, by the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, by Charles Murray
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, by the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, by Charles Murray
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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 businesses, practice vocations, 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 best-selling 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.
, by the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, by Charles Murray- Amazon Sales Rank: #20376 in Audible
- Published on: 2015-05-12
- Released on: 2015-05-12
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Running time: 729 minutes
Where to Download , by the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, by Charles Murray
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123 of 133 people found the following review helpful. It's Not the Entire Answer, But It's Part of the Answer By H. P. By the People is Charles Murray’s answer to what to do about a regulatory state metastasized and gone mad (if you disagree about that it’s probably best to start elsewhere). And what he recommends is not to act through the traditional democratic channels, but to instead engage in what he calls “systematic civil disobedience.” It meets the dictionary definition, but it is not civil disobedience as we generally think of it, nor is it necessarily that different than some of the pushback against the State already going on, albeit on a larger scale. We’ll get to that.Murray divides By the People into three parts. Part I covers how we got to where “we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it” and why “the normal political process will not rescue us.” Part II outlines the particular sort of civil disobedience that Murray recommends. Part III takes a look at the various reasons, e.g., demographic, cultural, why Murray thinks now is an especially apt time for change. He sees a broad market for what he’s selling and uses the term “Madisonian” throughout to refer to classical liberals, libertarians, and conservatives (and presumably conservatarians) who generally agree that government should be limited. And he is preaching to the choir; this is a call to action, not a call for conversion.Part I breaks down the problem into discrete areas, first describing what went wrong and then making the case as to why it can’t be fixed through the normal democratic process. For example, the chapter titled “A Broken Constitution” starts with a short history of the New Deal Court’s abandonment of a federal government limited to its enumerated powers. It ends by arguing that reversing the key decisions just discussed will never happen. For example, reversing Helvering would require the federal government to “end Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, all welfare programs, all spending on K-12 education” and more. If it were enforced it would throw the country into chaos and the Supreme Court would never do it. Murray also covers lawlessness of the legal system as a whole (due to the huge cost of civil litigation, the abandonment of the requirement of a guilty mind in criminal law, etc.), the extralegal regulatory state, a systematically corrupt legislature (the sort of corruption requiring campaign contributions to get anywhere with legislation), and institutional sclerosis.Part II addresses what to do about it, assuming that Murray is correct that the normal democratic processes will be inadequate. It advocates “systematic civil disobedience.” That civil disobedience, though, mostly means people continuing to do what they did before, invariably running afoul of one regulation or another from time to time, only now with a privately funded legal resistance. That legal resistance would take two forms. The first is a legal defense fund that he calls the Madison Fund, much like a Pacific Legal Foundation or Institute for Justice but on a much larger scale and specifically focused on protecting against government overreach of a certain sort. The second is insurance against government funded by industry groups (this idea doesn’t get as much attention). These would first and foremost “defend ordinary individuals against government overreach, even if it accomplishes nothing else.” But Murray also wants to “make large portions of the Code of Federal Regulations de facto unenforceable.” Murray goes on to spend quite a bit of time on the nuts and bolts, laying out categories of regulations that should not be candidates for civil disobedience and giving principled and practical decision rules for choosing regulations to ignore. Defense against a regulatory action would be both legal and in the public square.Part III is when things fall apart a bit. Which is funny, because Part III is where Murray finally returns to his wheelhouse—social science. He runs through several findings that I take it are to provide support of Murray’s argument that the time is now, but it doesn’t come through forcefully. It’s still wonderful stuff, though. Murray points out that we’ve always been a pluralistic society with at least as much of a cultural gulf among the original four groups that settled America (he owes a lot to and explicitly discusses Albion’s Seed here) as among the various groups in America today. It was the period from the 1950s to the 1970s that was anomalous. He points out that a significant portion of Americans still live in small towns or small cities where local government remains relatively personal, effective, and light (only 28% of Americans live in urban areas of more than 500,000 people). Technology offers new opportunities to evade burdensome, protectionist regulations (Uber is a case study). He adds an argument at the end that the Left should give up on public sector unions, the Right should give up on eliminating transfer payments, and both sides should reject their cultural absolutists (progressives and (some) social conservatives, respectively). In doing so he makes a perceptive, and overlooked, distinction between progressives and left-liberals. There is also a one paragraph description