Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

What Biden’s Nomination of a Waco Arsonist Portends For Americans’ Safety

by Jim Bovard | Apr 14, 2021 | Featured Articles

Last week, President Joe Biden nominated David Chipman to be head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the premier federal firearms enforcement agency. Biden complemented that announcement with a call for a national red flag law to entitle police to preemptively confiscate firearms from citizens suspected of being a threat to themselves or others. Chipman was a 25-year ATF agent and a key official at the 1994 federal trial of the Branch Davidians who survived the ATF and FBI assaults the prior year. Many federal agents posed for grisly “victory photos” in the rubble...

How the Government Covered Up the Waco Massacre

by Jim Bovard | Mar 25, 2021 | Featured Articles

The easiest way to achieve sainthood in Washington is to cover up a federal atrocity. Thus, it is no surprise that former senator John Danforth continues to be treated by the Washington Post as a visionary statesman. The Post showcased Danforth’s attack on Donald Trump in October after Trump derided the Commission on Presidential Debates. Danforth, a permanent member of that commission, is one of the top five “useful idiots for Leviathan,” according to the revised rankings after the death of John McCain. In the 1990s, Danforth received plaudits for being a “moderate” Republican who supported...

Understanding the Bend of History (Or Lack Thereof)

by Jim Bovard | Mar 23, 2021 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

The notion that Americans will always be free is part of the catechism that is force-fed to public school students. For hundreds of years, philosophers, politicians, and reformers have touted a law of history that assures the ultimate triumph of freedom. “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” But few political follies are more hazardous than presuming that one’s liberties are forever safe. None of the arguments on why liberty is inevitable can explain why it has...

The Old Patriot Act Didn’t Work, and Neither Will the New One

by Jim Bovard | Mar 8, 2021 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

President Biden, congressional Democrats, and much of the media are clamoring for a new law against domestic terrorism. Before enacting a new law, Americans should recognize how “terrorism” has spurred deluges of political and prosecutorial malarkey for almost 20 years. Any new crackdown on terrorism will turn into a numbers game in which justice and fair play don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. In the six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the feds rounded up 1,200 people as suspected terrorists or terrorist supporters in the United States. All that was necessary for an Arab...

Afghanistan’s Victory Over the United States

by Jim Bovard | Mar 1, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

Acrimony and recriminations continue to swirl around the 2020 presidential election. Three out of four Republicans believe that there was “widespread fraud” in the election, while Democrats have sought to turn criticisms of the election into a “Big Lie” heresy against democracy. Senior congressional Democrats are pressuring the nation’s largest cable providers to cease carrying conservative networks such as Fox News that raised too many questions about Biden’s victory. What could possibly go wrong with sweeping the 2020 election controversies under the rug? Clues can be found in a recent...

Another Bogus Impeachment

by Jim Bovard | Feb 22, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

The Senate impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump confirms historian Henry Adams's adage a century ago that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” The impeachment process was a farce that should fortify Americans’ disdain for Washington. Considering how Democrats are using the January 6 clash at the Capitol to justify enacting a new domestic terrorism law, Americans need to recognize the frauds that permeated this process from the start. At last week’s trial, House impeachment manager Jaime Raskin (D-MD) boasted to the Senate, “I think we have done an...

Nancy Pelosi’s Disastrous Idea To Have a ‘9/11 Commission’ About the Capitol Attack

by Jim Bovard | Feb 18, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

Many members of Congress remain outraged at the Trump protestors who charged into the Capitol on January 6. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently declared, “We must get to the truth of how this happened…Our next step will be to establish an outside, independent 9/11-type Commission to investigate and report on the facts and causes.” But another pious fraud from the political establishment is the last thing that America needs right now. The 9/11 Commission should be a warning that Washington dignitaries are the last people we should trust to expose the truth. After the 9/11 attacks, a joint...

The Military Occupation of Washington DC is a Ticking Time Bomb

by Jim Bovard | Feb 13, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

“Tyranny in form is the first step towards tyranny in substance,” warned Senator John Taylor two hundred years ago in his forgotten classic, Tyranny Unmasked. As the massive National Guard troop deployment in Washington enters its second month, much of the media and many members of Congress are thrilled that it will extend until at least mid-March. But Americans would be wise to recognize the growing perils of the militarization of American political disputes. The military occupation of Washington was prompted by the January 6 clashes at the Capitol between Trump supporters and law...