James Bovard Quotes & Sayings

Liberty is a political firewall that limits the damage government can do to the individual. — James Bovard

This is a case if the President is permitted to be above the law, then we no longer have a republic. — James Bovard

How many McDonald's gift certificates would it take to sway a lot of Americans to pledge to never publicly criticize the U.S, President? — James Bovard

American democracy is capsizing as a result of the vast increase in the number of government dependents and government employees. — James Bovard

Governments and citizens blend together only in the imaginations of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens. There is no magic in a ballot box that makes government any less coercive. — James Bovard

If so many Americans are looking for the government to save them, then it is hard to have a dignified search for a shepherd in chief. — James Bovard

Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy. — James Bovard

The more freedoms Americans lose, the more dangerous government becomes. — James Bovard

Entire generations of Americans have come of age since the ancient time when the president's power was constrained by a duty of candor to the American people. — James Bovard

It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way. — James Bovard

Today's citizen is obliged to find his freedom only in the narrow ruts pre-approved by his bureaucratic overlords. "Risk-free liberty" is the ideal of the Welfare State: citizens are permitted only liberties which have been declawed, defanged, neutered, certified and wrapped in benevolent restrictions. — James Bovard

The more people expect from government, the more biased they become against limiting government power. — James Bovard

Government aid programs have been endlessly expanded, and the government has sought to maximize the number of people willing to accept handouts ... Roughly half of all Americans are dependent on the government, either for handouts, pensions, or paychecks. — James Bovard

Its contempt for citizens ... is so routine, and so unlimited, that the agency has become a kind of Frankenstein, running wild and terrorizing Americans at will. The IRS hypocritically requires mistake-free returns when its own books are in shambles. It demands exorbitant sums of money without regard to the accuracy of its claims. It doesn't hesitate to use every possible maneuver to get what it wants, sometimes destroying businesses
and lives
in the process. — James Bovard

The more that voting is glorified as a panacea, the more lackadaisical people become about preserving their constitutional rights. — James Bovard

With attention deficit democracy, I am trying to wake up people to how the combination of mass ignorance, fear mongering by the government, and lying politicians is putting our entire system of government to a death spiral. — James Bovard

If citizens wish to retain their liberty, they cannot assume that those who seek power over them are honest. Skepticism of government is one of the most important-and most forgotten-bulwarks of freedom. — James Bovard

The key question for many voters is: How much is the candidate offering for my vote? — James Bovard

As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board. — James Bovard

It is one of the great tragedies of the US, that most learn most of what they know about the government from the government. — James Bovard

Dependency is the highest political good - at least for politicians. Since the 1930s, politicians have striven to leave no vote unbought. — James Bovard

Throughout history, politicians have used other people's property to buy themselves power. That is the primary achievement of the welfare state. — James Bovard

No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest. — James Bovard

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends. — James Bovard

The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule. — James Bovard

There has been so much power concentrated. There is no leash on that power anymore and Americans face the situation that this power is getting momentum with each passing year with each presidency. — James Bovard

People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests. — James Bovard

Not only has the number of government employees multiplied in recent decades, but the rise of government unions further stacks the political odds against private citizens. — James Bovard

I was amazed at how easy it was for the Clinton Administration to basically cover what they did at Waco in the fog of lies and avoid any responsibility for it. — James Bovard

Freedom to vote is valuable primarily as a means to safeguard other freedoms. — James Bovard

There is no virtue in denying the law of gravity, and there should be no virtue in denying the limitations of government ... The more we glorify government, the more liberties we will lose. — James Bovard

It has been surprising to me that so few conservatives have voiced concern over the precedence that are being set in favor of suppression by this so-called conservative administration. — James Bovard

It is amazing to think after all that has happened in this country in the last few years, the last few decades, that so many people have this blind faith that government is our friend and therefore, so we don't need protections against it. — James Bovard

Foreign aid breeds kleptocracies, or governments of thieves. — James Bovard

It is like we are obliged to assume that the government is only doing what it says it is doing. — James Bovard

