Massie’s loss was historic for a multitude of terrible reasons. Reports are that the race is the most expensive House primary in American history, with roughly $32 million spent to remove one of the few remaining liberty-minded Republicans in Congress. At the same time, Republicans reportedly spent only around $20 million defending Republican-held seats in Virginia during the recent debacle of Virginia democrats trying to gerrymander the state. The message from the Republican Party leadership and Trump is unmistakable. Punishing dissent inside the party matters more than protecting their competitive general elections.

They are not practicing a viable strategy but instead political cannibalism.

Massie was never a conventional Republican. He consistently frustrated both the Republican Party leadership and progressive Democrats alike. He opposed large deficit spending under both Republican and Democratic administrations, consistently opposed foreign interventions, and frequently voted against legislation he viewed as unconstitutional, even if it meant bucking his own party. He represented something rare in American politics, though: ideological consistency. Whether one agreed with him or not, Massie would vote based on his principles rather than what was politically fashionable or how the rest of the party voted.

His defeat signals that the modern GOP no longer rewards independent thinking of any kind. Loyalty to Donald Trump is the defining requirement for GOP membership and the only kind they will allow. While that may energize older Republican voters, it is rapidly alienating younger Americans.

The Republican Party has a demographic problem that it cannot ignore. Younger voters increasingly see the GOP as hostile to dissent, are consumed with ‘culture war’ issues, and are disconnected from the economic and civil-liberty concerns that many younger Americans face. Political coalitions cannot survive indefinitely by relying on older voters while steadily losing the younger generations. At some point, the demographics will catch up to Republicans.

The generational divide in the Massie race was difficult to miss. Older Republican voters overwhelmingly rallied behind Gallrein and Trump’s endorsement, while many younger conservatives, libertarian-leaning, anti-war voters, and anti-establishment Republicans saw Massie as one of the few voices in D.C. willing to challenge Trump and hold him accountable to the policies he campaigned on.

Although the GOP may have won the primary, it is still losing the next generation. The campaign against Massie was not a grassroots uprising of upset conservatives. It was a coordinated political effort driven by national donor networks, super PACs, and ideological enforcement through financial influence. Reports identified major billionaire donors and aligned political networks among the forces against Massie.

At a time when Republicans claim America faces existential crises from inflation, debt, border security, housing costs, institutional decline, or the multitude of “enemies we must destroy” (Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, China, etc.), tens of millions of dollars were mobilized not to defeat democrats, but to remove one of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress. That should concern anyone who still believes the GOP is primarily focused on governing.

Massie’s real offense was not ideological extremism; it was refusing to submit to the whims of President Trump and the ever-shifting demands of Trump-era Republicanism.

The modern GOP operates on a system where ideological consistency does not matter, as Trump loyalty is paramount over all. Yesterday’s policy positions can be changed on a whim depending on what Trump decides is politically useful at the moment. Trump built much of his political brand opposing foreign wars and criticizing interventionism abroad. However, he and many Trump-Republicans, are now supporting military confrontation with Iran. Trump built his immigration platform around strict border enforcement and reducing immigration levels, yet Republicans now increasingly support large expansions of employment-based visa programs when aligned with corporate or tech industry demands. The policies themselves are again, only secondary to what matters to the GOP, alignment with Trump’s political signals. Trump’s approval rating has cratered with every demographic, but is increasingly becoming worse with younger generations.

Massie represented one of the last remnants of a Republican tradition supposedly rooted in constitutional limits, fiscal responsibility, skepticism of foreign entanglements, and independent thought. In today’s GOP, consistency has increasingly become a liability.

This loss opens a door and an enormous opportunity for Libertarians and liberty-minded individuals. There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of fiscally conservative, anti-war, civil-libertarian, and constitutionally-minded Americans who increasingly feel politically homeless. Many are not going to vote Democrat, but they will not vote for a Republican now, either. A Republican party that punishes independent thinkers like Massie drives away the kinds of voters it once depended on: younger conservatives skeptical of the status quo in D.C. They want limited government but also reject authoritarian political culture and ideological browbeating by the Democratic Party.

If libertarians want to capitalize on this moment, they must avoid falling into the same trap that consumes both parties. Ideological purity tests increasingly dominate both big parties. One disagreement, one deviation from what is ‘approved’, and individuals are treated as enemies or outcasts that must be purged from the party. Millions of Americans are tired of these purity tests. The Libertarian Party has the opportunity to become something different. A genuine big-tent coalition for people who believe in individual liberties, constitutional governance, civil liberties, fiscal restraint, and skepticism towards centralized power. This coalition is not going to agree on everything, and it should not, because disagreement and discussion are vital to understanding and coming to the best policy.

Some libertarians are pro-life, and some are pro-choice. Some libertarians support more open immigration policies while others favor stronger border enforcement. There are disagreements on trade, foreign policy, policing, and countless other issues. That diversity of thought, however, is a necessity.

