The political culture created by the Constitution has made Americans a people uniquely optimistic, lacking in class envy, and confident that they are in charge of their own lives. Today, the United States is moving toward the European model of extensive regulation and government protections against adversity. Charles Murray argues that the European model drains too much of the stuff of life from life. It is not suited to the deep satisfactions that constitute genuine human happiness. Enabling that kind of happiness is what the American system does uniquely well; abandoning that system will...

This book examines statistics on illegitimacy, criminality, and the dropout rate from the labor force for four checkpoints from 1954 to 1997.

Respected author, scholar, and columnist Charles Murray has long challenged accepted notions of public and social policy issues. In this volume, originally published in 1988, Murray presents a persuasive and practical argument that reconsiders commonly held beliefs of what constitutes success in social policy by examining the scope of government and its role in peoples pursuit of happiness.