Rockwell Rule

The Rockwell Rule is a rule of thumb on countering Deep State propaganda, coined by Ron Paul protégé Daniel McAdams. In a 2021 interview with the Mises Institute, McAdams described the Rockwell Rule as follows:

“

It’s very simply, never, ever, ever in any regime that the CIA wants to overthrow, never ever repeat their talking points. Never criticize any regime that the CIA wants to overthrow, full stop. That is the Rockwell Rule, the Rockwell Doctrine and it deprives the interventionists of the ability to say, see? Even the libertarians agree that Qaddafi is passing out Viagra or that Saddam is eating babies. They can say, Oh yeah, the libertarians, they don’t want to invade, but see? Even they agree. So, deprive them of that ability. Caitlyn Johnstone has a good way of saying it, “Don’t be a CIA mouthpiece.” I think that is very, very important and it’s so funny because you do see these things at exactly the right moment that the CIA and the regime change machine wants you to say them. When they’re ramping up the heat on Iran, for example, all of a sudden, you’ll have some young libertarian gal come out and say, Iran is horrible, a despotism, they’re socialist in their economy. It always comes at the exact right moment. If you’re a libertarian and you participate in this, you’re a dupe or worse.

”

This rule of thumb was named after Lew Rockwell, a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist activist mentored by Murray Rothbard and a longtime friend of both Paul and McAdams.