By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
Charles Murray
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0385346530
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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With the Court’s ruling in Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell (290 U.S. 398) that a Minnesota law retroactively changing the terms of existing mortgages was constitutional. The Minnesota legislature appeared to have obviously impaired the obligation of contracts with a law that authorized the retroactive extension of the time during which mortgagers could redeem their mortgages from foreclosure. But how could anyone object to using the power of the state to help farmers trying to.
The Impact of Regulatory Change.” Election Law Journal 14 (1): 27–44. Carpenter, Dick M., Lisa Knepper, and John K. Ross. 2012. License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing. Arlington, VA: Institute for Justice. Chernow, Ron. 2004. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin. Clarke, Arthur C. 1962. Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible. 1973 ed. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Coase, Ronald H. 1960. “The Problem of Social Cost.” Journal of Law.
Because it magnified the power of special interests many times over. When individuals could contribute as much as they wanted to a campaign, a member of Congress might have a few large contributors whom he wanted to keep happy. But keeping them happy usually amounted to voting the way that the candidate’s publicly held political positions had led big contributors to believe he would vote. Yes, a big contributor in business X might expect the right vote on a bill directly affecting business X, but.
Court can do much to push that process along. But the only way to get the justices to do that is by giving them no alternative. That’s what the pressure brought on the courts by the defense funds might accomplish: force the courts to reform or be overwhelmed. What are the odds of this scenario, or something like it, actually happening? Probably small. But reality has a way of ultimately forcing confrontations. Herb Stein’s law is true: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”11 Two.
Social-insurance taxes (Social Security and Medicare), corporate taxes, and “other.” Income taxes and social-insurance taxes account for 82 percent of the total. The top quartile of earners are responsible for shouldering around three-quarters of that 82 percent—and they will be responsible for shouldering about the same proportion of the increased $2.5 trillion in spending that the CBO projects for 2024.20 The IRS reports on the percentage of income taxes paid by different income groups get a.