James Bovard
Bestselling libertarian author and lecturer, whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government.
There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.
Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.
For scores of millions of Americans, Clinton's "caring" was more important than his lying.
Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power.
The growth of government is like the spread of a dense jungle, and the average citizen can hack through less of it every year.
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.
The arrogance of power is the best hope for the survival of freedom.
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.
A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.
The federal tax system is turning individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives.
The principle of government supremacy is Clinton's clearest legacy.
It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of freedom everywhere without also destroying freedom in the United States.
Truth is a lagging indicator in politics.
The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a suspected terrorist and every federal agent like a proven angel.
Clinton exploited and expanded the dictatorial potential of the U.S. presidency.
The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.
Trusting government nowadays means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives.
Instead of revealing the “will of the people,” election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.
The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.
The worse government fails, the less privacy citizens supposedly deserve.