Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

How the American War on Drugs Demolished Guatemala

by Jim Bovard | Jun 9, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala earlier this week to bestow millions of dollars in new foreign aid on that government. The Biden administration is pretending that giving more US tax dollars to Central American governments will miraculously reduce the surge of illegal immigrants that Biden’s appointees are welcoming in Arizona, Texas, and elsewhere. The purpose of Harris’s trip and the new handouts is not to solve that problem but simply to make the Biden administration appear to give a damn about the issue. In her official statements during the visit, Harris included no...

How the Corporate Press Pushes War

by Jim Bovard | Jun 9, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Fifty years ago, the New York Times began publishing excerpts from a massive secret report called the “History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy.” Those excerpts, which quickly became known as the “Pentagon Papers,” provided shocking revelations of perennial government deceit and spurred an epic clash over the First Amendment. Unfortunately, many of the media outlets that will celebrate the Pentagon Papers anniversary have long since become lap dogs of perfidious politicians dragging America into new foreign conflicts. The report that became the Pentagon Papers was a secret...

Memorial Day: Remember Political Lies that Caused Soldiers to Die

by Jim Bovard | Jun 1, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

This article was originally published at the Institute last year on Memorial Day and is reprinted below. On Memorial Day, the media do their usual sacralizing of war. Instead, it should be a day for the ritualized scourging of politicians. During the last 70 years, their lies have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of almost 100,000 American soldiers and millions of foreigners. And yet, people still get teary-eyed when politicians take the stage to talk about their devotion to the troops. On Memorial Day 2011, for instance, the Washington Post included numerous touching photographs of...

George Bush’s Damnable Afghan War Lies

by Jim Bovard | May 25, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Former President George W. Bush is bewailing President Joe Biden’s plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Bush told Fox News last week, “I’m also deeply concerned about the sacrifices of our soldiers, and our intelligence community, will be forgotten,” after the war ends. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the American media has already forgotten how Bush’s lies turned U.S. intervention in Afghanistan into a quagmire that pointlessly killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers. After Al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes on September 11, 2001, wreaking death and destruction in...

Correcting the Lapdog Media

by Jim Bovard | May 13, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Former CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski declared on Twitter last week that American journalists would “never expect…Your own govt to lie to you, repeatedly” and “Your own govt to hide information the public has a right to know.” Kosinski denounced “Trump’s unAmerican regime” and declared, “No one should accept this.” Kosinski’s comments epitomize the “Trump-washing” of American history that explains much of the media’s rage, hypocrisy, and follies in the last five years. Kosinski’s mindset also helps explain why Americans' trust in the media has collapsed. Kosinski spent years...

Congress’ Obsession With Unreadable Laws

by Jim Bovard | May 10, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap,” Napoleon is reputed to have said more than two centuries ago. Boundless ignorance is also not a handicap, as Congress demonstrated last December by approving a 5593-page bill without reading it. Plenty of activists and editorial pages howled over the sloppy procedures propelling $2.3 trillion in new federal spending. James Madison warned in the Federalist Papers in 1788 that “it will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they...

The Feds Are Coming for Libertarians

by Jim Bovard | Apr 23, 2021 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Libertarianism

On the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, former CIA chief John Brennan announced on television that federal intelligence agencies “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” various suspect groups, specifically mentioning libertarians. Libertarians are in the federal crosshairs. Six or seven years ago, there was a lot of prattle about how “the libertarian moment has arrived.” I always knew that was hokum. Since then, there has been a huge increase in hostility to libertarians in Washington DC and elsewhere around the country. Many...

Jim Bovard Speaks to Maryland Libertarians About the Waco Siege

by Jim Bovard | Apr 20, 2021 | Featured Articles

28 years ago yesterday, the FBI launched a tank and toxic gas assault on the Branch Davidians that ended with 80 dead civilians. On Saturday night James Bovard spoke to the Maryland Libertarian Party convention. Below is his riff from that speech on how Biden slapped a halo on the ATF and FBI after the Waco debacle and his nomination of David Chipman to head ATF. This was originally featured at James Bovard's blog and is republished with permission.