Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

No Donald Trump, America Was Not ‘Always Free’

by Jim Bovard | Mar 10, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

In his State of the Union address last week, President Donald Trump promised that Americans “will always be free.” That throwaway line assured another round of applause from his Republican devotees on Capitol Hill. But will other Americans be as gullible or servile as members of Congress? Americans are indoctrinated in government schools to presume that our national DNA practically guarantees we will always be free. But few follies are more perilous than presuming that individual rights are safe in perpetuity. None of the arguments on why liberty is inevitable can explain why it is becoming...

Trump Should End All Foreign Aid: My Interview with Georgian TV

by Jim Bovard | Feb 20, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Will President Donald Trump end America’s corrupt foreign aid program and democracy promotion con games? Levan Akhalaia, a reporter with Georgian Public Broadcasting, and I had a lively conversation on that topic last week. Mr. Akhalaia has shown a lot of courage condemning brutal police attacks on protestors in recent times. Below is a rough translation of the Georgian language article on our discussion, which can be read here. Here is a link to a Spotify audio version of the discussion with my voice dubbed into Georgian. And here is a link to a translation via Edge, reposted below with...

Forty Years Bashing the National Endowment for Democracy

by Jim Bovard | Feb 4, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On Sunday, Elon Musk posted on X: Those who know, please reply to this post listing all the evil things that NED has done. It’s a long list. https://t.co/8smJsP5Hji — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025 After that merciless arm-twisting, I have no choice but to recap my National Endowment for Democracy bashes going back to shortly after it was launched in 1983. In a November 29, 1985 piece in the Oakland Tribune, I hailed NED as "one of the newest, most prestigious boondoggles on the Potomac." But there were plenty of scoffers early on: “NED has been called many things—an International...

Trump Freezes Foreign Aid Frauds

by Jim Bovard | Jan 29, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The Donald Trump administration suspended top officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this week. The move, labeled a “Monday afternoon massacre,” was spurred by allegations that top USAID officials were circumventing President Trump’s ninety day freeze on foreign aid disbursements. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) howled on Twitter that “Trump decimating USAID’s leadership without cause is all harm & no benefit for our national security.” But the sordid record of failed aid programs doesn’t support his caterwauling. Foreign aid has long been the incarnation of...

My Best Biden Bashes

by Jim Bovard | Jan 21, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

Joe Biden’s presidency ended yesterday. Would it be ungracious to whack him as he was exiting the White House? Nah—Biden has been vilifying libertarians and anyone who didn’t kowtow to his commands for too many years. Plus, he is working on a memoir, so he is fair game. Here are some of my favorite lines on Biden’s four years of pratfalls: “Biden has gotten lost on stage so many times that WAZE should create a special app for Joe to navigate his next steps.” (Future of Freedom Foundation, November 2023) "Biden is desperate because his credibility on COVID is waning faster than a Pfizer...

We Must End the Sham of Presidential Medals of Freedom

by Jim Bovard | Jan 8, 2025 | Featured Articles

Joe Biden is determined to 'Leave No Washington Sham Behind' before his presidency ends on January 20. On Saturday, Biden presented Presidential Medals of Freedom to a rogue’s gallery of shysters, donors, bootlickers, as well as some innocent bystanders and dead people. Biden presented failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a Medal of Freedom—perhaps for her crusade to Make Censorship Great Again. Hillary has long been one of America’s foremost censorship advocates. In 2022, she wailed that “tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability” and...

Thank the Feds for a Million COVID Dead

by Jim Bovard | Dec 31, 2024 | Featured Articles

Last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal exposed how federal agencies helped carry out the biggest scientific con of the century. In early 2020, when the COVID pandemic was starting to ravage America, federal bureaucrats and politicians rushed to suppress any suggestion that the pandemic originated from a Chinese government lab bankrolled by U.S. government agencies. Key officials in Joe Biden's administration effectively exonerated the Chinese government even though the Chinese completely stonewalled any outside investigation into the origin of the COVID virus. The FBI’s top expert...

Forty Years Sniping at Leviathan

by Jim Bovard | Dec 19, 2024 | Featured Articles

I have spent decades trying to turn political dirt into philosophic gold. I have yet to discover the alchemist’s trick, but I still have fun with the dirt. I was born in Iowa and raised in the mountains of Virginia. Wheeling and dealing with old coins as a teenager vaccinated me against trusting politicians long before I grew my first scruffy beard. Shortly after my fifteenth birthday, the U.S. government drove the final wooden stake into the nation’s currency when President Richard Nixon announced that the U.S. government would cease redeeming any dollars for gold. The dollar thus became a...

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