An Ordered World
TimeWatch Editorial
May 10, 2016
According to his online Biography, James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), The Bush Betrayal (2004), and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994). He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader's Digest, and many other publications. His books have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a contributing editor for American Conservative magazine and The Freeman, and a regular contributor to the Future of Freedom magazine.
The introductory paragraph of “Lost Rights” paints a picture that I must confess at the time I first read it in 1995 was not as blatantly evident as it is today. But as the years have rolled on his description of the situation became more apparent.
“AMERICANS' liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state, and local governments are confiscating citizens' property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before.
“Americans today must obey thirty times as many laws as their great-grandfathers had to obey at the turn of the century. Federal agencies publish an average of over 200 pages of new rulings, regulations, and proposals in the Federal Register each business day. The growth of the federal statute book is one of the clearest measures of the increase of the government control of the citizenry. But the effort to improve society by the endless multiplication of penalties, prohibitions, and prison sentences is a dismal failure.” James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, page 1.
What is now apparent is the fact that the multiplication of penalties, prohibitions and prison sentences were never intended to “improve society” as Mr. Bovard suggests in the above quoted paragraph, but rather to control and restrain society at all costs, regardless of the consequences. If the world is to be ordered after the specific instructions and will of the ruling class, then the thoughts, actions and reactions of everyone living must be conditioned to a preprogrammed pattern of choices. The concept of ownership must be so depreciated, that those who have been stupefied by the coercive conditioning will believe that they are owners when in fact, not only is their so-called property not really theirs, but they themselves are the property of the masters.
These masters have managed to accomplish their goal, without the slightest resistance from the so-called free society. While the population has occupied themselves with the idiotic pursuit of valueless trinkets and engaging in simplistic forms of labor, their futures have been sold to those who now control their every thought and action. Mr. Bovard’s next paragraph details the level of restriction that has been reached
“The attack on individual rights has reached the point where a citizen has no right to use his own land if a government inspector discovers a wet area on it, no right to the money in his bank account if an IRS agent decides he might have dodged taxes, and no right to the cash in his wallet if a DEA dog sniffs at his pants. A man's home is his castle, except if a politician covets the land the house is built on, or if his house is more than fifty years old, or if he has too many relatives living with him, or if he has old cars parked in his driveway, or if he wants to add a porch or deck. Nowadays, a citizen's use of his own property is presumed illegal until approved by multiple zoning and planning commissions. Government redevelopment officials confiscate large chunks of cities, evicting owners from their homes and giving the land to other private citizens to allow them to reap a windfall profit. Since 1985, federal, state, and local governments have seized the property of over 200,000 Americans under asset forfeiture laws, often with no more evidence of wrongdoing than an unsubstantiated assertion made by an anonymous government informant.” James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, page 1.
This is merely the beginning. The ultimate goal stretches must further. Once enslavement begins, there is usually no identifiable end. The lust for control tends to be absolute and resolute. Will we be ready for what comes next?
Cameron A. Bowen
