What It Means to Be a Libertarian A Personal Interpretation

by MURRAY, CHARLES

• ISBN13: 9780767900393
• ISBN10: 0767900391
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-12-29
• Publisher: Crown

Summary

Charles Murray believes that America's founders had it right--strict limits on the power of the central government and strict protection of the individual are the keys to a genuinely free society. InWhat It Means to Be a Libertarian,he proposes a government reduced to the barest essentials: an executive branch consisting only of the White House and trimmed-down departments of state, defense, justice, and environment protection; a Congress so limited in power that it meets only a few months each year; and a federal code stripped of all but a handful of regulations. Combining the tenets of classical Libertarian philosophy with his own highly-original, always provocative thinking, Murray shows why less government advances individual happiness and promotes more vital communities and a richer culture. By applying the truths our founders held to be self-evident to today's most urgent social and political problems, he creates a clear, workable vision for the future.

Author Biography

Charles Murray is the author of two of the most widely debated and influential social policy books in recent decades, <i>Losing Ground: American Society Policy 1950-1980</i> and, with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, <i>The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.</i> The Bradley Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Murray lives with his family near Washington, D.C.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
The Framework	p. 1
Principles	p. 3
The Public Good	p. 11
The Pursuit of Happiness	p. 18
An Image of Limited Government	p. 36
How Would it Work?	p. 45
The Trendline Test	p. 47
Choosing to Do It Ourselves	p. 57
Removing Government from Economic Life	p. 60
Tolerance and Discrimination	p. 79
Permitting Revolutions in Education and Health Care	p. 90
Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll	p. 102
Protecting the Environment	p. 114
Removing Government from Civil Life	p. 124
Loose Ends	p. 139
Is it Possible?	p. 141
Gloom and Hope	p. 143
Government As "Them"	p. 144
The Demand to Be Left Alone	p. 149
Lived Freedom	p. 157
The Stuff of Life	p. 163
Conclusion	p. 169
Sources and Acknowledgments	p. 171
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the American Founders created a society based on the belief that human happiness is intimately connected with personal freedom and responsibility. The twin pillars of the system they created were limits on the power of the central government and protection of individual rights.

A few people, of whom I am one, think that the Founders' insights are as true today as they were two centuries ago. We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government. Limited government means a very small one, shorn of almost all the apparatus we have come to take for granted during the last sixty years.

Most people are baffled by such a view. Don't we realize that this is postindustrial America, not Jefferson's agrarian society? Don't we realize that without big government millions of the elderly would be destitute, corporations would destroy the environment, and employers would be free once more to exploit their workers? Where do we suppose blacks would be if it weren't for the government? Women? Haven't we noticed that America has huge social problems that aren't going to be dealt with unless the government does something about them?

This book tries to explain how we can believe that the less government, the better. Why a society run on the principles of limited government would advance human happiness. How such a society would lead to greater individual fulfillment, more vital communities, a richer culture. Why such a society would contain fewer poor people, fewer neglected children, fewer criminals. How such a society would not abandon the less fortunate but would care for them better than does the society we have now.

Many books address the historical, economic, sociological, philosophical, and constitutional issues raised is pages. A bibliographic essay at the end of the book points you to some of the basic sources, but the book you are about to read contains no footnotes. It has no tables and but a single graph. My purpose is not to provide proofs but to explain a way of looking at the world.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Excerpted from What It Means to Be a Libertarian by Charles Murray
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.