This month is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bruno Leoni, one of the most penetrating political thinkers of the post-World War Two era. His 1961 book, Freedom and the Law, helped me get a handle on the perils of majority rule. (E-text versions of that book are available free from the Liberty Fund […]
Tag Archives | dictatorship
More Bush-Inspired Epigrams for his Library Day
In honor of Bush’s library dedication today, here are some more epigrams he inspired from Terrorism & Tyranny (Palgrave, 2003) Killing foreigners is no substitute for protecting Americans. Habeas corpus is an insurance policy to prevent governments from going berserk. Perpetual war inevitably begets perpetual repression. It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of […]
Rand Paul Endorses Using Drones to Kill Suspected Liquor Store Robbers
Sen. Rand Paul did great work focusing America’s attention on drone killings last month during his filibuster. I was surprised to learn today that Sen. Paul endorses using drones to kill suspected liquor store robbers: “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash I don’t care […]
MP3 The Great Boston Crackdown – Scott Horton Show
Talk show host Scott Horton and I had a rowdy 25 minute chat yesterday on the Boston bombings and the subsequent “house arrest” order for a million people in the Boston area. Scott refused to give a blanket endorsement to the response by the Homeland Security apparatchiks. I talking about how my reaction to the […]
Dictatorship of Lawyers
Lawyer-huckster Peter Angelos is in the news this week. A Wall Street Journal editorial notes that Angelos’s asbestos lawsuit racket is rapidly losing its credibility. Early in this century, I did a piece for the Freeman on how lawyers and politicians (such as Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer) were in cahoots to wreck industry after […]
Ripping the Raisin Regime in USA Today
USA Today April 5, 2013 (also syndicated nationwide via Gannett) Fight for the Right to Grow Raisins by James Bovard If the Supreme Court cannot smack down the raisin racket, then it should forfeit any pretense of safeguarding Americans’ rights and liberties. The Supreme Court could soon end one of the federal government’s most archaic […]
Political Accounting: Why Waste is Inevitable
From the Freeman, September 1999 – partly extracted from my Freedom in Chains (1999) Here are a few of the punchier lines from the piece – * The benevolence of government rarely transcends the venality of politics. * The amount of power a politician can seize over other people is inversely related to the politician’s […]
