Shows / Guns and Butter
Guns and Butter
Weekly commentary by Connor O’Keeffe, examining some of the biggest stories in the news through an Austro-libertarian lens.
Episodes
- Guns and Butter
The Flock Camera Backlash Is a Very Good Sign
The backlash against automated license plate readers is not really about traffic cameras. It is about a public that no longer assumes the people in charge are…
- Guns and Butter
5 Things Anthony Fauci Teaches Us About the American Government
Fauci is back in the limelight after the release of his diary before a Senate hearing last week. And that’s good, because the career of Anthony Fauci can teach…
- Guns and Butter
Is This Country Having Its Socialist Moment?
Democratic socialist candidates are becoming a serious political challenge in Democratic Party primaries. Have Americans suddenly become convinced by the…
- Guns and Butter
Greenspan Was The Perfect Fed Chair. That Is Not a Compliment
The Fed Chair’s job isn’t to stabilize the economy. It’s to use prestige, technical jargon, and mind-numbing dullness to cover for the central bank’s…
- Guns and Butter
The Musk Trillionaire Panic Is a Distraction
Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire has triggered a familiar round of progressive outrage. But the imprecise focus on wealth distribution…
- Guns and Butter
Warsh’s Concerning Interest in Redefining “Inflation”
Although it's true that many government-driven price hikes in recent years aren’t “inflation” in the strict sense, the pain they cause is just as real. Warsh’s…
- Guns and Butter
Trump’s Iran Predicament Is His Own Fault
Trump is trapped in a genuinely difficult situation as he tries to reach a deal with Iran. But it is a crisis of his own making. Also, the establishment…
- Guns and Butter
A Rothbardian Case Against Bad Data Center Policy
AI has created enormous demand for new data centers, and many communities do not want them nearby. The Rothbardian answer is not blanket permission or blanket…
- Guns and Butter
Progressives and Conservatives Are Wrong About Taxing the Rich
Both progressives and conservatives show a complete unwillingness or inability to distinguish between those who got rich by genuinely creating value by serving…
- Guns and Butter
How Antitrust Populists Drove Spirit Airlines Out of Business
Antitrust populists claimed blocking the Spirit–JetBlue merger would protect competition and consumers. But their effort led to an intervention that…
- Guns and Butter
The American People Should Not Be Forced to Fund Israel’s Atrocities
This Tax Day, as the American public reflects on what our government is using our money for, there is growing opposition to the behavior of the Israeli…
- Guns and Butter
The Economic Destruction of Trump’s War Goes Far Beyond High Gas Prices
This war is not just making energy more expensive, it’s knocking out the higher order goods the global structure of production depends on. This has already…
- Guns and Butter
Our Problem Isn’t Kings; It’s the Presidency
To call Trump’s actions king-like is to greatly understate the problem. What we actually face is a massive, self-amplifying executive branch that makes…
- Guns and Butter
The Immorality of Trump’s War with Iran Matters
Anyone who cares about American greatness must also refuse to allow us to become the kind of society that shrugs off the crimes our government commits in our…
- Guns and Butter
No, We Cannot “Afford” This War with Iran Either
Leftists sarcastically asking where the money for this war will come from are right about the GOP’s hypocrisy, but wrong to imply that it actually means…
- Guns and Butter
Launching a War on Iran Was No Act of Courage
As recent history shows, there are few things more courageous for a president to do than face down the ever-accelerating, wealth-draining, conflict-amplifying…
- Guns and Butter
Trump’s War with Iran Is Even More of a Disaster than People Realize
The problem with this new campaign in Iran is not merely that it will likely have bad near-term consequences, but that it represents the American government…
- Guns and Butter
Trump’s Iran Buildup Is Based on a Lie
If the Iranian regime were truly trying to sacrifice their entire country to commit a nation-level nuclear murder-suicide against Israel and the US, they would…
- Guns and Butter
Voter ID is Common Sense, But it Won’t Fix Anything
While the Voter ID debate consumes the airwaves with political debate, the real issue is not who is elected, but the unelected elites that hold power. Even if…
- Guns and Butter
People Are Not Upset Enough About the End of New START
The administration dismissed concerns about the last nuclear treaty between the US and Russia formally expiring last week. But even if this isn’t an…
- Guns and Butter
Everyone Agrees Our Elites Are Terrible, So Why Are We Stuck with Them?
