Summary

Governments are bigger and more powerful than ever, while a citizen's ability to control his or her own life has never been less effective. Bovard shows how the State threatens to destroy the individual in order to preserve the belief that any government is superior to the citizen. Bovard asks how we got to this point and answers with a thoughtful look at the history of governmental control from ancient times to the present, peppered throughout with observations on our present day, out of control governmental regulatory commissions and all-confiscating IRS.