I listen regularly to Jason Lewis’s radio show because of his cogent, well-prepared insights that you won’t hear anyplace else. For anyone who has heard Jason on his national radio show, listened to him when he substituted for Rush Limbaugh, or read his opinion pieces in places such as the Wall Street Journal, you know what I am talking about. This book is a genuine treat. The book continues Jason’s trademark style by providing a real education, in this case on why “states’ rights” has been so important to America’s success and why the nationalization of decisions threatens American’s freedom.
This book couldn’t be more timely. With the federal government quickly taking over ever more aspects of our lives, the last vestiges of individual choice seem to be disappearing. Local citizens, who know to pick the rules that best serve their interests, instead face thousands of federal criminal statutes governing everything from the size of your toilet tank, the water pressure in your shower, and what your children can study in school. One of the remarkable benefits of the American experiment is that permitting states to make decisions in the past has allowed Americans to learn from the mistakes of others.
In the past, if states that made bad decisions were unwilling to reconsider them, Americans had the ability to move to other states. If healthcare regulations lowered the quality of healthcare, and raised costs enough, Americans could move to a state with more acceptable options. We are quickly losing not only this important way of evaluating laws, but we have also lost our freedom to move away from bad government decisions.
Jason Lewis has the rare knack for putting ideas across in a jargon-free commonsense way. This concise and carefully written book provides the highlights of the legal history of the relationship between the states and the federal government. And he takes on the hard issues in a way that is thoughtful, not ideological.
America has moved far from the constitutional protections that were originally set up to protect freedom. Jason not only explains where we are and how we got here; he also offers a way out of the constitutional malaise the nation finds itself in today. If his viewpoint seems radical, it’s only because we have drifted so far from the limited government tradition that the author attempts to reclaim.
Read this book and you’ll have a much greater understanding of just how fragile the republic has become. You will also, assuming Lewis’ prescription is followed, have much-needed hope for the future.
— John Lott, PhD, economist and senior research scientist at University of Maryland, and author of five books including Freedomnomics, The Bias Against Guns, and More Guns, Less Crime