By the People

Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

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I am something of a Charles Murray fan. I think his 1988 book In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government remains the best introduction to libertarian philosophy I've seen. He's been a consistent advocate of the values I most appreciate: personal responsibility, humane individualism, mutual respect, and so on. I buy his books automatically.

By the People is a diagnosis and possible remedy of major flaws in modern American society and our government, combining history, sociology, and legal analysis. Murray considers the "Madisonian" vision of the founding fathers, and shows how that vision has been trashed over the past 8 decades or so. (Not that flaws didn't appear earlier with Wilsonian "progressivism".) Our legal system is a thick morass of vague rules that a sufficiently zealous prosecutor can use to make his chosen targets miserable. Ditto for essentially unregulated regulatory agencies. Our politics are systematically corrupt with both parties more than willing to play the "public choice" game, doing big favors for well-connected constituents, spreading the costs out to the unaware masses.

What to do? Murray suggests strategic civil disobedience, fueled by the (so far) imaginary "Madison Fund", designed to defend the flouters of unjust laws and stupid regulations. The theory: make it expensive for Big Government to force its pet policies down the throats of the citizenry. Essentially, he hopes, the most outrageous legal bullying will become totally impractical.

Murray describes why he thinks this might be a winning strategy, in his usual accessible prose. I hope he's correct about that.


Last Modified 2024-01-26 4:28 PM EDT