The latest release of Epstein files again highlighted how disgusted and frustrated people have grown with the current elites. Yet they remain essentially…
- Guns and Butter
Trump’s Embrace of Economic Leftism Will Destroy the Legacy He’s Desperately Trying to Build
Trump is clearly focused on building a legacy in his second term with his domestic vanity projects and dramatic foreign interventions. But his actual legacy is…
- Guns and Butter
Greenland: Trump’s Folly
Even hawkish foreign policy scholars admit that changing the US security setup in Greenland is unnecessary. Its supply of raw materials is also nothing…
- Guns and Butter
The Central Banking Establishment Is Genuinely Worried About Trump, but Not for the Reasons They Say
Central bankers are not afraid Trump will “politicize” the Fed and turn it into a crony arm of the government that warps the economy to benefit those close to…
- Guns and Butter
There Are No Good Outcomes in Trump’s Latest Attempt at Regime Change in Venezuela
The Trump administration wants Americans to believe that this latest intervention into Venezuela was a quick and definitive success. But, given enough time…
- Guns and Butter
What Happened to Climate Change?
Only a couple years ago, climate change was a major political issue. Now it’s strangely absent from public discourse. Why did this happen? Because, at least…
- Guns and Butter
Obamacare Was Not a Failure
As Congress scrambles to extend emergency subsidies to keep Obamacare afloat, it can be tempting to view the bill that made healthcare less affordable as a…
- Guns and Butter
How to Actually Solve the Affordability Crisis
Politicians in both parties are promising to address the affordability crisis. But neither is focusing on, or even discussing, the true causes. Here’s what…
- Guns and Butter
50-Year Mortgages Won’t Make Housing More Affordable
President Trump has proposed a 50-year mortgage for new homebuyers, ostensibly to make housing more affordable. Actually, this financial instrument will make…
- Guns and Butter
Trump’s Tariff Power Grab
The justices that Trump appointed to the Supreme Court have shown a recent intolerance for the kinds of semantic leaps his administration is relying on to…
- Guns and Butter
We Have Not Properly Reckoned with the Economic Insanity of 2020
The governmental response to the covid pandemic was to cripple the economy. To compensate for the damage, the Federal Reserve unleashed massive inflation in an…
- Guns and Butter
Is Bari Weiss at CBS a New Direction or a Misdirection?
Bari Weiss’s appointment to head CBS News has brought cries of anguish from the usual suspects on the left and approval from some on the right. But will she…
- Guns and Butter
Trump, Comey, and the Long History of the Unelected Government
The media is trying to frame last week’s indictment of James Comey as a “norm-shattering” use of executive power for personal gain. In truth, it's just the…
- Guns and Butter
Establishment Fears About Trump’s Focus on the Fed Are About Optics, Not Policy
The political establishment is trying to stoke panic that Trump is “politicizing” the Federal Reserve. But it’s already political. The real danger, from their…
- Guns and Butter
The Kirk Assassination Has Exposed Our Political Rot
As politics come to dominate more of our lives and young generations grow righteously disillusioned with a system designed to rip them off, we’re likely to see…
- Guns and Butter
Trump Is Digging His Own Economic Grave
Since becoming president, most of the actions taken by President Trump have been anti-economic growth, and the US economy now is sputtering. Unfortunately…
- Guns and Butter
The Venezuela Military Deployment Is About Cronyism, Not National Security
President Trump has deployed naval vessels off the coast of Venezuela, citing its escalation of the war on drugs. However, the true motivation for Washington’s…
- Guns and Butter
The Real Problem with Trump’s Intel Deal
The federal government taking an ownership stake in Intel is neither a promising new approach to governance nor an unprecedented leap into economic fascism…
- Guns and Butter
Trump’s DC “Takeover” Is Missing the Point
Few really understand why these blue cities are crime-ridden. It’s not merely a lack of resources or even progressive ideology. At the root of the problem are…
- Guns and Butter
The Trump-Putin Meeting: How We Got Here
The disheartening and frustrating fact is that Russia is in a much stronger negotiating position now than they were earlier in the war, when Western officials…
- Guns and Butter
The Split over Epstein Tells Us Something Important about the MAGA Movement
