Republic or Empire — Where Do We Go From Here?

Republic or Empire — Where Do We Go From Here?

The finale of Empire of Liberty stands alone as a summary of the entire series. Opening with the cycle of democracy often attributed to Alexander Tytler, the episode tests that cycle against two centuries of American foreign policy, compresses the nineteen-installment synthesis into nine documented turns, engages the strongest interventionist counterargument in its strongest form, lays out the four pillars of constitutional restoration, and closes on Lord Acton’s insight that corruption is structural rather than personal — the ground for genuine hope that the cycle can be broken by an engaged and informed citizenry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeffkellick.substack.com [https://jeffkellick.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Libertarians Being Libertarian: After Kentucky

Originally planned as a companion piece to our written article, this episode has adjusted into coverage of the Kentucky 4th district US House race featuring Thomas Massie. We go into a day after analysis and look at the numbers and the history of this race. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeffkellick.substack.com [https://jeffkellick.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Aristocracy of Pull — From Smedley Butler to the Equity State

This contemporary application episode is the libertarian corrective to ninety years of misnamed critique of American foreign policy. Opening with Major General Smedley Butler’s 1933 confession revisited from Episode 19, the episode performs the vocabulary repair Butler himself could not have performed in 1933 because the analytical tradition had not yet matured. Act I establishes the taxonomy distinguishing free market capitalism from mercantilism, corporatism, and economic fascism, with the non-aggression principle as the libertarian metric. Act II walks the intellectual chain from Bastiat through the Austrian school to Ayn Rand, with the developed historical case at United Fruit and Guatemala 1954. Act III reads Venezuela 2026 through the corporatist vocabulary the prior acts established. Act IV catalogs the Trump administration’s accumulated equity portfolio across 2025 and 2026 — sixteen deals, 20.9 billion dollars, the Defense Department leading with seven — alongside the Carta del Lavoro of 1927 as the doctrinal antecedent and Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address as the prescient American warning. Act V closes on Lord Acton’s full 1887 quotation, with the bipartisan recognition that both parties have built and continue to build the corporatist arrangement, and with the libertarian project framed as the practical implementation of Acton’s structural insight: limit the power, limit the corruption This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeffkellick.substack.com [https://jeffkellick.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

“The Monroe Doctrine Inverted” — Venezuela and the Ongoing Interventions

Episode 19 traces the two-hundred-year arc from James Monroe’s 1823 doctrine — originally a defensive warning to European powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere — to its contemporary inversion into a claim of American authority to reshape Latin American governments at will. Opening with Major General Smedley Butler’s 1933 confession that he had been “a high-class muscle-man for Big Business,” the episode examines the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, the Cold War template of Latin American interventions (Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Bolivia), and situates Operation Absolute Resolve against Venezuela in January 2026 as the culminating case of a pattern, not the beginning of one. Closes with a survey of simultaneous American military operations across Africa, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific, and the strategic overextension those commitments represent. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeffkellick.substack.com [https://jeffkellick.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Adjective and the Noun

Piece 1 of a three-part feature on libertarianism and the 2026 Libertarian National Convention. The episode separates the libertarian idea — the lowercase-l, a tradition reaching back roughly twenty-five centuries — from the Libertarian Party — the capital-L, a coalition organized in a Westminster, Colorado, living room on December 11, 1971. It walks through the foundational commitments of the libertarian tradition, sketches its intellectual lineage from Cicero through the present, surveys five live conversations within the tradition, narrates the founding of the party in the wake of the Nixon Shock and its institutional history across five decades, and lands on the standard against which the next two pieces — and Grand Rapids itself — will be measured. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeffkellick.substack.com [https://jeffkellick.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]