Tom DiLorenzo on Donald Trump's admiration for William McKinley

Lo and behold, President Trump has discovered a new political hero to idolize: President (1897-1901) William McKinley of Ohio whose election was orchestrated by the wealthiest man in Ohio (and the U.S.), John D. Rockefeller, who ran the Standard Oil Company out of his Cleveland home.  McKinley is President Trump’s new hero because he was known as a congressman as the most rabid Republican party protectionist in a party that was founded on the principle of protectionism (and of corporate welfare and a national bank) in the mid 1850s.  The 1890 McKinley tariff was named after Representative William McKinley because of his notoriety as a tool of the Northern manufacturing plutocracy.  It created the highest average tariff rate in U.S. history up to that point and targeted such items as wool and tin with especially high tariff taxes, some exceeding 100 percent.  It caused such a spike in the prices of such items that in the next election the Republican party was wiped out, losing both houses of Congress and the White House, with the Democrat party having a 2-1 advantage in the House.  Free trader Grover Cleveland became president.  McKinley himself was defeated and was installed by the Rockefeller machine as the governor of Ohio. 

The Rockefeller machine got McKinley elected president in 1896.  One of his first “accomplishments” in 1897 was to repeat the political disaster of the McKinley Tariff Tax by signing the Dingley Tariff Tax which created another highest average tariff rate in history.  The people be damned; by that point the Republican party had created a government by the Northern corporate plutocracy, for the corporate plutocracy, of the corporate plutocracy.  President Trump’s kind of people.

McKinley was also a notorious imperialist, waging an imperialistic war against Spain (the Spanish-American War) during which the U.S. government conquered Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, leading the great Yale University libertarian scholar William Graham Sumner to author his famous article, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain.”  The Spanish-American War, Sumner wrote, turned the U.S. into an imperialist power, just like the thoroughly corrupt and bankrupted Spanish empire.  (All empires, by the way, view their populations as good for two things: as taxpayers and cannon fodder in the empire’s wars.  Fast forward to today’s world and the incoming president is proposing a takeover of Greenland, part of Panama, and Canada “for national security reasons.”

~ Thomas DiLorenzo, "How the McKinley Tariff Almost Destroyed the Republican Party," LewRockwell.com, December 31, 2024

Tom DiLorenzo on Donald Trump's "populism"

President Trump’s election is said to be a “populist” victory against the deep state establishment, but there is nothing more anti-populist than protectionist tariff taxes.  Protectionist tariff taxes are nothing more than a price-fixing conspiracy orchestrated by the state that enriches a relatively small group of politically connected corporations (and their unions) by plundering their consumers with higher prices.  After all, if it is possible to use tariffs to force foreigners to pay a county’s taxes, every government on earth would be doing it.  Yet President Trump apparently believes that he has discovered some kind of holy grail of economics that proves you can get something for nothing after all. 

~ Thomas J. DiLorenzo, William McKinley: Prostitute of Protectionism, Mises Wire, January 29, 2025

David Gordon on the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian visions of America

Most readers of the Mises Wire will be familiar with the account of American history developed in many books by Mises Institute President Thomas J. DiLorenzo.  According to him, American history since our founding as a nation has been shaped by two conflicting traditions: one, begun by Alexander Hamilton, favoring a centralized government and the other, best personified in Thomas Jefferson, supporting decentralized government and the rights of the states and local communities.  Hamilton favored building up American industry artificially through high tariffs, as well as a national bank and a system of costly “national improvements.”  He also supported high government debt to stimulate industry.  Jefferson opposed all of these measures.  Henry Clay’s “American System” continued the Hamiltonian plan, as did Clay’s follower Abraham Lincoln.  In the twentieth century, Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” fits into this paradigm. 

~ David Gordon, "Alexander Hamilton's poisoned legacy," Mises Wire, July 19, 2024

Tom DiLorenzo on the Sherman Antitrust Act and myth of monopolies

I was studying antitrust at the time.  And, of course, when I was teaching, I was teaching the Austrian theory of competition, not the perfect competition theory of competition.  And I noticed that every single textbook said that in the late nineteenth century, there was a rampant monopolization of American industry, and that justified the antitrust laws.

