PODCAST · news
Guns and Butter
by Connor O'Keeffe
Weekly commentary by Connor O’Keeffe, examining some of the biggest stories in the news through an Austro-libertarian lens.
Episodes
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Profiting from Government Didn’t Begin with Trump
Trump has made his family billions by courting foreign and corporate money and accepting extravagant gifts while in office. But he didn’t bring self-enrichment to Washington, he simply made it much harder to ignore. Read the article here:...
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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 acting in good faith. Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/flock-camera-backlash-very-good-sign 2026 is the Year of...
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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 arguments in favor of command economies, or is there something deeper going on? Read the article here:...
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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 obscures the real issue: how much of modern wealth is acquired through politics rather than production. Read the article here:...
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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 push to narrow what the Fed counts as inflation—so it can justify even more inflation—is alarming. Read the article here:...
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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 figures now condemning him should not be allowed to pretend they had nothing to do with it. Read the article here:...
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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 prohibition, but a property-rights framework and the return of market forces that government policy has largely displaced. Read the…
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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 government. Yet we’re all still forced to send it some of our hard-earned tax dollars. Enough. Read the article here:...
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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 locked in dangerous shortages in critical industries like healthcare, food production, and much more. Read the article here:...
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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 deranged presidents far more dangerous than an actual king could ever be. Read the article here:...
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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 name and with our money. Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/immorality-trumps-war-iran-matters Be sure to follow the Guns...
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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 there's plenty to spend on all these government programs. We can’t afford any of this. Read the article here:...
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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 warfare state in DC. Trump has decided to go in the opposite direction. Read the article here:...
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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 be acting very differently. Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/trumps-iran-buildup-based-lie Be sure to follow the Guns...
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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 Voter ID passes, the new law will not change the real structure of power. Read the article here:...
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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 exceptionally dangerous moment in itself, the end of New START reflects an incredibly disturbing trend. Read the article here:...
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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 untouchable. Why? Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/everyone-agrees-our-elites-are-terrible-so-why-are-we-stuck-them Be sure…
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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 shaping up to be defined by his lack of progress on affordability. Read the article here:...
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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 special. There isn’t even a ton of money to be made for crony companies. This is purely about Trump’s ego, and it will cost taxpayers a lot. Read...
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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 power. They’re afraid his blind inflationism and lack of subtlety will make it impossible to hide the fact that it already is. Read the...
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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, there is essentially no way this can go well. Read the article here:...
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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 for now, it stopped being the most useful way for elites to justify their power grabs. Read the article here:...
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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 total failure. But that wasn’t the true purpose of the ACA. It was always meant to prop up the faltering crony healthcare system. Read the...
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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 they are and how to fix them. Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-actually-solve-affordability-crisis Be sure to follow…
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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 housing more costly and do nothing to address the root of this entire problem: the artificial housing shortage. Read the article here:...
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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 attempt to do what the Fed always does in a crisis: bail out the economic actors. Read the article here:...
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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 really bring the kind of change that will challenge the political establishment? Probably not. Read the article here:...
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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 latest chapter in a much older story: the struggle between elected and unelected officials. Read the article here:...
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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 perspective, is not that Trump is changing the Fed; it’s that he’s making its true nature harder to hide. Read the article here:...
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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 more violence and chaos. It’s a bad path we’re on. But there is a better one. Read the article here:...
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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, Trump seems to believe that a combination of trade restrictions and inflation is what the economy needs. Read the article here:...
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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 involvement in the region is likelier related to disputed oil claims affecting well-connected energy companies. Read the article here:...
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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. It’s simply Trump embracing the corrupt status quo he ran against with a superficial rebrand. Read the article here:...
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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 governments working hard to maintain a monopoly on a service they then refuse to provide. Read the article here:...
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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 convinced Ukraine to walk away from peace talks and fight. Read the article here:...
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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 Trump opponents claim that MAGA is a monolithic movement beholden only to Trump. This incident tells us something else. Read the article…
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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 such tragedies from happening again is the right thing to do. But that involves looking at the actual facts. Read the article here:...
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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 socialism’s rising popularity lies mostly on their own shoulders. Read the article here:...
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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 that shouldn’t discourage us. Ending endless wars isn’t easy, but it is worthwhile. Read the article here:...
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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 people while remaining just as unlikely to bring about peace and stability in the region. Read the article here:...
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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 has attempted to control public opinion for nearly a century. Read the article here:...
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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 overreach. In reality, government overreach as we know it has been made possible by the federal judiciary. Read the article here:...
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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 cannot be reasoned with. In truth, the difficult situation Trump finds himself in is almost entirely their fault. Read the article here:...
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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 fabricated by right-wing propagandists. That lack of trust is well deserved. Read the article here:...
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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 controls would only worsen the problem with the drug market. Here are three things he can do instead. Read the article here:...
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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 program to keep Americans safe. It's the latest example of the government using 9/11 as an excuse to grab more power. Read the article...
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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 what it takes to accomplish their goals, while those who want to change it are not. Read the article here:...
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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 freedom. But there is a pertinent question no pundits are even asking: Why are taxpayers being forced to give Harvard $9 billion? Read the...
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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 failed strategies of the War on Terror is a terrible idea. Read the article here:...
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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 credit expansion. Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/theres-only-one-possible-cause-next-recession-and-it-isnt-tariffs The...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Weekly commentary by Connor O’Keeffe, examining some of the biggest stories in the news through an Austro-libertarian lens.
HOSTED BY
Connor O'Keeffe
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How many episodes does Guns and Butter have?
Guns and Butter currently has 92 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Guns and Butter about?
Weekly commentary by Connor O’Keeffe, examining some of the biggest stories in the news through an Austro-libertarian lens.
How often does Guns and Butter release new episodes?
Guns and Butter has 92 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Guns and Butter?
Guns and Butter is created and hosted by Connor O'Keeffe.
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