A movement built around liberty should not force total ideological conformity. Free societies produce disagreement. The goal is not purity, but principled coexistence under shared limits on government’s power. None of this means Massie was right on every single issue, and it doesn’t mean Trump lacks legitimate political support. However, political movements become impossible to hold together when disagreement becomes disqualifying.

If libertarians attempt to replicate the same purity spiral that is weakening both big parties, they will squander the opportunity laid out before them. There are millions of Americans searching for a political home that is not defined by personality cults or ideological enforcement. The Libertarian party does not need to become “Republican-lite” or “Democrats who love guns,” but instead a coalition with broad support to unite people around core principles of liberty.

The destruction of Thomas Massie should serve as a warning not just to the Republican Party’s future, but also to what happens to political movements when loyalty matters more than principle.

The question after Massie’s defeat is no longer whether the GOP is changing, but whether anyone inside it is still allowed to disagree at all.

The post The Trump Purity Spiral Creates a Libertarian Opportunity appeared first on Free the People.

We are currently watching that again in real time with this war. The growing number of voices breaking with the MAGA-diehards and insisting that the war with Iran is a terrible idea are being smeared in real-time. Joe Kent’s resignation letter clearly stated that Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation.” Calling on his time in the military, who had deployed 11 times and someone who lost his wife in a suicide bombing in Syria, Kent has the judgement of an individual who has operated at the highest levels of national security, and on the ground in tactical situations, and what that means for the servicemembers that must face the brunt of the war.

Already, at this writing, 13 service members are dead, with over 200 wounded, at least 10 ‘seriously.’ Besides the emotional and familial loss of their loved ones, the United States SGLI (Servicemember’s Group Life Insurance) covers $500,000 for each service member lost, a cost already over $6.5M for just those 13. Long-term disability costs are even higher. Just the 10 most severely wounded, assuming full disability over a lifetime, could cost more than $28 million. The remaining wounded could add roughly $250 million more, even before factoring in annual cost-of-living increases. Those servicemembers, much like the GWOT servicemembers I served alongside, deserve that VA disability for the number of deployments, as well as mental and physical problems they now face because of those wars; however, the cost is staggering. The cost for service members, as well as the cost of war, has exceeded $18B in just a few days, indicating the war is already off to an unsustainable start.

The general public, past and current Congressional members, and grassroots activists all echo the sentiment Joe Kent espouses. A New York Times article reported earlier this month that this war has the lowest public support of any American war, sitting at 41%, with a range of 27%-50% depending on the poll. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former MAGA faithful, stated on X in February, “Thousands and thousands of Americans from my generation have been killed and injured in never-ending pointless foreign wars, and we said no more…” She has consistently gone against foreign intervention, much to the chagrin of Trump, arguing that the foreign wars undermine the “America First” promise and distract from more pressing domestic issues. Regardless of whether someone agrees with her or not, her position shows skepticism among some of the MAGA faithful about another endless conflict in the Middle East. Tucker Carlson, in an interview with The Economist, stated that, “This war is something that he (President Trump) promised he wouldn’t do. Not once, but countless times… and the idea behind it is not only contrary to America-first, it may be its inverse.”

When looking at how individuals are engaging these arguments against the war, many proponents of a continued escalation in Iran have chosen the tactic of smearing the individuals. Alan Dershowitz, in an interview with Newsmax, took the typical response of anyone who can’t debate the arguments, but tries to label Joe Kent and others as “Nazi Neo-Fascists.” The accusation does not try to argue for the war with Iran, but attempts to delegitimize anyone who is against the war. Looking again at a neocon smear job, Mark Levin has described anyone against the war as “neofascist podcaster isolationists,” again framing any opposition to his foreign policy as an ‘ultimate evil.’ Strong arguments do not have that kind of rhetoric; weak arguments do. This rhetoric is the same as when people call individuals ‘isolationists’ and that their foreign policy is akin to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany. They try to delegitimize individuals and arguments to ensure that debate on these serious matters does not occur. They do not want Americans to think there might be another way, but instead to believe their policies are infallible. This tactic is coming from the same foreign policy establishment that led to the disastrous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and on and on.

Donald Trump initially attempted to justify the conflict as an effort to eliminate an imminent threat to the United States. After the strikes earlier in the year, he claimed that Iran’s defenses were gone. Stating that, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.” If that was true, and the threat was neutralized a month ago and Iran’s nuclear capabilities were destroyed back in June of last year, why is the U.S. escalating a larger war with Iran? Why are new strikes being planned to destroy the capabilities that the U.S. has supposedly already destroyed? Why is Trump reportedly looking to seize Kharg Island with 3,000 Marines and the 82nd Airborne deploying to the region?

These contradictions would be challenging in any typical policy debate; however, the debate is being shaped to favor a longer and more substantial war. Lindsey Graham, who called for Marines to seize Kharg Island by force, compared taking it to the American capture of Iwo Jima. Besides the fact that World War II was a fight for national survival, Iwo Jima resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans and the spending of billions of dollars. To believe that this war in Iran would be any different from other wars in the Middle East ignores history and recent conflicts. It will cost thousands of American lives, trillions of dollars, and ultimately leave us worse off in the long run.

