Attention Deficit Democracy

This essay on the negative side of American politics is the handbook for every citizen that votes and does not vote. This book does not favor the Right or the Left. You'll never be an informed voter until you've read James Bovard's masterpiece.

James Bovard's Attention Deficit Democracy is an engaging, articulate, and passionate expose of one of the major causes of America's loss of liberty, the American people's apathy, ignorance, and collusion with the power-grabbers. Bovard takes the American people to task, pointing out that we must take much of the responsibility for allowing the federal government to steal our rights over the last 100 years. The Spirit of 1776 is long gone; in it's place is a willful refusal to get involved in the hard work of keeping the federal government under control, and a willingness to give up hard-won freedoms to the Nanny State. Unleashing Leviathan results in we ourselves becoming leashed, and serving as no more than cannon fodder and cash cows for the powers-that-be. The cost of this apathy and ignorance in terms of lives lost, property stolen, and rights trampled is shown to be truly devastating, both here in these United States, and overseas. Bovard's book is a call to wake up; I only wish he had spent some time giving us his views on what can be done to turn things around.

Today is a good day I think to write about the successes and failures of American representative government, and it's been a long time since I've read a better survey of those failures than James Bovard's "Attention Deficit Democracy." This book is nothing less than, to borrow a phrase Bovard himself borrows from John Taylor, a "commission to overthrow political idolatry" -- which shows, of course, why so many strong feelings come to the fore when people read his writings. Bovard's career is evident proof of the saying of Charles Beard that the quickest way to get yourself a reputation as a troublemaker and extremist is to go around saying the same things the Founders said in 1776. Bovard's problem is that he takes history seriously. He takes concepts and the meaning of words seriously. Most of all, he takes liberty seriously. He further places himself outside the pale when he uncompromisingly criticizes both Republicans and Democrats. When he took on President Clinton in book after book, it may have been easy enough to categorize Bovard as a "conservative." But now that he's giving President Bush the same treatment, what are we to do about him? Because clearly, there is no morally acceptable ground outside that staked out by the two "opposing" parties. But enough sarcasm. In "Attention Deficit Democracy," Bovard is saying things that need to be said -- things which should be self-evident to any open-minded observer. Americans who still embrace the truisms of talk radio, the major newspapers and TV stations, and their sixth grade civics classrooms, will shudder at the author's disproving the trendy equation of "freedom" and "democracy" (in fact, they don't have any direct or necessary relationship at all), his stomping of the urban legend that "democracies never fight each other," and perhaps most of all, his sacrilegious suggestion that the people most to blame for the current state of affairs are the American people themselves. This isn't just a simple, Al Frankenish, "How could you let yourself be fooled by Bush?", but a much more fundamental questioning of people's understanding of how far away from true liberty we've really moved. Are we still a free country, just because we're given the chance to vote for new rulers every two, four, or six years? James Bovard's recitation of the administration's "disassembling" (to use a Bushism) on torture made for deeply frustrating reading. His citing chapter and verse of all the elites who place "trust of government" as the highest of a citizen's obligations, was infuriating. And his attempt to show how "freedom" and "democracy" are in fact the answers to two, very different, questions was something that really needed to be said (or said again: I point the reader to "Liberty or Democracy: The Challenge of Our Time" [1952, reprinted 1993] by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn for an excellent primer on this topic). On the whole, this is an excellent book filled with excellent analysis. It's much easier to get

Mr. Bovard removes the pleasant veil that shelters American democratic system and lets us peek inside at the real deal. Great book, as the other contributions by the same author.

In his latest offering James Bovard does an excellent job of proving that Murrow's warning has come to pass in no uncertain terms. With his top notch research, an excellent blending of historical as well as up to the moment events; this writer has once again shown that to allow Washington to conduct unsupervised activities is to pass to our children a disgraceful legacy, along with a mortgage that they will never pay off. Bovard shows THE BIG PICTURE is distracting the people from all of the components of its making. As well as how all of those components effect the lives of all Americans not only today, but for generations to come. It is a very sobering read.