My July 4, 1996, Hell-Raising

By James Bovard

On July 4 twenty-two years ago, I riled up folks at the Libertarian National Convention.  I talked about the EEOC’s war on Hooters, House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s pig paranoia, zoning idiocy, and other boondoggles. Commenting on a recent idiotic asset forfeiture decision, I noted, “The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court did not explain the equivalency of piracy in the 1820s and oral sex in the 1990s.”  I noted that nothing could “justify granting federal agents the power to seize your house, strip mine you paycheck, grab your guns, trespass on your land, stop you from getting life-saving medicines, and shut down the Internet.”

After recapping Waco and Ruby Ridge and calling for the death sentence for the Oklahoma City bombers, I concluded: “There is nothing that Timothy McVeigh or others could have done that would  ex post facto validate what the federal government did at Waco…. It’s important for critics of government to act responsibly, but it’s important for the government to keep one thing in mind, and that is we will not be silenced.”

The CSPAN video of the speech is online here…

BOVARD: (AUDIO GAP) …and the whole attitude towards government
in this country has been — much of the media has been part of the
trouble because — well, for example, The Washington Post had a
series recently of articles — a series of article on how people think
about government. Now, there are some newspapers that do series — do
investigations on why it is that the people believe in witches, or

trust in goblins, or things like that. What The Washington Post tried
to investigate is why is it that people don’t trust government.

And it was a pretty good series. But there was a sense of wonder
throughout it that the — wonder by the journalists, that so many
people would think the government wastes their money, or lies to them,
or is a threat to their basic rights and freedoms. The series, I
think, documented how badly informed most Americans are about their
government. But one thing that the journalists found absolutely
impossible to explain was the fact that the most informed citizens are
those who distrust the government most. This is the kind of problem
that we wouldn’t have if more people read The Washington Post. The
people would understand the good things that the government does.
FDCH Political Transcripts, July 4, 1996…

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