Charles Murray's books are reliably excellent, By the People being no exception. He does his research thoroughly, drawing from superb, highly applicable sources, he intelligently and searchingly analyzes the data and the views and analyses of others, then he synthesizes his own meanings and implications. Often quite influentially. And he communicates them with clear, graceful, jargon-free prose within very rational structures. Perhaps best known, his 1984 Losing Ground was much read and discussed, considered by many to have led to the welfare reform a decade later. One can hope this book sinks in with many as well, getting a broad swath to see the simple logic and plain good sense of reigning in the administrative state and returning to government and individual liberties per the US Constitution.

By the People is a critique of the administrative state, what Murray considers better called the regulatory state, a term also used by another great Libertarian, Richard Epstein, in his superb and widely read Simple Rules for a Complex World. Murray outlines the regulatory state's essential characteristics, provides a synoptic history, and explains why these characteristics are constitutionally illegitimate, unreasonable and unnecessarily burdensome, showing how they are used to abuse ordinary people, businesses and organizations, and violate our natural rights which are enshrined in the Constitution, their protection supposedly being the primary purpose of our government. He then suggests a way to effectively oppose and undermine the regulatory state, causing enough trouble for the troublemakers and their anti-constitutional systems that, he believes, citizens, businesses and other organizations can succeed at opposing the abuse, making the abuse too much work with too little reward for the abusive bureaucrats.

Murray describes why he believes things are becoming such that success is possible. With this important and quite substantial first step being a key aspect of a non-violent counter-revolution to return to robust, valid application of the US Constitution after over a century of its continuously ongoing and expanding destruction by Progressives, i.e., a return to limited government with three strictly separate federal branches, each exercising only its enumerated powers with no others exercising them; with federalism, i. e., non-enumerated powers (and those few specifically enumerated for the states) again reserved to the people and their states; and with the people once again having robust and protected rights to life, liberty, and property, absent unreasonable government interference in our lives and in our economy, including the absence of government coercion and of illegitimate seizure or transfer of property or rights. Murray also nicely summarizes the foolish errors of Progressive thought that led to the mess and has sustained it, showing how those errors are destructive and are mindless nonsense. And he briefly describes how the "Madisonian" ideas in the Constitution are reasonable, valid, and have been fruitful when applied.

Important in his critique and discussion are several key features of contemporary America that have supported the expansion and continuation of the regulatory state: the essential lawlessness of the current legal system; the "extralegal state within the state" (primarily regulatory administrative agencies within the federal executive, some nominally and anti-constitutionally "independent" of oversight by the elected PresIdent, which promulgate their own regulatory laws, also anti-constitutionally but with winks and nods from both parties in Congress [happy to have less work, more time for fundraising, and no political accountabity for the pseudo-legislation, just as the unelected pseudo-legislators have none]), and which have their own anti-constitutional judiciaries (violations of both separation of powers and of numerous rights required for defendants and plaintiffs such as jury trials, ability to produce evidence, be told sources of evidence, cross-examine); what he convincingly calls our systemically corrupt political system (largely a pay to play system); and what he calls the institutional sclerosis characteristic of advanced democracy. The one legal specific I'll mention is deference to adminstrative agency interpretations of their own pseudo-legislation required by federal courts including the Supreme Court, particularly per the especially odious Chevron deference doctrine.

The solution depends on widespread civil disobedience in the many cases that, for virtually any sane person of virtually any political persuasion, are obviously abusive and cannot conceivably have moral justification. With support for those accused, warned/threatened, dragged into court, from "Madasonian" legal defense fund organizations who will defend the harassed, pay their fines, spread word about unreasonable government abuse of those causing no harm and about arbitrary and capricious government abuses, build case records and use them, and find and target weak spots in the regulatory state. Leading to a "No Harm, No Foul" regulatory regime rather than the current Mafia-like regime that shakes down essentially law-abiding citizens and businesses and threatens to destroy them financially and otherwise, and waste many of their years, if they don't comply with generally random, often marginally applicable and almost always ludicrous diktats.

So in this step one, the regulatory bureaucrats get used to the idea that it is too much trouble to target people in ways that are not clearly defensible and represent principles the general public can support; the general public gets better educated about the regulatory state; people, businesses and organizations get used to the idea that it can be worth it to oppose regulatory agencies; courts see that the people do not accept unreasonable regulatory agency abuse, will fight it and will get effective help; and, hopefully, the agencies and courts adopt a "No Harm, No Foul" approach. With the stage then set for step two in the return to Constitutional government and liberties.
( )

Not as good as Coming Apart, but still a very good treatise on the undemocratic Administrative State, which is getting a great deal of attention as Donald Trump tries to cut it back in material ways. Murray does not believe that a material cutback is possible under the current system. We'll see if Trump can be successful. ( )

Murray offers a way to buck the regulatory state through civil disobedience.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)

“Per the American project I mean the continuing effort, begun with the founding, to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals, families, and communities to live their lives as they see fit as long as they accord the same freedom to everyone else, with government safeguarding a peaceful setting for those endeavors but otherwise standing aside.

When I say that we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it, I mean that only remnants remain, and they are reserved for a lucky few. The largest remnant is that able, industrious people can still get ahead in today’s America regardless of their origins. That’s good, but the people who become successful as measured by the metrics of money, power, and celebrity make up a small minority of the whole: an elite.

That’s exactly what the American project was not supposed to be. America and its founding broke with history. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness were no longer to be privileges for a few but the inalienable rights of all. All Americans, high and low, were to be let free to live their lives as they see fit (p. xiii).”

Madison, in Federalist #41 limited the federal government’s power to tax and spend in Article 1 Section 8. The general welfare was not open ended.

Unfortunately, the Founder’s vision lost out to FDR and the Progressives. Madison and his theory of government was overthrown in the 1930s by Hamilton’s, the most radical of the founders, in the Helvering v. Davis constitutional case over Social Security. Justice Benjamin Cardozo stated:

“Congress may spend money in aid of the “general welfare.” There have been great statesman in our history who have stood for other views. We will not resurrect the contest. It is now settled by decision. The conception of the spending power advocated by Hamilton and strongly reinforced by Story has prevailed over that of Madison, which has not been lacking in adherents (p. 19).”

The Madison Fund, according to Murray, should be set up for civil disobedience in those cases where the government should really have the attitude of no harm no foul as in basketball. Unfortunately, I think it would be harder to raise money for a Fund such as this and have not found convincing support for it in any case. I had hoped to find some discussion of the Convention of States as a potential fix for the sclerotic federal government but such is not the case. Murray does not deal with a convention.

He does however provide a historically accurate point about the cultural diversity that existed at the founding of the American republic. Diversity was documented in David Hackett Fischer’s, Albion’s Seed. There were four main groups of diversity: religion was culturally divisive (p. 193).

I can appreciate the author’s diagnosis of the problem I have reservations about his civil disobedience solution to problems confronting America.

Reviews:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H4voroBfcrU

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/05/06/the-case-for-conser...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/books/review/george-packer-reviews-charles-mu...

http://www.libertylawsite.org/book-review/why-charles-murrays-attack-on-the-regu...