Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

Remember the Atrocities of the Korean War, Not the Propaganda

by Jim Bovard | Jul 27, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Today is the 70th anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting between North and South Korea. Almost 40,000 American soldiers died pointlessly in that conflict. If politicians and policymakers were honest and prudent, the Korean War would have vaccinated America against the folly and evil of foreign intervention. Instead, the war was retroactively redefined. As Barack Obama declared in 2013, “That war was no tie. Korea was a victory.” The war began with what Harry Truman claimed was a surprise invasion on June 25, 1950, by the North Korean army crossing the dividing line with South...

‘The Most Massive Attack Against Free Speech in United States History’

by Jim Bovard | Jul 10, 2023 | Featured Articles

Sometime since January 2021, Biden administration policymakers decided that they were infallible—or a “close enough for government work” level of infallible. They claimed a divine right to suppress the online posts and comments of conservatives and anyone else who had a bad attitude towards federal power. That party ended on July 4 when federal judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden censorship regime as potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” Doughty issued a preliminary injunction to ban federal agencies and the White House from browbeating...

Celebrate Fourth of July by Cussing Politicians

by Jim Bovard | Jul 3, 2023 | Featured Articles, Politics

America was founded by rowdy folks who enjoyed nothing better than applying tar and feathers to British tax collectors. For a couple centuries, Independence Day was an occasion for raising a ruckus with firecrackers and plenty of other friendly detonations. But in recent times, the Fourth of July has been downgraded to simply another opportunity for citizens to express gratitude to their political masters. We are still permitted to celebrate, but unfortunately, federal, state, and local governments routinely trample the rights that the Founding Fathers sought to make sacrosanct. The Fourth...

My 40 Year War on Reefer Madness

by Jim Bovard | Jun 26, 2023 | Featured Articles

Forty years ago this week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration unleashed its "Just Say No" program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the wrong powder, or used non-approved hallucinogens. I was mortified to see Ronald Reagan—who was elected on a promise to get “government off your backs”—double-cross his supporters with what morphed into the most intrusive scheme in American history. Like kids everywhere in the 1970s, I laughed at the 1936 “Reefer Madness” movie in my high school health...

Daniel Ellsberg’s Courageous Work Remains Unfinished

by Jim Bovard | Jun 19, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

What if truth doesn’t win out until a million corpses too late? Daniel Ellsberg, one of the most heroic truth-tellers of our era, passed away on Friday at the age of 92. He risked life in prison to leak the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon administration. Ellsberg sought to shatter the enchantment that official lies held for so many Americans. That noble cause remains a work in progress. Here is a two minute video of Ellsberg telling the story of his epic battle against the Nixon administration and warmongering government officials. Ellsberg was an antiwar icon for more than 50 years after...

Biden Demagogues Florida Massacre to Demonize Gun Owners

by Jim Bovard | Jun 13, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

President Joe Biden tweeted yesterday on what he called “Pulse Remembrance Day": Seven years ago today, our nation suffered what was then the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Forty-nine people, predominantly Latino LGBTQI+ people, lost their lives in a senseless act of gun violence. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando while police loitered for hours outside. Politicians have been exploiting the killings ever since. And no amount of hard facts or a damning jury verdict have been able to curb political demagoguery....

EXPOSED: Biggest FBI Spy Scandal of the Year

by Jim Bovard | May 25, 2023 | Featured Articles

A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion released last week revealed that the FBI violated the constitutional rights of 278,000 Americans in 2020 and 2021 with warrantless searches of their email and other electronic data. For each American that the FISA court permitted the FBI to target, the FBI illicitly surveiled almost a thousand additional Americans. This is only the latest federal surveillance scandal stretching back to the years after 9/11. The FISA law was enacted in 1978 to curb the rampant illegal political spying exposed during the Richard Nixon administration. After the...

The FBI Vetoed the 2016 Presidential Election

by Jim Bovard | May 17, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

On Monday, Special Counsel John Durham released his final report on the FBI and Justice Department's abuse of power during the 2016 presidential election. His 316-page report proves that federal law enforcement was weaponized to rig American politics by shielding Hillary Clinton's campaign and persecuting Donald Trump's campaign. Durham’s report is only the latest in a long pattern of abuses by the FBI. In 1945, President Harry Truman noted in his diary, “We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction.” In the 1948 presidential campaign, Hoover brazenly championed...

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