Brian Schnack’s Reviews > The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America > Status Update

“There is a reason why there's a revolution named after the Velvet Underground, a pariah even in the Free World, and none after Van Cliburn, the classical pianist pushed endlessly on American audiences as the high-cultural equivalent of Russian piano masters.”

Each and every one of us has been authoring a personal declaration of independence, a statement about how we want to be free to live and love, to buy and sell, to enter and exit. Those choices define our time on the planet, and they are too important to leave to other people, especially politicians whose insight is every bit as suspect as their motives.

Despite their demonstrated incompetence, our elected leaders at all levels are calling for more centralization and more power to solve the problems they created, even as Americans are fleeing their traditional masters in every other sphere and living lives that are more decentralized than ever.

It is well past time for politics to catch up with the American people.

We know that things are getting better. But to move beyond a stultifying political duopoly, we need (1) to recognize all that is great and good happening around us and (2) to replace attempts to control our economic and social freedom with a decentralized governing structure that devolves power to the people, who ultimately bear responsibility for and the costs of their own decisions.

“Yet, everything in our political discourse pushes us toward the worst sort of existence bias. Still, change is not only possible but constantly occurring in ways that are rarely acknowledged or fully appreciated.”