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James Bovard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"James Bovard is a bestselling libertarian author and lecturer, whose political commentary targets examples of governmental waste, failures, and abuses of power. He is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, and eight other books. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader's Digest, and many other publications. His books have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean. ..." |
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TheAdvocates.org - James Bovard
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| Biography |
| Future of Freedom Foundation |
| Laissez Faire Books |
| Awards Received |
| 1995 Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties, granted by Center for Independent Thought, The Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties, 1995 |
| Associations |
| Policy Advisor, The Future of Freedom Foundation |
| Web Pages |
James Bovard - Libertarian
Advocates for Self-Government |
| Archived Articles |
Future of Freedom Foundation
since Sept 1994 |
| Blog |
| Bovard |
| Articles |
Misguided Democracy, by George C. Leef, Freedom Daily, Mar 2006
Related Topics: Democracy, Voting
A review of Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard
"Bovard has made quite a writing career out of his desire to penetrate the fog of deception that shrouds so much of what government does these days to expose the truth that the state is becoming ever stronger and the sphere of liberty is constantly shrinking." |
| Writings |
"Every Day is 1956": The Hungarian Revolution Today, 27 Oct 2006
Related Topic: Hungary
"Fifty years ago, the Hungarian people bravely expelled Soviet tanks from Budapest and proclaimed their intention to create a democracy. ... Two and a half years later, it was the Hungarians who, more than any other Eastern Europeans, brought the Iron Curtain crashing down. In May 1989, Hungarian government officials cut the barbed wire on the border with Austria." |
A Legacy of Anti-Terrorist Failure in Lebanon, Freedom Daily, Oct 2006
Related Topic: Lebanon
"With the Bush team cheer-leading all the way, Israel reinvaded Lebanon in July in response to Hezbollah's seizure of two Israeli soldiers. ... Americans need to pay attention to what is happening in Lebanon because there are many politicians and political appointees in Washington who want to see U.S. troops join the fray. This would be as foolish now as it was in 1982." |
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A Modest Proposal for the Next Drug-War Shootdown, Freedom Daily, Aug 2001
Related Topics: War on Drugs, Peru
"Drug warriors like to stress that anti-drug programs target the guilty and it is only an accident —and a rare one, at that— when innocent people are killed. Yet it is apparently routine policy for Peruvian jets to strafe the survivors of a shootdown." |
Blockbuster Victory for the Second Amendment, Freedom Daily, Aug 1999
Related Topic: Right to Keep and Bear Arms |
Booze Busting: The New Prohibition, Freedom Daily, Dec 1998
Related Topic: Prohibition |
Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship, 9 Oct 2006
Related Topics: Rule of Law, George W. Bush
"President Bush has once again decreed that his personal pen is the highest law of the land. ... His action vivifies that the rule of law now means little more than the enforcement of the secret thoughts of the commander in chief. ... The American Bar Association recently declared that Bush's signing statements are 'contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers.'" |
Bush’s Opium Boom, 28 May 2003
Related Topic: Afghanistan |
China: From Brutal Oppressor to Terrorist Victim, Freedom Daily, Dec 2003
Related Topic: China |
Democracy Versus Liberty [PDF], The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, Aug 2006
Related Topics: Democracy, Bill of Rights, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson
"Democracy can be a good method for reaching agreement on standards of weights and measurements used in commerce, but is a poor method for dictating wages and prices. Democracy should be a system of government based on common agreement on issues that must be agreed upon, and tolerance—however grudging—on all other differences." |
Dictatorship of Gadflies, Freedom Daily, Nov 1998
Related Topic: Private Property
Discusses the National Trust for Historic Preservation and similar groups |
Do Elections Guarantee Freedom?, Freedom Daily, Nov 2007
Related Topics: Voting, George W. Bush, Constitution of the United States, Government, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald W. Reagan
Discusses whether democratic elections achieve the purported objective of "will of the people" controlling the government
"What if being permitted to choose a master once every four years is the primary 'freedom' left? Are citizens merely choosing whose vassal they will be? Many citizens today behave like slaves who spent their time wishing for a good master, rather than scouting up information on runaway routes." |
