Rating: 
Summary: Great book. Don't be put off by the ill informed rant of...
Review: ...one reviewer that apparently can't keep his facts straight as to what happened under which President. (Hint: Ruby Ridge happened under Bush. Asset Forfeiture was pushed through by Reagan. Waco was planned by the Bush administration and carried out by his holdovers at the ATF and the FBI.) This book skewers both sides, right and left, thoroughly. From "The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984" to the instituting of the legal theories of Bentham into our system of law at the expense of basic rights, this book is a splash of cold water on the face of America. Read it and recommend it to your friends before the creeping face of fascism becomes the new face of America.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this and weep for what has been lost.
Review: A fascinating analysis of the origins of the police state arising out of America's bureaucracy. As the authors present it, the Constitution has become an relic for the history books. Ordinary people are routinely crushed by viciousness on the part of US Government employees who act with a sense of mission, and without a sense of proportion. This is not a first person account, but a well researched journalistic attempt to tie together disturbing trends that most people see as isolated events. As one who has experienced a Mad Dog Prosecutor (and written a first-person account of it), I can state that this book is far from exaggerated in its description of the abuse of ordinary and honest people by our government. The constitutional protections we were taught all about in school have become a fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Government an Obstacle to Freedom, Not a Source
Review: Excerpts from a book review by Nikos A. Leverenz in The Independent Review (Fall 2001) The Tyranny of Good Intentions should make those who participate in our political and legal systems uncomfortable, if not self-loathing. Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M Stratton's principal argument is that what passes for "law" in the current civil climate is far removed from the "long struggle to establish the people's sovereignity" that dates back to pre-Norman England. Simply put, the law has been transformed from a shield that protects the people from the encroachments of government power into a sword that enables the government to lord over people. Those who are weary of the ongoing government assault on Microsoft and the tobacco industry or of the continued evisceration of civil liberties under the tutelary banner of the drug war should immediately recognize this transformation. The Tyranny of Good Intentions highlights two broad areas in which the content and enforcement of the law now serve as a sword against what is loosely termed "the Rights of Englishmen": namely, "prohibitions against crimes without intent, retroactive law, and self-incrimination." First, the authors consider how government prosecutors, manifesting a win-at-all-costs mentality, sacrifice the quest for truth in order to advance their careers. Second, the adbication of legislative power to administrative agencies has eroded the Anglo-Saxon legal maxim "a delegated power cannot itself be delegated." Those who are actively engaged in policymaking and law enforcement would do well to read The Tyranny of Good Intentions, even if it gives them only momentary pause in their assorted "public interest" crusades to leave hoof prints on the people's constitutional liberties.
Rating:
Summary: Identifies the problems but no real solutions
Review: I began reading The Tyranny of Good Intentions looking for insights into underlying causes of our judicial, political and social systems century long erosion towards despotic activities in Americas legal, political and judical systems. I got that and much more. The authors paint a picture condemning both sides of the political spectrum here and I do not agree with those who say it is biased one way or the other. It certainly highlights some of the great abuses of governmental power supported by activist, apathetic and corrupted judges, police officers, administrators and the various social organizations invented by government. It would appear that the lower-level representatives run amuk in our society causing hate and discontent and freely abuse anyone they spotlight as a viable target or a good mark, guilty or not. The authors bring these travesties, that takes place daily across our country, to light very well I think. The book depicts the persecution of those long believed grass roots American concepts of truth, justice and the American way, which we all (well most of us) have come to trust in. Plea-bargains for expedience and asset forfeiture laws for expedience are wrong and just as bad and destructive of basic human and civil rights as abortions for expedience are, and redistricting for expedience or political favor are, or lifelong incumbency in political offices is as well as those terrible subsidies for votes are, which the great George Will identified in his book Restoration. I did find a few principles that the vast majority of “WE the People†do not believe in or support at all, even though these authors support and defended them. In most cases I am a Blackstone supporter I guess, but in a few cases I am soundly a Bentham advocate. As an Administration of Justice Major in college I found that the search for Truth and Justice and Civilized Society are much more compelling than simply winning a case and that they should come first, and must come first, before those treacherous privileged communications do and/or