James Bovard Quotations

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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, we don’t need protections against it.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was also surprised at how easy it was for the Clinton Administration to demagogue against the rights of gun owners, for instance.

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

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.

Foreign aid breeds kleptocracies, or governments of thieves.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority.

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.

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?

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.

For the average person walking down a dark street late at night, a promise from a politician is worth far less than a .38 Special.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Americans' liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state and local government's are confiscating citizens' property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before.... American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose unless fundamental political changes occur.

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.

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.

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.

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.

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. By trying to seize far more power than is necessary over American citizens, the federal government is destroying its own legitimacy. We face a choice not of anarchy or authoritarianism, but a choice of limited government or unlimited government .

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

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.

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.

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...

The average American family head will be forced to do twenty years' labor to pay taxes in his or her lifetime.

The more freedoms Americans lose, the more dangerous government becomes.

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?

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

Freedom is whatever the president says it is, pending revision.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

There is no safe political refuge for those afraid to take responsibility for their own lives.

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.

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.

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.