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Home >  Books >  What It Means to Be a Libertarian
What It Means to Be a Libertarian
Print Mail
A Personal Interpretation
By Charles Murray
Posted: Saturday, January 1, 2000
What It Means to Be a Libertarian
Dimensions: 8.5'' x 5.75''
191 pages
Broadway Books  (New York)
Publication Date: January 1997
Paperback
ISBN: 0767900391
Hardcover
ISBN: 0553069284

For the Legions of Americans expressing or exploring libertarian beliefs, Charles Murray has created a radical, compassionate blueprint for solving today's most urgent social and political problems.

Murray believes that America's founders had it right--that strict limits on the power of the central government and strict protection of the individual are the keys to a genuinely free society. In What 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 environmental 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 provocative thinking, Murray shows why less government advances individual happiness and promotes more vital communities and a richer culture.

Charles Murray is the author of Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, and, with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, the controversial national bestseller, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The Bradley Fellow at AEI, Murray lives with his family near Washington, D.C.



Table of Contents

Introduction

  • Part I: The Framework
  • Part II: How Would It Work?
  • Part III: Is It Possible?

Sources and Acknowledgments

Related Links
Review in the Washington Post
Review in the Washington Times
Review in Commentary
Review in Roll Call
Review in the Weekly Standard
Coverage in the AEI Newsletter
Order from Barnes and Noble
Review in the Wall Street Journal


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