the rampant suppression of evidence that take place today. I find both easily defendable but the bringers of injustice and chaos in the search for truth. In other words they are grossly misused today. The current system is just a game as the authors rightly indicate and honestly convicting or acquitting a suspect is of little concern to the games lawyers, police and judges play. Especially in this media feeding frenzy we have today where ones 15 minutes of TV fame is more important than truth, or exposure to the press is more important than justice. In the area of integrity, honor, rightious justice and truth I believe we have terribly lost our way as a society and our Supreme Court has betrayed their most sacred charge, keeping the search for truth at the forefront of their decisions. As a sideline one particular passage struck me as very interesting and humorous. The author indicates on page 128 that Leonard W. Levy’s book A License to Steal is full of horror stories that illustrate the Gestapo-like application of the Assets Forfeiture Act. He may be right. Many a reviewer summoned their very best rhetorical vocabulary to support their assertions even if they did not wholeheartedly agree with the authors and attacked the states misconduct. Yet in reviewing several other book reviews I found it interesting that when David Limbaugh tried in his book Persecution to highlight the same types of misuse of state and government power, which is also out of control in regards to the establishment clause, reviewers lambasted him as a nut case and unworthy of respect. A little inconsistent don’t you think? In any case I found this book both informative and contradictory at the same time. there are just too many instances to address them all in this short forum. I suppose many people who think for themselves will probably find it so. It in no way identifies an all encompassing formula for correcting the problems it identifies in others; nor does it even acknowledge the ones it creates itself in the stances the authors take. I enjoyed the book but I found much of its legalese and assertions could not be supported by good ole common sense. It was disturbing in that regard, but a valuable asset to have on the shelf with others like Max Boots Out of Order when discussing the tremendous fallacies in our political and judicial systems in the 21st century. Jim
Rating:
Summary: Whatever Happened to the Land of the Free
Review: I first heard of Paul Craig Roberts back in May when I read one of his thoughtful essays comparing America under Bill Clinton to the Third Reich. His matter-of-fact analysis was rich in specifics and never stooped to over-the top sensationalism. "The Tyranny of Good Intentions," delves further into the same theme-in recent years judicial activists and unelected bureaucrats have steadily chipped away at many of the Constitutions Rights that our founding fathers cherished. Many judicial bedrocks like the necessity of harmful intent have taken a terrible beating during this new era of legalistic chicanery. This multi-tiered usurpation has occurred with the eager approval-or at least the irresponsible indifference--of elected officials at all levels in both political parties. The work is truly a bipartisan broadside. One of his most cited examples of an over-zealous prosecutor is Rudolph Gulliani. The work cites examples of Supreme Court decisions from the early 1900's that started us down the slippery slope of liberty-infringing policies, and suggests that the push to crack down on crime under Ronald Reagan and George Bush enhanced intrusive tendencies. With the road paved under the best-laid plans of Reagan and Bush, Roberts and Stratton illustrate how the corrupt Justice Department of Bill Clinton shredded Constitutional protections at a rate unseen in any free country. Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Elian Gonzalez cases grabbed the headlines, but they reveal those infamous tragedies as the tip of a dangerous ice burg. They detail many fascist actions that generated little media coverage including the murder of millionaire Donald Scott (by California authorities) on specious grounds and the highly suspicious besting death of Kenneth Trentadue in an Oklahoma prison cell. The book also discusses multiple cases were justice was abrogated in less violent ways from Leona Helmsley to Michael Milken to the still pending Microsoft case, unprovoked government intrusion is shown as a rapidly escalating threat. However, any exploration of this topic seems incomplete without a healthy perusal of the unhealthy war against tobacco companies and gun manufacturers currently being waged by governments at all levels. The authors barely touch on this pernicious trend but do include one terrifying tidbit---"Ralph Nader who is closely tied to these lawsuits, has said that the next ones are alcoholic beverage makers, sugar, fat, and cholesterol-laden food producers, beef producers, makers of fiber-deficient food, X-ray equipment manufacturers, (and) bicycle makers." With an exigent presidential election looming, this thoughtful disquisition is an essential book for an open-minded voters to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Seriously flawed, but very useful
