforms every decent thing.

It so happens that my friend Andy Keusal, a homeschooling father of ten and a genuine expert on the subject (on which he has 25 years of professional experience), just released a course intended to get your kids' heads on straight on this crucial topic (and you, dear parent, may want to take it yourself -- there's no law against that).

Andy takes a biblical perspective on the question, so if that doesn't interest you then the course may not be for you, but part of his argument is that sound money is not only economically superior but is also contemplated in the Bible itself.

You can take 15% off Andy's course with (what else?) code WOODS:
 
Check out the P.S., just below, for my super-duper bonus for anyone who picks it up by tomorrow at midnight.

Tom Woods

P.S. Pick up Andy's course and forward your receipt to bonuses@tomwoods.com, and you can have my Government course for the Ron Paul Curriculum (which sells at my homeschool site for $50) for free.

Adults: I promise you will not feel talked down to, and will benefit very much from, this course, whose 90 audio or video lessons are as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Natural Rights Theories: High Middle Ages to Late Scholastics
3. Natural Rights Theories: John Locke and Self-Ownership
4. Natural Rights Theories: Argumentation Ethics
5. Week 1 Review

6. Locke and Spooner on Consent
7. The Tale of the Slave
8. Human Rights and Property Rights
9. Negative Rights and Positive Rights
10. Week 2 Review

11. Critics of Liberalism: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the General Will
12. Critics of Liberalism: John Rawls and Egalitarianism
13. Critics of Liberalism: Thomas Nagel and Ronald Dworkin
14. Critics of Liberalism: G.A. Cohen
15. Week 3 Review

16. Public Goods
17. The Standard of Living
18. Poverty
19. Monopoly
20. Week 4 Review

21. Science
22. Inequality
23. Aid to Developing Countries
24. Discrimination
25. Week 5 Review

26. The Socialist Calculation Problem
27. Working Conditions
28. Child Labor
29. Labor and Unions
30. Week 6 Review

31. Health Care
32. Antitrust
33. Farm Programs
34. War and the Economy
35. Week 7 Review

36. Business Cycles
37. Industrial Policy
38. Government, the Market, and the Environment
39. Prohibition
40. Week 8 Review

41. Taxation
42. Government Spending
43. The Welfare State: Theoretical Issues
44. The Welfare State: Practical Issues
45. Week 9 Review

46. Price Controls
47. Government and Money, Part I
48. Government and Money, Part II
49. Midterm Review
50. Week 10 Review

51. The Theory of the Modern State
52. American Federalism and the Compact Theory
53. Can Political Bodies Be Too Large?
54. Decentralization
55. Week 11 Review

56. Constitutionalism: Purpose
57. The American Case: Self-Government and the Tenth Amendment
58. The American Case: Progressives and the "Living, Breathing Document"
59. The American States and the Federal Government
60. Week 12 Review

61. Monarchy
62. Social Democracy
63. Fascism I
64. Fascism II
65. Week 13 Review

66. Marx I
67. Marx II
68. Communism I
69. Communism II
70. Week 14 Review

71. Miscellaneous Intervention: Postwar Africa
72. Public Choice I
73. Public Choice II
74. Miscellaneous Examples of Government Activity and Incentives
75. Week 15 Review

76. The Industrial Revolution
77. The New Deal I
78. The New Deal II
79. The Housing Bust of 2008
80. Week 16 Review

81. Are Voters Informed?
82. Is Political Representation Meaningful?
83. The Myth of the Rule of Law
84. The Incentives of Democracy
85. Week 17 Review

86. The Sweeping Critique: Robert LeFevre
87. The Sweeping Critique: Murray N. Rothbard
88. Case Study: The Old West
89. Economic Freedom of the World
90. Week 18 Review

Again, get this bonuses when you forward your receipt from Andy's Biblical Money course to bonuses@tomwoods.com.

Get Andy's course at https://www.tomwoods.com/soundmoney, and use code WOODS for 15% off.
 






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Tom Woods · PO Box 701447 · Saint Cloud, FL 34770 · USA