Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen

A provocative exploration of the steady growth of government power and its consequent dangers to personal freedom traces the development of the State, providing a historical perspective on how its power has gone out of control. 25,000 first printing.

Epigrams from Freedom in Chains
EPIGRAMS FROM FREEDOM IN CHAINS:The Rise of the State & The Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press) by James Bovard The Nature of Government There is no way to criminalize our way to utopia. Government is ourselves - armed with clubs. To be overgoverned means lives thwarted, hopes dashed, creativity suppressed, potential squandered, and dignity destroyed. The increase in government power is like a political arms- buildup against the citizenry - a vast expansion of the pretexts that the rulers have to attack the governed. Each law enacted in a momentary panic is the equivalent of a permanent conquest of new territory for the State. It is misleading to conceive of politicians offering both carrots and sticks: government must first use a stick to commandeer the money to pay for the carrot. POLITICS There is no trigger guard on political ambition. Politicians appear far more anxious to control citizens than to protect them. The effort to find a political mechanism to force government to serve the people is the modern search for the Holy Grail. The further politicians' power extends, the more contemptible they become. The more politicians promise to give, the more they entitle themselves to take. The opportunity to engage in political finagling is no substitute for direct control over one's own life. Federal subsidies beget federal controls because politicians like power. DEMOCRACY Rather than "government by the people," we now have Attention Deficit Democracy. Nowadays, "democracy" serves mainly as a sheepskin for Leviathan, as a label to delude people into thinking that government's big teeth will never bite them. Voting has changed from a process by which the citizen controls the government to a process that consecrates the government's control of the people. Elections have become largely futile exercises to reveal comparative popular contempt for competing professional politicians. Modern democracy is now largely an overglorified choice of caretakers and cage keepers. The fiction of majority rule has become a license to impose nearly unlimited controls on the majority and everybody else. Political dishonesty mixed with voter ignorance is a recipe for Leviathan. The defects in any system of choosing and anointing rulers outweigh the risks of letting people run their own lives. The idealizing of American democracy is one of the worst threats to the future of American liberty. PATERNALISM Contemporary Welfare States are based on the nationalization of the pursuit of happiness. Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power. Government is far more effective at reducing incentives for people to help themselves than at actually helping them. The gap between politicians' promises and the performance of the State is the maw into which the lives of more and more citizens are falling. Contemporary paternalism largely consists of forcing the individual to pay the salary of his own social jailkeeper. The success of the Welfare State cannot be measured by the number of people who rattle tin cups when politicians pass by. The Welfare State offers an "under my thumb" recipe for happiness. Paternalism presumes that the path to the citizen's happiness consists in increasing the number of government restrictions imposed on him and the number of government employees above him. The people must be subdued before they can be saved. The prerequisite of paternalism is breaking the resistance to the government's good deeds. LIBERTY Freedom means not needing a permit to find and roam the open spaces within one's own life. Freedom means each person having a chance to live for what he considers to be his highest value. Freedom means not being confined to the rut of what other people think best. Liberty is a political fire wall that limits the damage government can do to the individual. A free society gives people the chance to be their own disciplinarians. MISCELLANEOUS It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way. Empowering the State to liberate the individual makes sense only if the State has no incentive to exploit, abuse or shackle the individual for its own profit. Anything that increases dependency on government undermines liberty. Big Government almost automatically destroys the moral foundation necessary for its credibility. Government cannot make people's lives more fair by making them less free. As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people. There is no safe political refuge for those afraid to take responsibility for their own lives. 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 with an incentive not to squander his paycheck. The fancies of philosophers are not more sacrosanct than the hides of citizens. The extent of government power should be the preeminent issue for people fighting to regain their liberties. The first duty of today's citizen is to assume the best of government, while government officials assume the worst of him. The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag other people down. Political progress depends on distrust of politicians. To blindly trust any government is to vest it with more power than it should have.