Review: I'm giving this book three stars because it is very good at one thing, even though it is bad at most everything else. Intended as a primer for a civil libertarian view of certain troubling legal trends, The Tyranny of Good Intentions fails on that level because it wears its bias on its sleeve in some staggeringly conclusory statements (for instance, blaming publicity-hungry feds for genocidal butchery against David Koresh) while failing to back them up. No one who reads it and is not already convinced of the book's thesis could be converted by this supposed entry-level book. And for those already committed to the cause espoused by the authors, this book contains little in the way of useful reasoning. Its avowed purpose is to contrast Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian version of law, which it states is in force today, with Blackstone's absolutist version of civil liberties -- but instead of defeating Bentham's arguments, the authors call him names and say Blackstone's version of law is more traditional (i.e., older). There are good arguments to be made against weighing peoples' civil rights against a general societal benefit. For instance, whenever it's done and individual rights are made to yield to the public good, it seems that the public doesn't benefit. But the authors do not discuss the contrast they claim they are making between absolute rights and utilitarianism; they just say utilitarianism loses, make fun of it, and move on. Considering the two levels on which The Tyranny of Good Intentions is supposed to work are two on which it fails utterly, I find myself surprised to be giving in three stars. But there is a level on which it is extremely useful. The authors' research for emotional arguments to replace the logical ones they do not make has revealed a large number of concrete examples of injustice done to real, named people under the present system of proescutorial overenthusiasm. While these are reported in the conclusory style I so deplore, they are useful beginnings to my own researches, and they make for splendid talking points. There are people out there to whom the potential for abuse of governmental power is purely theoretical because they have never heard of anyone who actually suffered. Properly used, the examples in this book can raise awareness that not only can government get out of hand, but it has. No one who learns of the Depression-scarred doctor who kept cash in his shoeboxes, and had it seized when he tried to give it to charity, will look at drug forfeiture the same way again. No one who hears of the pizza restaurant forced to clean toxic waste out of a landfill because some of its boxes were found in it will be an unequivocal supporter of the Superfund. For all its many faults, The Tyranny of Good Intentions will raise the level of skepticism about government power, and for this alone it is worth the three stars I give it. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and this book is an inspiration to pay this price.
Rating:
Summary: Seriously flawed, but very useful
Review: I'm giving this book three stars because it is very good at one thing, even though it is bad at most everything else. Intended as a primer for a civil libertarian view of certain troubling legal trends, The Tyranny of Good Intentions fails on that level because it wears its bias on its sleeve in some staggeringly conclusory statements (for instance, blaming publicity-hungry feds for genocidal butchery against David Koresh) while failing to back them up. No one who reads it and is not already convinced of the book's thesis could be converted by this supposed entry-level book. And for those already committed to the cause espoused by the authors, this book contains little in the way of useful reasoning. Its avowed purpose is to contrast Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian version of law, which it states is in force today, with Blackstone's absolutist version of civil liberties -- but instead of defeating Bentham's arguments, the authors call him names and say Blackstone's version of law is more traditional (i.e., older). There are good arguments to be made against weighing peoples' civil rights against a general societal benefit. For instance, whenever it's done and individual rights are made to yield to the public good, it seems that the public doesn't benefit. But the authors do not discuss the contrast they claim they are making between absolute rights and utilitarianism; they just say utilitarianism loses, make fun of it, and move on. Considering the two levels on which The Tyranny of Good Intentions is supposed to work are two on which it fails utterly, I find myself surprised to be giving in three stars. But there is a level on which it is extremely useful. The authors' research for emotional arguments to replace the logical ones they do not make has revealed a large number of concrete examples of injustice done to real, named people under the present system of proescutorial overenthusiasm. While these are reported in the conclusory style I so deplore, they are useful beginnings to my own researches, and they make for splendid talking points. There are people out there to whom the potential for abuse of governmental power is purely theoretical because they have never heard of anyone who actually suffered. Properly used, the examples in this book can raise awareness that not only can government get out of hand, but it has. No one who learns of the Depression-scarred doctor who kept cash in his shoeboxes, and had it seized when he tried to give it to charity, will look at drug forfeiture the same way again. No one who hears of the pizza restaurant forced to clean toxic waste out of a landfill because some of its boxes were found in it will be an unequivocal supporter of the Superfund. For all its many faults, The Tyranny of Good Intentions will raise the level of skepticism about government power, and for this alone it is worth the three stars I give it. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and this book is an inspiration to pay this price.