of our “civic religion” that rivals W.J. Cash’s summation of the South in The Mind of the South for nailing the mores of a people in just a few words.I’m not entirely sold, though. Murray very early on asserts that the answer is not electing the right politicians or getting the right judges appointed. But his plan looks less like traditional civil disobedience than it looks like conservative legal activism over the past few decades. His Madison Fund admittedly looks a lot like existing groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Institute for Justice, only on a much larger scale. As in several hundred million dollars a year versus $25 million a year for the existing groups combined. When groups like that are already doing such great work, what is the basis for funding on a much larger scale for a new group? And despite Murray’s dismissal of seeking change through the courts, his plan for the Defense Fund assumes just that. First, a major change in the level of scrutiny courts give enforcement actions is a bigger deal than fighting enforcement actions on an individual level. That kind of change requires first and foremost the sort of intellectual credibility conservative and libertarian attorneys and academics have been building on a number of issues over the past few decades. Murray really seems to be relying on a change in law and not what the term civil disobedience suggests to me, which is to leave the regulations and enforcement options intact but effectively useless because of the scale of violation. Rather than spend time on how things play out if there is no sea change in the law, Murray relies on such a change. That isn’t crazy. Legal positions that were considered crazy by most of the academy, such as the Second Amendment as an individual right and the Commerce Clause having any constraining principle, were resurrected because judges have to show their work and in the law reasoning and principles really do matter. Sackett v. EPA was huge, important win. But it’s a daunting road. The Supreme Court’s most vocal proponent of Chevron deference, after all, is Justice Scalia.Changing the law would require principled argument, but it would also require principled judges. Murray is wrong to dismiss the importance of who is elected president for that reason alone. But perhaps more importantly, the president can have enormous influence over the regulatory state through his veto pen and as head of the executive branch. The institutional sclerosis Murray so vividly paints a picture of is real. But who would argue, when it comes to wrangling the regulatory state, that Reagan was not preferable to both Bush the elder and Bush the younger? Or even that Clinton was preferable to Obama? Public choice principles might suggest any president will be loath to devolve any power from the executive branch, but I think it is feasible because so little of the power of the regulatory state is really at the hands of the president (in stark contrast to our military and foreign policy apparatus). Congress is a lost cause, but the presidency has the potential to counterweight Congress’ inherent foibles in this area as it so often has on trade.Further, I don’t think Murray spends enough time considering the threats of blowback and a regulatory state that proves more entrenched than expected. For example, look at the prohibition of drugs, especially marijuana. The American people have practiced a sort of civil disobedience in that large numbers of Americans ignore drug laws and continue to use drugs. But for decades the federal government’s response was to double down again and again on drug prohibition and to encroach on its citizens’ civil liberties in more and greater ways. The courts facilitated, rather than impeded, this response. Prosecutors and criminal courts found a way to handle huge case loads. States even began to retreat from harsh enforcement of drug laws (again, especially marijuana) without the federal government beating a similar retreat, although this may be beginning to happen (on a related note, Murray commits an egregious error of law in discussing state marijuana decriminalization by suggesting that because the federal government prohibits marijuana, states MUST also prohibit it; this is plainly wrong under current and correct federalism jurisprudence). Murray does mention briefly in his conclusion that the efforts he recommends may “further erode the legitimacy of the federal government.”Murray is also more optimistic about our cultural readiness. He points to our pluralism, noting that cultural pluralism has been the rule in America, not the exception, and he points to the decline of network television. He’s right about that, but I still have my doubts. The rise of the progressive faction on the Left has led to a rather shocking attempt to enforce cultural hegemony. The rise of the Long Tail may actually make things worse, not better, leaving a few dominant media properties without an effective counterweight. I see this seemingly every morning as the morning shows have found something new about which people are outraged. How can we be ready for limited government when parents might get arrested if they let their kids walk home from the park alone?Finally, Murray doesn’t consider the threat of another source of sclerosis. Our enormous wealth. Our government is largely a parasite, but it’s a parasite with a host unmatched in human history—the American economy. When we remain so much richer today than yesterday, how will the problem of a kudzu-like regulatory state ever be sufficiently acute to take real action? Good, after all, is often the enemy of great.But in many ways the above critiques are more a feature than a bug, because the book spurred me to think deeply about the issue. It spurred me to rethink a lot of stuff that I had written off as inevitable. And it spurred me to come back to the basic problem I’ve always wrestled with as a libertarian—how do we get from where we are today to a basically free future? Murray doesn’t have all the answers. But I think he has part of the answer.Disclosure: I received a copy of By the People through NetGalley.