I was the very first person to dig up the actual statistics on such things as production and prices of the industries that were accused of being monopolies by the Senate and the House of Representatives in the late 1880s before they passed the Sherman Act.  And I published this article showing that instead of output restriction, there was massive expansion.  These industries were the fastest-growing and most productive industries in America at the time, which is why they were being picked on by their less successful rivals, who got the politicians to pass a law that would hamper them.  The same with prices.  They dropped prices faster than the CPI dropped for ten years prior to the Sherman Act and ten years after the Sherman Act.  The only reason I was the first one to do that is that no one else had asked this question from an Austrian perspective every before.

So if you have Austrian economics and libertarian theory in your educational background, you look at history very differently.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "The Importance of Human Action To Me," The Misesian, May-June 2024

Tom DiLorenzo on faux libertarians defending the bombing of Gaza

The faux “libertarians” who are praising Netanyahu as “heroic” and “courageous” for having orchestrated the killing of more than 30,000 civilians in Gaza (while demanding the killing of even more civilians) would obviously disagree with Rothbard but are in complete, 100 percent agreement with every one of the Washington, D.C. neocons.  They are defending the undefendable.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "'Above All, Don't Target Civilians'," LewRockwell.com, May 21, 2024

"Above All, Don't Target Civilians" - LRC Blog (lewrockwell.com)

Tom DiLorenzo on the Seven Deadly Sins of politics

All politicians everywhere, including Israel, are showcases of the Seven Deadly Sins.  Self-pride trumps humility for starters.  What member of Congress is not an egomaniac?  Envy poisons the heart of every proponent of “income redistribution” schemes, the cornerstone of welfarism everywhere. 

Wrath is what one experiences whenever one opposes the state.  Ask all the doctors who had their medical licenses cancelled after questioning the covid “vaccines.”  Even Tucker Carlson was smeared as a “Russian asset” for opposing the American financing of Ukraine in its war with Russia. 

Sloth has always been associated with government bureaucracy.  No one likes being called a “bureaucrat.”  Then of course there is greed.  Greed for power and money animates national and state capitals everywhere.  No institutions anywhere are more greedy for money than public employee unions, for example or the thousands of other “special-interest groups” that scheme endlessly to rob the treasury.

Gluttony is on display everywhere as well with the ostentatious lifestyles and conspicuous wealth of ruling classes.  Nor are politicians unfamiliar with the sin of lust, especially the lust for power over others, dubbed by Judge Andrew Napolitano as “libido dominande” or “lust to dominate.”

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Christian Worship of the False Gold of Politics," LewRockwell.com, May 16, 2024

Tom DiLorenzo on Big Oil's ability to manipulate gasoline prices

The American oil industry started out in a laissez-faire environment in which there was little, if any, government regulation and no income taxation.  Entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller were able literally to create one of the most important industries in world history from nothing.  In doing so they transformed the world, made the machine age possible, improved the standard of living for millions, created hundreds of thousands of jobs, and invented management practices that would be emulated by other capitalists around the world.  Capitalism, or market entrepreneurship, is what created all of these economic benefits.  But from the early twentieth century on, the oil industry has been a regulated industry and has become less and less capitalistic.  Today the industry is heavily regulated - strangled, some would say - by governmnt.  And inevitably, government regulation - not the capitalistic nature of the industry - causes high prices, shortages, and other problems.

Still, the myth persists that the industry's capitalistic nature is precisely what creates problems.  Indeed, virtually every time there is a jump in gasoline prices the oil companies are accused of "price gouging," their profits are reported on the front pages of America's newspapers, and, more often than not, some congressional committee commences an investigation or holds hearings to look into the matter.  During the so-called energy crisis of the 1970s the accusastions against the oil companies were more strident, as the seven largest companies - "the seven sisters," as they were called - were accused of somehow orchestrating a shortage to boost their own profits.  But on the face of it, the notion that a price-fixing conspiracy can periodically increase gasoline prices makes no sense.  If oil companies are able to raise prices in such a manne, why don't they do it all the time?  Why only every several years?  Why do they throw all that money away by holding prices down?  And why are the incapable of stopping oil prices from falling?  (During the 2000 presidential election vice president Dick Cheney appeared on Meet the Press to say that oil and gas prices were too low and that some kind of government "price stabilization program" was needed.  At the time, he had just left his position as a top oil industry executive.)  The obvious answer to these questions is that the oil companies do not have the price-fixing powers that the mainstream media - and anticapitalistic intellectuals - ascribe to them.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America, pp. 206-207

