- Bovard, James. The Bush Betrayal. New York:
Macmillan, 2004. ISBN 1-4039-6727-X.
-
Having dissected the depredations of Clinton and Socialist
Party A against the liberty of U.S. citizens in
Feeling Your Pain
(May 2001),
Bovard now turns his crypto-libertarian gaze toward the
ravages committed by Bush and Socialist Party B in the
last four years. Once again, Bovard demonstrates his
extraordinary talent in penetrating the fog of government
propaganda to see the crystalline absurdity lurking within.
On page 88 we discover that under the rules adopted by Colorado
pursuant to the “No Child Left Behind Act”, a school with 1000
students which had a mere 179 or fewer homicides per year would not be
classified as “persistently dangerous”, permitting parents of the
survivors to transfer their children to less target-rich institutions.
On page 187, we encounter this head-scratching poser asked of those
who wished to become screeners for the “Transportation Security
Administration”:
Question: Why is it important to screen bags for IEDs [Improvised
Explosive Devices]?
- The IED batteries could leak and damage other passenger
bags.
- The wires in the IED could cause a short to the aircraft
wires.
- IEDs can cause loss of lives, property, and aircraft.
- The ticking timer could worry other passengers.
I wish I were making this up. The inspector general of the “Homeland
Security Department” declined to say how many of the “screeners” who
intimidate citizens, feel up women, and confiscate fingernail
clippers and putatively dangerous and easily-pocketed jewelry managed
to answer this one correctly.
I call Bovard a “crypto-libertarian” because he clearly bases his
analysis on libertarian principles, yet rarely observes that
any polity with unconstrained government power and sedated
sheeple for citizens will end badly, regardless of who wins the
elections. As with his earlier books, sources for this work are
exhaustively documented in 41 pages of endnotes.
December 2004 