I almost forgot my role in the Oklahoma City bombing.<\/p>\n
No – I’ve never been to Oklahoma. <\/p>\n
But a 1999 Los Angeles Times review of one of my books made similar points to what Bill Clinton made in his New York Times op-ed on Monday. The reviewer, Anthony Day, was horrified at my rejection of the prevailing political orthodoxy and my debunking of government benevolence. <\/p>\n
In the final paragraph of the review, Day makes clear that he was far more concerned about harsh critics than of government abuses.
\n++++++++++++++++++++
\n Los Angeles Times<\/p>\n
March 4, 1999, Thursday, Home Edition<\/p>\n
A CHILLING INDICTMENT OF U.S. GOVERNMENT;
\nFREEDOM IN CHAINS, THE RISE OF THE STATE AND THE DEMISE OF THE CITIZEN; BY
\n JAMES BOVARD; ST. MARTIN’S PRESS $26.95, 326 PAGES<\/p>\n
BYLINE: ANTHONY DAY, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES <\/p>\n
BODY:
\n The rhetoric of liberty has sustained the American republic from its founding
\nto the Senate’s recent vote to acquit President Clinton on Lincoln’s birthday.
\nHaving no monarchy, no common religion, no ancient history, the country lives by
\nthe words of its founders, who wrote and spoke them not all that long ago. <\/p>\n
Those words have served us well. They helped us through a terrible civil war.
\nThey have brought us to our present state, in which we (most of us) enjoy
\npersonal freedom and prosperity unimaginable not many years ago. But along the
\nway an odd thing happened.<\/p>\n
As Richard Hofstadter and other historians have noted, from the beginning of
\nthe new nation there has existed a paranoid strain of political thinking. The
\nrhetoric of freedom has been turned by a small but noisy minority against the
\nconcept of democratic government itself, so that the government becomes not the
\nagent of the people’s common purpose but the very enemy of the people. In the
\npolitical paranoid’s view, the government assumes an overweening, menacing
\naspect. It becomes not the creature of the citizen but the citizen’s mortal
\nenemy.<\/p>\n
“Freedom in Chains” is an unvarnished example of this contemptuous attitude
\ntoward the American political system. From beginning to end it quivers with
\nBovard’s hatred of government. It is a polemic heavily populated with villains.
\nJean Jacques Rousseau and Franklin D. Roosevelt, for their support of the common
\ngood, are James Bovard’s principal malefactors, but the American people and
\nBill Clinton are not far behind. <\/p>\n
Bovard’s opinions about the relation between democracy and its citizenry
\nsuggest a situation that falls far short of the ideal of the framers:
\n“Governments and citizens blend together only in the imaginations of political
\ntheorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private
\ncitizens. There is no magic in a ballot box that makes government any less
\ncoercive.” “Rather than broadening people’s minds,” Bovard argues, “the exercise
\nof voting too often merely debases their character.<\/p>\n
“The problem with democracy is not only that government routinely scorns
\ncitizens’ values, it is also that government imposes majority preferences that
\nhave no legitimacy. . . . Majorities are routinely the ephemeral creations of
\npolitical promises to confiscate one group’s property and render it to someone
\nelse. What virtue does a majority of tenants have when the one policy they
\ndemand consists of little more than the looting of all apartment owners via rent
\ncontrol?”<\/p>\n
“Confiscation” is much on Bovard’s mind. Taxes, he says, are “confiscation,”
\nnot the price we all pay for living in a civilized society.<\/p>\n
Bovard doesn’t think much of civilized society. He opposes Social Security,
\nMedicare, federal job training, government spending on education, the Consumer
\nProduct Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, land use zoning
\nand so on. The reasons for his opposition lie not in an inquiry into the facts
\nbut in his ideology: If it is done by the government, it is coercive and
\nconfiscatory.<\/p>\n
He admits that some sort of national defense is a necessary governmental
\nfunction and concedes that the National Institutes of Health have done some
\ngood. But in the main he brings toward government relentless hostility and
\npervasive fear.<\/p>\n
All this is nonsense. Is Bovard’s argument harmless? Not necessarily, and not
\nalways. In Bovard’s defensive and disingenuous discussion of the bombing of the
\nOklahoma City federal building, he reveals that he is aware of the possible
\nconsequences of his words.<\/p>\n
“Regardless of whether Americans consider the federal government
\nillegitimate,” he writes, “attacks that kill innocent people are never
\njustified. The 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building was
\ninexcusable. . . .<\/p>\n
“The militia movement in this country became highly active only after the
\nfederal killings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas,” Bovard states. “The
\nfact that no federal officials have been held legally responsible for the
\ndeaths at Ruby Ridge and Waco made many people presume, not surprisingly, that
\nthe government was out of control and a dire threat to their rights and safety.”
\nAnd that is exactly the view that Bovard expounds in this chilling polemic.<\/p>\n
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