The twin propositions of this book are that we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it, but that opportunities are opening for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation.
By the American project I mean the continuing effort, begun with the founding, to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals, families, and communities to live their lives as they see fit as long as they accord the same freedom to everyone else, with government safeguarding a peaceful setting for those endeavors but otherwise standing aside.
When I say that we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it, I mean that only remnants remain, and they are reserved for a lucky few. The largest remnant is that able, industrious people can still get ahead in today’s America regardless of their origins. That’s good, but the people who become successful as measured by the metrics of money, power, and celebrity make up a small minority of the whole: an elite.
That’s exactly what the American project was not supposed to be. America at its founding broke with history. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness were no longer to be privileges for a few but the unalienable rights of all. All Americans, high and low, were to be left free to live their lives as they saw fit.
That was the essence of the American promise. For the first century and a half, the nation kept that promise for white Americans. For the last seventy-five of those years, the nation began to make good on it for black Americans. Then the promise was intermingled with other priorities and other agendas. What made America unique first blurred, then faded, and is now almost gone. Part I describes how it happened and my reasons for concluding that the normal political process will not rescue us.
The second proposition of By the People is that opportunities are opening for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation. This hopeful proposition takes two forms. The center of my attention in Part II is how to restore important aspects of American freedom based on this truth: The federal government is genuinely powerful, as it should be, when it comes to tasks such as defending the nation. But when it comes to micromanaging the lives of more than 300 million people, government is the Wizard of Oz: fearsome when its booming voice is directed against any single target, but, when the curtain is pulled aside, revealed as impotent to impose its will in the face of widespread refusal to comply with its rules. Part II describes practical strategies for taking advantage of this weakness, using the resources of the private sector to nullify rules that arbitrarily and capriciously interfere with ordinary people trying to live their lives as they see fit.
Part III takes up a more indefinite but potentially transforming set of possibilities. We are at a peculiarly propitious moment for reshaping the polity. The reasons range from cultural to demographic to fiscal. I believe the openings created by these conditions have the potential to break today’s political logjam, opening the way for reforms that are impossible now.
By the People is written for people who are devoted to limited government. In today’s terminology, that includes classical liberals, libertarians, and many conservatives.
As I got into the book, I discovered that I had to find a label less cumbersome than “people who are devoted to limited government” yet one that almost all of us can live with. My first impulse was to call us Jeffersonians, but Jefferson was well to the libertarian side of the spectrum, and I wanted to include advocates of limited government who think of themselves as conservatives. I settled on Madisonians instead. It was Madison who, 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. Classical liberals, libertarians, and conservatives who love limited government disagree on many things, but not, I think, on this: If we could restore limited government as Madison understood it, all of our agendas would be largely fulfilled.
Because Madisonians are my primary audience, I assume that my readers do not need to be persuaded of the rightness of our cause. Shelves of books have made the theoretical and empirical cases for liberty. By the People focuses on how to rebuild liberty, not on why.
Everyone else is invited to listen in. Progressives who hope America will become like Europe won’t like By the People—I’m highly critical of Wilsonian progressivism. But millions of others who think of themselves as moderate liberals are as attached to America’s heritage as Madisonians are—holding different policy preferences, of course, but ones that fall within our common vision of what has made America exceptional. I assure such readers that they will find here no cheap shots about their points of view. I hope they will enjoy observing a different way of looking at the world. I dare to think they will find a lot to agree with in my description of the problems, and maybe even in some of my solutions.
CHARLES MURRAY
Burkittsville, Maryland
December 16, 2014