Quotes from 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.

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

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

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.

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.

Subsidies entail politiciansí taking the citizenís paycheck and then using it to buy his submission.

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.

There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.

The worse government fails, the less privacy citizens supposedly deserve.

Attention Deficit Democracy produces the attitudes, ignorance and arrogance that pave the way to political collapse.

People have been taught to expect far more from government than from freedom.

We need a constitutional amendment to make the federal government obey the Constitution.

Truth is a lagging indicator in politics.

Trusting government nowadays means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other peoples lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives.

The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of politicians.

Bogus fears can produce real servitude.

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

For scores of millions of Americans, Clinton's "caring" was more important than his lying.

The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.

The more that democracy is assumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.

Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.

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.

Instead of revealing the will of the people, election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.

There are no harmless political lies about a war. The more such lies citizens tolerate, the more wars they will get.