64 of 67 people found the following review helpful. His Big Surprise: The "Madision Fund" and "Systematic Civil Disobedience" By Bassocantor BY THE PEOPLE was a big surprise to me. Dr. Murray presents two major themes in this book: First, "We are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it." Secondly, "Opportunities are opening for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation." The author clarifies that "American project" refers to our country's experiment with minimal government interference. Dr. Murray makes it clear that the book is based on the assumption that limited government is best.Dr. Murray explains that he struggled to find a term to describe people who agree with limited government. At first he thought of using the term "Jeffersonian," but then he settled on the term "Madisonian" instead. His reasoning is that it was Madison, "more than any other individual, midwifed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It was his Constitution that preserved limited government for the first century and a half of America's existence."The first part of BY THE PEOPLE describes how America got into the big government situation. Big changes began around the time of the Great Depression because "Americans, suffering from the Great Depression, weren't interested in constitutional limits on what the federal government could do." A critical event that drastically changed the limitation on the federal government was the 1937 Supreme Court decision ruling on the legality of Social Security (Helvering vs Davis.) This decision opened the path to more intrusive federal regulation.Some of the founding fathers worried about the phrase in the Constitution, "General Welfare." in article 1 section 8, the Constitution says that Congress has the power to provide for "general welfare of the United States." The founders disputed how exactly the term general welfare would be interpreted in future years. Some worried that it could be interpreted to mean anything. James Madison and the other Federalists who defended the Constitution believed that the enumerated powers listed in the constitution would limit the government's power to just those powers explicitly listed. Dr. Murray emphasizes that the debate amongst the founders centered on whether that phrase would give too much power to the federal government, or whether that fear was groundless. Importantly, he clarifies, "None of the leading Federalists in any of the ratified conventions defended the notion that general welfare should be interpreted as conferring authority for Congress to do anything that advance the general welfare. Not even Alexander Hamilton."Dr. Murray asserts that the situation has gone so far that it's not a matter of just putting different judges on the Supreme Court, or winning a few more presidential elections. He explains: "Restoration of limited government is not going to happen by winning presidential elections and getting the right people appointed to the Supreme Court. A majority on the Supreme Court would help significantly at the margins. But the revolution in constitutional jurisprudence has gone too far, with too many consequences." Realistically speaking, there is no way in the world that Social Security, Medicare, and many other federal institutions are going to be dissolved. That just is not going to happen.The big surprise in this book is what the author proposes in Part 2. Dr. Murray proposes a program of "systematic civil disobedience underwritten by privately funded legal resistance to the regulatory state." He envisions a fund, called the "Madison Fund," that would insure individuals against adverse action against them when they fight against regulations. It would be a "privately funded foundation to map terrain and probe defenses while helping ordinary Americans who are trying to cope with the regulatory state."The Madison Fund would have three goals: First defend people who are actually innocent of violating regulations; secondly, defend people who are actually guilty, but make it so expensive to take action against them that the regulatory agency might give up; thirdly, generate tons of publicity on the negative effect of the regulations and harassment on liberties. Dr. Murray gives an example of using the fund. The ADA, American Dental Association, could insure its members against burdensome regulations from the federal government.The author admits that his proposal is a radical tack: "What I am advocating through the defense funds is unquestionably subversive." He admits that the federal government will certainly come after the Madison fund. So, one of the first tasks of the fund will undoubtedly be to defend itself!The latter part of the book suggests there are technical reasons that make limited government more practical today. In particular, the internet and information technology have made information a lot cheaper and more widespread. This would seem to mitigate