Book Review
When Politicians Won’t Act

When Politicians Won’t Act

Sociological author Charles Murray now believes that U.S. politicians and the political system are so corrupted that elections won’t fix things, so he offers a different path. ...
James Heiser
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, by Charles Murray, New York: Crown Forum, 2015, 319 pages, hardcover.

Is it already too late to save the American Republic? This is one of the central questions confronting readers in Charles Murray’s new book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission. The author begins with the declaration: “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 open for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation.” Murray dedicates the first third of the book to attempting to substantiate the first of these propositions, and the evidence that he presents to readers is a well-documented record of institutional corruption, perversion of the Constitution, and the establishment of a seemingly irresistible bureaucratic leviathan that is at war not only with the liberties of the American people, but is even at war with the most basic principles of common sense. By the People is often a painful book to read, but for traditional conservatives, it is a book that needs to be read for its summary of the distance the regulatory regime has moved day-to-day American life away from that envisioned by the founding fathers and established in the federal Constitution.

Murray documents the rise of a Progressive ideology bent on reshaping the Republic by means of regulation, and he sets forth one approach to countering that Progressive agenda, and possibly overthrowing many of the victories that have already been won by opponents of the Constitution.

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