Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

Congress Cares When It’s Their Windows Being Broken

by Jim Bovard | Jan 15, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

The political hysteria unleashed by last week’s clash at the Capitol between police and Trump protestors poses a growing danger to Americans’ constitutional rights. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer ludicrously compared the ruckus to Pearl Harbor—a “day of infamy.” Schumer complained that the “temple to democracy was desecrated…our offices vandalized” and that rioters were able to “stalk these hallowed halls.” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) compared an incursion that broke some windows and furniture with the 1814 British invasion that torched the Capitol. The pro-Trump mob should not have...

New Report Continues to Obfuscate Killing of Duncan Lemp

by Jim Bovard | Jan 2, 2021 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

Why did a Montgomery County, Maryland SWAT team kill 21-year-old Duncan Lemp, in a no-knock predawn raid on March 12? The county released an official report yesterday stating that a violent no-knock raid was justified “due to Lemp being ‘anti-government,’ ‘anti-police,’ currently in possession of body armor, and an active member of the Three Percenters.” The report also noted that “police had viewed several videos showing Lemp handling and shooting firearms.” Distrusting the government and police and appearing in photos or videos with firearms is a catch-all that could apply to millions of...

How 2020 Destroyed the Myths of America

by Jim Bovard | Jan 1, 2021 | Featured Articles

Thanks in large part to COVID lockdowns, this year has left vast wreckage in its wake, with ten million jobs lost, more than 100,000 businesses and dozens of national chains bankrupted or closed. Up to 40 million people could face eviction in the coming months for failing to pay rent, and Americans report that their mental health is at record low levels. But the casualty list for 2020 must also include many of the political myths that shape Americans’ lives. Perhaps the biggest myth to die this year was that Americans’ constitutional rights are safeguarded by the Bill of Rights. After the...

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...