Tom DiLorenzo on precedents set by the Civil War

Americans are still fascinated by the war because many of us recognize it as the defining event in American history.  Lincoln’s war established myriad precedents that have shaped the course of American government and society ever since: the centralization of governmental power, central banking, income taxation, protectionism, military conscription, the suspension of constitutional liberties, the "rewriting" of the Constitution by federal judges, "total war," the quest for a worldwide empire, and the notion that government is one big "problem solver."

Perhaps the most hideous precedent established by Lincoln’s war, however, was the intentional targeting of defenseless civilians.  Human beings did not always engage in such barbaric acts as we have all watched in horror in recent days [9/11].  Targeting civilians has been a common practice ever since World War II, but its roots lie in Lincoln’s war.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Targeting Civilians," LewRockwell.com, September 17, 2001

Tom DiLorenzo on the reason for government

The purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not.

~ Tom DiLorenzo

Tom DiLorenzo on the American response to the public health bureaucracy

Once the “public health” bureaucracy declared a pandemic, millions of Americans instantly turned into mental infants, eager for the D.C. bureaucracy to become their real mommies and daddies and protect them from the big bad coronavirus wolf.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Why 'Public Health' is the Health of the State," LewRockwell.com, April 14, 2021

Kevin Duffy exposes the quasi-statist Liberty Series of 1954-1968

I was just going through my old stamp collection and stumbled on the “Liberty Series” of 1954-1959. Denominations went from ½ cent to $5.00. You’ll never guess who was on the $5.00 stamp - Alexander Hamilton. In fact, John Marshall was on the 40 cent stamp as well. Other noteworthies in the series: Lincoln (4 cent, standard postage at the time), Teddy Roosevelt (6 cent), and Wilson (7 cent). 

Of course, mixed in were many who belonged, probably to give the series some legitimacy: Franklin (½ cent), Washington (1 cent), Jefferson (2 cent), Revere (25 cent), Robert E. Lee (30 cent) and Patrick Henry ($1.00).

~ Kevin Duffy, email to Tom DiLorenzo, January 31, 2009

(DiLorenzo responded, "How politically incorrect to put Robert  E. Lee on a stamp!  It would never happen today.")

Tom DiLorenzo on the 2020 election

Trump will win, then cheating on steroids will occur with "ballot harvesting" by the Bolsheviks. All they have to do is get one Democrat governor to refuse to validate the electoral votes in his state. If they reach inauguration day after hundreds of lawsuits are filed, then the election goes to the House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi picks the president.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, October 17, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo on Leftist indoctrination and the complacency of American parents

While American parents slept, university Leftists have turned millions of their children into uneducated, empty-headed, slogan-chanting useful idiots for the most despicable political tyrants and would-be dictators on the planet. Way to go, American parents.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Your Marxist Revolutionary Sons and Daughters," LewRockwell.com, October 16, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo on how the Left makes an argument

When a business school professor (actually a lawyer hired to preach left-wing politics to business students) initiated a new course called “Critical Thinking” at my former university I asked her what academic discipline she would be drawing on – philosophy, logic, political philosophy, economics, etc. Her answer was “Oh none of that; we will just criticize people like you.” 

