The Tyranny of Good Intentions
How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A thousand years of legal protections against tyranny are being stolen right before our eyes. Under the guise of good intentions, personal liberties as old as the Magna Carta have become casualties in the wars being waged on pollution, drugs, white-collar crime, and all of the other real and imagined social ills. The result: innocent people caught up in a bureaucratic web that destroys lives and livelihoods; businesses shuttered because of victimless infractions; a justice system that values coerced pleas over the search for truth; bullying police agencies empowered to confiscate property without due process.
"A devastating indictment of our current system of justice." — Milton Friedman
In this provocative book, Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton show how the law, which once shielded us from the government, has now become a powerful weapon in the hands of overzealous prosecutors and bureaucrats. Lost is the foundation upon which our freedom rest—the intricate framework of Constitutional limits that protect our property, our liberty, and our lives. Roberts and Stratton convincingly argue that this abuse of government power doesn't have ideological boundaries. Indeed, conservatives and liberals alike use prosecutors, regulators, and courts to chase after their own favorite "devils," to seek punishment over justice and expediency over freedom. The authors present harrowing accounts of people both rich and poor, of CEOs and blue-collar workers who have fallen victim to the tyranny of good intentions, who have lost possessions, careers, loved ones, and sometimes even their lives.
This book is a sobering wake-up call to reclaim that which is rightly ours—liberty protected by the rule of law.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
According to Roberts and Stratton (both fellows at the Institute for Political Economy), our cherished individual rights are going to hell in a handbasket, delivered by politically ambitious prosecutors, misguided or malevolent bureaucrats, law enforcement agents run amok and pandering politicians. This book has odd heroes/victims: Charles Keating of the Savings and Loan scandal, Exxon Corporation (owner of the Exxon Valdez), hotelier Leona Helmsley, Michael Milken and even agri-business giant Archer Daniels Midland. The arch-villain is odder still, Jeremy Bentham, the 19th-century philosopher who popularized the theory of utilitarianism, which can be simply described as a belief in formulating public policies that result in "the greatest good for the greatest number." Bentham's villainy, the authors say, is rooted in utilitarian philosophy's role in undermining the Rights of Englishmen traceable to the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and now embodied in the Bill of Rights. Perhaps oddest of all is the characterization of J. Edgar Hoover as a paragon of morality and law enforcement restraint, qualities the authors feel are utterly lacking in today's American leadership. Roberts and Stratton will strike a nerve with this book; the government abuses they colorfully rail at--the unrestrained powers of police and prosecutors, unfair forfeiture laws, unreasonable bureaucratic regulations and police profiling, to name a few--mark a frightening departure from what most Americans consider the fair exercise of government authority. Unfortunately, in the end, the book comes off as primarily an incendiary polemic. Lost in the rhetoric of the authors' call to arms is a useful analysis of how to balance competing individual and societal interests without sacrificing fundamental rights.
Customer Reviews
The book is intellectually dishonest
The book pushes an idealistic utopian America, in which the very real problems of very serious bad guys and enemies need not be dealt with. I don‘t doubt that the specific examples of prosecutorial abuses cited actually occurred, but the authors go to great lengths to make it appear that at least a menacing and significant segment of prosecutors and others in authority are power crazy monsters, and that the primary criterion for advancement in law enforcement is by counting scalps of innocent people. Are there some like that? Sure. But to jump to the conclusion that most, or even many, are evil people, motivated by self centered greed, is just wrong. That said, I certainly think that concern is in order to minimize abuses of power, to hold accountable the powerful who would play free and footloose with our rights. I am a veteran of the American intelligence community, with many years involvement on the military, law enforcement, and international business scenes at high levels. I liken the authors‘ rendition of reality in the subject matter of their book to a soap opera in which every cast member is involved every day in activities that most people encounter once in a lifetime, if at all. Or, perhaps an even better example is movies like Platoon, in which the director portrays every American soldier as drunk, drugged, emotionally unstable, and a sadistic monster. And, in which dropping F-bombs was something every soldier did in every sentence they spoke. Yes, the book has a message, but its basis in fact is taken so far out of the context of reality that it is insulting to the informed reader.