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Freedom Book of the Month
Email List Archive
Freedom Book of the Month for June, 2001:
Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State
by Sheldon Richman, Future of Freedom Foundation 2001, paperback, 150 pp.
Stores and libraries are filled with books examining various aspects of
public policy, and with books expounding total philosophical systems. What
is often missing is the book that examines a particular system, as opposed
to small parts of it, but that concentrates on that system instead of
relegating it to one section in a larger work. Sheldon Richman and the
Future of Freedom Foundation have been filling that niche for many years
now. In "Tethered Citizens," Richman turns his eye toward the demolition of
the welfare state.
The book is an uncompromising libertarian critique of government as parent
and provider. Richman lays out the history and origins of the welfare
state, explores its underlying rationales, and neatly disposes of them,
making the case point by point for repeal of laws that attempt to
"redistribute resources from those who produced them to those who did not."
I have often heard "pure" libertarian ideas characterized as "utopian." As
moral, perhaps, but not practical. The level of detail and practical
argument in Richman's book demonstrates the basic falsity of that
description. Richman thoroughly documents the cost -- in money and
essential liberty -- of the
gargantuan bureaucracies which purport to "help" citizens by confiscating
the product of their labor and disposing of it in ways that the citizens
would not have chosen to themselves.
As with so many of FFF's offerings, "Tethered Citizens" makes a perfect
introduction to the libertarian perspective on the issues. For those of you
who haven't read the FFF editorials published in newspapers around the
nation and the world, or the previous and equally worthy books from the
Foundation's press: you should. They incorporate a perfect mix of genuine
compassion and understanding with practical prescriptions for positive
change, in a way that is accessible to the person who isn't a libertarian
-- or didn't know he was a libertarian.
As Congressman Ron Paul says in the book's forward, "Sheldon Richman has
produced a book that is essential reading for any American wishing to
understand how the welfare state is incompatible with constitutional
government and a free society. Such understanding is the first step toward
reclaiming liberty."
Order "Tethered Citizens" from Laissez Faire Books for $15.95:
http://www.laissezfairebooks.com/product.cfm?op=view&pid=PT8460&aid=FM
Visit the Future of Freedom Foundation:
http://www.fff.org/
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Thomas L. Knapp | "Your genuine action will explain itself, and will
Managing Editor | explain your other genuine actions. Your con-
Free- Market.Net | formity explains nothing."
| --Ralph Waldo Emerson
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