If an election is simply a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions, then this is not a very noble form of government. — James Bovard

The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power. — James Bovard

There are a lot of benefits representative of government and it is far better than any type of dictatorial system and it is far better than a one-man rule situation. — James Bovard

Once freedom is equated with a certain material standard of living, confiscation becomes the path to liberation. — James Bovard

Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington
regardless of who wins the Presidency. — James Bovard

Some of the folks on both sides might be sincere, but it does seem as if it is only the opposition that cares about the Bill of Rights most of the time. — James Bovard

Trumpeting the importance of voting deludes people into thinking that they have a leash on the government. — James Bovard

The more government dependents, the more likely that democracy will become a conspiracy against self-reliance. — James Bovard

The first step in saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose it unless fundamental political changes occur. — James Bovard

The only things government can do are regulate and redistribute, prohibit and penalize, confiscate and command. Are these the things that liberty is made of? Somebody else's money and an endless list of Thou Shalt Nots? — James Bovard

As we learned from the Clinton administration and much of the media, a machine gun in the hands of a federal agent is now a symbol of benevolence and concern for a child's well-being. — James Bovard

Once a person becomes a government dependent, his moral standing to resist the expansion of government power is fatally compromised. — James Bovard

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. — James Bovard

As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people. — James Bovard

To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck. — James Bovard

This stuff on enemy combatants, the Bush Administration has fought like a tiger to avoid having to produce any evidence to a judge to show why somebody is locked up in perpetuity. Another example of that is the torture scandal. — James Bovard

The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits and the more lies it must tell. — James Bovard

We are asking the wrong question. The issue is not who should be trusted with all the power of the Presidency. Instead, we must ask how much power any candidate can be trusted with. — James Bovard

Some politicians are aware of the Bill of Rights. It seems that the opposition party is far more likely to invoke it, to wave it in the air, this is what we saw from a lot of republicans during the Clinton Administration, and we are seeing the same from Democrats under Bush. — James Bovard

Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer's patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued. It doesn't matter what untruths the people are fed because they will not long remember. But in politics, forgotten falsehoods almost guarantee new treachery. — James Bovard

It is important to recognize and politics positive thinking is often the slaves' virtue - something that people do to con themselves about the burden and change being placed upon them. — James Bovard

The government's appearing to be a necessary evil does not oblige people to trust it. We face a choice of trusting government or trusting freedom-trusting overlords who have lied and abused their power or trusting individuals to make the most of their own lives. — James Bovard

It is hard to know how many people do, but given that the people are so docile towards the rulers, nowadays, very few Americans show the passion for freedom that our forefathers had. — James Bovard

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. — James Bovard

However accurate or inaccurate the agency's numbers may be, tax law explicitly presumes that the IRS is always right
and implicitly presumes that the taxpayer is always wrong
in any dispute with the government. In many cases, the IRS introduces no evidence whatsoever of its charges; it merely asserts that a taxpayer had a certain amount of unreported income and therefore owes a proportionate amount in taxes, plus interest and penalties. — James Bovard

Gun laws are an attempt to nationalize the right of self-defense. Politicians perennially react to the police's abject failure to prevent crime by trying to disarm law-abiding citizens. The worse government fails to control crime, the more the politicians want to restrict individuals' rights to defend themselves. But police protection in most places is typical government work - slow, inefficient, and unreliable ... — James Bovard

Part of the reason that the government's fear mongering is succeeding is because so many people are so ignorant, that it is easier for government to frighten people in submission. — James Bovard

The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people. — James Bovard

Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution. — James Bovard

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. — James Bovard

It is unfortunate that Americans are no longer aware of what the constitution says and what their rights are. Because of that, we are often very passive about what happens when the government violates those rights. — James Bovard

The people = government doctrine is equivalent to political infantilism
an agreement to pretend that the citizen's wishes animate each restriction or exaction inflicted upon him. — James Bovard

The sheer number of government employees and welfare recipients effectively transforms the purpose of government from maintaining order to confiscating as much as possible from vulnerable taxpayers. — James Bovard