The smearing by neocons resembles leftist tactics that label people as ‘racist,’ ‘homophobic,’ ‘xenophobic,’ etc., aiming to shut down debate by attacking individuals instead of their arguments. Critics of the Iran war are dismissed as having extremist views, and any opposition to the neocon stance is deemed illegitimate. The goal is not to win policy debates but to make constructive discussion and policy decisions impossible. We saw this during the lead-up to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when skeptics were called unpatriotic or accused of not supporting the troops. Those conflicts cost trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, and destabilized the region. Now, once again, the U.S. is heading toward another open-ended conflict in the Middle East, facing a far larger and more capable adversary.

The problem with the smearing and name-calling is not simply that the war may go badly, but that honest debate cannot occur. If critics of the war in Iran are smeared as being ‘fascists’ instead of a proper debate occurring, the United States may walk itself into another war in the Middle East that will last another twenty years. The case for war in Iran is already extremely weak. The effort to silence individuals against it only makes that clearer. Unless Americans are willing to challenge not only the policies being implemented but also the tactics used to smear the individuals fighting those policies, we will watch the same mistakes repeat themselves. If dissent is silenced yet again, the outcome will not be just another war in the Middle East; it will be another failure we were not allowed to question.

The post Smearing the Skeptics, D.C. Neocons’ Oldest Trick to Sell War appeared first on Free the People.

That assumption was made explicitly by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference when she stated, “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign. This is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons.”

That statement is, first, blatantly false, and it should also alarm every American.

One of the core issues raised by the shooting in Minneapolis is not partisan, but a foundational right to carry a firearm. In a truly free society, lawful possession of a firearm cannot be treated as probable cause for lethal force. A right that lowers the threshold for being killed by the state is not a right at all. Just because someone is carrying a firearm does not mean they are a threat.

Carrying a firearm, especially during protests, should not be a death sentence.

Armed Protest is Not a Contradiction

Secretary Noem’s statement collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
In January 2020, more than 22,000 people gathered at the Virginia state capital in Richmond for the Virginia Citizens Defense League’s annual Lobby Day to protest anti-second amendment legislation and meet with members of Virginia’s congress to try and sway them against it. Many of those attendees openly carried firearms. Rifles, including AR-15s, and handguns were common. One individual even carried a legally owned .50-caliber rifle, something that anti-second amendment individuals deemed as proof that violence was going to occur.

No violence ever occurred.

Despite the supposed weeks of warnings of violence touted by Democrats in charge, the rally concluded peacefully. There was no gunfire, no rioting, no injuries. Protesters even cleaned up after themselves and left the place in better condition than when they got there. The presence of firearms did not create any chaos.

West Virginia’s Citizens Defense League has followed in the same pattern. Armed citizens have assembled peacefully and lawfully, without violence. These demonstrations directly refute the claim that firearms and peaceful protest are mutually exclusive.

A gun is nothing more than an object. Violent action is the conduct of the individual. Confusing the two is inaccurate and dangerous.

The Ideological Inversion on Display

What makes the current situation in Minneapolis even more weird is the political inversion and hypocrisy it has shown by both sides.

For decades, the Republicans have styled themselves as the defenders of the Second Amendment while Democrats outright despise it. In response to Minneapolis, however, many self-described pro-2A Republicans are now arguing that the visible exercise of carrying a firearm near ICE and filming them nullifies that right and the right to life.

At the same time, many voices on the political left, traditionally those against any form of gun ownership, have correctly stated that lawful possession of a firearm is not a crime and does not justify lethal force. This blatant hypocrisy from both sides is laughable at this point. Crimes, and justification for enforcement or nonenforcement of gun laws, are either “red team good/red team bad” or “blue team good/blue team bad.”

Seeing the situation in that way, and a reversal of what both sides usually espouse, should trouble anyone who commits to the actual Second Amendment and its purpose.

The Second Amendment does not exist to protect politically convenient gun ownership. It exists precisely to prevent the government from deciding that citizens should lose their rights, or, when a government becomes tyrannical, the very right to self-defense.

The left and the right should both realize that a right that vanishes when it becomes uncomfortable for their side is not safeguarded for either side.

Virginia’s Legislative Blueprint for Eroding Rights

Virginia is showing a clear case study in how this mindset is becoming law. This year, Democratic lawmakers in Richmond have advanced an extremely aggressive gun-control agenda: expanded red-flag laws, bans on AR-15-style rifles, prohibitions on standard-capacity magazines, increasingly technical regulations governing how firearms may be carried or stored, and the rollback of reciprocity agreements that once allowed gun owners to travel across state lines lawfully.

Each proposal has been marketed as ‘reasonable’ and ‘commonsense.’ Together, the proposals form a legal framework designed to make exercising a constitutional right risky, expensive, and legally difficult. This legislation is all done by design, with the ultimate goal of complete disarmament.

