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Review of "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission" by Charles Murray
From the tea party to Occupy Wall Street to #BlackLivesMatter, America has spent much of this young century questioning its premises. And as the battles over federal spending, economic inequality and racial injustice continue,
linkCharles Murray comes forward to identify another threat to the nation’s purpose and self-image: the rise of the regulatory state, a rapacious shadow government that has left us “at the end of the American project as the founders intended it.”
Murray, a political scientist and professional controversy magnet at the American Enterprise Institute, is known for
link“Losing Ground,” which deemed the welfare state a failure;
link“The Bell Curve,” which linked intelligence, race and socioeconomic outcomes; and
link“Coming Apart,” which declared that white America is torn by class and values. In
link“By the People,” he not only offers a bleak assessment of the health of American democracy but — and here is where things get interesting — calls for civil disobedience aimed at rehabilitating it.
Some may think of civil disobedience as a tactic employed mainly in the service of liberal causes — think civil rights or antiwar efforts — but Murray exhorts conservatives to issue “a declaration of limited resistance to the existing government,” on the grounds that it has lost legitimacy. If
link“Atlas Shrugged” had been written by a despondent social scientist instead of a dyspeptic novelist, it would read a lot like “By the People.”...
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By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission - Publisher: Crown Forum (May 12, 2015) Available at Amazon
The American way of life, built on individual liberty and limited government, is on life support.
American freedom is being gutted. Whether we are trying to run a business, practice a vocation, raise our families, cooperate with our neighbors, or follow our religious beliefs, we run afoul of the government—not because we are doing anything wrong but because the government has decided it knows better. When we object, that government can and does tell us, “Try to fight this, and we’ll ruin you.”
In this provocative book, acclaimed social scientist and bestselling author Charles Murray shows us why we can no longer hope to roll back the power of the federal government through the normal political process. The Constitution is broken in ways that cannot be fixed even by a sympathetic Supreme Court. Our legal system is increasingly lawless, unmoored from traditional ideas of “the rule of law.” The legislative process has become systemically corrupt no matter which party is in control.
But there’s good news beyond the Beltway. Technology is siphoning power from sclerotic government agencies and putting it in the hands of individuals and communities. The rediversification of American culture is making local freedom attractive to liberals as well as conservatives. People across the political spectrum are increasingly alienated from a regulatory state that nakedly serves its own interests rather than those of ordinary Americans.
The even better news is that federal government has a fatal weakness: It can get away with its thousands of laws and regulations only if the overwhelming majority of Americans voluntarily comply with them. Murray describes how civil disobedience backstopped by legal defense funds can make large portions of the 180,000-page Federal Code of Regulations unenforceable, through a targeted program that identifies regulations that arbitrarily and capriciously tell us what to do. Americans have it within their power to make the federal government an insurable hazard like hurricanes and floods, leaving us once again free to live our lives as we see fit.
By the People’s hopeful message is that rebuilding our traditional freedoms does not require electing a right-thinking Congress or president, nor does it require five right-thinking justices on the Supreme Court. It can be done by we the people, using America’s unique civil society to put government back in its proper box.
