The Permission Society: How The Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms Into Privileges And What We Can Do About It

Sandefur, Timothy

ISBN 10: 1594038392 / ISBN 13: 9781594038396

Published by Encounter Books, 2016

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # ABBB-194328

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Permission Society: How The Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms Into Privileges And What We Can Do About It
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594038392
• ISBN 13: 9781594038396
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Throughout history, kings and emperors have promised “freedoms” to their people. Yet these freedoms were really only permissions handed down from on high. The American Revolution inaugurated a new vision: people have basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and government must ask permission from them. Sadly, today’s increasingly bureaucratic society is beginning to turn back the clock and to transform America into a nation where our freedoms—the right to speak freely, to earn a living, to own a gun, to use private property, even the right to take medicine to save one’s own life—are again treated as privileges the government may grant or withhold at will. Timothy Sandefur examines the history of the distinction between rights and privileges that played such an important role in the American experiment, and how we can fight to retain our freedoms against the growing power of government. Illustrated with dozens of real-life examples—including many cases he litigated himself—Sandefur shows how treating freedoms as government-created privileges undermines our Constitution and betrays the basic principles of human dignity.

About the Author

Timothy Sandefur is Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute. Prior to joining the Institute, he worked for 15 years as a litigator for the Pacific Legal Foundation, where he oversaw the Economic Liberty Project, devoted to defending the right to earn a living without unreasonable government interference. He is the author of The Right to Earn a Living (2010), The Conscience of the Constitution (2014), and Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America (second edition, coauthored with Christina Sandefur, 2016).