James Bovard Quotes
Dependency is the highest political good - at least for politicians. Since the 1930s, politicians have striven to leave no vote unbought.
Bovard, James. Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen. St. Martin's Press, 1999.
This is a fascinating quotation. The Fascist spokesperson, writing in an influential American Magazine, criticizes the previous Italian government for providing to the Italian masses what they demanded which resembled socialistic programs. He sees a government as apart from the masses, a detached entity which provides “favors” and “grants” to the people in order to buy their loyalty and support. He sees government not only as an entity separate and apart from the majority of people, but an entity that knows better than the people what is good for the nation and those people. Despite all his other rationalizations, that was exactly how Fascists viewed things. Given that, all of the Fascist actions followed.
Roosevelt’s first gubernatorial term was shaken by the Stock Market Crash and the Failure of the Banks 1929 and the passivity of the Herbert Hoover administration in Washington in coping with the economy and the Great Depression. Reform of Tammany Hall and other State problems took a back seat to trying to create jobs and stabilize the state economy. The Republican candidate Tuttle could not argue against FDR’s economic policies as he would then have to defend President Hoover who was becoming exceedingly unpopular. So he went after the corruption of the Tammany Hall Machine and Roosevelt’s relative passivity. The voters were ok with FDR’s priorities.
San Francisco Machine Boss Abraham At that time, there were very few jurisdictions with primary elections. Most, like California, selected the party candidates at party conventions. At the time the Railroads had bribed or employed enough delegates to the Party Convention to veto any candidate they did not like. And Pardee was in their sights as he was a supporter of the Theodore Roosevelt concept of preservation of public lands. That meant less land for the Railroads to obtain, develop, build a railroad line and station in the area and then sell the land in smaller parcels at a huge profit.
James Bovard (/bəˈvɑːrd/; born 1956) is an American libertarian author and lecturer whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. He is a USA Today columnist and is a frequent contributor to The Hill. He is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy and nine other books. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader's Digest, The American Conservative, and many other publications. His books have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean.
