{"id":21216,"date":"2025-01-08T09:29:44","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T14:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21216"},"modified":"2025-01-08T11:45:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T16:45:06","slug":"we-must-end-the-sham-of-presidential-medals-of-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/08\/we-must-end-the-sham-of-presidential-medals-of-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"We Must End the Sham of Presidential Medals of Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We must End the Sham of Presidential Medals of Freedom<\/a><\/h1>\n

by Jim Bovard<\/a><\/span> | January 8, 2025\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"joe<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

Joe Biden is determined to \u2018Leave No Washington Sham Behind\u2019 before his presidency ends on January 2<\/strong>0. On Saturday, Biden presented Presidential Medals of Freedom<\/span><\/a> to a rogue\u2019s gallery of shysters, donors, bootlickers, as well as some innocent bystanders and dead people.<\/p>\n

Biden presented failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a Medal of Freedom\u2014perhaps for her crusade to Make Censorship Great Again. Hillary has long been one of America\u2019s foremost censorship advocates. In 2022, she wailed<\/span><\/a> that \u201ctech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability\u201d and endorsed European Union legislation to obliterate free speech. She wants the same muzzle slapped on the \u201cdeplorables\u201d in this nation.<\/p>\n

Biden presented a Medal of Freedom to George Soros\u2014perhaps for his lavish spending to elect prosecutors who would Make Shoplifting Great Again\u2014by letting shoplifters loot to their heart\u2019s desire. OK, only $900 per store visit in California until recently, but you get the gist. The New York Times<\/span><\/a><\/em> noted, \u201cAfter weeks in which Mr. Trump has showcased Elon Musk, the world\u2019s richest man, as a member of his inner circle, Mr. Biden appeared to want to say: We have our billionaires, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anna Wintour received a Medal of Freedom for twice heroically placing Jill Biden on the cover of Vogue<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bill Nye got a Medal of Freedom\u2014perhaps for his hysterical condemnations of anyone who refused to get injected with the COVID vaccine that<\/span><\/a> Biden falsely claimed would protect people from COVID infections.<\/p>\n

A Medal of Freedom went to Tim Gill, who, as The New York Times<\/em> reported, \u201chas been among the most important donors in the gay community, working to push L.G.B.T.Q. rights first in his home state of Colorado and then nationally. He gave $355,000 to the Biden Victory Fund during the 2020 race.\u201d Why not print out a million Medals of Freedom and send one to everyone who donated $5 to the Biden or Kamala Harris campaigns?<\/p>\n

According to The New York Times<\/em>, Medals of Freedom are \u201cseen by historians as a final use of the presidential megaphone to say to Americans: This is whom we should admire and emulate.\u201d Biden \u201cconferred one of the nation\u2019s highest honors on core members of the political, financial and celebrity establishment of which he has long been a part,\u201d the Times<\/em> reported. Does this mean that we will never again have to hear Uncle Joe\u2019s BS about being part of the middle class? I was disappointed that Biden didn\u2019t give a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Vice President Harris for her pathbreaking service allegedly making french fries<\/span><\/a> at McDonald\u2019s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Four years ago, a Washington Post<\/em> editorial condemned Donald Trump for giving Medals of Freedom to a football coach and a couple congressman and harumped: \u201cThankfully, the Oval Office will soon be occupied by a president\u2014himself a rightful recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom\u2014who understands and will honor the traditions of the presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, Medals of Freedom are one of the cheapest ways for rulers to reward their lackeys.<\/strong> The names of many of the medal recipients look like confirmation of the famous passage from Friedrich Hayek\u2019s chapter in The Road to Serfdom,<\/i>\u00a0\u201cWhy the Worst Get on Top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presidential Medals of Freedom<\/a><\/span> have long been far more squalid than The<\/em> Washington Post <\/i>recognizes\u2014in part because the Post <\/i>cheered the wars that spurred many of the most tainted awards.<\/p>\n