Drug War Dementia, Freedom Daily, Nov 1996
Related Topic: War on Drugs
"If drugs were legal, we would still see deaths from overdoses, but there would be far fewer deaths from gun battles among drug dealers, far fewer neighborhoods destroyed destroyed by drug dealers, and far fewer deaths from contaminated drugs." |
Flashback: Beirut, June 1982: The Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster, CounterPunch, 8 Oct 2003
Related Topics: Lebanon, Ronald W. Reagan |
Free Speech on the Ropes, Freedom Daily, Jan 2006
Related Topics: Freedom of Speech, George W. Bush, Ron Paul
"Brett Bursey, 54 years old, was arrested for holding a 'No War for Oil' sign too near the hangar where Bush would be speaking. Local police, acting under Secret Service orders, supposedly established a 'free speech zone' far from the airport hangar. ... After moving twice, Bursey refused to move again and was arrested." |
Freedom to Farm Washington, Freedom Daily, Jan 1999
Related Topic: Farming
The results of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act |
Hoover's Second Wrecking of American Agriculture, Freedom Daily
Related Topic: Farming
"The Farm Board was certain that a world shortage of wheat was imminent and that importing nations would soon come begging to America. Instead, Canadian and Argentinean farmers reaped windfall profits ... Its massive cache ... depressed world prices, since every grain dealer in the world knew that the United States would eventually dump its surplus on the market." |
Illegal Surveillance: A Real Security Threat, 27 Feb 2006
Related Topics: Right Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures, Richard M. Nixon
"Americans seem to have forgotten why the Founding Fathers prohibited government from spying on them. ... such blind faith in government simply ignores the lessons of U.S. history. ... The purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent government officials from having 'dictatorial power over the streets' and elsewhere ..." |
Iraqi Sanctions and American Intentions: Blameless Carnage? Part 1, Freedom Daily, Jan 2004
Related Topic: Iraq |
Iraqi Sanctions and American Intentions: Blameless Carnage? Part 2, Freedom Daily, Feb 2004
Related Topic: Iraq |
Killing in the Name of Democracy, Attention Deficit Democracy, 27 Jan 2006
Related Topics: Democracy, Guatemala, William McKinley, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson
Excerpt from the "Messianic Democracy" chapter
"The U.S. government's first experience with forcibly spreading democracy came in the wake of the Spanish-American War ... President Woodrow Wilson raised tub-thumping for democracy to new levels ... During the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. military interventions in Latin America were routinely portrayed as 'missions to establish democracy.'" |
Killing in the Name of Democracy, Freedom Daily, Jun 2006
Related Topics: Democracy, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Philippines
"Killing in the name of democracy has a long and sordid history. ... The U.S. government is currently spending more than a billion dollars a year for democracy efforts abroad. But Thomas Carothers, the director of the Carnegie Endowment's Democracy and Rule of Law Project, warns that Bush policies are creating a 'democracy backlash' around the globe." |
Lies and Leviathan, Freedom Daily, Aug 2006
Related Topics: Government, Social Security Tax
"Big government requires big lies — and not just on wars but across the board. The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits and the more lies it must tell. Interventions beget debacles that require cover-ups and denials. The more the government screws up, the more evidence the government is obliged to bury or deny." |
My Time in the Tower of London, Freedom Daily, Dec 2006
Related Topic: Protection Against Cruel and Unusual Punishments
"... in late September 2006, Congress voted to effectively legalize torture and to pardon all the torturers and torture policymakers. Has the U.S. Capitol building acquired at least an odor of the Tower of London? ... the law that Congress passed will be a cornucopia of barbarity that will be likely to afflict people around the world." |
Nonsense on the Inevitability of Democracy, Freedom Daily, May 2006
Related Topic: Democracy
"Many Americans are being lulled into assuming that democracy is inevitable. This is a favorite theme of President Bush's beating on the same drumhead used by President Clinton, President Wilson, and other notable demagogues. But the fact that politicians agree does not make something true." |
Parity: Bureaucratic Tyranny by Moral Fraud, Freedom Daily, Sep 1999
Related Topic: Farming |
Political Plundering of Property Owners, Nov 2002
Related Topic: Private Property |
The 9/11 Servility Reflex, Freedom Daily, Dec 2007
