February is Epigrams Month.   I will be posting epigrams from each of my books on this blog throughout this month.
I would appreciate feedback on this list Are there any epigrams here that seem like clunkers and should be dropped?
Are there lines that should be moved closer to the top?
Are there lines not on this list that I should have included?
 
Today’s entry is from Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave, 2003; Spanish edition, 2004):
 The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a suspected terrorist and every federal agent like a proven angel.
 Habeas corpus is an insurance policy to prevent governments from going berserk.
 It took less than a week for Washington politicians to transform the Federal Aviation Administration’s greatest debacle into its finest hour.
 Like a Soviet historian, John Ashcroft rewrote the judicial history of the United States and expunged all the court decisions detailing and denouncing abuses by law enforcement.
 Most of the homeland security successes in the war on terrorism have been farces or frauds.
 Nothing happened on 9/11 that made the federal government more trustworthy.
The worse government fails, the less privacy citizens supposedly deserve.
 There is power in information: the more information government gathers on people, the more power it has over them. The more government surveillance, the more intimidated Americans become.
 There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.
 The U.S. government is far more efficient at making enemies than at defending Americans.
 Killing foreigners is no substitute for protecting Americans.
 Perpetual war inevitably begets perpetual repression. It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of freedom everywhere without also destroying freedom in the United States.
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 A lie that is accepted by a sufficient number of ignorant voters becomes a political truth.
 Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.
 In the long run, people have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go, but power-hungry politicians will always be with us.
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 Freedom will only be permanently secured when people cease craving power over other people. In other words, as long as human beings are human, freedom will be in peril.
You forgot the paraphrase of Voltaire:
“The citizen will not be free until the last Politician is strangled with the entrails of the last lobbyist and made into a poison to kill the last corporate media by boiling down the last Wingnut Arena Church.”
And, “The more information a government collects on it’s citizens, the less intelligent it becomes.”
Some nice ones Mr. Bovard…the government provides no end of target for bitter irony.
Dirk – you have a knack for epigrams!
I hope the local Utahans appreciate your wit.
Can’t say they do since I left it many moons ago. After all, anyone doubting the Cult of Cheney and Limbaugh in the land of Zion is to be shunned like a Baptist Protestor screaming at newlyweds on Temple Square.
I’m up here in the Weekender Woodland of Connecticut…a place that used to have my favorite kind of Republican …the kind that said “you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone and watch yer damned budget” This GOP, of course, no longer exists…even where it says it does. New England has gone Blue and if the Framers could see what’s become of the place, they’d ask for a replay of the Shays Rebellion and join em.
This assignment forced me to pull my copy of Terrorism & Tyranny off the shelf and review it. There is nothing more disturbing than the hideous unvarnished truth about the world we live in.
One short paragraph stood out, the first sentence of which is included above:
“Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.”
The rest of it is:
“Americans must be vigilant to prevent politicians from exploiting the terrorist attacks which their own policies helped provoke.”
I’m guessing Giuliani never read this book.
Tom, I don’t know if Giuliani read the book, but he did refuse to provide a jacket blurb when Palgrave/St. Martin’s contacted him pre-publication.
Dirk – as usual I am “many moons” behind.
I will try to cease associating you with Utah.
Connecticut — any state that was hospitable to Mark Twain can’t be all bad.