Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

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...

Tariffs Are Bipartisan Enemies of Freedom

by Jim Bovard | Jul 17, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump both portray tariffs as magic wands to create national prosperity. Trump is calling for a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports, while Biden is imposing selective tariffs that he portrays as miracle cures for any economic malaise. But tariffs have always been and always will be an enemy to prosperity and individual freedom. The U.S. tariff code is the accumulated junk heap of centuries of political payoffs and kickbacks. In 1790, the Tariff Code consisted of a single sheet of rates posted at U.S. Custom Houses; now, our tariff code...

COVID Tyranny and Merle Haggard’s Forgotten Warning

by Jim Bovard | Jul 1, 2024 | Featured Articles

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, many Americans have been appalled at the tidal wave of dictatorial and futile decrees that sought to vanquish a virus. Even more shocking was the craven response by many citizens who believed that groveling to officialdom was the only way to survive. But there were warning signs of the collapse of American support for freedom long before the Wuhan Institute pocketed U.S. tax dollars to concoct its first coronavirus. “Is the best of the free life behind us now?” Merle Haggard asked in a haunting 1982 country music hit song. Nine years earlier, Haggard...

Will Trump Learn from Bump Stock Battering?

by Jim Bovard | Jun 18, 2024 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Politics

The Supreme Court last Friday struck down one of the most controversial gun control edicts in recent years. The ruling on bump stocks is being widely hailed as a victory for an expansive reading of the Second Amendment. But it is also a stark rebuke to Donald Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and his Presidential Magic Felony Wand. On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock fired hundreds of rounds from his window in the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas into a crowd attending a country music concert below. Sixty people were killed, and more than four-hundred wounded. Paddock was using a bump stock, an...