A Government That Long Ago Inverted America's Founding Principles

Review of "Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty" by James Bovard

“For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.” Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, Associated Press vs. National Labor Relations Board (1937), quoted in Bovard, James, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty, 15. “Too Late for Liberty?”, Austin, TX: The Libertarian Institute, 2023, p. 303. Sutherland was somewhat presciently referring to Americans of the Twentieth Century—or is that the Twenty-first as well?

Prolific pro-liberty firebrand James Bovard has returned with his latest full-length book. His columns have been featured everywhere from the New York Post to Counterpunch to Playboy (as well as more “respectable”, “mainstream” publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, et. al.). His books include The Farm Fiasco (1989), Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (1999), Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (2000), The Bush Betrayal (2004), and Public Policy Hooligan (2012). According to the dust jacket of Last Rights, “His writings have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Labor, Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the TSA, DEA, and FEMA. In 2015, the Justice Department sought to suppress his articles in USA Today.” Obviously, he is an equal opportunity offender and nonpartisan dissident who is doing something right.