Related Topics: September 11, 2001, George W. Bush, Government
Discusses how the general American public reacted after the 9/11 attacks and how the 9/11 Commission and the mainstream media helped reinforce that reaction
"The naive response to politicians triumphed in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. By the end of September 2001, almost two-thirds of Americans said they 'trust the government in Washington to do what is right' either 'just about always' or 'most of the time.' Amazingly, the attacks even boosted Americans' confidence that government would protect them against terrorists." |
The Bush Torture Memos, Freedom Daily, Nov 2006
Related Topic: Protection Against Cruel and Unusual Punishments
"President Bush is proposing to medievalize the American legal code by permitting the use of coerced confessions in judicial proceedings. ... the Bybee memo ... began by largely redefining torture out of existence. It then explained why even if someone died during torture, the torturer might not be guilty if he felt the torture was necessary to prevent some worse evil." |
The Fraudulent Meaning of Elections, Freedom Daily, 4 Jun 2006
Related Topics: Voting, Republican Party
"The 'debate' in Congress illustrated how elections are now about consecration, rather than representation. Elections have become something for rulers to shroud themselves in, rather than leashes used by the people. Politicians are obsessed with maintaining the imagined dignity of their class, not in resolving doubts about honest vote counting." |
The Most Absurdities per Kilo, Freedom Daily, Feb 2006
Related Topics: War on Drugs, Tommy Chong
"... on February 24 [2003], Ashcroft proudly announced the most decisive attack ever on purveyors of bongs ... At a time when political leaders warned that a terrorist attack on the homeland could be imminent, more than 1,200 federal law officers were involved in Operation Pipe Dreams, ... the biggest attack on glass bowls in American history." |
 Warring as Lying Throughout American History, Freedom Daily, Feb 2008
Related Topics: War, American War Between the States, Gulf War, Ronald W. Reagan, World War II
Recounts how U.S. Presidents and their administrations since James Polk have lied about wars, from start to finish
"Presidential deceits on foreign policy have filled cemeteries across the land. ... Lying and warring appear to be two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, many Americans continue to be gullible when presidents claim a need to commence killing foreigners. It remains to be seen whether the citizenry is corrigible on this life-and-death issue." |
“Free-Speech Zone”: The administration quarantines dissent, The American Conservative, 15 Dec 2003
Related Topics: Freedom of Speech, George W. Bush |
| Interviews |
Interview with Jim Bovard, by Sunni Maravillosa, Apr 2006
"I started to become politically aware at a time when government lies and abuses were roiling the nation and the world. ... Roaming in the East Bloc in the mid-1980s gave me a stronger sense of the evil of tyranny. ... I occasionally tried my hand at humorous writing ... I sent a satire on the failure of the all-volunteer Congress to the New York Times." |
James Bovard Interview, by Scott Horton, The Weekend Interview Show with Scott Horton, 16 Oct 2004
"Scott talks to Jim Bovard, author of the new book The Bush Betrayal, about the book, and about the administration." |
| Books Authored |
Attention Deficit Democracy, 10 Jan 2006
Related Topics: Democracy, George W. Bush, Voting
Electronic text of Introduction available at LewRockwell.com
"The rising gullibility of the American people may be the most important trend in U.S. democracy. With each passing decade, with each new presidency, it takes less and less to snooker Americans. And a candidate only has to fool enough people on one day to snare power over everyone for four years." |
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Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years, 2000
Related Topic: Bill Clinton |
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Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen, 1999
Related Topic: The State |
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Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, 1994
Related Topic: Rights |
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Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil, 2003
Related Topic: Terrorism |
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The Bush Betrayal, 7 Aug 2004
Related Topic: George W. Bush
Electronic text of first chapter available at Future of Freedom Foundation
"This book does not aim to analyze all Bush policies. Instead, it examines an array of his domestic and foreign actions that vivify the damage Bush is inflicting and the danger he poses both to America and the world. Bush governs like an elective monarch, entitled to reverence and deference on all issues." |
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