Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

American Atrocity: Remembering the Shenandoah Burning

by Jim Bovard | Sep 30, 2024 | Featured Articles, History

George Orwell wrote in 1945 that “the nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” This week is the 160th anniversary of one of the worst atrocities of the American Civil War, a barbarous episode that vanished long ago from history books. Union General Philip Sheridan laid waste to a hundred mile swath of the Shenandoah Valley, leaving vast numbers of women and children on the edge of starvation. Before the summer of 1864, the Civil War was primarily fought on battlefields. After failing...

Hillary Clinton’s Sordid History of Secrecy and Censorship

by Jim Bovard | Sep 23, 2024 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Politics

“You could drop Hillary into any trouble spot, come back in a month and…she will have made it better,” former President Bill Clinton declared in a 2016 speech championing his wife’s presidential candidacy. But Hillary’s entry into the brawls surrounding the 2024 presidential election will leave many Americans wishing to drop her elsewhere. As the race enters the home stretch, Hillary Clinton is riding in like Joan of Arc to rescue truth—or at least to call for hammering government critics. But Hillary has been a triple threat to American democracy for fifteen years. Last Monday evening,...

Did the IRS Manipulate the 2020 Election?

by Jim Bovard | Sep 9, 2024 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Politics

Hunter Biden pled guilty on Thursday to a barrage of federal tax crimes. But will the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department ever plead guilty to stealing the 2020 election for Joe Biden? In 2023, the IRS assessed 18,599,109 penalties on individuals who allegedly underpaid or failed to pay federal income taxes. How did the IRS miss Hunter Biden for so long? In 2021, the Biden administration sought to compel banks to report to the IRS any bank account with more than $600 in transactions per year. But the feds effectively disregarded multimillion dollar windfalls pouring into Hunter’s...

Democracy’s Damndest Defamation

by Jim Bovard | Sep 4, 2024 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics

In a democracy, people automatically become liable for whatever the government inflicts upon them. Many of the most deadly errors of contemporary political thinking stem from the notion that in a democracy the government is the people and vice versa, so there is scant reason to distinguish between the two—or to worry about protecting citizens from the government. In 1798, President John Adams pushed through Congress the Alien and Sedition Acts, which empowered Adams to suppress free speech and imprison without trial any critic of the federal government. When the citizens of Westmoreland...

Kamala and the Deadly Perils of Sham Idealism

by Jim Bovard | Aug 26, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics

As the presidential race enters the final stretch, politicians are recycling the usual cons to make people believe this election will be different. At last week’s Democratic National Convention, sham idealism had a starring role, accompanied by ritual denunciations of cynicism. But idealism has a worse record in Washington than a New Jersey senator. “Idealism is going to save the world,” President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed shortly after World War I left much of Europe in ruins and paved the way for communist and Nazi takeovers. Wilson’s blather provoked H.L. Mencken to declare that Americans...

Nixon’s Resignation and America’s Impunity Democracy

by Jim Bovard | Aug 13, 2024 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Politics

August 8 was the fiftieth anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Unfortunately, that anniversary spurred little reflections or lamentations on how lawless the federal government has become in the subsequent half century. Aside from his Watergate abuses, Nixon was guilty of illegally invading a foreign country (Cambodia), perpetuating the war in Vietnam for political purposes and his 1972 reelection campaign, violating the rights of tens of thousands of Americans with the illegal FBI COINTELPRO program, sanctioning CIA violence and subversion around the globe, and many other...

Dictator Biden’s Anti-Dictator Constitutional Amendment

by Jim Bovard | Aug 5, 2024 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics

Twenty years ago, I jokingly proposed a constitutional amendment to require the U.S. government to obey the Constitution. President Biden has one-upped me with his proposal for a “No One is Above the Law” constitutional amendment. But Biden would have been more honest if he labeled his pitch the “No One is Above the Law Except Me” amendment. The “No One is Above the Law” constitutional fix is as big a sham as the KamalaFlauge expunging of Vice President Harris’ political history. In the same week that Biden trumpeted his proposed amendment, he announced new schemes to avoid complying with...

Biden’s Blather and American Democracy Gone Awry

by Jim Bovard | Jul 23, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics

Since late 2020, President Joe Biden has invoked “the will of the people” dozens of times to sanctify his power, including arbitrary decrees that were illegal or unconstitutional. Biden’s invocations did not prevent his re-election campaign from being terminated behind closed doors on Sunday by Democratic Party donors and leaders. Though Biden is being shoved off stage, the “will of the people” will continue to be invoked to raze limits on presidential power and trample the Bill of Rights. Biden’s rhetorical machinations reflect a wrong path taken long ago by American politicians regarding...