The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America

by Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch

Overview

Everywhere in America, the forces of digitization, innovation, and personalization are expanding our options and bettering the way we live. Everywhere, that is, except in our politics. There we are held hostage to an eighteenth century system, dominated by two political parties whose ever-more-polarized rhetorical positions mask a mutual interest in maintaining a stranglehold on power.

The Declaration of Independents is a compelling and extremely entertaining manifesto on behalf of a system better suited to the future--one structured by the essential libertarian principles of free minds and free markets. Gillespie and Welch profile libertarian innovators, identify the villains propping up the ancien regime, and take aim at do-something government policies that hurt most of those they claim to protect. Their vision will resonate with a wide swath of frustrated citizens and young voters, born after the Cold War's end, to whom old tribal allegiances, prejudices, and hang-ups about everything from hearing a foreign language on the street to gay marriage to drug use simply do not make sense.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610391009
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	06/26/2012
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	946,240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Nick Gillespie is the editor-in-chief of the websites Reason.tv and Reason.com and Matt Welch heads up the print edition of Reason, which since 1968 has been "a kick-ass, no-holds-barred political magazine" (New York Post) whose "refusal to carry water for the Republicans or Democrats is deeply refreshing in this age of partisan bickering" (Folio).

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Paperback Edition xi

Prologue: Pursuing Happiness, Not Politics xix

Part I The End of the World as You Know It

1 Beyond Duopoly 3

2 The Pit and the Pendulum 21

3 The Libertarian Moment 43

Part II The Democratization of Just About Everything, or Case Studies in Making Life Richer, Weirder, and Better

4 Keep on Rockin' in the Free World 67

5 You Are Now Free to Move About the Country 89

6 The Disorganization Man (and Woman) 105

7 Rise of the Mutants 127

8 We the Media 143

Part III Operational it Baby!

9 We Are So Out of Money 165

10 Your Mind, Your Health, and Your Retirement Are Terrible Things to Waste 189

11 The Permanent Nongoverning Minority 207

Epilogue: The Future's So Bright 225

Acknowledgments 233

Notes and Sources 235

Index 249

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus, May 5, 2011

"An enthusiastic, entertaining libertarian critique of American politics, brimming with derision for the status quo and optimism for the future and confident of the right direction."

Marginal Revolution, May 20, 2011

"This is the up-to-date statement of libertarianism. Not warmed-over right-wing politics, but real, true-blooded libertarianism in the sense of loving liberty and wanting to find a new path toward human flourishing."

Washington Examiner, June 26, 2011

"An important book and lively read."

Forbes.com, July 4, 2011

"A fun and ultimately positive look at how anti-authoritarianism, entrepreneurship and independence have led to one revolution after another in the way we think about the world, the products we buy, and the jobs we end up getting (or creating for ourselves).... It's a good book, a well-written, easily accessible manifesto on how libertarian ideas and anti-authoritarianism can help change the world, and how they will one way or another, whether we like it or not. Just as importantly, the book is uplifting, optimistic and full of energy."

RealClearPolitics, July 5, 2011

From the Publisher

A call to bring to government the same expansion of personal choice and freedom that has swept other areas of American life, through the application of libertarian principles.

The past four decades have seen an astonishing increase in personal choice and opportunity in commerce and culture. The dominance of a few institutions offering limited options, from Kodak and AT&T to the communist bloc, has been swept away by market forces, withdrawal of government protections and the democratizing torrent of information from the Internet. Government alone has remained largely unaffected, which explains why it is so expensive and unresponsive. So contend former and current Reason editors Gillespie and Welch (McCain: The Myth of a Maverick,2007). In this rambunctious and rambling indictment of contemporary American politics, the authors gleefully tear into the Republican and Democratic parties, arguing that the spectacle of our horse-race politics is meaningless because regardless of what they say about themselves, both parties' actions expose them as spendthrifts in love with unwieldy centralized control. Gillespie and Welch believe this regime is tottering because voters—the "independents" celebrated in the title—increasingly reject party identification and because both parties have together spent the country into bankruptcy. The authors see salvation in a move to more libertarian principles, an independence from politics "in which a majority, however slim, acquires the right to control the lives and property of the minority." However, the authors leave unstated exactly what this means and how this is to be accomplished, beyond exuding a sunny confidence in innovation and markets unconstrained by government controls. When they turn to specific institutions like public education and retirement entitlements, their prescriptions are discouragingly shopworn. Their conjecture that a "nongoverning minority of independents and disaffected party members who come together in swarms to push or block legislation ... [is] the future of American public policy and elections" offers little hope or direction for responsible constitutional government.

An enthusiastic, entertaining libertarian critique of American politics, brimming with derision for the status quo and optimism for the future and confident of the right direction, but disappointingly silent about which roads to take.

Kirkus Reviews