Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto by Matt Kibbe

marginal costs of getting good information about Washington’s ways is changing the old, tired political calculus. Politicians can no longer hide from their constituents, telling them one thing back home while voting for business as usual in the nation’s capital. As a result, we are beginning to see real accountability, and the effects, though only just beginning to be felt, are amazing.
    Thanks to the power of political disintermediation, the American people are making their voices heard in Washington. A new generation of congressmen and senators has emerged to give voice to the formerly voiceless, to keep their promises, and to stand on principle.
    This is nothing short of a paradigm shift that gives shareholders a real seat at the table in Washington. Our proxy representation at the board of directors’ table is a growing bicameral “Liberty Caucus,” the size and quality of which is historically unprecedented in American politics.
    I was lucky enough to sit down with six of the most exciting figures to emerge from this new political environment, to get their take on things. I asked them about their history with the ideas of liberty and their experiences confronting the political establishment. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX), along with Representatives Justin Amash (R-MI), Thomas Massie (R-KY), and David Schweikert (R-AZ), are leading among those writing the new rules in politics, where power does not go to those most entrenched in a broken system, but remains with the people, where the founders intended it. *
    These are some smart, fearless guys. Because this is my book, I took the liberty to mash up six separate conversations into an imaginary gab fest between all six legislators. All of their quotes, of course, are the real thing.
    Here’s what went down in my imaginary living room:

    MK: We’re talking about the ideas of liberty and the way that the world has changed so much in the last couple of years, but I wanted to ask you first, how you got into these ideas. How did you discover freedom?
    TED CRUZ: As a kid I got very involved in a group in Houston that was called the Free Enterprise Institute. It had a program where it taught high school kids principles of free market economics, and it would have us read Milton Friedman, and Hayek, and Von Mises, and Bastiat, and have us prepare speeches on free market economics. In the course of four years of high school I ended up giving right about eighty speeches across the state of Texas on free market economics, and also on the Constitution. And that became really the intellectual inspiration and foundation for being involved in the liberty movement.
    DAVID SCHWEIKERT: It came to me as a teenager. Somehow I got my hands on an Ayn Rand book. And unlike most people, I started with a book called We the Living . In Arizona it’s really hot during the summer, so you’re just inside going through the pages. And I fell in love with the heroine in that. And from there it just sort of built into understanding the power of the individual. And I have to admit, even in the high school I was in, there were probably a dozen of us who became Rand devotees.
    THOMAS MASSIE: My gateway issue was gun rights. When I was eighteen I went to school in Massachusetts from Kentucky. I’d read about people who wanted to ban guns, but I’d never met one. And instantly I found myself surrounded by these people that wanted to ban guns. And that was my liberty issue.
    MIKE LEE: I was raised with a real love of the country. My parents taught me that America is a special place, that America is unlike other countries. And we’re very privileged, we’re very fortunate to live here because of these shared values and the heritage that we have inherited from prior generations. My parents taught me about the structure and how it’s set up from an early age. One of the things that I’ve been frustrated with since at least the age of ten is the fact that the federal