{"id":1790,"date":"2010-05-21T10:15:52","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T15:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2010-05-21T10:15:52","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T15:15:52","slug":"obama-and-attention-deficit-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/21\/obama-and-attention-deficit-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama and Attention Deficit Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>for the Future of Freedom Foundation <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fff.org\/comment\/com1005g.asp\">today<\/a>&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>OBAMA AND ATTENTION DEFICIT DEMOCRACY<\/strong><br \/>\nby James Bovard <\/p>\n<p>In his commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 1, President Obama warned that public ignorance subverts self-government. Obama declared: \u201cWhen we don\u2019t pay close attention to the decisions made by our leaders, when we fail to educate ourselves about the major issues of the day&#8230; that\u2019s when democracy breaks down. That\u2019s when power is abused.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, most Americans have little or no idea how government works or who is holding the reins on their lives. Most American voters do not know the name of their congressman, the length of terms of House or Senate members, or what the Bill of Rights guarantees. Most Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice or a single cabinet department in the federal government. But the ignorance goes far beyond Civics 101. <\/p>\n<p>In his commencement speech, Obama declared that \u201cwe need an educated citizenry that values hard evidence and not just assertion.\u201d Except, of course, when government officials assert that \u201cthere is nothing to see here \u2014 just move along.\u201d While Obama loudly urges Americans to get better informed, Republicans and Democrats are quietly covering up some of the government\u2019s worst abuses. <\/p>\n<p>Obama heavily pressured Congress last year to enact a law prohibiting the release of thousands of photos showing horrendous abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. troops. From 2004 onwards, the U.S. government deceived Americans \u2014 first claiming the torture scandal involved only \u201ca few bad apples\u201d from West Virginia, and then insisting that it was merely a few bad units, and then asserting that there was no national policy. By 2008, it was clear that the torture was mandated at high levels of the White House and Pentagon. Suppressing the photos makes it easier for former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who crafted the policies to continue denying that any crimes ever occurred. <\/p>\n<p>Obama is also squelching the vast majority of facts regarding the National Security Agency\u2019s 2002+ warrantless wiretapping of Americans. (Federal Judge Vaughn Walker recently ruled that the wiretaps were illegal.) No individual American has been permitted to know whether NSA copied his email or recorded his calls. The Obama administration even refuses to release the Bush-era Justice Department memos that \u201cproved\u201d why government is now entitled to spy on citizens without a warrant. While Congress granted retroactive immunity to the federal officials and phone companies that betrayed Americans\u2019 privacy, Obama\u2019s Justice Department is prosecuting a NSA official for notifying the media of the abuse. <\/p>\n<p>Obama\u2019s vision of democracy also does not include permitting Americans to learn which banks and other financial institutions received trillions of dollars of subsidies and guarantees from the Federal Reserve. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.\u2013Vt.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R\u2013Tx.) pushed an \u201cAudit the Federal Reserve\u201d amendment to the financial regulation bill. But the Obama White House acted as if disclosing the names of the lucky companies that received windfall benefits would violate the rights of the biggest welfare recipients in American history. <\/p>\n<p>How are citizens supposed to stop abuses when politicians refuse to let them know what government is doing? The government claims that evidence of its torture and wiretapping must be suppressed in the name of national security. But this greatly reduces the likelihood that Americans will learn from their rulers\u2019 folly. <\/p>\n<p>The recent cover-ups illustrate how our republic is becoming an Attention Deficit Democracy. The government remains nominally democratic \u2014 elections continue to be boisterous events with mass rallies and tidal waves of dubious ads. But after the polling booths close, most citizens remain clueless about what their rulers do in their name. <\/p>\n<p>Attention Deficit Democracy begets Leviathan because rulers exploit people\u2019s ignorance to seize more power over them. The contract between rulers and ruled is replaced by a blank check. And regardless of how many secrets the government keeps, the rulers still act like the people are liable for all the government\u2019s abuses. <\/p>\n<p>Obama urged graduating students to \u201cpay attention\u201d and \u201cstay informed.\u201d Citizens should be especially curious about what lurks behind the curtains that politicians close. The more crimes politicians are permitted to hide, the fewer liberties citizens will retain. <\/p>\n<p>James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>for the Future of Freedom Foundation today&#8230;. OBAMA AND ATTENTION DEFICIT DEMOCRACY by James Bovard In his commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 1, President Obama warned that public ignorance subverts self-government. Obama declared: \u201cWhen we don\u2019t pay close attention to the decisions made by our leaders, when we fail to educate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[659,22,44,677,669,38],"class_list":{"0":"post-1790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","8":"tag-bailout","9":"tag-democracy","10":"tag-obama"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Obama and Attention Deficit Democracy - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/21\/obama-and-attention-deficit-democracy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama and Attention Deficit Democracy - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"for the Future of Freedom Foundation today&#8230;. OBAMA AND ATTENTION DEFICIT DEMOCRACY by James Bovard In his commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 1, President Obama warned that public ignorance subverts self-government. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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