Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

Don’t Fall for the ‘National Service’ Scam

by Jim Bovard | Feb 7, 2022 | Featured Articles

In the wake of America’s disastrous Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted to prohibit involuntary servitude. Unfortunately, top newspapers, pundits, and think tanks are now campaigning to nullify that prohibition. Apparently, slavery was evil not because of the unjust subjugation but because plantation owners, not politicians, were the profiteers. Politicians have long been hustling to establish their prerogative to commandeer young Americans’ lives. At a “Volunteerism Summit” in Philadelphia in 1997, President Bill Clinton announced that America needed more “citizen-servants” and...

Demonizing Those Who Drive for Freedom

by Jim Bovard | Feb 4, 2022 | Featured Articles

The denigration of the Canadian trucker protest convoy exemplifies how freedom is now the biggest villain of the COVID-19 pandemic. A Washington Post cartoonist portrayed the trucker convoy as “fascism” incarnate while another Post column derided the “toxic ‘Freedom Convoy.’” Anyone who resists any government command is apparently now a public enemy. The trucker protest was spurred by the Canadian government’s sweeping COVID vaccine mandate. Many truckers believe the risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefit and, more importantly, that they have the right to control their own bodies....

January 6th: A Turgid Anniversary

by Jim Bovard | Jan 10, 2022 | Featured Articles

Last year’s Jan. 6 clash at the Capitol may be the most politically exploited ruckus in American history. Team Biden is doing a victory lap to mark the anniversary, but the feds continue covering up key information regarding that day’s events. Democrats are canonizing a false version of history to change voting laws to perpetuate many of the shoddy if not shady practices that tarnished the 2020 election. After the fracas a year ago, Democratic members of Congress made ludicrous claims about the perils they faced that day. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said, “We came close to half of...

For One Day, Protestors Stopped the War Machine

by Jim Bovard | Dec 27, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

I’ve attended most of the major antiwar protests in Washington since 9/11. At a 2005 protest, a cop tried to whack me on the head with a wooden pole. At a 2007 protest, I snapped a picture showing George W. Bush hanging next to the U.S. Capitol. But my favorite protest was a potent little ruckus that I almost missed. On a sunny late summer day in 2013, I ambled to downtown Washington to hike with a bunch of folks who enjoyed bantering as much as I did. The route for the jaunt started on the National Mall, passing by the Smithsonian, heading toward the World War II Memorial and points beyond....

How I Robbed the World Bank

by Jim Bovard | Dec 14, 2021 | Featured Articles

I have always had a bad attitude toward official secrets regardless of who is keeping them. That prejudice and John Kenneth Galbraith are to blame for an unauthorized withdrawal I made from the World Bank. When I lived in Boston in the late 1970s, I paid $25 to attend a series of lectures by Galbraith on foreign aid and other topics. The louder Galbraith praised foreign aid, the warier I became. His hokum spurred my reading and led me to recognize that foreign aid is one of the worst afflictions that poor nations suffer. As one critic quipped, foreign aid is money from governments, to...

Biden’s Keynesian Course: Riding the ‘Multiplier’

by Jim Bovard | Dec 9, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles

White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain tweeted on Wednesday: “Stronger COVID measures produce STRONGER ECONOMIC outcomes. That’s why jobs, growth, and economic activity are UP this year, significantly over last year.” Actually, jobs and economic activity have rebounded because governors are no longer locking down businesses, schools, and daily life. But Biden’s team is painting its latest COVID decrees as the key to renewed prosperity. Biden’s team is tacitly invoking a long history of multipliers to justify government interventions. In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes popularized the notion...

‘State Secrets’ Hide Government Perfidy

by Jim Bovard | Nov 29, 2021 | Featured Articles

Will federal law enforcement agencies ever be forced to disclose their abuses of American citizens? The Supreme Court could answer that question in its decision on a potentially landmark case it heard last week regarding surveillance of Muslim communities in California. Though the case may be decided on narrow grounds, it involves a legal Pandora’s Box that has spawned and shielded the worst abuses of the post-9/11 era. Beginning in 2006, the FBI sent Craig Monteilh, a former Drug Enforcement Administration informant, into mosques in southern California to gather evidence against Muslims at...

How I Said Phooey to College

by Jim Bovard | Nov 22, 2021 | Featured Articles

President Biden is tub-thumping for Congress to create new federal handouts to make college free for the vast majority of students. But as Ryan McMaken and other commentators on mises.org have pointed out, college is vastly overpriced and overrated nowadays. My view on college stems from my experience as a two-time dropout. I was frightfully bored in high school and had mediocre grades. Almost immediately after my compulsory schooling ended, my long-lost love of reading revived. A month before I began attending Virginia Tech, a kindly neighbor gave me the University of Chicago Great Books...