John Fund likes Brian Doherty’s new book on the history of libertarians in America:

Libertarian ideas have enjoyed a surge of respect lately, helped by the collapse of Soviet central planning, the success of lower tax rates and the appeals of various figures in popular culture (e.g., Drew Carey, John Stossel and Clint Eastwood) who want government out of both their bedroom and wallet. Even so, libertarianism is often not the people’s choice. Part of the problem is the inertia of the status quo. “In a world where government has its hand in almost everything,” Mr. Doherty writes, “it requires a certain leap of imagination to see how things might work if it didn’t.” Many people couldn’t make that leap when, for example, economists proposed channeling some Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts.

Yes, that’s the problem. People like the idea of the government leaving them alone, until they realize that in many cases, they’re on the dole themselves. As Fund notes, the net may help spread the idea of personal freedom and personal responsibility, and perhaps these ideas, on which the country was founded, can be reinvigorated, and fight back against the inertia of the past seventy big-government years.