"Entire generations of Americans have come of age since the ancient time when the president's power was constrained by a duty of candor to the American people." -- James Bovard
James Bovard (born 1956) is a bestselling libertarian author and lecturer, whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. 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, The American Conservative, and many other publications. His books have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean.
"As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.""Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.""How many McDonald's gift certificates would it take to sway a lot of Americans to pledge to never publicly criticize the U.S, President?""I was amazed at how easy it was for the Clinton Administration to basically cover what they did at Waco in the fog of lies and avoid any responsibility for it.""If an election is simply a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions, then this is not a very noble form of government.""If so many Americans are looking for the government to save them, then it is hard to have a dignified search for a shepherd in chief.""It has been surprising to me that so few conservatives have voiced concern over the precedence that are being set in favor of suppression by this so-called conservative administration.""It is amazing to think after all that has happened in this country in the last few years, the last few decades, that so many people have this blind faith that government is our friend and therefore, so we don't need protections against it.""It is hard to know how many people do, but given that the people are so docile towards the rulers, nowadays, very few Americans show the passion for freedom that our forefathers had.""It is important to recognize and politics positive thinking is often the slaves' virtue - something that people do to con themselves about the burden and change being placed upon them.""It is like we are obliged to assume that the government is only doing what it says it is doing.""It is one of the great tragedies of the US, that most learn most of what they know about the government from the government.""It is unfortunate that Americans are no longer aware of what the constitution says and what their rights are. Because of that, we are often very passive about what happens when the government violates those rights.""Part of the reason that the government's fear mongering is succeeding is because so many people are so ignorant, that it is easier for government to frighten people in submission.""People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.""Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.""Some of the folks on both sides might be sincere, but it does seem as if it is only the opposition that cares about the Bill of Rights most of the time.""Some politicians are aware of the Bill of Rights. It seems that the opposition party is far more likely to invoke it, to wave it in the air, this is what we saw from a lot of republicans during the Clinton Administration, and we are seeing the same from Democrats under Bush.""The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people.""The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power.""The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule.""There are a lot of benefits representative of government and it is far better than any type of dictatorial system and it is far better than a one-man rule situation.""There has been so much power concentrated. There is no leash on that power anymore and Americans face the situation that this power is getting momentum with each passing year with each presidency.""This is a case if the President is permitted to be above the law, then we no longer have a republic.""This stuff on enemy combatants, the Bush Administration has fought like a tiger to avoid having to produce any evidence to a judge to show why somebody is locked up in perpetuity. Another example of that is the torture scandal.""Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy.""With attention deficit democracy, I am trying to wake up people to how the combination of mass ignorance, fear mongering by the government, and lying politicians is putting our entire system of government to a death spiral."
The Wall Street Journal called Bovard "the roving inspector general of the modern state." Washington Post columnist George Will called him a "one-man truth squad." His 1994 book Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty received the Free Press Association's Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism and Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner Award for the Best Book on Liberty in 2003. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought, and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association.
Bovard's writings have been publicly denounced by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, multiple Commissioners of the Internal Revenue Service, and the chair of Congressional Black Caucus.
"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." ~ Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994)
"A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect."