When President Trump declared the Epstein case closed, many of his supporters in MAGA objected, believing that the government is still hiding the truth. But…
- Guns and Butter
The Texas Floods and Political Opportunism
As the Texas floodwaters receded, politicians like Chuck Schumer twisted facts about the tragedy to score a political win. Examining what went wrong to prevent…
- Guns and Butter
Establishment Democrats Created the Conditions for A Socialist Victory
The democratic establishment is upset that socialist Zohran Mamdani beat their candidate, Andrew Cuomo, in New York City’s mayoral primary. But the blame for…
- Guns and Butter
Dismantling the Warfare State Was Never Going to Be Easy
Although it may not have ultimately ended how they wished, the strikes on Iran demonstrated that neoconservatives are still a viable force within the GOP. But…
- Guns and Butter
War with Iran Is Not in the Interest of the American People
The United States is dangerously close to entering yet another war in the Middle East. But this one has the potential to be a lot costlier for the American…
- Guns and Butter
The Weaponization of Media Access Did Not Suddenly Start with Trump
What the “legacy” media is trying to present as a brand-new authoritarian crackdown on the press is only a more visible version of how the federal government…
- Guns and Butter
The Federal Judiciary’s War on Trump Is Not About Protecting Us from Government Overreach
As President Trump racks up defeat after defeat before the federal courts, the legacy media claims that federal judges are protecting us from government…
- Guns and Butter
Why Ending the War in Ukraine Is So Difficult Now
Members of the establishment are trying to seize on Trump’s recent frustrations with Putin to act like they’ve been right all along that the Russian president…
- Guns and Butter
What the Biden Health Coverup Reveals About the Political Class
The reaction to Biden’s cancer announcement reveals how little trust the public has in the people who spent years claiming that Biden’s mental decline was…
- Guns and Butter
How Trump Can Lower Drug Prices Without Price Controls
While Trump has not yet turned to price controls to address America‘s absurdly high drug prices, Monday‘s executive order suggests that he soon may. Price…
- Guns and Butter
Real ID Is Not About Keeping You Safe
With the deadline for obtaining the federal government‘s Real ID technically upon us, it‘s important to understand that this is not an irritating but necessary…
- Guns and Butter
The Trump Administration Is Not Serious About Ending Endless Wars
The first 100 days of the second Trump administration have made it clear that those who want the foreign policy status quo to continue are serious about doing…
- Guns and Butter
Stop All Federal Funding of Universities
President Trump‘s threat to withhold $9 billion from Harvard University is being framed in the legacy media and academia as a threat to Harvard‘s academic…
- Guns and Butter
Bringing the War on Terror to Our Southern Border Can Only End in Disaster
President Trump has threatened to use the armed forces to go after the drug cartels in Mexico. Escalating the disastrous War on Drugs by incorporating the…
- Guns and Butter
There’s Only One Possible Cause of the Next Recession, and It Isn’t Tariffs
While President Trump‘s tariffs certainly are causing economic harm, they alone could not cause a recession had there not already been years of artificial…
- Guns and Butter
Trump’s “Liberation Day” Tariffs are a Mistake
President Trump has declared today “Liberation Day,” because many of his tariffs come into force. His team is taking a gamble that either the law of supply and…
- Guns and Butter
The Far-Left’s Violent Attacks on Tesla are Revealing
The leftists destroying and defacing Teslas to protest Elon Musk’s foray into American politics provide the latest example of the American far-left being…
- Guns and Butter
Trump Adopts the Democrats’ Terrible Yemen Policy
While the Trump administration claims it is breaking with the policies of Joe Biden, it is continuing US attacks on the Houthis of Yemen supported by the…
- Guns and Butter
Who Gets the Blame for the Upcoming Recession?
President Trump has indicated that a recession could be coming and the pundits are playing the blame game. Don‘t look to anyone in Washington for a coherent…
- Guns and Butter
The Other Thing Zelensky Got Called Out On
For the first time since the war began, a senior US official criticized Ukraine’s use of conscripts. This is overdue, as conscription is one of the worst…