against burdensome regulations, since the purported misdeed would be more widely known and publicized. This would tend to make the regulations redundant.Dr. Murray explains that in the entire history of the world there has been no experiment like America: "The United States of America from 1789 to the 1930's is the sole example of truly limited government anywhere, at any time." No other country in the entire history of the world started with a theme of limiting the power of government and maximizing individual freedom.The author laments that if America continues down the path of social democracy, as in Europe, it would mean "the loss of a unique way of life grounded in individual freedom. Under the umbrella of individual liberty, America went from a small group on the East coast to the richest and most powerful nation on earth.√ All in all, BY THE PEOPLE is a thoughtful, creative dissertation that aims on restoring the freedom and limited government on which our country was founded. No question--Dr. Murray proposes some controversial ideas, all of which will be severely criticized. It remains to be seen whether a fund such as the Madison Fund will actually come to fruition. In any case, Dr. Murray has presented an ingenious way forward. At the rear of the book, the author provides an extensive Notes section that provides further information on the various points made. There is also an extensive bibliography.Advance copy for review courtesy of NetGalley.
47 of 51 people found the following review helpful. Responding to the out-of-control federal bureaucratic state By Paul Mastin Is it just me, or is Charles Murray getting angrier and more frustrated as he gets older? Murray's new book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission reveals Murray at the end of his rope. This stuff he's been writing about for decades--limiting government, declining societal norms, the welfare class, racial divides--is coming to a head. In By the People, he addresses the out-of-control federal bureaucratic state, offering solutions but with reservations about success.The U.S. federal government has grown beyond anything the founders would ever recognize. "Under Republicans and Democrats alike, the federal government went from nearly invisible in the daily life of ordinary Americans in the 1950s to an omnipresent backdrop today." He paints a bleak picture of the administrative state, and finds that "solutions are beyond the reach of the electoral process and legislative process."In the first several chapters, Murray describes how we got here, a nation of rules, whose rule makers are unaccountable and who frequently impose "arbitrary or capricious" rulings. He compares our system of rules to a Third World kleptocracy, where lobbyists have pay the bribes and legislators shake down donors. It leads to effectual lawlessness and inevitable corruption.Given the corruption of the legislative process, what does that leave? The judicial process, of course. The most substantial section of By the People has Murray calling for civil disobedience, in which people refuse to follow certain types of regulations. He primarily has in mind businesses whose operation is constrained by those "arbitrary and capricious" rules. In order to protect these righteous scofflaws Murray proposes legal defense funds, similar to the Institute for Justice (only on a larger scale) and industry-specific trade associations. When a company or work site is targeted by OSHA or other government agency, they will have a means to defend themselves. Given the number of work sites across the country and the limitations of the regulatory agencies, Murray foresees an eventual concession to a "no harm, no foul," hands-off regulatory atmosphere. He sees these concessions as potentially changing overall attitudes toward the regulatory state. "Once it becomes normal for liberals as well as conservatives to react to stupid regulations with 'This is ridiculous,' the way will have been opened for larger changes."Murray can be simultaneously bleak and wildly optimistic. On the one hand, "The federal government was created with one overriding duty: to allow us to live freely as we see fit. . . . It has betrayed that duty." Yet, he writes, over the next two centuries, "America will do a better job of leaving people free to live their lives as they see fit. . . . There will be too much money and too many technological resources to make today's leviathan government necessary." In the meantime, I really like his proposal for the Madison Fund, the legal defense fund he outlines. If he can get the funding and recruit some good lawyers for it, I think it can have the impact he describes. If he gets busy on this, maybe he will have a role in reining in the bureaucratic state and relieve some of his frustration! More power to ya, Dr. Murray!Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!
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