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

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/the-aristocracy-of-pull-from-smedley-butler-to-the-equity-state
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/the-aristocracy-of-pull-from-smedley-butler-to-the-equity-state.md
Podcast: [Consequential Actions Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158)
Published: 2026-05-19T02:05:58+00:00
Episode link: https://jeffkellick.substack.com/p/the-aristocracy-of-pull-from-smedley
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/198343892/d8fea571fb6f138377a45aee00c3bf77.mp3
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Duration seconds: 5407

## Resource

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

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## Transcript

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