Paul Craig Roberts (pictured above), is the esteemed chairman of the Institute for Political Economy, an economist, educator and former assistant secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan. He authored an essay on October 30, 2023, in which he declared it’s is no longer correct to refer to the Western nations as “free.”

I’m glad someone of Roberts’ stature has finally recognized the obvious. I’ve been referring to the U.S. and its allies for the last three years or more as the “formerly free Western world.”

In his column, Roberts linked to one of my previous articles about the arrest of freedom advocate Reiner Fuelmich as just one example proving his case that the Western nations are no longer “free,” at least not by any clear-thinking person’s assessment.

My question is, why do the bulk of Americans, Canadians, Brits, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and Australians still believe they are free? Are they so influenced by their educational indoctrination, their pampered upbringing and the media gaslighting that they have lost touch with reality?

Do they perhaps know they are not free but just don’t care, having long since been stripped of any ability to feel the joys of freedom by the nihilistic nature of today’s society?

Maybe they, as Aldous Huxley suggested, have learned to enjoy their enslavement in the modern technocratic society, where there are plenty of bread and circuses to keep their minds off the unpleasant nature of their existence.

Maybe they are simply too stubborn to admit that life in America, Britain, Germany and France is not what it used to be, and really not much freer than life in Russia or China.

Yes, we at least still have the 2nd Amendment in America and that is a good thing. But how real is the freedom to “keep and bear arms” when the ATF is constantly looking for sneaky new ways to water down that freedom by creating “rules” out of thin air? These rules usually get challenged in court, then take years to wind through the legal system (the ban on pistol braces is a good example of this).

In the meantime, states are banning all sorts of weapons that were previously allowed. The state of Illinois recently banned an assortment of semi-automatic rifles. The very fact that I have to use the word “allowed,” shows you the 2nd Amendment is largely a fiction, not a reality. And even if you do have the right to own a certain weapon, it’s a crap shoot as to whether you are allowed to use it in self defense. In many states, shooting a home intruder, or even just aiming a weapon at a hostile trespasser on your property, can get you arrested and convicted of a crime (Just ask Mark McCloskey and his wife in St. Louis).

Below is an excerpt from Roberts’ article in which he makes the case that the Western world is no longer the “free world.” It has gone over to the dark side. Most of us just haven’t seemed to notice yet, or we have noticed and don’t care. While I don’t agree with Roberts’ claim that the Western neocons have launched wars in the Mideast “in Israel’s behalf” (mostly they launch these wars because such war-making benefits their bank accounts) I do think the basic claims of his essay are spot on.

By Paul Craig Roberts

It sounds ridiculous to say, but it is a fact:  the era of freedom in the West is over.  The false flag attack, 9/11, was used to launch the neoconseratives’ wars in Israel’s behalf in the Middle East.  More importantly, fear of “Muslim terrorists” was used to set aside constitutional protections such as habeas corpus and due process and to implement other inroads into  liberty such as the Patriot Act and the mass warrantless NSA spying on US citizens.  Today you can be arrested in Germany, France, and the UK for waving a Palestinian flag.  In the US the exercise of free speech gets you cancelled and fired.  Only approved opinions can be safely stated.  The facts simply do not matter.  Official narratives have triumphed over truth.

This destruction of liberty began a long time ago.  I published a book 23 years ago about the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the government  which it clearly is as witnessed by the false charges against Trump and the imprisonment of 1,000 people who used their First Amendment right to protest the theft of the 2020 election from President Trump.  Hardly anyone believes the charges against Trump, not even the Democrat prosecutors, judges, Justice Department and members of Congress.  What is important to them is destroying their hate object.  The facts are of no concern.  The US is today experiencing Stalinist purge trials.  Stalin knew that the Bolsheviks were not capitalist spies and so did the Soviet court system, but Stalin nevertheless had their Bolshevik leaders executed.

In the US it is not only Democrats calling for more censorship and suppression of the First Amendment.  Republicans are just as alienated from freedom as Democrats.  Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, even Ron DeSantis are calling for more censorship and curtailments of free speech as a way of suppressing the Palestinian side of the story.  The Democrat Left and Republican Right now agree that free speech needs to be reined in, that it can make people uncomfortable, feel threatened, and spread misinformation by departing from official explanations.  Left and Right differ on what they want suppressed, but they are both willing to suppress free speech in the interest of their agendas.

The current restrictions on the First Amendment began with “political correctness” in the universities.  Some things could be said and others could not.  Some races and genders could say them and others could not.  Men could be verbally assaulted but not women. Whites could be called names but not blacks.

The orchestrated Covid pandemic brought national censorship.  The Covid narrative could not be challenged, not even by distinguished medical scientists.  Neither could the Vax.  The facts did not matter.  Inexpensive preventatives and cures–Ivermectin and HCQ–were prohibited from being used.  Consequently, Big Pharma made billions of dollars from a “vaccine” that did not prevent Covid but did have serious side effects–death and permanent health injury for millions of people.

Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, the distinguished German human rights activist, has led a large group of medical scientists and attorneys for several years preparing a lawsuit in behalf of the millions of people who died or were injured as a result of the Covid “vaccine.”  This has annoyed Big Pharma and their stooges in governments who are complicit in the crime of mandating the injection of billions of people with a substance known to be dangerous and life-threatening.

Efforts to discredit and to silence Dr Fuellmich were soon underway. A judge convicted him last May of insulting people and ordered  him to pay a large sum that was reduced to 2,100 euros.  Thus, the German court established the principle that free speech can be insulting and punished.

While traveling with his wife in Mexico, their passports were lost or stolen.  On October 13 they went to the German embassy in Mexico to have them replaced unaware that a warrant had been issued in Germany for Fuellmich on what appear to be fraudulent fraud charges. According to news reports, Mexico is outside the jurisdiction of the EU and the warrant could not be enforced, so Fuellmich was kidnapped by the German government and flown to Germany and imprisoned.  His lawyers have examined the charges of fraud, which seem to amount to stealing the money of his organization and regard the charges as absurd. At time of writing, the only evidence consists of an accusation, possibly a bribed or coerced one.

But Western governments are no longer accountable and can bring all the fraudulent indictments that they wish even against the President of the United States.  The purpose of this one seems to be to discredit Fuellmich and prevent his lawsuit from going forward. After being frustrated by the refusal of courts in the Western world to try the Covid case on the collected evidence, a court finally agreed.  In my opinion, to prevent accountability for Big Pharma and its government allies, an arrest warrant was issued and Fuellmich was imprisoned.

Read the entire article by Roberts on his website.

https://leohohmann.substack.com/p/paul-craig-roberts-it-is-no-longer?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=787967&post_id=138460211&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=7591d&utm_medium=email