Red-flag laws only exemplify and exacerbate the problem. Firearms would be seized first, with the hearings in court later. Accusations substitute for any evidence or due process, meaning any protest could be deemed evidence of a potential threat. The burden then is on the citizen to prove that they are not dangerous, a standard that is incompatible with due process.

Heller, Bruen, and the “Common Use” Rule

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects arms in “common usage” for lawful purposes and that weapons commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens cannot be banned. The court explicitly rejected the idea that the government can ban firearms simply because it does not like them.

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), this reinforced that rule, holding that modern gun regulations must be consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulations, not just switching up constitutional law because of political discomfort, contemporary policy preferences, or, in this case, carrying a firearm in touchy situations.

AR-15 style rifles are among the most commonly owned firearms in the United States. Millions upon millions are owned by millions of Americans and used overwhelmingly for lawful purposes. Under Heller’s ‘common use’ test and Bruen’s historical framework, bans on these firearms are misguided and constitutionally unacceptable. Magazine limits fare no better as standard-capacity magazines are standard precisely because they are found everywhere. Criminalizing them does not target criminal misuse; it only targets law-abiding citizens who wish to own firearms for self-defense and lawful use. The case in this shooting, in which the individual seems to be carrying a firearm and filming, is not illegal. It should not be a death sentence to film police officers while they are performing their duties and carrying a firearm. Be it a pistol, which in this case, or if he were carrying a rifle, it should make no difference.

An Inverse Test of Arguments and Policy

There is a simple way to test whether the rhetoric from either side is principled or merely convenient to the situation: reverse the roles.

If federal agents were conducting mass firearm seizures under a newly enacted ban, let us say with an influx of thousands of newly conscripted ATF agents with door-to-door confiscation, would the same voices argue that citizens should ‘just comply’? Would visible possession of a firearm suddenly justify lethal force? Should those Virginians who carry at the state capital be deemed a threat if they were to resist laws widely viewed as unconstitutional? Would Americans be told that resistance to anti-2A legislation and agents enforcing it would be viewed as forfeits to their rights of life?

History would say no.

For years, conservatives and republican lawmakers have rightly warned that enforcing unconstitutional laws is not morally neutral simply because the laws exist on paper. Blind obedience, many have argued, is incompatible with liberty. That conviction appears to evaporate when the enforcement target changes.

Democrats are no better in their thinking and rhetoric.

If ATF agents were killed while seizing firearms under a sweeping national ban, would today’s progressive defenders argue that compliance is the only acceptable response? Or would skepticism of militarized enforcement and federal overreach suddenly emerge again?

The Constitution does not operate on a partisan schedule or understanding. A principle that only applies in specific situations and in politically advantageous scenarios is not a principle; it is only a preference. Telling citizens to ‘just comply’ with laws that they sincerely and reasonably believe to be unconstitutional is not a defense of order. Endorsing lethal force to enforce those laws is worse.

This is where Virginia and Minneapolis intersect. When officials are arguing that carrying a firearm transforms a protest into a ‘violent riot,’ they are laying the groundwork for future policies that treat rights as threats. Once possession itself is deemed dangerous, especially when carrying while performing other constitutionally protected rights, escalation becomes easy to justify. You cannot meaningfully support the Second Amendment while endorsing laws that make its exercise criminal. You cannot claim to value civil liberties while applauding policies that punish people before they have done anything wrong.

Defending Principle

Violence and the enforcement of immigration laws can both be misused and abused. What happened in Minneapolis is a tragedy that someone lost their life, but carrying a firearm is not evidence of guilt or a threat of violence that needed to be escalated.

Carrying a firearm should never lower the threshold for lethal force. It should never void due process, and should not transform peaceful citizens into presumptive threats. If the government will kill you for exercising your constitutional rights, then that right has already been lost.

Minneapolis should foster a deeper understanding of our rights and what is happening. The question is not if firearms make someone uncomfortable, they are a threat, but whether constitutional rights mean anything when firearms are visible. A truly free society would be able to answer that without hesitation.

Carrying a firearm should never be a death sentence, and any government that treats it as such has forgotten the Constitution and what the Second Amendment is truly for.

Sic Semper Tyrannis.

The post Carrying A Firearm Should Not be a Death Sentence appeared first on Free the People.

Libertarians and non-interventionists reject the false choice that has been given in the media: you support the intervention, or you support the Maduro regime. The framing is dishonest and is used by both sides of the political spectrum in the United States to bring their followers to their calls for more political action and grandstanding on what needs to be done. Opposition to intervention in Venezuela is not a support for the tyranny that the Maduro regime brought to Venezuela; it is a defense of liberty, national sovereignty, and the constitutional limits on executive power. Pushing back against that dichotomy of choices is clear for anyone who has been following the situation. Just because you are against intervention does not mean you support the Maduro regime. History has shown that American-led regime changes rarely produce the outcomes the United States wishes to see and destroy many of the civil societies it wishes to protect.

In the capture of Maduro, Trump made it very clear what the U.S. intentions were with Venezuela: use their massive oil reserves for U.S. profits.

