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Before I get into the alienating stuff, I want to note:

On my other email list (for entrepreneurs, etc.) today I ate some crow: it turns out I can find quite valuable uses for AI indeed, and it really is true that you can make it into your personal (or administrative) assistant, and you can text it with tasks to complete.

We've all heard of people doing that, but they seem like magicians to us. How did they set that up?

Well, they're saving themselves hundreds of hours a year in so doing.

So I told those folks, and I'm telling you also, you can be a magician, too, and get all those hours back for yourself, your family, your hobbies (remember those?), and your leisure, and here's exactly how to do it:
 
On to business: I may have to shed some subscribers today, which I don't relish, but I'm at peace with it.

This week I had a handful of people write to tell me they were shocked by my noninterventionist take on the situation in Iran. They say they liked what I had to say on Covid, but they're confused about this.

I don't know how it could have shocked them; I've done nothing but condemn the permanent regime in Washington, the one that doesn't go away no matter who gets elected, and I've made clear that I don't believe a word it says. I cannot imagine still, at this late stage, being in thrall to it, no matter how scary one thinks the Iranian regime is.

I don't just buy what the so-called public health establishment tells me about anything, no matter how scary that thing may seem to me. They have not earned that trust. (That's the understatement of the century right there.)

If we can see through the Covid nonsense, we should certainly be able to see through this fiasco, and not be distracted by the loathsome Mark Levin and Sean Hannity trying to tell you that "Iran has been at war with us for 47 years," a whopper even for those two geniuses.

There are awful regimes around the world, no doubt, but my primary concern has to be the one that rules over me, and the fact is, the American foreign-policy apparatus cannot tell the truth to save its life.

After 25 years of what we call the "War on Terror," it really should have become obvious that these adventures are worse than useless -- much, much worse than useless. Read Scott Horton's book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism. Tall tales about liberating oppressed peoples are for naive fools, and people on the right are supposed to be anything but that. 

This is not a "liberal" point of view, I shouldn't have to point out. It is in fact the most based, right-wing view there is.

I promise you're not being a "liberal" to oppose this very worst of government programs. As I show in my book 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask, it is an absurd myth that American liberals have opposed war. They have been perfectly happy with virtually all American wars since 1898. They soured on Vietnam after they contributed so much to it, but that's about it.

Back in 2011, I was about to speak to a group in Los Angeles some unknown fraction of which consisted of big boosters of American military adventures. I could have gotten away with giving a predictable anti-Obama speech and left it at that. I knew I would have been cheered.

But I wanted to tell them that if they're really going to be opponents of the regime, they have to understand that the foreign-policy side of it is bad, too. It isn't that Obamacare and milk subsidies are wrong, but the Pentagon is awesome. The entire regime is deeply, deeply sick, and it exploits people's patriotic instincts to get them to go along with things they'd never approve otherwise.

For a moment I considered not bringing it up. I could just give that rah-rah speech that I knew they'd love.

Then I thought: what kind of person would that make me? I won't tell the truth as I see it because I'm afraid a crowd won't like me?

I decided I couldn't be like that in my public speaking (and I won't be like that in this newsletter, either, of course).

So I told them: I used to have the same opinions you do. And then I couldn't take it anymore. It was Pat Buchanan who objected most loudly on humanitarian grounds to -- for example -- the inhuman sanctions on Iraq, among other things. You're going to tell me Pat Buchanan is a "liberal"? Come on.

I told them: if it were the Soviet Union doing things like that, and making the same excuses that the execrable U.S. foreign-policy establishment is making, we would laugh. We would also be horrified.

I said: are you guys the same people who would lecture me about "moral relativism," and yet let moral enormities pass because they're committed by your government? Why are you so eager to make excuses for your government, anyway? If you don't pay your taxes, or you don't follow some dumb regulation, I promise they won't show you the same courtesy.

I promise I'm not attacking you personally when I accuse our government of doing terrible things. Didn't we all agree Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney were terrible people, after all? Why are we getting squeamish about calling them evil?

I told them: you are better than this. You are letting the awful regime that rules us turn you into something you should not want to be.

This is not left-wing or right-wing; it is a simple matter of basic humanity.

Well, that wasn't what they expected to hear.

But guess what: I got a thunderous standing ovation. (It's still up on YouTube.)

They knew I hadn't just told them what they wanted to hear. I had told them what they needed to hear. Instead of just throwing out red meat and playing to the crowd, I spoke to them heart to heart and told them serious things they'd never heard before.

The ovation said it all.

Covid showed us that at heart we are ruled by sociopaths who care more about power than they do about our well-being.

I am telling you, the same kind of people make the foreign policy. They do not magically transform into saints. I know we want to make an exception in that area, because our uncle is in the military or we like to wave the flag, but we need to face the truth like adults.

So yes, you are going to hear me say things that will shock you if you came to your philosophy through Sean Hannity or Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro. So prepare yourself accordingly, or if you must, click the unsubscribe button at the bottom.

But with the densely populated city of Tehran, with nearly 10 million inhabitants, now under a bombing attack, if what you're looking for is rah-rah pro-government propaganda, you will be disappointed, just as you would have been disappointed if you expected me to defend Anthony Fauci.

The two phenomena are cut from the same cloth.
 
Tom Woods






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