Archive for James Bovard
Contributing editor James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy,Terrorism and Tyranny, Lost Rights, and other books.
Fear-Mongering and Servitude
In his 1776 essay, “Thoughts on Government,” John Adams observed, “Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.” The [...]
22Jun2011 | James Bovard | 33 comments | ContinuedHow Washington Protects Your Privacy and Liberty
Preserving trust in government is the highest good—at least for politicians. To create that trust, government continually spawns façades to make people believe their rights are safe. Few things better illustrate this charade than the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. In 2004, three years after the Patriot Act was enacted, politicians started to worry [...]
22Dec2010 | James Bovard | 7 comments | ContinuedOrient Express to Hell
In 1986 and 1987 I slipped behind the Iron Curtain a few times to study economic perversity and political slavery. In November 1987 I flew into Hungary before heading on to the most repressive regime in Europe. The train from Budapest to Bucharest, Romania, was called the Orient Express. The original Orient Express began in [...]
20May2010 | James Bovard | 4 comments | ContinuedFreedom Is Not the Issue? It Just Ain’t So!
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, Terrorism and Tyranny, Lost Rights, and other books. The Friends of Leviathan are once again encouraging people to forget about freedom. In a May op-ed piece in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks announced, “The central political debate of the 20th century was over the [...]
1Sep2008 | James Bovard | 0 comments | ContinuedTorture and Liberty
Is torture compatible with liberty? Unfortunately, this is no longer a hypothetical question. Many Americans who claim to support individual freedom also favor permitting the government to torture suspected terrorists or other purported enemies of the United States. This controversy is reminiscent of a disagreement between the famous economists F. A. Hayek and John Maynard [...]
1Jul2008 | James Bovard | 0 comments | Continued“Deliberative Democracy” Dementia
A specter is haunting America ‘s politicians and professors—the spect(er of illegitimacy. The political-intellectual elite fear that millions of Americans will conclude that the current democracy is a fraud—that they are being given bogus choices at the ballot box—and that the phrase “will of the people” now means as little as “the check is in [...]
1May2007 | James Bovard | 4 comments | ContinuedDemocracy Versus Liberty
If a foreign power took over the United States and dictated that American citizens surrender 40 percent of their income, required them to submit to tens of thousands of different commands (many of which were effectively kept secret from them), prohibited many of them from using their land, and denied many the chance to find [...]
1Aug2006 | James Bovard | 2 comments | ContinuedUncle Sam’s Flood Machine
When NASAs Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars in 1997 and sent back pictures showing that the planet was once flooded, comic Alan Ray quipped: “Of course, Mars lacks the one factor that makes high waters on Earth so much more devastating. Mars has no FEMA.”
1Jan2006 | James Bovard | 5 comments | ContinuedFederal Surveillance: The Threat to Americans’ Security
Since the terrorist attacks on 9/11 the Bush administration has launched many new surveillance programs in the name of homeland security. When critics raised questions about the potential abuses of the new powers, some administration supporters insisted that Bush’s new surveillance policies were benign because there was no evidence the programs were being abused. But [...]
1Jan2004 | James Bovard | 2 comments | ContinuedNew Laws Will Protect Americans from Snipers?
The handcuffs had barely been slapped on the two Maryland sniper suspects—John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo—before the so-called liberals began invoking their crimes as a pretext to undermine the rights of all Americans. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, writing on October 31, 2002, invoked federal crime statistics indicating that “the number of [...]
1Feb2003 | James Bovard | 0 comments | ContinuedDictatorship of Lawyers
James Bovard is the author of Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (St. Martin’s Press). Law is no longer an impediment to legalized robbery. In area after area, lawyers have achieved court rulings that subvert due process and the rule of law. Unfortunately, while this trend has [...]
1Apr2001 | James Bovard | 5 comments | ContinuedFarm Credit Fraud
James Bovard is the author of Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (St. Martin’s Press, September 2000). The federal government has been busy foisting new billions in loans onto uncreditworthy farmers. The lending binge is accelerating and paving the way for another massive loan collapse and another [...]
1Jan2001 | James Bovard | 3 comments | ContinuedProperty and Liberty
Property is “the guardian of all other rights,” as Arthur Lee of Virginia wrote in 1775.[1] The Supreme Court declared in 1897: “In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.”[2] Unfortunately, legislators, judges, and political philosophers in the twentieth century [...]
1Sep2000 | James Bovard | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Right of Resistance
Many politicians talk as if citizens were obliged both to revere and obey their government. But there are few things more dangerous than swallowing the notion that government is entitled to boundless obedience from the people under its power. Throughout history, governments have occasionally overstepped the bounds of their legitimate power. What should be done [...]
1Aug2000 | James Bovard | 3 comments | ContinuedGovernment as Slave Owner
James Bovard is the author of Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State & the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin’s Press, 1999). The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” This assertion captured the idealism and the principles of this nation’s [...]
1Feb2000 | James Bovard | 1 comment | ContinuedPolitical Accounting
Why does the federal government, according to its own auditors, squander tens of billions of tax dollars year after year? Attempts to understand the actions of politicians and bureaucrats on the basis of private-sector decision-making are doomed to failure. Efforts to “fix” government by ending specific boondoggles are quixotic crusades. Government will continue to be [...]
1Sep1999 | James Bovard | 5 comments | ContinuedParanoia About Paranoia in American Politics
Since the 1960s modern “liberals” have often sought to stigmatize those who distrust government as paranoid. This “diagnosis” was first popularized by Columbia University professor Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970). His widely read book The Paranoid Style in American Politics, first published in 1965, presented a thesis that is routinely invoked to delegitimize any criticism of government [...]
1Aug1999 | James Bovard | 0 comments | Continued-
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Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
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Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
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