Jim Bovard

Sunni: How far would you go to defend this country and the principles that led to its birth? Can you see yourself ever bailing and going expat somewhere?

Jim: Would West Virginia count as expat?

Sunni: [laughs] I imagine so, at least in parts of the deep back country. But even there, you're still within this country's borders and therefore likely to become made a target if the busybodies were ever so inclined.

Jim: Actually, I might not mesh so well with the deeper, darker parts of West Virginia. I was driving through the mountains of western North Carolina in August 2001, looking for a small hotel. I pulled up to a hardware store in a one-horse village to ask directions and this big ol' bald guy comes tromping out the door and asks, What part of Maryland you from? He starts chatting me up, and after about 15 minutes, he admitted that he thought I was an undercover federal agent. Why? I asked. Because you are driving a black car and it has Maryland license plates, he astutely explained. He then said that the federal cars always have these GPS tracking devices hidden in the back of the car, underneath the trunk. I invited him to check out the ol' Ford Contour, and he did—and then, after discovering no incriminating evidence, became quite friendly. I talked with him for a couple hours, and he invited me to stop by his place—I passed. Turns out that this was the part of North Carolina where Eric Rudolph was suspected of hiding out. The FBI had come down there en masse a year or so earlier. The FBI had been so arrogant towards the local folks that they soon got no help; and he said that at least one restaurant refused to serve them food. Good folks down there west of Asheville. [pauses] I find that some of the bureaucrats I deal with in Washington think I am a redneck—and then the rednecks think I'm an undercover fed. What's a po' country boy to do?

Sunni: I don't know, Jim; I've never been good at fitting in either. Is it sometimes frustrating for you, that your opportunities for activism are somewhat constrained by being well known? I mean, I think it'd be pretty hard for you to become an income tax or Real ID refusenik, for example ...

Jim: It is still possible to have some fun. I biked along and around the anti-war march in DC last September. Having a bike was the best way to deal with—and occasionally avoid—the mob. As I was coming down 17th St. by the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, some fat cop comes trotting out into the street and raises a long stick in the air, like he is getting ready to do some chopping exercise to narrow his gut. I was puzzled at first and then realized that the dude's stick appeared to be intended for me personally. I didn't realize that the street was closed—some other cop grunts something about how I had to detour. I swung off on a street to the right and left the stick cop in the dust. This was an area where there were almost zero demonstrators around, so the cops might have felt free to attack, unimpeded by the omnipresent camcorders. Almost all the streets were obstructed in one way or another—the cops had their metal sawhorses all over the place—and they were changing what streets were closed at various times arbitrarily, as far as I could tell. The police didn't clearly mark which streets are closed to all traffic—and yet felt entitled to attack anyone who didn't obey the secret rules. Sort of the paradigm for contemporary American freedom. I'll send you a picture I took of one of the cops.

Sunni: Nice doughboy! Which is not to minimize the threat he represents ...

Jim: I don't think he has won any 100 yard dashes recently.

Sunni: What things give you the most hope for the future of liberty, Jim?

Jim: Perhaps the current level of abuses will eventually spur a backlash, as happened here after World War I. On the other hand, perhaps that is the same thing that urbane Italians said as they watched Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922. Just because things are getting bad does not mean that they cannot get one helluva lot worse. Sometimes the best you can hope for is to keep up a skirmish line in the battle of ideas—to conduct a rearguard action to slow the advance of Leviathan. Maybe times will change and lost liberties can be recaptured.