Yes, it’s already a mess, as well as a steep stack of betrayals and contradictions, by a President who was supposed to be better than this. How is killing a religious leader, and launching a bombing campaign on a Muslim nation twice in 8 months any way to get to peace? BTW, don’t blame end times believers for this, blame the war hawks who misuse religion to argue that we must use force to make God’s prophecies come true, instead of letting the Almighty take care of things. As usual, there is no free speech afforded on cable media to any constitutional-minded critic who might object. Two anti-war voices cry out in the midst of the droning FOX wilderness:
LP National Chair on the more statist than ever annual speech celebrating Big Government and more federal force:
Last night, President Donald Trump declared that the state of our Union is strong.
He spoke of economic resurgence and a new Golden Age of America.
But strength measured in speeches is not the same as strength measured at the kitchen table.
Since 2020, Americans have absorbed over 20% cumulative price increases. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, thanks to Congressional spending, the highest in four decades, after trillions in COVID-era stimulus, and Federal Reserve asset purchases were injected into the system. We were told it was temporary. We were told it was necessary.
Prices did not return to baseline. They reset higher.
The decay isn’t just ‘inflation this year.’ It’s the accumulated loss of purchasing power, prices resetting higher and never retreating, while the debt load keeps rising.
The President cites growth.
Americans see grocery bills up double digits.
He cites job creation.
Americans see insurance premiums rising faster than wages.
He cites market resilience.
Americans see credit card debt exceeding $1 trillion.
He speaks of prosperity.
Young families see housing drifting out of reach.
Median home prices remain near historic highs. Mortgage rates more than doubled from their pandemic lows. The monthly payment on a median home is now roughly 80% higher than it was in 2020. Ownership has shifted from milestone to mirage, with younger generations completely giving up on the prospect of ever owning a home.
This is not happenstance. When over $6 trillion in emergency federal spending collides with a monetary system untethered from sound money and discipline, purchasing power erodes. Inflation is a law of nature. It is policy translated into rent, groceries, and tuition.
The President speaks of strength abroad.
We hear renewed warnings toward Iran. Military repositioning. Strategic language. Familiar drums of war.
We have heard those beats before.
Emergency. Deterrence. Escalation. Permanence.
Every administration promises that conflict will be limited, targeted, and temporary. Yet after two decades of the global war on terror, the machinery built under the banner of security has not receded. Agencies expand. The surveillance state turned inwards. “Temporary” powers calcify into permanent government programs.
War abroad centralizes authority at home.
It always has.
The President speaks of restoring order at the border.
But order enforced through federal militarization layered atop a dysfunctional immigration code is not reform; it is a band-aid on a broken system, which treats those in limbo as collateral. Neither Republicans nor Democrats wish to tackle the issue of true immigration reform, but rather oscillate between border chaos and domestic authoritarianism.
We have seen what happens when emergency enforcement becomes permanent architecture. Contractors and data firms are building enforcement and surveillance tools that never stay confined to their original targets. Those will soon be used against you.
The President promises discipline.
Yet the national debt now approaches $40 trillion. Annual deficits continue in the trillions, with the cost of servicing the debt reaching 8% of the budget. Both parties speak of restraint while appropriating expansion. Both condemn inflation while tolerating the conditions that produce it.
DOGE was ignored as soon as the waste, fraud, and abuse was exposed. One of the only Republican Congressmen to vote against the Big Beautiful Bill, Thomas Massie, was called a traitor and third rate Congressmen, and Trump backed his primary challenger.
The hypocrisy is palpable; look at one hand, and ignore what the other is doing.
Strength, in Washington, is often defined as the capacity to manage crises.
Liberty requires preventing them from becoming permanent.
The Libertarian Party rejects the premise that centralization is synonymous with stability. Economic resilience does not come from monetary manipulation. Security does not come from perpetual escalation. Prosperity does not come from debt financed by future generations.
Power, once granted, does not volunteer to recede.
That is the throughline from pandemic stimulus to housing unaffordability to the drumbeat toward another Middle Eastern conflict.
The question is not whether the Union can be declared strong.
The question is whether Americans remain free from systems that expand in every crisis and retreat in none.
True strength can only be realized when a country returns to sound money, a free market capitalist system, and stays out of forever wars.
There, the strength is wielded by the hands of the individual, not the state.
In Liberty,
Steven Nekhaila
Chairman, Libertarian National Committee
Join us for QL’s county convention as the Libertarian Party of Queens County (LPQC) on March 14 at noon. It will be held will be held at our Astoria location, Stamatis Greek and Mediterranean Restaurant at 29-09 23rd Avenue (in the back area, menu details at stamatisrestaurant.net). This official LP county committee function will serve as our full general meeting, where officers will be nominated or re-nominated, and committee or subcommittee members are to be appointed.