Talking with many of her students over the years I have learned that they were taught nothing about how to structure a criticism by using logic, facts, and theory. Instead, they are taught to condemn, slander, libel, denounce, and smear anyone who voices disagreements with any of the standard leftist platitudes that all college students are bombarded with and have been since elementary school. Ruthless criticism, in other words, just as Marx himself advocated.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Your Marxist Revolutionary Sons and Daughters," LewRockwell.com, October 16, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo compares cultural Marxism to past Marxist revolutions

The whole history of Marxist revolutions is that the older civilization, which may have evolved over centuries, is in fact destroyed and then replaced with nothing but totalitarian thuggery, corruption, violence, and mass killing.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Your Marxist Revolutionary Sons and Daughters," LewRockwell.com, October 16, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo on the historical record of the American government dehumanizing the enemy

William Graham Sumner warned that “a matter of mind” that views other peoples as “less human” than you would lead to “cruelty and tyranny” by the American government, as was the case with all other governments in history that ruled over empires. This of course was always the way of empires. Southerners were demonized to “justify” the mass murder of tens of thousands of civilian women, children, and old men, and the bombing and burning of entire cities like Atlanta and Richmond during the “Civil War.” The Plains Indians were dehumanized as “savages” while the brave men of the U.S. Army murdered tens of thousands of Indian women and children from 1865 to 1890. Now it was the Filipinos’ turn. At least 200,000 Filipinos were eventually murdered by the U.S. government for resisting becoming a part of the American empire. According to historian Joseph Stromberg, only about 15,000 of them were actual combatants.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "The Man Who Predicted (in 1899) What America Would Become," LewRockwell.com, October 10, 2013

Tom DiLorenzo on the Democratic Party strategy to win the 2020 presidential election

I wrote last March that the order had apparently come down from the Democrat National Committee that if you wanted a future in Democrat politics Mr. Mayor, Mrs. Governor, and Miss City Councilwoman, then you will destroy your local economy as much as possible for as long as possible with lockdowns in order to harm Trump’s chances in November.  Nothing else matters – not the millions of lost jobs, the destroyed businesses, the home foreclosures, the depression and suicide that would inevitably result – nothing.  Keep the public terrified, depressed, and miserable, and we will win in November has been their strategy.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "The Political Business Cycle in Reverse," LewRockwell.com, September 19, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo on Princeton's racism problem

Princeton does indeed have a racism problem. The problem is with the racist “faculty of color” and their supporters who espouse the notion of “systemic racism” which condemns white people solely on the basis of skin color, the exact definition of racism. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself would not be welcomed at Princeton today by these letter writers with his old-fashioned notion that people should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Such language would be investigated by that new Stasi-like “investigative committee” and denounced as the words of an “Uncle Tom” and a race traitor.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Princeton's Racism Problem," LewRockwell.com, July 24, 2020

Lew Rockwell on the GI Bill and its corrosive effects on higher education

The GI Bill, adopted after World War II, played a big role in lowering standards. As Tom DiLorenzo has pointed out, “The damage caused by the program was much more than fiscal. It made the centralization of education possible for the first time in American history. That in turn opened the door to the ruinous politicization of higher education that has marked the past half century.

The tool used by government was the college accrediting agency. A network of them was originally established in the late 19th century to work as private buffers between academia and government. Their purpose was to insure high standards, and prevent government subsidies from leading to government control.

After the second world war, the federal government used various college accrediting agencies to ostensibly guarantee a quality education for veterans. Only accredited schools could receive G.I. Bill funds, so the accrediting agencies quickly transformed themselves. They became the gatekeepers of the tax money and virtual adjuncts of federal power. This gatekeeper role expanded as federal funding of higher education escalated.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Are Universities Finished?," LewRockwell.com, July 23, 2020

President Roosevelt signs G.I. Bill into law on June 22, 1944

Tom DiLorenzo on the BLM riots

[W]hat started out as riots supposedly over police brutality against black people turning into “demands” for an exponentially bigger welfare state, abolition of police and prisons, the abolition of capitalism and in essence the adoption of socialism. Toppling statues of Christopher Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant, abolitionist Albert Pike, and even of Lincoln is not a protest against police brutality but part of an effort to destroy the institutions of Western civilization and replace them with communism at long last.  As one of the founders of Black Lives Matter proudly boasted, “We are trained Marxists. (“Trained” by Obama-style “community organizers,” no doubt).

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "A Disease in the Public Mind, Part II?," LewRockwell.com, June 29, 2020