Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

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.

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...

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