What It Means to Be a Libertarian A Personal Interpretation [Paperback]

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