Rating:
Summary: Give Me Liberty . . . or Give Me Bureaucracy!
Review: Many Americans do not realize that there have been unprecedented inroads into long-established civil liberties in the last 20 years in the United States. The sources of these injustices have been a combination of an irritated electorate, an unchecked Congress siding with a more powerful Executive branch, aggressive use of new theories of prosecution, 'show trials' to appease voters,and the corrupting influence of money and power. Basically, what can happen is that when the whole society agrees that enough is enough, we can cede too much power to the authorities who pursue these forms of deviant behavior. The war against drugs has become a model of that potential for abuse. The Tyranny of Good Intentions is good at noticing these issues, but does an inadequate job of being convincing about the degree and seriousness of the threat. A second weakness is that the book looks at the problem too much from the legal perspective and not enough from the political one. Perhaps the authors should have added someone to their team whose expertise is in the area of political analysis. Basically, this book is designed to preach to the choir, the converted, but will not scare most of those who are very concerned about the problems of drug dealing, income tax evasion, white collar crime, and environmental pollution. The main reason is that the case histories here are a bit too truncated, and the discussions of the cases would have been more convincing if they were more balanced. The points of view of the prosecutors, legislators, and law enforcement officials who are accused by the authors of overreaching are seldom displayed. I graded the book down two stars for these shortcomings. Despite that, I do encourage you to read the book, because you will benefit from the warnings here. The structure of the book is built around providing the reader with a background on English civil liberties, and their bases in legal history. Next, the authors show the overwhelming power of the state versus the individual in the show trial of Bukharin during the Stalinist regime in the USSR. You will later get some eerie echoes from that show trial in hearing about the prosecutions of someU.S. citizens and corporations. Then a series of chapters look at specific examples where traditional civil liberties have been lost. You will also hear a lot about the theory of utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest number should outweigh the rights ofthe few) that Jeremy Bentham expounded, and how that kind of thinking is being employed today. As an attorney, I found myselfdisagreeing with the authors on many of the cases cited as examples of citizen abuse. For example, I see no fault in the prosecution of Microsoft on antitrust charges. But I also found myself agreeing with the authors on many others. Clearly to me, Exxon, Charles Keating, and Michael Milken did not get their just due from the prosecutorial processes. Public opinion weighed too much in the balance in thesecases. The Leona Helmsley case is also a cautionary tale that one should avoid becoming unpopular. That unpopularity can make anindividual an irresistible target for prosecution, and the results can be overwhelming for the individual. The proposed solution will surprise you. "Our constitutional system and its precepts havelost the allegiance of the American elites . . . . Without an intellectual rebirth, a revival of constutionalism, there is no hope for American." The authors despair of Congress reasserting its traditional role or of promoting constitutional values until this happens. If correct, that is a sad state of affairs. I suspectthat the problem is not that severe. Greater publicity about losses of civil liberties can probably turn the tide faster and in a more fundamental way. The cases of the mighty in the book will move some, but the cases of the meek who are crushed will move all. One of the most pernicious legal abuses now are the laws related to drugs. Ifyou are suspected of having aided in drug trafficking, your goods are forfeit. This is true even if you are later found to be innocent of any wrong doing. Only the most wealthy can afford to fight these seizures successfully, and they do not always succeed. Let me give you an example of what a threat