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

See the Forest Through the Trees
This is an important "anthology" of the abuses of the Clinton-Gore administration. To regular Bovard readers, it does cover some of the material that his other works have detailed but is a disturbing litany of statist, unconstitutional, and power hungry moves by this administration. What this summary does is put in greater perspective the actions of the Clinton-Gore administration that range from seemingly unrelated domestic policy such as HUD and farm loans programs to foreign policy such as the WTO and the Serbian war.

The common thread is a executive branch gobbling ever increasingly amount of control over normal people's lives while dishing out intellectually contorted reasoning appealing to people's emotions and fears. Intentions are always more important than results, activity more desired than progress, the end always justifies the means, and the truth is simply a tool to be used, warped, or discarded to advance one's aims. When we are constantly told that "it's all old news" or "just about sex", the casual political observer can't help but sit back and wonder about the lies we don't know about. This is what the book is all about.

I recommend you read the one star review from the person from California ("Hatred, not analysis"). This is an ironic message that illustrates all that the Clinton administration wants you to swallow. The reviewer reminds you that any dissenting opinion is simply "right wing hatred". He/she -- knows -- that the author has his facts wrong but won't tell you how they know this nor site any examples of these errors ("just trust me..."). What the Clinton-Gore apologists want us to believe is that any administration discretion is just a rare, isolated brush fire that really isn't a big issue, has been dealt with and there's nothing to worry about except when one steps back and examines the forest they find that the entire landscape is in flames.

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Puts It All in Perspective
Bovard provides us with the big picture regarding the policies of the Clinton Administration, whereas the media has only looked at certain things in isolation. Coming in the wake of the Danforth Commission on Waco, which claims to absolve the government of any fault in the death of the Branch Davidians, Bovard devotes a chapter of his book to the incident. Like many people at the time of the conflagration, I was one of those Americans who thought, "Well, they were a bunch of religious fanatics, whattaya expect?" Therefore, it should be rather sobering to read in "feeling your pain" that BATF agents could have arrested Koresh at any time when he went into town prior to the raid, and that at one point Koresh even invited the ATF to come and inspect the compound, but they refused the invitation. Instead, they opted for a military raid to be covered by the media to bolster the agency's image in the minds of the American people. A lost tv cameraman inadvertently tipped the Davidians off, but knowing this, the ATF tried to storm the compound anyway. The rest, as we know, is history.

Civil libertarians should be troubled by the attempts of the administration to limit privacy over our internet commmunications and in banking. The book also gives a good summary of why the military intervention in Kosovo was such a blunder. Interestingly, I just read in the paper this morning that an American serviceman pleaded guilty to raping and murdering an ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo. Is this what Clinton meant by a humanitarian intervention? Other areas covered include the War on Drugs, agricultural policy, HUD abuses and gun control efforts.

I had recently read Bovard's previous book, Freedom In Chains, which I gave 5 stars. One of the weaknesses of "feeling your pain" is that Bovard recycles some of the same material. There are even entire paragraphs that look like they were cut and pasted from "Freedom". But since some of the issues he looks at were the same, I suppose we cannot expect him to reword everything he said. This book also differs from Freedom In Chains thematically. Whereas "Freedom" examined the concepts of freedom and liberty and the conflict between liberty and statism in a philosophical framework, his current work looks at how the Clinton Administration's policies have curtailed or threatened to curtail our liberties in a number of policy areas.

While some of Bovard's detractors may dismiss "feeling your pain" as just another Clinton bashing book, Bovard acknowledges that the Republicans would not have had a much better track record on many of these issues if they controlled the White House. This book is a must for anyone who wants ammunition to argue with a die hard Clinton partisan.

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Covers a lot of the same territory as "Lost Rights"
James Bovard's "Feeling Your Pain" covers much of the same territory and the same abuses as his other excellent book, "Lost Rights." Nevertheless, "Feeling Your Pain" still is a very good book, especially in the chapters covering the abuses under Americorps. Bovard basically accuses Americorps of being a liberal indoctrination program which provides little to the communities in which they serve. His chapters on the abuses of the ADA and farm subsidies are also very interesting and show the extent of government waste in America.

I personally feel that Bovard should also be commended for continually reminding his readers about the abuses of civil liberties and human rights which happened at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Bovard's chapters on these almost forgotten scandals parallel those in "Lost Rights," although the chapter on Waco is more in depth to the aftermath of Waco. Bovard also offers extensive documentation of his resources in case readers want to verify Bovard's conclusions.

Basically, the only reason I am giving this book only four stars is because it covers the same material as "Lost Rights." Nevertheless, it still an excellent book from one of America's best liberatarian writers.