Book Description
Freedom in Chains - Governments and
bureaucracies are bigger and more controlling than ever.
Today's citizen has less ability to control his or her own
life than ever before. How did we get to this point? James
Bovard, bestselling author of Lost Rights, shows how
the State has become a behemoth that threatens to destroy the
individual. Public policy today is permeated by
"Statism"--the belief that government is inherently
superior to the citizenry, that progress consists of
extending the realm of governmental compulsion, and the
vesting more arbitrary power in government officials will
eventually make citizens happy. Reading through the history
of the State and its war on the citizen, Bovard looks at
thinkers as diverse as John Locke, Etieene de la Boetie,
James Madison, and G.W.F. Hegel. He explores the original
idea of the State; the corruption of the concept of freedom;
how the rising number of government dependents is subverting
democracy; and the ultimate fraud that is perpetrated as the
State's benevolence. In these times of the Leviathan State, Freedom
in Chains is must reading for everyone who took James
Bovard's Lost Rights to heart, as well as for anyone
trying to understand how government power has transformed
self-reliant Americans into wards of the State.