‘By the People’: A Q&A with Charles Murray

Dr. Charles Murray has a new book out May 12 titled “By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.” In it, he explains why we can no longer hope to roll back the power of the federal government through the normal political process — and how we the people can use America’s unique civil society to put government back in its proper place. On May 14th, Murray will sit down to discuss his book at AEI — more details on the event here. Below, he answers a few questions on how regulation got out of control, if there’s any way to reduce it, and whether or not he’s hopeful about the future of Americans’ freedom. Be sure to check out his guide to civil disobedience at the end of the Q&A.

 

In “By the People” you talk about how government has determined it knows how to run our lives better than we do. Some might argue that we have elected officials – presumably because we think they are competent and intelligent — to look after our best interests and we should just let them do their job. How would you respond?

The regulations that are strangling everyday life aren’t created by our elected officials. That’s precisely the problem. Congress has been given permission by the Supreme Court to pass laws with vague, high-minded mandates that are then handed over to regulatory agencies to be implemented through whatever regulations the bureaucrats see fit. We have given de facto legislative power and de jure enforcement power to institutions that are extra-legal in the truest sense of that term. They lie outside the normal rule of law.

You discuss the serious problem of excessive and arbitrary regulation, citing James Madison in Federalist #62: “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” How did regulation get so out of control?

It goes back to that Supreme Court decision I mentioned. The first words of the Constitution after the preamble are “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” But any law requires at least some administrative discretion, so it was accepted early in our history that government agencies could add administrative details to clearly stated legislative goals—“intelligible principles,” as the Supreme Court used to put it. Then, during the 1930s, the Court began to accept broader wording. In 1943, in NBC v. United States, the Supreme Court ignored the requirement for “intelligible principles” and said it was okay for the Federal Communications Commission to make regulations based on whatever “public convenience, interest, or necessity” requires. It was a declaration of independence for the regulatory state.

Is there any way to reduce this mammoth regulatory system, or should we just focus on keeping it from growing any further?

I have two chapters explaining why rolling back the regulatory system through the normal political process will never happen. It’s not just improbable but impossible. The only way to reduce government power is through civil disobedience—just ignoring pointless, stupid, or tyrannical regulations.

You talk about establishing a private counterweight to government – which you call the Madison Fund. Can you explain how the Madison Fund would operate and what exactly its role would be?

The Madison Fund would be the vehicle that allows ordinary citizens to ignore pointless, stupid, or tyrannical regulations by overloading the enforcement capability of the government. It would mount determined, prolonged litigation of violations of such regulations, including violations where the defendant is technically guilty. Obviously, it’s not as simple as that—I take many pages describing the criteria for deciding what regulations may be ignored and procedural issues. But the main point is this: Once the Madison Fund establishes its credibility, it won’t have to litigate thousands of cases. Just the announcement that the Fund is taking up a citizen’s defense will force the regulatory agency to ask whether it’s worth it, when the violation of the regulation didn’t actually harm anyone or anything.

Someone I know working in a government agency in DC ran into a situation you describe in your book – namely, a system that fosters poor performance with employees making very high wages that are almost impossible to fire. At this agency, employees routinely take several hour long lunches, arriving hours late to work and leaving early, and complain about how things aren’t accomplished because they are understaffed. Is there any way to remedy such an ineffective and inefficient system?

This kind of problem should be fixable through the normal political process—but it isn’t if the government employees are unionized. The public employees’ unions are so powerful that the mayor and city council owe their elections to the unions. The key to better government functioning at every level is prohibition of unions of public employees, but that’s something that is unlikely to happen any time soon.

In the future, “there will be too much money and too many technological resources to make today’s leviathan government necessary,” you predict. Wouldn’t more money and technology bring about more oversight by the government, resulting in its expansion?

When it comes to exploitation of the new technology, I’m betting that the private sector’s guys will beat the government’s guys. I grant you that NSA has some extremely sophisticated capabilities. But it’s also true that Edward Snowden was able to throw a large monkey-wrench into their work. And once you get away from the national security/intelligence/defense world into the domestic agencies, you’re looking at pretty mediocre capabilities within the government. Even for critically important functions like air traffic control, the government is usually a generation or two behind the IT capabilities of the private sector.

How optimistic are you about the future of Americans’ individual freedom?

Surprisingly optimistic. In the book, I mean it when I compare the federal government to the Wizard of Oz. When its booming voice is directed against any of us individually, the government is really scary. But it cannot possibly enforce its 175,000 pages of regulations in the face of widespread noncompliance. And when a resource like the Madison Fund takes up a citizen’s defense, it is not going up against a team of top-notch investigators and lawyers, but against a few bureaucrats who just want to get through their daily eight hours with as little hassle as possible. It’s actually pretty easy to threaten the government with more hassle than it is willing to accept. Or so I hope and believe. So far, I’m encountering so much enthusiasm for starting a Madison Fund that we may actually have a chance to find out.

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