Freedom Book of the Month for June, 2001:

Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State
by Sheldon Richman, Future of Freedom Foundation 2001, paperback, 150 pp.

Stores and libraries are filled with books examining various aspects of public policy, and with books expounding total philosophical systems. What is often missing is the book that examines a particular system, as opposed to small parts of it, but that concentrates on that system instead of relegating it to one section in a larger work. Sheldon Richman and the Future of Freedom Foundation have been filling that niche for many years now. In "Tethered Citizens," Richman turns his eye toward the demolition of the welfare state.

The book is an uncompromising libertarian critique of government as parent and provider. Richman lays out the history and origins of the welfare state, explores its underlying rationales, and neatly disposes of them, making the case point by point for repeal of laws that attempt to "redistribute resources from those who produced them to those who did not."

I have often heard "pure" libertarian ideas characterized as "utopian." As moral, perhaps, but not practical. The level of detail and practical argument in Richman's book demonstrates the basic falsity of that description. Richman thoroughly documents the cost -- in money and essential liberty -- of the gargantuan bureaucracies which purport to "help" citizens by confiscating the product of their labor and disposing of it in ways that the citizens would not have chosen to themselves.

As with so many of FFF's offerings, "Tethered Citizens" makes a perfect introduction to the libertarian perspective on the issues. For those of you who haven't read the FFF editorials published in newspapers around the nation and the world, or the previous and equally worthy books from the Foundation's press: you should. They incorporate a perfect mix of genuine compassion and understanding with practical prescriptions for positive change, in a way that is accessible to the person who isn't a libertarian -- or didn't know he was a libertarian.

As Congressman Ron Paul says in the book's forward, "Sheldon Richman has produced a book that is essential reading for any American wishing to understand how the welfare state is incompatible with constitutional government and a free society. Such understanding is the first step toward reclaiming liberty."