Outgoing LPQC Chair John Clifton will discuss the evolution of the county committee over the past decade, its current status and his own future plans. We hope to have an update by Larry Sharpe or a representative about the progress of his campaign for Governor, and upcoming LPNY petition drive. New candidates for office are given an opportunity to announce their interest in running and meet and greet those attending.
Attendees are asked to pay/renew dues of $20 to LPQC by or during the proceedings in order to vote. In this session members will again be offered to serve as LPQC officers, and as key persons or “team members” for the following positions: media contact, membership/fundraising, candidate/activist outreach, youth/campus outreach, community/business outreach. Please attend, and volunteer to help in one of these areas! Hope to see you there! Details and Directions
Full Transcript of Schoenberg’s remarks from the February LPQC meeting:
America has many Founding Fathers. Many advocated liberty while owning slaves. Today, we will discuss four presidential Founding Fathers, imperfect as they were, who advanced the cause of liberty. They created a new nation, the United States of America, based upon that concept. These Founding Fathers had aspirations that the USA would become a city on a hill to serve as a shining example of liberty as we Americans all strive to perfect their vision of freedom for all.
I am doing these four presidential Founding Fathers not in the order that they were president but how they contributed to the chronological creation of liberty as if they were involved in building a house: John Adams served as the “architect,” providing the vision and organizing efforts; George Washington acted as the “engineer,” establishing leadership principles like civilian supremacy and serving for a limited time; Thomas Jefferson was the “publicist,” articulating the ideals; and James Madison functioned as the “inspector,” ensuring the legal framework was sound throughout the Constitution…Read the rest
Author Alan Stevo, excerpted below, on the imperfect delivery of populist liberty-friendly policy by Trump, as opposed to the “crybaby idealism” of those who want a perfect statesman in this depraved era. Maybe, all things considered, this is the best we can get:
A Divide Between Realism And Idealism In Libertarian Thought
…There is a divide in libertarianism between realism and idealism; the divide does not have to exist.
Think deeper. Be as realistic as possible. Try to know the truth as hard as you can, as uncomfortably as you can.
In the life I live, Trump is a night-and-day difference from any Republican or Democrat President. They are not all the same. The two parties often put up similar candidates. But the idea that the two parties are the same has become an unreliable bromide. This is especially true after candidate Trump, essentially running as a third-party candidate for the Republican nomination, took over the White House as an unwelcome outsider, and is in the process of taking over a major American party.
Trump is different. Maybe his masonic handlers have allowed him to be different. Maybe his zionist blackmailers have allowed him to be different. I do not know. He is different.
He is measurably different in my life in a way no other President has been, and it was that way even when he was only a candidate.
Why I Do Not Hate Trump For Iran
What is he doing in Iran? I don’t know. But it’s uncomfortable for me, too.
I know I’m happy Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and John McCain are not President right now.
Trump does not appear to be the same as those people.
The indication from his first term is that Trump operates with much bluster, and is certainly not anti-war, but he also promotes peace in international affairs, though certainly not calm.
I am not going to join you in being in a state of outrage on this matter. Maybe outrage is deserved. I do not know.
Why I Do Not Hate The Police
Do I support the police state, as you claim? Yeah, sometimes. You see, I understand America needs Jesus. I also understand America doesn’t have Jesus. This divide leaves us in an unpleasant predicament.
I grew up in a place affected in an outsized way by macro-trends. I wish it weren’t that way, but the place I grew up in doesn’t have the luxury of nonchalance the way CNBC commentators do. It is working class.
Broad acceptance of Jesus once held things together. What we have is Jesus replacement #1: “Defund the Police!” And Jesus replacement #2: “Back the Blue!” I am not in either category, but I know that a neighborhood that doesn’t get policed turns into a mess. That is the case today. It was not the case in 1930, nor in 1950, and in some places it is still not the case, but in most of America it is.
A neighborhood like the one I grew up in needs the police. It is a stop-gap measure. What we really need is Jesus, but absent Jesus and absent the police, everything falls apart.
I live in daily reality that recognizes how nice idealism is; I also know how thankful I am for cops that occasionally strong-arm a thug and get him to stay out of the neighborhood.…More
An attempt was made in 2025 to hold a planning meeting to develop a cross-borough committee for LPNY members and activists, to pursue joint projects affecting the whole of NYC. A new effort to accomplish this in 2026 has been scheduled by Zoom call on Thursday, February 12 at 7 pm. Contact details are available for those who sign up for the meet up here.
This planning meeting will be an exploratory review of 2026 election year issues as it bears on NYC, where LP members/activists from the 5-borough area will go over projects and campaigns that could be jointly conducted or coordinated by the existing LP county committees in NYC. It is a Zoom call set up by the LPNY Outreach Director, but with minimal restrictions on who can contribute, so bring your ideas!
