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.Collection: Legal
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.Collection: Equality
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.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Amazing
If an election is simply a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions, then this is not a very noble form of government.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Rights
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.Collection: Political
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.Collection: Law
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.Collection: Humor
The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits and the more lies it must tell.Collection: Powerful
It is one of the great tragedies of the US, that most learn most of what they know about the government from the government.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Rights
Once a person becomes a government dependent, his moral standing to resist the expansion of government power is fatally compromised.Collection: Government
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 .Collection: Government
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.Collection: Alzheimer's
The more people expect from government, the more biased they become against limiting government power.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Country
The average American family head will be forced to do twenty years' labor to pay taxes in his or her lifetime.Collection: Average
American democracy is capsizing as a result of the vast increase in the number of government dependents and government employees.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Rights
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.Collection: Government
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?Collection: Government
The more freedoms Americans lose, the more dangerous government becomes.Collection: Government
This is a case if the President is permitted to be above the law, then we no longer have a republic.Collection: Law
Foreign aid breeds kleptocracies, or governments of thieves.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Government
Dependency is the highest political good - at least for politicians. Since the 1930s, politicians have striven to leave no vote unbought.Collection: Political
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.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: People
Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.Collection: Class
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.Collection: Government
Once freedom is equated with a certain material standard of living, confiscation becomes the path to liberation.Collection: Path
Freedom is whatever the president says it is, pending revision.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Opportunity
As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Passion
Freedom to vote is valuable primarily as a means to safeguard other freedoms.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Gun
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.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Government
Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.Collection: Law
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.Collection: War
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?Collection: Mcdonalds
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.Collection: Odds