cover image Governing Ourselves: How Americans Can Restore Their Freedom

Governing Ourselves: How Americans Can Restore Their Freedom

Harold D. Thomas. Booklocker (www.booklocker.com), $14.95 paper (194p) ISBN 978-1-61434-913-6

Sweeping statements bolstered by opinion rather than research form the backbone of this Tea Party%E2%80%93tinged treatise on the proper role of government in the lives of the citizenry. Thomas begins by enumerating the failures of the federal government, followed by the familiar doomsday scenarios of collapsing currency and foreign domination, before presenting purely fictional case studies of what life would be like if a libertarian utopia emerged post-crash. In this scenario, corporations police themselves, banks operate with transparency and ethics, and children are home-schooled by mothers who don't work. Problematically, the book goes on to utilize these invented case studies as evidence that social programs only foster dependence and laziness, and that regulations do nothing but suppress entrepreneurship. Thomas further claims that trade unions are unnecessary because people can always find other jobs, that unemployment insurance and Social Security simply bail people out of bad life decisions, and that the needy could be cared for by the charity of their community. A chapter on the environment dismisses global climate change. Readers looking for doctrinaire right-wing politics will find it here..