Tag Archives | Democracy

Federal Policies Are Huge Financial Burden on American Families

Press TV posted a monologue I did last night responding to a new Pew poll indicating that most Americans are feeling financially stressed and that 82% of households reported suffering a financial shock last year.  My riff focused on how U.S. government policies make life more difficult for average Americans:  If you listen to Congress and the […]

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Mises Institute: The Illusion of Reform

  Mises Institute “The Austrian” Newsletter, Issue #1, 2015 The Absurdity of “Reform” in DC by James Bovard In the 1930s, peasants who were starving because of the Soviet regime’s brutal farm collectivization policy lamented, “If only Stalin knew!” Nowadays, American social scientists look at floundering federal programs and lament: “If only Congress knew!” And […]

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Wash. Times: Obama’s Liberal Spending Panacea

Washington Times, February 16, 2015 Obama’s liberal spending panacea The president ignores the crushing impact of more debt By James Bovard President Obama recently denounced the “mindless austerity” that threatens his dream of spending $4 trillion in the coming year. In lieu of the current sequestration restrictions on federal spending, Mr. Obama promises “smart investments […]

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Anarchy, Regicide, & Beer: Another Brian Wilson Podcast

Brian Wilson and I had a rowdy chat on his Libertas Media Podcast this afternoon.  After his great opening bit, I didn’t have the heart to tell Brian that Raging Bitch is no longer my favorite beer.  After a discussion of Freedom in Chains and a  foray into the Shenandoah Valley for “redneck ethnic cleansing,” […]

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Counterpunch: Americans’ Fatal Freedom Apathy

 COUNTERPUNCH, January 28, 2015 Surrendering Liberty America’s Fatal Freedom Apathy by JAMES BOVARD According to our civic folklore, Americans are more devoted to freedom than any other nationality on earth.   But it is increasingly appears that this dogma is a relic of bygone times. A Gallup poll last July asked a thousand Americans: “Are you […]

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FFF: Americans’ Fading Love of Freedom

Future of Freedom Foundation, October 2014 issue of Future of Freedom AMERICANS’ FADING LOVE OF FREEDOM by James Bovard Tea Party protesters, some Republicans, and many libertarians perceive the federal government as a vast engine of oppression. But are anti-Obama activists mistaken in presuming that most Americans still care about freedom? A Gallup poll released […]

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Freeman: Government as Slaveowner (2000)

UPDATE: Here are some perhaps improved versions of a few lines in the following essay (thanks to Twitter space limits): Government worship tautology: because government has almost boundless power, it is presumably the source of all rights. *A good definition of liberty must provide a barricade that 10,000 federal agents cannot breach. *Tax burdens are […]

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