Freedom in Chains
eBook - ePub

Freedom in Chains

The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen

  1. 466 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Freedom in Chains

The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen

About this book

Governments and bureaucracies are bigger and more controlling than ever. A citizen's own ability to control his or her own life has never been less than it has today. How did we get to this point? Jim Bovard, bestselling author of Lost Rights, looks at the development of the State into a behemoth that threatens to destroy the individual at the cost of preserving the idea of "statism"--the belief that government is inherently superior to the citizenry, that progress consists of extending the realm of governmental compulsion, and that 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, Etienne de la Boetie, James Madison, and Bernard Bosanquet among others. He explores the original version of the idea of the state, the development of the welfare state, the progress of the state's judicial system from the original province of the courts into the lives of men and women and the ultimate fraud that is perpetrated as the state's benevolence. Controversial and essential reading in these times of the Leviathan state, Freedom in Chains is must reading for everyone who took Jim Bovard's Lost Rights to heart as well as anyone trying to understand how far we've come from our eighteenth century roots as a community of impassioned patriots to our sorry positions as wards of the state at the end of the 20th century.

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Yes, you can access Freedom in Chains by James Bovard in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politik & Internationale Beziehungen & Bürgerrechte in der Politik. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Notice
  4. 1. Introduction
  5. 2. The Great Pretending: The State, Ideal & Real
  6. 3. The Mirage of Welfare State Freedom
  7. 4. Cagekeepers and Caretakers: Modern Democracy
  8. 5. The Moral Glorification of Leviathan
  9. 6. Sovereignty & Political Slavery
  10. 7. Paternalism versus the Blessings of Liberty
  11. 8. A Few Thoughts on an Ideal Political Order
  12. 9. Taking Coercion Seriously
  13. Acknowledgments
  14. Notes
  15. Index
  16. About the Author
  17. Also by James Bovard
  18. Newsletter Sign-up
  19. Contents
  20. Copyright