American Institute for Economic Research, July 14, 2021 No Victory Lap For Governors Who Locked Down America James Bovard There are no fact-checkers for victory laps. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summarized his experience with the Covid-19 crisis: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.” Cuomo made that declaration in a […]
American Institute for Economic Research, May 26, 2021 Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity? James Bovard “It’s like we created another industry in our state. The amount of money is staggering,” Andrew Schaufele, director of Maryland’s Bureau of Revenue Estimates, happily declared last week. The Biden stimulus plan is deluging governments across America […]
Here’s my tribute to one of the best and least appreciated classics of American political thought. Here is a link to a free version of the original printing from 1822. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Tyranny_Unmasked/HhHVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover 200th Anniversary of a Great American Demolition of Tyranny by James Bovard This is the 200th anniversary of the publication of one of the […]
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 Institute for Economic Research, March 24, 2021 Lockdown Tyranny: A Personal Retrospective James Bovard Over the past year, Americans’ rights and liberties have been ravaged worse than almost anyone expected at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Fearmongering quickly proved the ticket for politicians to seize almost unlimited power. But heavy-handed government decrees were […]
Best quote for this week? Lily Tomlin said, “No matter how cynical you get, it is not enough to keep up.” Deceiving citizens violates voting rights as much as barring people from polling places. https://t.co/yY2kPoOfXt — James Bovard (@JimBovard) November 6, 2020 This post-election vote counting is like extra innings of a baseball playoff game […]
American Institute for Economic Research, October 27, 2020 Defining Despotism Down James Bovard The simultaneous defining down of both democracy and despotism is 2020’s darkest legacy. Voters are recognizing that their ballots merely choose elective dictators who can exempt themselves from the Constitution simply by pronouncing the word “emergency.” At the same time, despotism is […]