When Leaders Tell You the Reason, Believe Them

Throughout the Trump administration campaign against Venezuela, oil was never far from the conversation. In a news conference from January 3rd, he stated that, “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela… and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the dangerous damages caused us by that country.” Trump has repeatedly emphasized Venezuela’s vast petroleum reserves, often mentioning oil multiple times in his press conferences, and framing that oil as American, even though the ground and the oil within it are very clearly under Venezuelan-owned territory.

At another conference on January 6th, Trump announced that Venezuela’s interim authorities would transfer between 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States for sale, with any proceeds controlled by the U.S. government. This statement was not an offhand remark made by Trump; it was explicitly reported and confirms what critics of the intervention had argued: that control of Venezuelan oil is central to U.S. policy.

This context matters as before the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil industry in 1976, American and other companies dominated the oil production under concession agreements. The massive American companies exerted enormous influence over Venezuela’s most valuable resource, ensuring huge American profits while the Venezuelan state received just a small share of those. The arrangement ended when Venezuela asserted national control over its oil.

When Hugo Chávez came to power, multinational firms were forced under his socialist policies to accept minority ownership stakes or leave the country altogether, which forced some American companies, including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, to exit in 2007. Many of these companies, and the political allies that they have in Washington, have never stopped wanting to regain what they lost under more favorable terms. When Trump says that he is going to sell Venezuelan oil under U.S. control, he is describing resource transfer. Americans should recognize this for what it is: state power being used to reshape foreign economies in ways that benefit politically connected companies.

The Drug War Is a Convenient Pretext

Alongside the oil and ‘protecting democracy’ rhetoric, the Trump administration has leaned heavily on another justification for its intervention in Venezuela: Drugs, specifically fentanyl. Americans were told that Venezuela was not only a socialist dictatorship but a major contributor to the fentanyl crisis here in the United States. This claim collapses when viewed through our own federal agencies’ straightforward reporting.

According to U.S. CRS reports, UNODC World Drug Report (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), and law enforcement reporting on drug threat assessments, the overwhelming majority of fentanyl entering the United States is produced by Mexican criminal organizations, often using precursor materials sourced from China. Fentanyl is trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico land border. Venezuela does not appear as a significant source or producer in these federal threat assessments. The rhetoric has persisted because it served the purpose of emotional appeal to the American public. By tying Venezuela to fentanyl and the thousands of deaths that it has caused in the United States, intervention could be reframed not as an optional foreign policy, but as a needed policy to combat the thousands of deaths in self-defense. This rhetoric is not evidence-based policymaking, but instead narrative construction that we have seen before.

Drugs as “WMDs”: A Relic of Iraq Policymaking

Even more troubling is how this rhetoric mirrors one of the worst tragedies of American foreign policy in American history, the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, exaggerated and ultimately false claims about weapons of mass destruction were used to manufacture the American public’s consent for invasion. If we would not intervene in Iraq, Saddam was about to launch nuclear weapons towards the United States, and millions would die. We had to act, or so we were told. That war led to hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi lives lost, trillions spent on defense spending, and, looking at the situation in Iraq now, a less stable region that had seen a rise of ISIL forces and sectarian fighting.

Today, drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl, is elevated to an existential national security threat, framed eerily similar to the “WMD” discourse of the early 2000s. If the threat is portrayed as severe enough, and as the thousands of American lives unfortunately lost to this drug ties the emotional appeal, ordinary restraints are ignored for the sake of ‘safety.’ This emotional appeal lets this administration bypass Congress, bypass the national sovereignty of Venezuela, and allows war to be acceptable.

Those who lived through the “WMD” false claims should recognize this tactic immediately.

Venezuela As a Signal to Others

Venezuela, however, does not seem to be the end goal, but only the message that the Trump administration wishes to send.
Foreign policy interventions are often about signaling just as much as the outcomes. Trump’s posture towards Venezuela can reasonably be interpreted as a demonstration of the administration’s willingness to go to war against other countries deemed to be threats, and just how far the Trump administration is willing to go to achieve its goals.

Colombia is one country that Trump may be signaling to. Trump has repeatedly criticized Colombia over drug trafficking, and publicly, more drastic actions may be needed, including the possibility of military pressure, again under the idea of a war on drugs. By framing Venezuela as a legitimate target due to alleged narcotics involvement and the humanitarian crisis in the country, the administration is establishing a precedent that governments deemed insufficiently cooperative may face U.S. military action.

Iran may be another country that the Trump administration is signaling to. Trump has openly expressed support for the Iranian protests in recent days and stated on Truth Social that, “If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.” In this context, the Trump administration has Venezuela as proof of how far they are willing to go, that they are eager to escalate from rhetoric to action under the guise of supporting ‘the people.’ The implication is clear that the logic used to justify intervention in Venezuela could be applied to Iran, this time under the ‘humanitarian’ framing.

When regime change interventions become the signaling tool, every protest abroad can be a potential next pretext, and every American geopolitical rival becomes a candidate for intervention.

Liberty Cannot Be Exported

Trump’s Venezuelan intervention exposes the uncomfortable truth that when a president openly links intervention to control another nation’s natural resources and backs it with exaggerated cases of drug trafficking, the moral superiority collapses.

