Today is the anniversary of one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s worst infamies – his confiscation of privately-owned gold. I wrote the following article in 1999 for Sheldon Richman at the Foundation for Economic Education. This article was a spinoff of Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. […]
American Conservative, December 18, 2020 Biden’s ‘Will of the People’ Malarkey Generations of presidents have cited “the will of the people” to legitimize power grabs. The Founding Fathers wouldn’t approve. by James Bovard In his cough-ridden victory speech Monday night, President-elect Joe Biden proclaimed again that “the will of the people prevailed” in the 2020 […]
Mises Institute, October 23, 2020 Will Democracy’s Myths Doom Liberty? by James Bovard The Supreme Court declared in 1943, “There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority.” In reality, the cardinal doctrines of contemporary democracy are layer upon layer of mystical claptrap. The […]
American Conservative, July 24, 2020 How Intellectuals Cured ‘Tyrannophobia’ American presidents have adopted Hobbesian levels of power. by Jim Bovard Almost 400 years ago, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote a book scoffing at tyrannophobia—the “fear of being strongly governed.” This was a peculiar term that Hobbes invented in Leviathan, since civilized nations had feared […]
Libertarian Institute, April 13, 2020 FDR, Demagogue Champion of Leviathan and War by Jim Bovard | Sunday was the 75th anniversary of the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt was sainted by the media even before he died in 1945. CNN last week trumpeted FDR as “the wartime president who Trump should learn from.” A 2019 […]
American Conservative, March 3, 2020 The Census and Facebook: Working Hand-in-Glove to Censor the Internet by James Bovard The same agency that once helped the Army round up Japanese Americans has now achieved protected status on social media. America’s social media giants are rallying behind the 2020 Census. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg recently assured […]
The American Conservative, February 18, 2020 Yalta and the Death of the ‘Good War’ by James Bovard FDR’s complicity in Stalin’s post-WWII bloodletting started a trend of lies and hypocrisy in U.S. foreign policy. Yalta summit in February 1945 with (from left to right) Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. (public domain) *** This […]
