Will the Ghost of Duncan Lemp Haunt Gun-Grabbing Politicians?

Will the Ghost of Duncan Lemp Haunt Gun-Grabbing Politicians?

If you post a photo of a rifle on Instagram, tag it to your hometown, and add a caption like “green tip armor piercing gets the girls wet," Maryland police can cite that to get a no-knock search warrant and kill you in a pre-dawn assault on your bedroom. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell warned, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.” Duncan Lemp, the 21-year-old software programmer who posted the rifle photo I've just described, was shot three times without warning by a policeman standing outside a smashed-in window at 4:42 am....

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Will Any ‘Last Rights’ Epigram Go to the Moon?

Will Any ‘Last Rights’ Epigram Go to the Moon?

Epigrams are excellent propellants for seditious ideas. How far can one line go? Thirty years ago, I casually appended a sentence to the end of a paragraph in the final chapter of my book, Lost Rights: The Death of American Liberty. I was amazed: “Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner” became one of the most popular worldwide epigrams on democracy. It was translated into almost fifty languages, quoted by the Chief Justice of Hong Kong, and is serving as a rallying cry for oppressed dissidents everywhere. That epigram circulated on coffee cups,...

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Guilty But Clueless: Special Counsel Verdict On Biden

Guilty But Clueless: Special Counsel Verdict On Biden

Did a Special Counsel report officially launch the Biden administration Death Spiral? President Joe Biden is not guilty because he is hopelessly clueless about his own life and career. That is the tacit verdict of Special Counsel Robert Hur, who concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed" classified information, which "risked serious damage to America's national security.” If anyone else did this, they would be federal crimes. But Biden cannot be convicted of a "felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” the Special Counsel concluded – apparently because Biden’s mind is...

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Debacles at Home and Abroad Propel ‘Defend the Guard’

Debacles at Home and Abroad Propel ‘Defend the Guard’

The National Guard is back in the headlines thanks to a showdown at the Texas border and Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy debacle. The Biden administration has refused to enforce federal law to limit undocumented immigrants (many of whom “lost” their documents just before arriving at the U.S. border) from crossing from Mexico into the United States. The Transportation Security Administration permits those new arrivals to board domestic flights merely by showing their Department of Homeland Security arrest warrants as identification. (American citizens are permitted no such luxury.) Texas...

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Davos Demolition Derby for World Freedom

Davos Demolition Derby for World Freedom

The World Economic Forum had their annual conference last week in Davos, Switzerland. Once again, the Davos crowd ran a demolition derby for the destruction of liberty around the globe. The WEF seized the COVID pandemic to champion a “Great Reset” to radically increase the power of politicians over every aspect of modern life. In June 2020, the WEF announced that “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate…We need a...

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Biden: Vote for Me or Hitler Wins

Biden: Vote for Me or Hitler Wins

“Endless hysteria will keep you free,” said none of the Founding Fathers. But President Joe Biden missed that message before his absurdly overheated speech last Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden draped himself in Revolutionary War virtue as he demanded that Americans quiver in fear at the prospect of his reign ending. Biden invoked the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol clash to effectively call for canceling the 2024 presidential election. At a minimum, Biden wants to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler. Biden boasted, “We are still a nation that...

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Bovard’s Zestiest Zingers of 2023

2023 was another godsend for cynics. Here’s a round-up of my zestiest lines from my articles in the past year. Some lines were tweaked for this collection. Hearty thanks to Hunter DeRensis and editors at other outlets who ran those articles up the flagpole. "Telling the truth is the only war crime now recognized by the U.S. government." "The new, improved definition of 'dictatorship' refers only to rulers who promise to do bad things to good people." "Shrouding the federal iron fist in a velvet glove betrays the Bill of Rights." "Would-be tyrants can always find lofty pretexts to shackle...

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Truth is the Biggest Threat to DC ‘Democracy’

Truth is the Biggest Threat to DC ‘Democracy’

In Washington, truth is reckoned as the greatest enemy of democracy. Hard facts are deadly threats to a president’s prerogative to define reality and impose “the will of the people.” Early this year, Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, was arrested and charged with transmission of national defense information among other charges. Teixeira allegedly leaked classified documents on the Ukraine war and other foreign policy issues to a Discord gaming group. The document propagated from there and appeared in many news articles in the following months. A hefty...

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Jim Bovard

Jim Bovard is a Senior Fellow for the Libertarian Institute and author of the newly published, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty (2023). His other books include Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and seven others. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Washington Post, among others. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.



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Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty

Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty

Americans today have “freedom” to be fleeced, groped, injected, harassed, surveilled, vilified, disarmed, beaten, detained, and maybe shot by federal agents. From hapless homeowners hit by SWAT raids to pandemic lockdowns pointlessly paralyzing lives, government...

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