Liberty cannot be delivered by force. It cannot be engineered through U.S. interventions and regime change wars. There may be videos now of cheering Venezuelans on social media, but much the same as the fall of Saddam, there soon was more unrest, sectarian violence, and a power vacuum that another power will fill.

We have seen this play out before, and we know where they all lead. The Senate, in approving a War Powers Resolution, is trying to rein in the Trump administration’s executive power; however, it needs to actually enforce the resolution. Calling out the Trump administration and trying to stop future interventions before they occur is only possible if Congress does its job. More than likely, it will be vetoed if passed by the House, and the Trump administration will undermine the resolution by noncompliance. Adding teeth to the resolution, including judicial enforcement, would help bolster it.

Venezuela’s suffering is very real, but it cannot be used as a blank reason for American interventionism. History offers no shortage of examples showing that regime change, justified through a multitude of reasons, often entrenches chaos, civil wars, totalitarian regimes after the fact, and corrodes liberty at home. When intervention is openly tied to another nation’s natural resources and propped up by exaggerated threats, the moral argument collapses entirely. Americans are not obligated to choose between endorsing dictatorships and endorsing wars abroad. Defending liberty means rejecting this idea. It means insisting on constitutional restraint, respecting national sovereignty, and not letting rhetoric be weaponized to justify another endless conflict. If the United States is serious about upholding freedom, it must do so by limiting its intervention abroad, especially when carried out under the guise of benevolence.

The post You Don’t Have to Support Maduro to Oppose U.S. Intervention in Venezuela appeared first on Free the People.

The United States is now over $38 trillion in debt. We have added over $2.18T in national debt just from November 5 of last year to November of this year alone. Every dollar that the United States spends, especially overseas, is a dollar borrowed at interest against Americans’ futures. Writing and agreeing to a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar blank check to Israel is irresponsible and unsustainable, especially when Israel is a wealthy nation fully capable of funding its own defense.

The Scale of U.S. Aid to Israel and the Double Standard

The amount of U.S. aid to Israel is staggering. From 1946 to 2024, Israel received over $300 billion in economic and military assistance, of which $244 billion was military-specific. The 2016 MOU alone guaranteed $38 billion over ten years. Since the October 7, 2023 attack, emergency funding and additional military support have increased, totaling $16.3 billion in direct military aid. Billions more flow in emergency deployments, munitions, and intelligence support. Despite this massive amount of money, negotiations are looking to provide even more money to Israel and extend the commitments for another 20 years. These numbers may seem minuscule when compared to our national debt or our defense budget, which is now closing in on the trillion-dollar mark; however, the costs are just too high.

Proponents of past MOUs and this new one point to missile defense cooperation, especially the Iron Dome Missile Defense System. Yet there is a glaring problem: Israel refuses to share full Iron Dome technology with the U.S., even though our taxpayer dollars financed much of its development. The U.S. purchases the batteries and contributes to the procurement; however, Israel retains the technical data for the system. If Israel is America’s “Greatest Ally,” why are they withholding technology from the country that helped bankroll the development of the program? Why is the value entirely one-way? Those are the questions that Washington needs to look at before locking the U.S. into another decade or longer billion-dollar fiasco.

Myth of “America First” MOU

The defenders of this MOU are trying to frame it as consistent with Trump’s “MAGA” agenda; however, the reality is the opposite. This MOU would send billions of borrowed taxpayer dollars overseas while the U.S. faces a multitude of problems domestically. Trump’s touted ‘50-year mortgage,’ failing public education, and crumbling infrastructure, among the litany of other domestic issues, ensure that Americans will “own nothing and be happy about it.”

The reason the new MOU is for a possible 20 years has much to do with Israel’s public opinion polling in the United States. Polls now show a 59% unfavorable opinion of the Israeli government, up from 51% in 2024. A majority of Americans now are questioning whether U.S. taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for Israel’s military. Continuing to fund Israel’s military, especially with a twenty-year MOU, tries to ignore this shift in the public’s opinion on Israel by locking in the money now, before public opinion shifts even more negatively.

The United States must adopt a principled fiscal policy: No foreign aid. Not to Israel. Not to any nation. Every borrowed dollar sent abroad is a dollar spent on another nation’s priorities, and a dollar that deepens America’s dependence on taxing at higher rates. Foreign aid without fiscal responsibility is something the United States cannot continue to do. Ron Paul was correct in 2011 when he stated, “Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country.” The even bigger problem this time, though, is that Israel is not a poor country; they are a well-developed first-world nation.

The Path Forward

Given the financial problems that the United States is facing, the lack of oversight, and the questionable abuses by Israel in Gaza, the path forward for the United States is apparent—no new MOU for Israel, especially one for ten or twenty more years. We must end all aid to Israel and any other foreign nation, especially while the U.S. is continuing to go into debt. We must require technological reciprocity for any defense programs bankrolled in part by the United States at any point in our past. Finally, better dialogues and conversations in Congress about funding foreign nations while the U.S. is in debt are needed.

