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February
22
2019

If Truth Is Politicized, All Is Lost
Paul Craig Roberts

Trump’s surrender to the  neoconservatives makes it impossible for an informed person to support him.  He has signed off on the coup against democracy in Venezuela, and he has placed all life at risk by pulling out of the INF treaty with Russia.  Putin has publicly announced that the consequences of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible decision to junk the INF treaty will be the targeting of the missile sites in Europe and also of the American command and control centers.   As I write there is nothing on the BBC or CNN websites or anywhere else in the US print and TV media about the President of Russia’s clear statement.  Trump has allowed the crazed neocons to raise the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon to near certainty, and it has gone unreported by the presstitutes.

Not only is there no evidence for Washington’s claim that Russia has violated the INF treaty, violating the treaty is not in Russia’s interests. Russian intermediate range missiles cannot reach the US. The purpose of the treaty is to keep Russia from targeting Europe by preventing US intermediate range missiles from being deployed in Europe.  Washington tore up the INF treaty in order to put intermediate range missiles on Russia’s border, thus endangering Europe.

A hopeful person could perhaps reason that Trump, realizing that he is powerless to reduce tensions with Russia and to stop the wars, has decided to give free rein to the neocons in the expectation that they will so terrify Europe that Europe will break from Washington and NATO in an act of self-preservation.    Perhaps Trump realizes that only the breakup of the Empire can stop the wars, and that the best way to destroy the American Empire is to give free rein to the crazed neoconservatives.  

What is important is not what political party or candidate that we support, but that we support truth wherever we find it.  Most people are confused about this.  If truth is on Trump’s side, and you support truth, people see it as supporting Trump.  This shows how politicized and emotional American thinking has become.  Andrew McCabe, former acting director of the FBI, has made it clear that the FBI, the Democratic Party, US media, former CIA director John Brennan, former director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and the US Department of Justice (sic) were, and are, involved in a plot to remove President Trump from office.  The fraudulent “Steele Dossier” is the basis for the fraudulent “Russiagate” investigation.  A number of laws have been violated by those involved in the plot.  For example, spy warrants were obtained from the FISA court under false pretense, and there is little, if any, doubt that Brennan, Comey, Rosenstein, and Mueller are guilty of sedition and conspiracy against the President of the United States.  By demanding that these government officials be held accountable, we defend truth and the rule of law, not Trump.  

Russiagate is a hoax, but the INF treaty and the open plot to overthrow Venezuelan democracy are not hoaxes.  These, not conspiring with Putin, are the crimes for which Trump should be held accountable.

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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