From the tea party to Occupy Wall Street to #BlackLivesMatter, America has spent much of this young century questioning its premises. And as the battles over federal spending, economic inequality and racial injustice continue, Charles Murray comes forward to identify another threat to the nation’s purpose and self-image: the rise of the regulatory state, a rapacious shadow government that has left us “at the end of the American project as the founders intended it.”

Murray, a political scientist and professional controversy magnet at the American Enterprise Institute, is known for “Losing Ground,” which deemed the welfare state a failure; “The Bell Curve,” which linked intelligence, race and socioeconomic outcomes; and “Coming Apart,” which declared that white America is torn by class and values. In “By the People,” he not only offers a bleak assessment of the health of American democracy but — and here is where things get interesting — calls for civil disobedience aimed at rehabilitating it.

Source: Charles Murray, http://www.washingtonpost.com