The proposed MOU is framed as ‘strategic,’ ‘moral,’ or “America First.” In reality, it is a blank check signed by American taxpayers, an open-ended commitment that enriches another country while increasing American debt and risk. Israel receives billions annually, has received hundreds of billions historically, and continues to ask for more. Americans are increasingly losing support for unconditional support for Israel, and continuing on this path ignores public sentiment and entrenches the U.S. in the region’s conflicts and problems for another twenty years.

This policy and MOU are clear examples of “America Last” in action. U.S. taxpayers foot the bill for decades more of foreign entanglements in the Middle East while domestic problems linger. The path forward for the United States is clear: end all foreign aid, stop the multi-decade MOUs, and help solve America’s debt problem by ending unconditional support to any nation.

It is time to stop taxing Americans to bankroll the world and prioritize fiscal responsibility. Foreign aid must end, and Americans must come first.

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While the Trump administration and supporters of these actions would say that the move is necessary to protect U.S. national security and its citizens, it must be understood that time and again, U.S. interventionism within Central and South America has been terrible in execution and results. Over the decades, these operations, covert or not, have been framed as defensive measures to protect the U.S. from shadowy threats. The threats loomed for Americans from communism, terrorism, and drug trafficking, among others.

The aftermath of these interventions, however, has too frequently been violence, instability in the United States and the country in question, and the undermining of democracy, here and abroad.

One only needs to look at the U.S.-backed coups and the regimes it supported during the Cold War to see how these efforts panned out. The CIA backed regimes and groups that committed vast human rights violations, all while under the guise that we were fighting to protect U.S. interests or against the never-ending threat of communism. In Guatemala in 1954, the CIA-backed Operation PBSuccess overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, in which his land reforms under the United Fruit Company were seen as a threat to U.S. corporate interests. This intervention would eventually lead to multiple military dictators and a 36-year-long civil war within the country.

In Chile, the CIA covertly worked to prevent Salvador Allende and would work to destabilize his government to the tune of $8 million in covert actions between 1970-1973. The efforts to destabilize the country through covert actions culminated in the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, another brutal dictatorship that would kill thousands, and many more would ‘disappear’ off the face of the earth.

The U.S. involvement in Central America got its most violent chapter in the 1980s with the deep covert operations within El Salvador and Nicaragua. The Reagan administration put billions of dollars into supporting Salvadoran governmental forces, one of the most horrific unintended events being the El Mozote Massacre, where over 800 civilians, including women and children, were slaughtered by the Atlacatl Battalion, equipped and explicitly trained by the U.S. military. A massacre that the U.S. continues to downplay its involvement in and has resisted calls for accountability in. The latter violent chapter would be in Nicaragua, where the U.S. backed the Contra forces, again, to prevent ‘spreading communism’.

The Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s not only devastated Central America but also triggered a massive wave of refugees and violence. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans sought asylum in the United States, many settling in Los Angeles and other urban centers. Among those refugees would be the young Salvadorans who started the notorious MS-13 gang, one of the most violent transnational criminal organizations. MS-13 coming to fruition is an unintended consequence of the United States’ continuous involvement in Central and South America through its interventionist policies. The mass gang violence that MS-13 brought with it is the same violence that the Trump administration is seemingly trying to defeat by using the same ill-advised policies as before.

The striking similarity between the current events unfolding in the Trump administration’s announcement and historical precedent is uncanny.

The Trump administration’s insistence that these operations are needed to protect U.S. interests is leading to more instability and human suffering. The framing of Maduro’s Venezuela as the ‘socialist drug king’ of South America bears a resemblance to the interventions throughout America’s history with Central and South America. What is worse is that the ‘global war on drugs’ bears a striking resemblance to the ‘global war on terror,’ after 9/11, in which both can ultimately find an unlimited number of enemies for the United States to intervene and fight. There is no endgame to both the ‘global war on terror’ and the ‘global war on drugs’ because the U.S. always wants to have that enemy, for there always to be the ‘other’ we must fight against. Maduro’s Venezuela is the next ‘other’ in a long line that must be defeated in the name of ‘security.’

Even more so, the Trump administration’s admission of covert operations comes with little transparency of the scope and oversight of these operations, much the same as how mission creep affected the scope of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This mission creep and covert operations raise concerns about accountability and legal justification under both U.S. and international law. The U.S. is bound to respect Venezuela’s sovereignty and refrain from the use of unauthorized force. The risk of escalation, regional destabilization, and blowback is apparent. History shows that these covert operations rarely produce the outcomes that the U.S. wishes to see and instead often only deepen the conflict, increase the migrant flows to the U.S., and foster more anti-U.S. sentiment.

