[Previous entry: "Sunday new year thoughts/silent meditation"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "10 worst Americans -- who can say?"]

01/03/2006 Archived Entry: "Bovard's Attention Deficit Democracy is published"

JIM BOVARD'S ATTENTION DEFICIT DEMOCRACY is about to hit the bookstores -- timed perfectly by Palgrave Macmillan to miss the all-important Christmas book buying season. I hope the timing doesn't deter anybody from buying and reading this witty and revealing book. IMHO, it might be Jim's best.

I got my copy directly from the source with a very nice autograph. (Thank you, Jim.) You can get yours from Amazon.com, which should be receiving its stocks next week.

Here's a little sampling of epigrams from ADD. (Hm. I think our friend Jim may one day rival H.L. Mencken in the liberty-quote books.)

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

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

• Attention Deficit Democracy lulls citizens into thinking that they have nothing to fear from the rising number of sticks and shackles that politicians and bureaucrats can use on them.

• The biggest election frauds usually occur before the voting booths open.

• A democratic government that respects no limits on its own power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.

• Leviathan is premised on government's need to control the people. Democracy rests on people's right to control the government. The conflict between these two principles generates much of the deceit that permeates contemporary politics.

• Washington policy debates are often like a criminal trial in which all the evidence of the defendant's past offenses is ruled inadmissible.

• Thanks to the Battered Citizen Syndrome, the more debacles government produces, the more voters cling to faith in their rulers.

• Americans cannot expect to have good presidents if presidents are permitted to make themselves czars.

• Being crowned a winner by the Electoral College does not give one American the right to dispose of all other Americans' lives and liberties.

• 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.

• Modern democracy is far more effective at unleashing government than at protecting individuals.

• As long as American presidents praise freedom, they are permitted to seize as much power as they please.

• Democracy is merely a form of government. It is not a mode of salvation. It is not a catapult to the Promised Land. It is not a penicillin that cures all politically transmitted diseases.
  

Posted by Claire @ 12:15 PM CST
Link