Sunday Reading

On Friday, Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, was kind enough to sign a copy of his new book, Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives.

Norquist's central thesis is that the current split in American political life is between the Leave Us Alone Coalition, which largely wants decisions left from the interference of government, and the Takings Coalition, which is created and maintained through the confiscation of private property and its redistribution by government.

Over the next decade America will make decisions that will set us on the path of Old Europe- trading liberty for security, dynamism, and growth for safety and managed decline- or recommit itself to pursuing a free and open society where there are no limits on what the individual can accomplish free of the politics of envy and leveling and control.

We will decide to live as independent adults, regaining our dignity and control over our lives and families, or we will come to be increasingly treated by the government as if we never left high school: coddled, protected, and caged. We will make this decision. No one else.

While there have always been those pushing for more government control of your life and other defending your autonomy and liberty, these two competing forces have never before been so clearly separated out into the two major political parties and they have never been so evenly divided.

It's a great read, and an insightful look at the coalition of interests that makes up the Democratic Party, and the coalition of ideas that makes up the Republican Party.