What is urgently needed is complete transparency and oversight of these operations. Congress should demand clarity on the legal basis for these operations. The end goal needs to be specifically defined, with sunset dates on AUMFs (Authorization of Use of Military Force), in the event of intervention, which seems likely. The American people deserve more than the rhetoric from the Trump administration, and need more assurances that the U.S. will not intervene militarily in Venezuela. If a larger regional conflict were to erupt in Venezuela, it would not only affect Venezuela, but also, as history suggests, the U.S. and the rest of the Western Hemisphere would have to deal with the consequences that follow. A mass refugee crisis could unfold, with hundreds of thousands fleeing, possibly illegally, to the U.S. Rather than stabilizing the region, covert operations and military interventions risk a larger humanitarian crisis and fuel migration and violence. It is a costly outcome that D.C. should avoid before deciding to pull the trigger on the next operation.

Trump’s admission of covert operations happening is not just the headline for the day, but a warning of what is to come. The United States has repeatedly intervened in Latin America with promises of promoting democracy and stability, only for that to backfire with horrific effects. The legacy of El Mozote, the numerous civil wars, and the unintended consequences of mass migration demonstrate that we must learn from history. If the Trump administration truly values U.S. security, it must reconsider moving forward with covert operations to prevent history from repeating itself.

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The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has forced Europe into learning a hard lesson. They need to change their defensive postures and rearmament programs into one that they themselves can depend on. The regional powers in the Pacific also need to learn from this costly and painful lesson the hard way. The United States needs to end foreign aid to Taiwan, forcing its Asian Pacific allies to step up properly.

A Hard Learned Lesson

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the world’s global peacekeeper. It has gotten involved in conflicts ranging from humanitarian interventions to economic interests to the global wars on terror, fighting terrorist threats. The global war on terror alone, as reported on by Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), cost the U.S. “over 7,000 U.S. troops killed in action, $6 trillion spent, long-term costs estimated at over $2.2 trillion through 2050, and even more unfortunate, over 30,000 veterans lost to suicide.” With the resurgence of a multi-polar world, U.S. allies must reassess their defense burdens and consider what they can do to ensure their safety. Dependency on the United States to cover the lion’s share of defense will no longer suffice.

Laura Pitel reported within Financial Times that, “European rearmament is driving ahead at full speed, as Germany’s Rheinmetall yesterday inaugurated what will be the EU’s largest ammunition factory.” This factory “will initially produce about 25,000 artillery rounds this year, to reach annual production of 350,000 in 2027.” This factory is just one part of the way that Europe can be self-sustaining in its defensive posture. Europe has demonstrated that it is more than capable of providing for its own defense and can rival the United States in terms of defensive spending.

In March, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, unveiled a five-point plan called ReArm Europe Plan that she said “could mobilize close to 800 billion euros of defense expenditures for safe and resilient Europe.” As the United States’ defense budget unfortunately approaches the trillion-dollar mark, Europe must take a more responsible approach to collective security.

Unfortunately, Ukraine had to be the country invaded for Europe to understand that the United States cannot always be the sole provider of equipment and financial backing for European defense, especially when European powers are more than capable of providing their own defense. This hard-learned lesson that Nato powers must increase funding brought European powers to finally “hit a longstanding target of spending 2% of GDP on defence this year…” America should force European leaders to understand the collective costs of security.

Learning from Mistakes

Taiwan faces a similar antagonistic threat from a resurging China. CIA Director William Burns stated that, “Xi has instructed the PLA “to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan,” although he has also assessed that Xi and the PLA “have doubts today about whether they could accomplish that invasion.” If this is the case, that China is possibly looking at a unification through forceful means, the same situation would befall the Indo-Pacific.

The Indo-Pacific has numerous power players who could easily help share the burden of deterrence and help maintain the balance of power in the region. Learning from Ukraine and applying those lessons would have prompted regional powers such as South Korea, Japan, and Australia to bolster their defensive armament programs and rebuild their arsenals. In the case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, America’s Asian partners would need to share that burden. Sheila Smith states in her book, Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power, that “Japanese leaders “understand that it is not in their best interest to limit their military as others invest in their own…”

American allies in the Pacific continue to rely heavily on American forces for defense, rather than working towards self-reliance. AUKUS still has Australia heavily dependent on the United States and the United Kingdom. South Korea and Japan’s continued reliance on American forces stationed domestically reflects the same European-style reluctance to defend themselves properly. Mirroring America’s Taiwan policy with its Ukraine policy will force American allies in the Pacific to boost their military in the same way as those in Europe. Building up their own rearmament programs and military forces would help balance the power in the region, while easing the strains and concerns of the American public.

America is Tired and Done

The United States is tired of shouldering the most significant burden of global peace. As research from Pew Research Center shows, “47% of U.S. adults say it is best for the future of the country to be active in world affairs. 64% think the U.S. should be willing to compromise with other countries on major international issues.” The United States has spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to ‘keep the peace’ of the liberal hegemonic moment. Multipolarity has, for better or for worse, returned to the international system and is likely to remain the dominant global power structure for the foreseeable future. Having regional powers and allies, such as the EU, South Korea, Japan, and Australia, step up for their share of the burden will be a necessity for a future they all want. The era of the United States being the world’s police is over, and to prevent a similar fate befalling Taiwan, our Asian allies need to look to their own defenses.

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