Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

by Nancy MacLean

George Bernard Shaw once sagely observed, “all great truths begin as blasphemies.”

Libertarians see no legitimate role for government beyond providing for the national defense, ensuring the rule of law (above all, protecting private property), and maintaining social order (to wit: armies, courts, and police). No place for a social safety net, or even public education.

Members of the Mont Pelerin Society initially chose to refer to themselves as “neoliberals,” to signal the way they were retooling nineteenth-century pro-market ideas; it’s the name applied to them today by critics of the policies they advocated. But the word “neoliberal” confused Americans because Democrats in the Roosevelt mold now had such a hammerlock on the word “liberal.”