Epigrams from Attention Deficit Democracy (2006)

Epigrams from Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard (Palgrave, 2006)

Americans have devoted far more effort to spreading democracy than to understanding it.

Modern democracy is far more effective at unleashing government than at protecting individuals.

When people blindly assume that their leaders are trustworthy, the biggest liars win.

Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.

Instead of revealing the “will of the people,” election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.

The biggest election frauds usually occur before the voting booths open.

A democratic government that respects no limits on its own power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.

Leviathan is premised on government’s need to control the people. Democracy rests on people’s right to control the government. The conflict between these two principles generates much of the deceit that permeates contemporary politics.

Washington policy debates are often like a criminal trial in which all the evidence of the defendant’s past offenses is ruled inadmissible.

America is becoming a democracy of knocking knees, sweating foreheads, and folks who jump too high at any sound.

Bogus fears can produce real servitude.

With the Battered Citizen Syndrome, the more debacles government produces, the more tightly voters cling to their rulers.

The more fears government fans, the fewer people recall the danger of government itself.

Americans cannot expect to have good presidents if presidents are permitted to make themselves czars

Being crowned a winner by the Electoral College does not give one American the right to dispose of all other Americans’ lives and liberties.

As long as rulers are above the law, citizens have the same type of freedom that slaves had on days when their masters chose not to beat them.

As long as American presidents praise freedom, they are permitted to seize as much power as they please.

Democracy is merely a form of government. It is not a penicillin that cures all politically transmitted diseases.

Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.

The bigger government becomes, the more votes it can buy.

The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.

It is far easier to reduce politicians’ power than to raise their characters.

Are Americans free simply because they are permitted a perfunctory choice on who will molest their rights and liberties?

Attention Deficit Democracy produces the attitudes, ignorance, and arrogance that pave the way to political collapse.