President Lyndon Johnson distributed a bucket of Medals of Freedom to his Vietnam War architects and enablers,<\/span><\/a> including Ellsworth Bunker, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, Clark Clifford, Averell Harriman, Cyrus Vance, Walt Rostow, and McGeorge Bundy. When he gave the award to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, he declared, \u201cYou have understood that while freedom depends on strength<\/span><\/a>, strength itself depends on the determination of free people.\u201d In reality, Johnson treasured McNamara for his ability to help deceive Americans about how the United States was failing in Vietnam. McNamara\u2019s lies helped vastly expand an unnecessary conflict and cost more than a million American and Vietnamese lives. The<\/em> Washington Post <\/i>editorial page didn\u2019t complain about those awards, because the Post <\/i>avidly supported that war. (After exiting the Pentagon, McNamara joined the Post<\/i>\u2019s board of directors.)<\/p>\n

President Richard Nixon inherited the Vietnam War and expanded and intensified U.S. bombing of Indochina. Nixon gave Medals of Freedom to Pentagon chief Melvin Laird (who helped shroud the war\u2019s continuing failure) and his secretary of state, William Rogers. President Gerald Ford gave the Medal of Freedom to his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld\u2014two persons notorious for tarnishing the honor of the United States in foreign affairs. The Post<\/i> didn\u2019t denounce the Medal of Freedom for Kissinger; instead, they made the Great Deceiver a columnist.<\/p>\n

President George H.W. Bush blanketed<\/span><\/a> Medals of Freedom on top officials involved with the first Gulf War, including Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, James Baker, Dick Cheney, and Brent Scowcroft. The Post<\/i> didn\u2019t complain about those awards, because that was another war that the Post <\/i>editorial page whooped up all the way.<\/p>\n

The Global War on Terror made Presidential Medals of Freedom even more craven.<\/strong> Retired U.S. Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich observed<\/span><\/a>, \u201cAfter 9\/11, the Medal of Freedom went from being irrelevant to somewhere between whimsical and fraudulent. Any correlation with freedom as such, never more than tenuous in the first place, dissolved altogether.\u201d After he deceived America into supporting an attack on Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush conferred Medals of Freedom on his Iraq War team<\/span><\/a>, including CIA chief George \u201cSlam Dunk\u201d Tenet, Iraq viceroy Paul Bremer, General\u00a0Peter Pace, General\u00a0Richard Myers, and General\u00a0Tommy Franks. The Post <\/i>was outraged, because\u2014no, wait,\u00a0the Post <\/i>editorial page thunderously supported that war, too.<\/p>\n

Presidential Medals of Freedom encourage Americans to view their personal freedom as the result of government intervention\u2014if not as a bequest from the commander in chief. Ironically, the individual who poses the greatest threat to freedom has sole discretion to designate the purported best friends of freedom<\/strong>. The media usually provides gushing coverage of the award ceremonies, never mentioning that the arbitrary power of the supreme leader was why the Founding Fathers fought a revolution.<\/p>\n

No president can be trusted to designate the true champions of freedom. At a minimum, Presidential Medals of Freedom should be suspended until presidents cease acting like czars or elective dictators. Or, in the interests of candor, the current awards could be replaced by citations for presidential bootlicking above and beyond the call of duty.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We must End the Sham of Presidential Medals of Freedom by Jim Bovard | January 8, 2025 Joe Biden is determined to \u2018Leave No Washington Sham Behind\u2019 before his presidency ends on January 20. On Saturday, Biden presented Presidential Medals of Freedom to a rogue\u2019s gallery of shysters, donors, bootlickers, as well as some innocent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,391,4455,4405,339,406,1075,4456],"class_list":["post-21216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biden","tag-censorship","tag-george-soros","tag-harris","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-medals-of-freedom","tag-sham","tag-shoplifting"],"yoast_head":"\nWe Must End the Sham of Presidential Medals of Freedom - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Biden gave out Medals of Freedoms to donors, shysters, and innocent bystanders\" \/>\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\/2025\/01\/08\/we-must-end-the-sham-of-presidential-medals-of-freedom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We Must End the Sham of Presidential Medals of Freedom - 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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 & 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\/21216","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=21216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21218,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21216\/revisions\/21218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}