{"id":18795,"date":"2023-12-05T20:28:36","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T01:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18795"},"modified":"2023-12-06T10:47:59","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:47:59","slug":"n-y-post-government-tyranny-comes-to-main-street-with-the-feds-more-powerful-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/05\/n-y-post-government-tyranny-comes-to-main-street-with-the-feds-more-powerful-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"N.Y. Post: Government tyranny comes to Main Street, with the feds more powerful than ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

New York Post, December 5, 2023<\/h3>\n

Government tyranny comes to Main Street, with the feds more powerful than ever<\/a><\/h1>\n
by James Bovard<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Americans today have the \u201cfreedom\u201d to be fleeced, censored, wiretapped, injected, disarmed, detained, groped and maybe shot by government agents. Politicians are hell-bent on protecting citizens against everything except Uncle Sam.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a world in which everything has been criminalized,\u201d warned Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. There are now more than 5,200 separate federal criminal offenses and tens of thousands of state and local crimes. Thanks to the Supreme Court, police can lock up anyone accused of \u201ceven a very minor criminal offense,\u201d such as an unbuckled seatbelt.<\/p>\n

The Founding Fathers saw property rights as \u201cthe guardian of every other right.\u201d But today\u2019s politicians never lack a pretext for plundering private citizens. Federal law-enforcement agencies arbitrarily confiscate more property from Americans each year (without criminal convictions) than all the burglars steal nationwide<\/a>. The IRS pilfered more cash from private bank accounts because of alleged paperwork errors than the total bank robbers looted nationwide.<\/p>\n

Government decrees are blighting more lives than ever before. More than a thousand occupations have been closed to anyone who fails to kowtow to absurd state licensing requirements, from fortune tellers in Massachusetts to anyone rubbing feet in Arizona. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made it a federal crime to refuse to hire ex-convicts<\/a>. Tens of thousands of drivers have been injured and hundreds killed thanks to red-light traffic-ticket cameras notorious for multiplying collisions.<\/p>\n

Schoolchildren are being sacrificed on an altar of social justice. Teacher unions have worked to destroy local control of education, prevent teacher accountability, deny parents any voice in their children\u2019s education and pointlessly shut down schools during the pandemic. In lieu of literacy, government schools are redefining gender and indoctrinating kids with values that many parents detest. When mothers and fathers raised hell at school-board meetings, the Biden administration and the FBI labeled them terrorist suspects.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Gun owners are America\u2019s fastest-growing criminal class. One state after another is enacting \u201cShow us the gun and we\u2019ll find the crime\u201d laws. The feds consider all 20 million+ marijuana users who own guns to be felons who deserve prison (unless their last name is Biden<\/a>). Politicians demonize firearms at the same time governments dismally fail to protect citizens against violent predators.<\/p>\n

Politicians and bureaucrats exploited the COVID\u201119 pandemic to forbid any activities they chose, from going to church to buying garden seeds. Governors in most states effectively banned hundreds of millions of citizens from leaving their homes, but most Americans still contracted COVID-19 infections. Many pandemic policies were simply Political Science 101, using deceit and demagoguery to domineer humanity.<\/p>\n

Despite perpetual controversies about police abuses, the federal government does not even bother compiling a body count of people killed by law enforcement. SWAT teams use battering rams and flash-bang grenades to attack 50,000 homes a year, routinely terrorizing people suspected of dastardly crimes like spraying graffiti or running poker games. Police unions ensure citizens do not learn the names of NYPD officers<\/a> whose abuses spur settlements that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. Federal Judge Don Willett derided the \u201cConstitution-free zone\u201d courts created where \u201cindividuals whose constitutional rights are violated at the hands of federal officers are essentially remedy-less.\u201d<\/p>\n

Politicians are increasingly dividing Americans into two classes \u2014 those who work for a living and those who vote for a living. Subsidy programs have multiplied even faster than congressional ethics scandals. Federal aid propelled college tuition increases that turned ex-students into a new debtor class endlessly clamoring for relief. Federal mortgage policies have been \u201cwrecking ball benevolence<\/a>,\u201d in a federal judge\u2019s words, spawning the 2007-08 collapse that slashed in half the net worth of black and Hispanic households. But politicians cannot undermine self-reliance without subverting self-government.<\/p>\n

While politicians boast of bestowing freebies, taxes have become a financial Grim Reaper. Americans are forced to pay more in taxes <\/a>than their total spending on food, clothing and housing. Inflation has become the cruelest tax as the dollar\u2019s purchasing power has fallen 17% since President Biden took office, fleecing any citizen with a savings account.<\/p>\n

Rather than the rule of law, we have a government of threats, intimidation and browbeating. \u201cGovernment of the people\u201d defaulted into \u201cgovernment for the people,\u201d which degenerated into perennially punishing people for their own good. Self-government has been defined down to paying, obeying and wearing a federal blindfold.<\/p>\n

Federal Judge Learned Hand warned in 1944: \u201cLiberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.\u201d But Americans nowadays are more likely to encounter liberty in history books instead of their own lives. Almost a third of young American adults support installing mandatory government-surveillance cameras in private homes to \u201creduce domestic violence<\/a>, abuse and other illegal activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a time foreign democracies are collapsing like dominos, can America avoid becoming the \u201celective despotism\u201d the Founding Fathers dreaded? The first step to reviving liberty is to recognize how far politicians have stretched their power. But nothing can safeguard freedom except the bravery of citizens who refuse to be shackled.<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of the new book \u201cLast Rights: The Death of American Liberty<\/a>,\u201d from which this piece is adapted.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Post, December 5, 2023 Government tyranny comes to Main Street, with the feds more powerful than ever by James Bovard Americans today have the \u201cfreedom\u201d to be fleeced, censored, wiretapped, injected, disarmed, detained, groped and maybe shot by government agents. Politicians are hell-bent on protecting citizens against everything except Uncle Sam. \u201cWe live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[539,2124,2349,2549,3198,182,509,3903,3706,148,3904,252,3841],"class_list":["post-18795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asset-forfeiture","tag-biden","tag-covid","tag-despotism","tag-gorsuch","tag-guns","tag-humor","tag-learned-hand","tag-mortgages","tag-schools","tag-taxpayers","tag-tyranny","tag-willett"],"yoast_head":"\nN.Y. Post: Government tyranny comes to Main Street, with the feds more powerful than ever - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Government tyranny comes to Main Street. 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Post: Government tyranny comes to Main Street, with the feds more powerful than ever"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/","name":"James Bovard","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f","name":"Jim","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","caption":"Jim"},"description":"Bovard's homepage is at http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com He can be contacted at jim@jimbovard.com James Bovard is the author of ten books. 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 & 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. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18795"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18804,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18795\/revisions\/18804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}