Are there Libertarian issues that can be developed and agreed upon for the citywide efforts? Is a citywide group needed to work on them? What can the LPNY people do to impact NYC policies? Should a second such meeting be held (by phone, Zoom or in person) each quarter to help determine this? Borough LP groups are encouraged to field candidates and invite them to this call, to meet and greet all those interested.
From an announcement by Larry Sharpe, who has entered the Republican primary in New York for Governor. If enough Libertarians choose to switch party registration to GOP by Feb 14 to vote in the primary, it could improve his standing in political polls ahead of the April petition drive, and for his race on the LP line in November. Members can always re-enroll back with LPNY later:
…New York is at a breaking point: crushing taxes, families leaving the state, rising crime, and a political class that keeps failing upward.
That’s why Larry Sharpe is entering the Republican primary for Governor of New York: to bring real reform, real competition, and real solutions to a system that desperately needs them.
But to make this work, we need your help.
Important Deadline: February 14
If you are currently registered as an Independent, Libertarian, or with another party, and you want a real choice in the Republican primary — you must switch your party registration to Republican by February 14.
Changing your registration does not lock you into anyone forever.
It simply gives you a voice in this critical primary — and helps ensure voters, not party insiders, decide New York’s future.
👉 Change your registration here: LINK
From a statement by national LP on the new politics (or old socialism) of Zohran:
The openly Marxist, openly divisive and openly fraudulent Zohran Mamdani is the new Mayor of New York City, elected with 52% of the vote in a city formerly considered the crown jewel of America, and arguably the most important city worldwide of the past 200 years.
During Mamdani’s victory speech, he spoke words that held true to his Marxist vision, and that should send chills down the spine of any student of history, or any keen observer of our modern world.
“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”
Of course, every aspect of society, personal choice, foreign intervention, economics, etc., etc., that the government takes an interest in “solving” inevitably results in hardship, stifling regulation, spiraling costs and shortages. That lesson has apparently been long forgotten by the populace of NYC, who fell for the same staple of lies that Socialists always tell: “You will get everything you want for free, and the government can control the market.”
Every one of the promises Zohran Mamdani proclaimed repeatedly on his campaign tour, including freezing the rent, making public transport free, levying brutal taxes on corporations, and more, were on their face lies because the Mayor does not have the power to implement a single one of them. All must either go through the City or State legislature, independent organizations like the Metro Transit Authority, or take votes by the citizenry of the city to enact. Those which he may possibly be able to create, like creating below-market-cost publicly-run supermarkets, are failed propositions that have already gone bankrupt and rot with bare shelves in cities like Minneapolis.
But Mr. Mamdani being denied his Marxist impulses is actually the best case scenario for the residents of NYC, who don’t grasp the irony when they cast their votes that the man who they have chosen would incur on them the absolute opposite of every item promised.
As we have seen throughout history, and can observe currently in Venezuela, which nationalized everything from oil to bakeries to stop “price gouging” – poverty, shortages and starvation are the result. Argentina killed off its rent control, leading to a boom in housing affordability and availability.
Were Major Mamdani’s policies to pass, New York City would see, in very short order:
- An even more major crisis in housing, as landlords stopped renting, stopped building, stopped improving and started exiting the NYC marketplace.
- Overcrowding of MTA busses and trains as “free” riders took advantage of the offer, requiring additional routes and vehicles to be implemented. However, because there is no charge, there is no funding for this increase. Mamdani has suggested that his extra (illegal) taxation would cover the costs, however he proposition that the rich, or corporations would stay in NYC while being taxed an additional 4% (a number he mentioned during campaigning) is dubious at best and, again, would require legislative assistance to venture. What would occur is jammed lines, angry riders, and a breakdown in maintenance and availability.
- Should public supermarkets be installed they would quickly run out of supplies as shoppers have no impetus to cost-save or limit purchases. Manufacturers will not sell goods for lower than the cost required to create them so there would be mass shortages, with bare shelves and long lines for what little remains. In turn, shoppers would be forced to shop at even more expensive grocery retail stores where prices have increased due to the shortened supply that was sold off at below-market prices previously.
Above all, the Marxist Mayor of New York City is an indictment of the city media, and teachers unions. The United Federation of Teachers (one of the largest in the USA) provided massive donations and endorsement for the Mamdani campaign – openly declaring its member support for the Marxist foundations of his platform. This comes as no surprise, as the abdication in schools for including the horrors of Marxist, Socialist and Communist rule has been clear over the past several decades.
Mayor Mamdani may serve as the United States modern-day education, filling in the gaps in our failed education system.