Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

How Coronavirus Put the Nanny State on Steroids

by Jim Bovard | Dec 16, 2020 | Featured Articles

The COVID pandemic this year has profoundly transformed the relationship of government to American citizens. Constitutional leashes have been obliterated as state and local politicians and officials have issued endless decrees that were vastly more effective at destroying freedom than at curbing a virus. And the Biden administration may soon take further leaps towards making our political system into a Cage Keeper Democracy where citizens’ ballots merely designate who will place them under house arrest. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito aptly declared last month, “The pandemic has resulted...

How Barack Obama Killed Political Idealism (Good)

by Jim Bovard | Dec 5, 2020 | Featured Articles

Americans are sickened of an “idealism that is oblique, confusing, dishonest, and ferocious,” as H.L. Mencken wrote a hundred years ago. Though Mencken was condemning President Woodrow Wilson, the same verdict could characterize the legacy of former president Barack Obama. Obama is now on a book tour issuing calls for honest government, civic virtue, and similar tripe. But Obama did more to discredit idealism than any president since Wilson. A dozen years ago, Americans were enthralled by the newly elected president from Illinois. After the deceit and demagoguery of the George W. Bush era,...

This Thanksgiving, the Government Gifts Us COVID-19 Sex Advice

by Jim Bovard | Nov 26, 2020 | Featured Articles

Politicians and petty czars have canceled Thanksgiving across the nation. What have government health departments offered in lieu of a family gathering? Endless idiotic advice for “safe sex” during COVID. The Vermont Department of Health captured the ethos of many health departments across the nation: “Decisions about sex and sexuality need to be balanced with personal and public health.” COVID Federal Superstar Anthony Fauci reflected that judgment when he declared in April that those who meet strangers for sex via Tinder or other dating apps are entitled to make their “choice regarding a...

America’s Mistakes In Syria Must Be Declassified

by Jim Bovard | Nov 20, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

How many Syrians did you vote to kill on Election Day? Thanks to our perverse political system, the answer will be revealed over the next four years if the Biden administration drags the U.S. back into the Syrian Civil War. But there are steps that Trump can take in his final months in office to deter such follies. Syria was not an issue in the presidential campaign and there were no foreign policy questions in the two presidential debates. That won’t stop the Biden team from claiming a mandate to spread truth and justice via bombs and bribes any place on the globe. The Biden campaign...

What Americans Should Have Learned from the Korean War

by Jim Bovard | Nov 17, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

This year is the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a conflict from which Washington policymakers learned nothing. Almost 40,000 American soldiers died in that conflict that should have permanently vaccinated the nation 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 across the dividing line with South Korea that was devised after World War...

Elections Are Becoming Coffin Nails for Legitimacy

by Jim Bovard | Nov 11, 2020 | Featured Articles, Politics

This year’s presidential election is the fourth since 2000 to be marred by either widespread allegations of voter fraud or of foreign interference. Politicians and pundits have long counted on elections to wave a magic wand of legitimacy over the reign of whoever is designated the winner. But Americans are increasingly wondering if the endlessly-trumped “consent of the governed” has become simply another sham to keep them paying and obeying. Twenty years ago, America was in the throes of a fiercely disputed recount battle in Florida. Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Al Gore won...

The American People’s Justified Cynicism

by Jim Bovard | Nov 2, 2020 | Featured Articles, Politics

“The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism,” declared former president Barack Obama two years ago. But as we enter the final days of another demagoguery-drenched presidential campaign, it is time to give cynicism the credit it deserves. In an era of clueless voters, conniving candidates and media bias, cynicism can be one of the most effective checks and balances on political power run amok. In modern American history, the most audacious liars have been the greatest self-proclaimed enemies of cynicism. “The only deadly sin I know is cynicism,” declared President Lyndon Johnson in a...

Jim Bovard’s Guide to Surviving Election Day

by Jim Bovard | Oct 30, 2020 | Featured Articles

Election Day can be the longest day of the year. Especially if the presidential race remains undecided late into the evening, neither Xanax nor vodka may be enough to kill the pain. In lieu of other sedatives, following are some cheerful lines which might blunt the impact of the prattling on CNN or MSNBC, though there is no known antidote to PBS’s piety. Voting The most dangerous political illusion is that votes limit politicians’ power. Nowadays, we have elections in lieu of freedom. The defects in any system of choosing rulers outweigh the risks of letting people run their own lives....