{"id":3350,"date":"2012-01-14T22:14:38","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T03:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=3350"},"modified":"2012-01-14T22:14:38","modified_gmt":"2012-01-15T03:14:38","slug":"epigrams-from-my-sordid-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/14\/epigrams-from-my-sordid-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Epigrams from My Sordid Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dipping into my books, I plucked out some of my favorite lines. FWIW: <\/p>\n

From The Farm Fiasco <\/strong>(ICS Press, 1989)<\/p>\n

* For sixty years, politicians have driven American farmers out of world markets and onto the government dole.<\/p>\n

*Nineteenth-century reformers built their utopias on the expectation of an imminent change in human nature. Twentieth-century reformers have built Leviathans and then awaited a change in politicians’ nature.<\/p>\n

* Reform is the opiate of the welfare state.<\/p>\n

*The only solution to the “farm problem” is to depoliticize agriculture.<\/p>\n

From The Fair Trade Fraud <\/strong>(St. Martin\u2019s Press, 1991)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Government cannot make trade more fair by making it less free.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cFair trade\u201d is a moral delusion that could be leading to an economic catastrophe.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The U.S. government has created a trade lynch law that can convict foreign companies almost regardless of how they operate.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It should not be a federal crime to charge low prices to American consumers.<\/p>\n

From Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty <\/strong>(St. Martin\u2019s Press, 1994)<\/p>\n

*America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.<\/p>\n

*The key to contemporary American political thinking is the neutering of the State — the idea that modern government has been defanged, domesticated, tamed. <\/p>\n

*A law is simply a reflection of the momentary perception of self-interest by a majority of a legislative body.<\/p>\n

*The federal tax system is turning individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives.<\/p>\n

*Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. <\/p>\n

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen <\/strong>(St. Martin\u2019s Press, 1999) <\/p>\n

\u2022 Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States \u2013 governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of politicians.<\/p>\n

\u2022 So much of political philosophy throughout history has consisted of concocting reasons why people have a duty to be tame animals in politicians\u2019 cages.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The growth of government is like the spread of a dense jungle, and the average citizen can hack through less of it every year.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Trusting government nowadays means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people\u2019s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives.<\/p>\n

From Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years <\/strong>(St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2000) <\/p>\n

*Clinton exploited and expanded the dictatorial potential of the U.S. presidency.<\/p>\n

*For scores of millions of Americans, Clinton\u2019s \u201ccaring\u201d was more important than his lying.<\/p>\n

*The principle of government supremacy is Clinton\u2019s clearest legacy.<\/p>\n

*The better that people understand what Clinton did in office, the greater the nation\u2019s chances for political recovery.<\/p>\n

From Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil <\/strong>(Palgrave, 2003)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Nothing happened on 9\/11 that made the federal government more trustworthy.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a suspected terrorist and every federal agent like a proven angel.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The worse government fails, the less privacy citizens supposedly deserve.<\/p>\n

\u2022 There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Killing foreigners is no substitute for protecting Americans.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of freedom everywhere without also destroying freedom in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A lie that is accepted by a sufficient number of ignorant voters becomes a political truth.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In the long run, people have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go, but power-hungry politicians will always be with us.<\/p>\n

From The Bush Betrayal <\/strong>(Palgrave, 2004)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Truth is a lagging indicator in politics.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The arrogance of power is the best hope for the survival of freedom.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We need a constitutional amendment to make the federal government obey the Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u2022 There are no harmless political lies about a war. The more such lies citizens tolerate, the more wars they will get.<\/p>\n

\u2022 People have been taught to expect far more from government than from freedom.<\/p>\n

From Attention Deficit Democracy <\/strong>(Palgrave, 2006)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Instead of revealing the \u201cwill of the people,\u201d election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Bogus fears can produce real servitude.<\/p>\n

\u2022 As long as rulers are above the law, citizens have the same type of freedom that slaves had on days when their masters chose not to beat them.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Attention Deficit Democracy produces the attitudes, ignorance and arrogance that pave the way to political collapse.<\/p>\n

++++
\nI welcome any suggestions. If there are lines that seem clunkish or lame, feel free to point them out – maybe the herd needs thinning out. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, since the list was already too long, I did not include any lines about the value of positive thinking. <\/p>\n

James Bovard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dipping into my books, I plucked out some of my favorite lines. FWIW: From The Farm Fiasco (ICS Press, 1989) * For sixty years, politicians have driven American farmers out of world markets and onto the government dole. *Nineteenth-century reformers built their utopias on the expectation of an imminent change in human nature. Twentieth-century reformers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEpigrams from My Sordid Past - 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\/2012\/01\/14\/epigrams-from-my-sordid-past\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Epigrams from My Sordid Past - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dipping into my books, I plucked out some of my favorite lines. 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