Liberty in Troubled Times: A Libertarian Guide to Laws, Politics and Society in a Terrorized World

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Terrorism. The Patriot Act. Political Protest. The 1st Amendment. The 4th Amendment. Liberals. Conservatives. None of these terms mean what they did before 9/11. The best lesson from history -- even America's own -- is to make sure those terrorist attacks have the smallest impact possible on American values and lifestyle. But political opportunists from both the left and right can't resist exploiting the fears that everyone had in the wake of the attacks. As a result, people and important principals of freedom and liberty are suffering. In this book, author James Walsh explains that the 9/11 attacks were much less dangerous to America and Americans than the political maneuvering that has followed. "Some of this has been cynicism at its deepest," Walsh writes. "But cynicism isn't part of the American persona. Liberty is. And pragmatism is. With the right support, those values will prevail against temporary weakness like the Patriot Act or knee-jerk self-loathing." Walsh uses specific topics -- freedom of speech, church-and-state separation, the right to bear arms, property rights, privacy -- to construct a libertarian antidote to the weakness and cynicism. He gives the reader tools for considering political risks in a way that emphasizes classical American values. And these classical American values aren't the pabulum that you hear from scripted politicians. Finally, Liberty in Troubled Times argues that the familiar America political struggle between liberal and conservative has been replaced by a new struggle: Between statist and libertarian. Walsh notes: This new struggle will make a hash of the old one. Many conservatives are statists...so are most liberals. Being a true -- a consistent -- libertarian is hard. But it's the brightest hope for best of American idealism. It always has been.

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