Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years - Hardcover

The Clinton-Gore years have been a catastrophe for individual liberty, writes James Bovard in this libertarian broadside:

Clinton was the Nanny State champion incarnate--the person who taught tens of millions of Americans to look to government for relief from every irritation of daily life--from child safety car seats to unpasteurized cider to leaky basements. Clinton's perennial message was that people should trust political action far more than the voluntary efforts of individuals to improve their own lives.

Bovard, a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, occasionally goes overboard--"Clinton sees government revenue as the source of all progress and all justice" and "Clinton exploited and expanded the dictatorial potential of the U.S. presidency." Yet he expertly marshals evidence to support his thesis that "no aspect of Americans' lives was too arcane for federal intervention" during the Clinton years. He notes that the average two-earner family's total tax burden rose three times faster than inflation, that the IRS has collected tens of billions of dollars in wrongful penalties and taxes not owed, and that the Justice Department has seized more than $600 million in private property, even though "the vast majority of people whose property is seized by federal agents are never formally charged with a crime." Bovard also takes extended looks at AmeriCorps, affirmative action, the war on drugs, agriculture policy, Waco, and more--and at every turn he sees an unmitigated calamity. His chapter on disaster relief is especially good, showing how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is "determined to spend tax dollars to rescue citizens, regardless of how irresponsible or negligent they have been and regardless of whether they have requested help." Bovard is an upscale, libertarian version of bestselling author Martin L. Gross, and Feeling Your Pain will appeal to readers interested in muckraking accounts of the welfare state and its blunders. --John J. Miller

James Bovard is a journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek. He is the author of Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (SMP, 1994).