BOVARD » dictatorship

Archive for dictatorship

The archive page you are viewing contains only excerpts of each post. To view the full post, click on its title.

Monday 21st June 2010

Supreme Court’s Latest Constitutional Disaster of Biblical Proportions

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision upholding a federal law banning “material support” to terrorist organizations is a disaster for preserving free speech or limiting federal power.
Once again, the Obama administration proudly championed repression, and the court agreed with the Obama team.
Raw Story has a good collection of quotes bashing the decision here.
David Cole, the [...]

Wednesday 21st April 2010

My Culpability for the Oklahoma City Bombing

I almost forgot my role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
No - I’ve never been to Oklahoma.
But a 1999 Los Angeles Times review of one of my books made similar points to what Bill Clinton made in his New York Times op-ed on Monday. The reviewer, Anthony Day, was horrified at my rejection [...]

Monday 19th April 2010

Podcast of April 19th Interview with Ernie Hancock

Legendary hellraiser and freedom fighter Ernie Hancock had me on his radio show today. We talked about the meaning of April 19th - Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, etc.
He tried to squeeze out a few predictions but I pretty much took a dive.
You can hear the show by clicking radio-jpb-2010-04-19-ernie-hancock-a-pmhere. (The [...]

Thursday 15th April 2010

1994 Tax Day article: “The Growing IRS Dictatorship”

Tax Day is a time to pause to appreciate all that Washington does for us. Here’s a piece I wrote 16 years ago. Unfortunately, few newspapers or magazines are stooping to notice the danger of the IRS’s power these days.
The article was accepted by Wall Street Journal editorial features editor Amity Shlaes, and [...]

Friday 5th March 2010

The Material Witness Ticket to Servitude

The Future of Freedom Foundation put online my article from the December Freedom Daily….
It’s amazing to see what kind of legal crap the government gets away with these days.
The Material Witness Charade Freedom Daily, December 2009
by James Bovard
Last September, a federal appeals court ruled that former [...]

Tuesday 16th February 2010

On Russian TV Talking About American Dictatorial Power

I was on Russian Television (the English language edition) last night talking about all the “emergency” declarations and power grabs by recent presidents. The interview on “The Alyona Show” starts about 6 minutes into this YouTube segment here.
It was ironic to be commenting on the danger of excessive presidential power on Russian TV….
Perhaps at some point the mainstream [...]

Thursday 4th February 2010

My Early Optimism on the War on Terror & Civil Liberties

I had forgotten about the following riff until stumbling across it a few days ago.
In late September 2001, Reason magazine asked a handful of folks “to discuss which civil lliberties they thought were most at risk in what has been called America’s first 21st century war.” They published the responses in an article entitled, [...]

Monday 18th January 2010

Gitmo Murders & Pentagon Coverup?

Scott Horton of Harper’s has a great piece online on how three detainees at Gitmo were killed during interrogations. The military responded with an elaborate coverup that claimed the three men committed suicide as an “act of asymmetrical warfare.”
The military’s story has been blow to bits in large part by former Gitmo guards who [...]

Thursday 24th September 2009

Antiwar Interview on Ashcroft, Tyranny, etc. now online

Scott Horton and I had a rollicking good chat earlier this week on the post 9/11 roundup of innocent terrorist suspects, why John Ashcroft should receive “justice” (and hard), the outrage of sovereign immunity, and the bisexual congresswoman entrapped by a lesbian foreign agent.
You can hear it here.
[If that link doesn't work, hit this [...]

Tuesday 28th July 2009

Martial Law and the War on Terrorism

The Future of Freedom Foundation is shotgunning out the following oped today….
***
Martial Law and the War on Terrorism
Or “One White House Memo Away From Dictatorship”
by James Bovard
The New York Times reported last week that the Bush administration considered sending in the U.S. military to arrest the so-called Lackawanna Six in 2002. [...]

Friday 17th July 2009

Torture and Political Science

9:15 am | Torture | dictatorship | Comments: 3

Amazing how few political scientists responded to the last 5 years of revelations about torture by the U.S. government.
But perhaps this merely continues that profession’s perennial habit of ignoring the dark side of Leviathan.
British historian Thomas Macaulay noted in his 1837 essay on Francis Bacon that “he who first treated legislation as [...]

Thursday 9th July 2009

McNamara’s Other “Body Count” Debacle

9:08 am | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | dictatorship | Comments: 4

[an op-ed sent out this morning by the Future of Freedom Foundation]
McNamara’s Other “Body Count” Debacle
by James Bovard, July 9, 2009
Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died on July 6, was best known for ratcheting up the Vietnam War thanks to the false claims he provided to President Johnson, Congress, and the American people.
Despite [...]

Friday 3rd July 2009

My 2 Cents on the Tenth Amendment movement

10:16 am | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | dictatorship | Comments: 2

I spoke to Bill Thompson of the Ocala, Florida News earlier this week. He has a very thoughtful article today on the Tenth Amendment movement. Here’s part of his article:
The author James Bovard, whose writings frequently focus on the negative consequences of the growth of the federal government at the expense of individual liberty, [...]

Tuesday 16th June 2009

Are You a “Low-Level Terrorist”?

The Pentagon is teaching soldiers and bureaucrats that people who attend public protests are guilty of “low-level terrorism.”
As a California political blog notes, “Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course – an annual training requirement for all DoD personnel that is fulfilled through web-based instruction – the DoD [...]

Wednesday 22nd April 2009

On Judge Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch” This Afternoon (4/22) + UPDATE

9:46 am | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | dictatorship | Comments: 4

I am scheduled to be on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch” internet broadcast on Fox today @ 2:30 pm. Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, and Glenn Beck are also scheduled for the program (which starts at 2 pm).
You can watch it live here. The show will also be archived at that site.
Topics for [...]

Thursday 12th March 2009

Portuguese Translations of my Epigrams and Recent Articles

Murilo Leme* kindly translated some of my recent epigrams and articles into Portuguese. I think some of the one-liners sound better with the Latin overtones of his language.
I much appreciate his making my writings accessible to folks in Brazil, Portugal, and even Mozambique. If you know folks who would [...]

Friday 3rd October 2008

Freedom is Still the Preeminent Issue

2:21 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | dictatorship | Comments: 13

The Foundation for Economic Education posted online my piece from the current issue of their Freeman magazine responding to David Brooks’s call to devalue freedom in American poiltics.
Freedom Is Not the Issue? It Just Ain’t So! The Freeman September 2008
By James Bovard
The Friends of Leviathan are once again encouraging people [...]

Sunday 7th September 2008

Introduction from FREEDOM IN CHAINS (1999)

Here’s another flash from the past. Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen was hell on my moderate image.
Curious how the intellectual battle lines have shifted in the decade since I wrote this book. I recall some reviewers denouncing me as an extremist for focusing on government abuses such as [...]

Wednesday 9th April 2008

Martial Law Act of 2006

The Future of Freedom Foundation today posted online my article from the January 2008 issue of Freedom Daily on Martial Law. Without further ado…
The Martial Law Act of 2006
by James Bovard
Martial law is perhaps the ultimate stomping of freedom. And yet, on September 30, 2006, Congress passed a provision in a 591-page bill that will make [...]

books

information:

archives:

search:

info: