James Bovard on warnings prior to 9/11

I think if the American people had known how [many] warnings, how many signals the U.S. had ahead of time of this potential hijack conspiracy, there would’ve been far less of a reaction to rally around the flag and more criticism of the president.  Commentators thought it was great in the weeks after 9/11 that trust in government skyrocketed…  People need to keep their minds open.  People need to keep skeptical and critical.

~ James Bovard, C-SPAN Booknotes, September 25, 2003 (aired November 2, 2003)

2003

 

James Bovard on CISA and censorship

Hegelian notions of “Government = Truth” propelled censorship here in recent years. Three years ago, Americans learned they lived under a Disinformation Governance Board with a ditzy Disinformation Czar who boasted of graduating from Bryn Mawr University. A public backlash led to the board’s termination but federal censors quickly and secretly resumed their sway over the internet. 

Though American censors rarely invoke Hegel, their schemes tacitly presume that political power is divine, if not in origin, at least in its effect. The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), created in 2018, has relied on “censorship by surrogate,” subcontracting the destruction of freedom. CISA partnered with federal grantees to form the Election Integrity Partnership a hundred days before the 2020 presidential election. That project, along with the efforts of other federal agencies, created an “unrelenting pressure” with “the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens,” according to a 2023 ruling by Federal Judge Terry Doughty. 

What standard did CISA use to determine whether Americans should be muzzled? CISA settled controversies by contacting government employees and “apparently always assumed the government official was a reliable source,” Judge Doughty noted. Any assertion by officialdom could suffice to justify suppression of comments or posts by private citizens. But when did government I.D. badges become the Oracle of Delphi? 

During the 2020 presidential election campaign, CISA established a “Rumor Control” webpage to deal with threats to the election—including rumors that the feds were censoring Americans. CISA targeted for suppression assertions by Americans such as “mail-in voting is insecure”—despite the long history of absentee ballot fraud. Biden won the presidency in part thanks to Democrats exploiting the covid pandemic to open the floodgates to unverified mail-in ballots. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared, “Twitter was basically an FBI subsidiary before Elon Musk took it over.”

~ James Bovard, "Sacrificing Truth on Leviathan’s Altar," Mises Wire, February 19, 2025

James Bovard on liberty in America

If you look at the rhetoric of the presidential campaign this year, you had Biden promising to make America more woke, you had Trump promising to make America great again.  What you didn't have is anybody promising to make America constitutional again or to make America free again.

So I really wonder how much love of liberty Americans still have, because it doesn't come up that often as a pure issue in presidential campaigns.  It really hasn't been a primary issue, I don't think, by a major candidate since the 1980s, since Ronald Reagan.

~ James Bovard, "Draining the Swamp with Jim Bovard," Competitive Enterprise Institute, 23:30 mark, January 9, 2025

James Bovard and Trump's tariffs

There is a huge danger.  If you look at Trump's trade policy, it's just turning back the clock to President McKinley.  I don't know why anybody would think that's a good idea.  People forget the devastation from McKinley's tariffs, how it helped spur the Spanish-American War, how it left the U.S. with control of the Philippines and thereby helped drag us into World War II.  There were so many follies...  

The Trump policy makers seem to think that you can put a 10% tariff on bananas and somehow it's not going to have an adverse effect on consumers and everything else.  It's like that they have no idea.  Trump likes to talk about the art of the deal, but he doesn't have a magic wand.  If you look at his first term, at the devastation he inflicted on American agriculture, with his trade wars and how it boosted dependency.  People forget, in the 2020 election, Trump tried to buy a lot of farmers' votes by showering extra money on the Midwest.  He bought some farmers' votes; it wasn't enough because Biden was buying other votes.

~ James Bovard, "Draining the Swamp with Jim Bovard," Competitive Enterprise Institute, 8:00 mark, January 9, 2025

James Bovard on the federal surveillance state

The federal surveillance net has vastly increased since the 1970s.  Nowadays, the feds are flagging people who purchase Bibles and “other media containing extremist views,” according to a report by the House Judiciary Committee. 

Technology is propelling new threats to freedom.  A March 2024 report by the House Judiciary Committee noted that “the decline of cash and the rise of digital payments and e-commerce platforms….  As a result, these financial institutions often act as arms of federal law enforcement as they work in coordination with federal law enforcement to identify what transactions and other information is ‘suspicious’ enough to be reported.”  Greater computer resources make it vastly cheaper to store dirt on practically any private citizen.

~ James Bovard, "Buy a Bible, Become a Terror Suspect," The Future of Freedom Foundation, August 16, 2024

James Bovard on George W. Bush cloaking his foreign policy in "freedom"

Perhaps no American president has praised freedom as often as George W. Bush. From his declarations that the United States was attacked because of freedom, to the names “Operation Enduring Freedom” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” to his proclamations of a “calling” from history to defend freedom, freedom quickly became the cloak draping all of Bush’s actions after 9/11.

This past July 24, President Bush celebrated “Captive Nations Week” by giving a speech on advancing his “freedom agenda.” The captive audience at the federal Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center was chock full of bureaucrats, so no hoots were heard and no dead cats were thrown on stage, despite the president’s absurdities. The bureaucrats were buttressed by many limousine loads of foreign diplomats, to add tone to the event.

~ James Bovard, "More Bush Freedom Hokum," LewRockwell.com, January 29, 2009

James Bovard on the abundance of laws

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. 

~ James Bovard