this is. This law has been used to seize cash from people who are reluctant to use banks, as well as people who happened to be holding a single piece of paper currency that had come into contact with cocaine. The latter application is quite a problem for many people, because a significant percentage of used fifty and hundred dollar bills have been handled by those who either sell or buy cocaine. The residue stays with the bills for some time from contact with someone's hand, or from rolling the bill and using it as a "snorting" device. So you could end up having your cash and your car seized because you happened to unknowingly have such a tainted bill in your pocket or purse. I hope someone else will write a much better book on this subject. For although this book is flawed, the problems described here are real. After you finishreading this book, let me encourage you to read and listen to newsaccounts differently. Ask yourself if use of legal power has provided for fairness for the defendant of the sort that you would like to have for yourself and your family. If it does not, write your newspaper,your congressperson, your senator, and anyone else you can think ofwho is influential. Also consider joining organizations that support civil liberties of a traditional sort. If we all speak up, a consensus against these abuses will be formed, and the abuses will recede.
Rating: 
Summary: Ignorance
Review: The Civil War ended over 150 years ago. Civil rights are now a matter of law. 911 shows us the results of this type of intolerance. Why do these authors attempt to perpetuate a "racial" orientation that can no longer be supported? The South no longer "lives"; it is time to move into the 21st century.
Rating:
Summary: You Think Prosecutors Are After Criminals. Think Again!
Review: This rather unassuming book is one of great import. When the same book is endorsed by Milton Friedman and Alan Dershowitz on the same page, it is one not to be taken lightly.
The book started off with the cornerstone pieces of the Anglo-Saxon law - mens rea (criminal intent), non-retroactiveness of new laws, presumption of innocence until proven guilty, sanctity of attorney-client privilege, property rights, and went on to cite laws and legal cases, some of the very high-profile, that helped chip away the these cornerstone pieces and made the law no longer a guarantor of constitutional rights. This dangerous practice of eroding the "Right of the Englishman" is, according to the authors, a result of well-intended, but poorly thought-out legislation and over zealous government prosecutors, who were driven by political ambition, pressure of revenue and even personal enrichment. It is frightening development. It is hard to believe that this country has allowed its cherished legal system to deteriorate to one that, in essence, is no different than that of a police state - one that prosecutors could at will use the full force of the government to break any individual, sometimes by threats, lies and confiscations. Most people will dismiss this notion as alarmist, until they read what this book has explained and chronicled. After 9/11, the Ashcroft regime seeks to greatly enlarge federal powers to fight terrorism, but that inevitably be at the expense of our cherished civil liberty. We should all be vigilant about what is being done. History has taught us that some really bad things that are done with good intentions are very, very hard to undo. Reading this book forces me to revise my opinion on those who had been vilified by the prosecutors and the media, like Charles Keating, Jr. Leona Hemsley and Michael Milken; as well it dims the much-heralded Rudolph Giuliani legacy. It also reconfirms that damages done by FDR's New Deal - the emergence of the administrative state, and his Court-packing initiative, not to speak of the unleashing of the welfare state. The presentation of the book, unfortunately, seems to lack clarity and force, and the organization is somewhat loose. There are anecdotes abound, but they are not backed by statistics, and the reader has no idea if the outrageous prosecutorial excesses are 10% of the cases, 1%, or less. The book is otherwise very readable. I will recommend this book if only for the seriousness of the subject matter.
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