Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

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...

Politicians Will Always Be Damn Rascals

by Jim Bovard | Jun 10, 2024 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

Former President Donald Trump was recently convicted by a New York jury after prosecutors claimed he was guilty of “hoodwinking” voters in the 2016 election by paying to cover up his boinking of a beefy porn star. Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg proclaimed that Trump was guilty of taking steps with “the end of keeping information away from the electorate.” Cue the casino scene from the movie Casablanca, with the French officer lamenting that he was “shocked, shocked” to find gambling on the premises. Lying is practically the job description for politicians. Economist John Burnheim, in his...

Forced Busing: Biggest DEI Debacle in U.S. History

by Jim Bovard | May 30, 2024 | Featured Articles

President Joe Biden seeks to boost government school spending to close the achievement gap between white and black students. According to the Biden administration, disparities in student test scores justify further government intervention. But Biden ignores how previous government education decrees ravaged Americans’ freedom and domestic tranquility. In a speech earlier this month, Biden touted the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education. That decision ruled that “separate but equal” systems that intentionally segregated students by race violated the...

Biden’s Sham Snickers Salvation Shtick

by Jim Bovard | May 20, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Politics

In 1896, Democratic Party presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan made a famous pro-inflation speech, proclaiming "you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold" (and stable prices). In 2024, President Joe Biden is campaigning for re-election by denouncing corporations for crucifying consumers on a grocery store rack of Snickers bars. According to Biden, “shrinkflation”—adjusting for inflation by selling smaller products for the same price—is a worse crime than anything his administration inflicted on the American people. And Snickers bars are Exhibit #1 of corporate perfidy in...

Psychiatry is Vexing Americans and Subverting Freedom

by Jim Bovard | May 13, 2024 | Featured Articles

Psychiatry is ruining more lives than ever before. The New York Times recently showcased psychiatric “prevalence inflation”—a vast increase in reported mental illness among teenagers because they are encouraged to view normal symptoms as grave maladies requiring intervention. Oxford University psychologist Lucy Foulkes observed that school programs are “creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they’re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional.” In an analysis published last year in the academic journal, New Ideas in Psychology, Foulkes...

Senator Bob Graham, 9/11, and the Mirage of American Democracy

by Jim Bovard | Apr 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

Former Senator Bob Graham passed away on April 16 at the age of 87. Graham had been one of the most outspoken opponents of the Iraq War, but his brightest legacy was his perennial fight against the George W. Bush administration’s cover-up of the 9/11 attacks. Graham was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when terrorists toppled the World Trade Center towers. When President Bush whipped up support for war by blaming the 9/11 attacks on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Graham recognized the scam. In October 2002, when Bush rammed a pro-war resolution (though not a formal declaration...

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