Larry Lindsey knows whereof he speaks. As a former governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, and as director of the National Economic Council under George W. Bush, he has helped craft economic policy at the highest levels of government. However, while the Harvard-educated economist views himself—along with many other people with whom he served in government—as “getting the job done and moving on,” he is concerned about a different group of top-level government employees who, he says, have a very different agenda. As he writes in his new book, Conspiracies of the Ruling Class:

The purpose of their government service was to accumulate personal power and to exercise that power over others. They didn’t have a noble cause, even though they always acted as though they did, but a hidden need to wield power and maintain control of their little domain.

Lindsey notes that he did not take “these people” too seriously until they began expanding their fiefdoms and turned their attention from the bureaucracy to the country itself and individuals like him. “These people” are politicians, appointees, and bureaucrats who are career government employees and academics who wait for their opportunities to assume positions of political power. He dubs them “the Ruling Class” and describes them thus:

They view their jobs not as leaders, who encourage the rest of us to make the most of our talents, but as people who are superior—as though they are the shepherds and we the sheep. They ridicule the successful and do everything they can to make the population dependent on them.

Lindsey identifies “progressives,” or modern liberals, as the ideological group that is the latest incarnation of the Ruling Class. Secure in their control of the media, the entertainment industry, and academia, a member of the Ruling Class will adopt an ideal such as “social justice” when in government service and attempt to implement this vision of a “just” world by taxing and spending, thus redistributing wealth by taking money from one person and giving it to another.

Lindsey divides his book into three parts. In the first, he discusses the Ruling Class’s threat to individual liberty. Beginning with a historical view of the imperious ruler having absolute or near absolute control over his subjects through most of the history of humanity, to the unique notion of a constitution embodying federalism and the rights of the individual resulting from the heroic efforts of the Founding Fathers, he lays out antecedents to the modern progressives’ ongoing assaults on the U.S. Constitution. As he notes, “The Ruling Class have rebranded themselves from the beneficiaries of a despot who inherited his position to a new kind of despot who inherited his position for the benefit of his society.”

In part two, Lindsey evaluates the governing performance of the Ruling Class in America over the latter part of the 20th century through the years of the Obama administration. Increasing economic inequality for America’s minorities; a burgeoning national debt and inadequate sustainable funding of Social Security and Medicare; declining performance of American children in reading, writing, and arithmetic (as compared to other developed nations); bureaucratic and economic mismanagement of the nation’s physical infrastructure; ongoing governmental threats to limit the rights of Americans to arm themselves for their self-defense; and expansion and abuse of the government’s powers (and consequent deterioration in due process and accountability) in the civil taking of citizens’ property are explained and described with publicly available data and explicit examples of ruling class behavior.

In part three, he offers his policy prescriptions for regaining the liberties that have been slipping away from Americans. This is the section of the book that fulfills his subtitle—How to Break Their Grip Forever—and he explains what activities and policies he believes Americans must embrace to throw off control by the Ruling Class.

Securing liberty / Lindsey makes an empirical case that there is a pro-liberty majority in America, noting that in an April 2012 survey, potential voters said they wanted smaller government by a 22-point margin and believed that government regulation made society less fair by a 28-point margin. Moreover, in a March 2015 Rasmussen poll of likely voters, 52% responded that increased government spending hurts the economy while just 28% disagreed.

Yet President Obama, an advocate of expansive government, won re-election in 2012 with a 4 percent majority of voters. Why? According to Lindsey, Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, failed to connect with voters on one key self-oriented value, “Cares about people like me,” even though Romney was viewed by voters as preferable to Obama on the leadership qualities of strength, vision, and values. While Lindsey does not believe that a liberty-oriented candidate should enter into a “bidding war” with a progressive Ruling Class candidate for votes, those voters who believe they are being abused by the government bureaucracy need to believe that a candidate embraces liberty because he or she genuinely cares about voters like them. Thus, a presidential candidate who frames the election as a choice between liberty and the progressive Ruling Class will win over the pro-liberty majority.

Lindsey also believes that a philosophy for a winning political campaign should be focused on improving people’s lives through increased independence and individual control. When it comes to tax increases, the previously mentioned March 2015 Rasmussen survey found that 50% of voters believe tax increases hurt the U.S. economy while just 23% disagree. Lindsey recommends that, to be “philosophically populist and operationally libertarian,” one should propose tax code simplification, for example a flat tax that is simple as well as fair in terms of taxes paid by different groups. As for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he recommends repealing the individual mandate, repealing the employer mandate, and ending federal mandates and restrictions on what policies must cover and who may offer coverage. Those steps would address the desires of 49% of those surveyed in a December 2015 Rasmussen poll who wanted to go through the law piece-by-piece and improve it.

He next turns to what must be done once a pro-liberty majority has been reestablished in Congress. First, he argues that Congress must reassert control of its constitutional responsibilities over administrative rulemaking. Federal lawmakers have delegated this authority to so-called “experts” in the executive branch and independent agencies. The first reform is to move this decisionmaking away from the “experts” and return it to Congress, while the executive branch focuses on enforcement responsibilities. Second, he looks to end lifetime careers in federal policymaking, both by implementing term limits for Congress and—more importantly—removing employment protections from Ruling Class bureaucrats who have numerous rights of appeal and who are rarely penalized for poor performance, much less fired. (Unfortunately, he offers no specific suggestions for civil service reforms.) He also recommends the federal court system end lifetime appointments to the bench, suggesting an 18-year term instead, which he believes is long enough to avoid the threat of political pressure.

As to the critical issue of budget reform, Lindsey first recommends that all government spending must go through the appropriations process (not just the present 30%, which excludes costly and expanding entitlements programs). Second, he would force Congress and the president, when enacting either a new entitlement or changing an existing one, to honestly estimate and designate a funding source for the long-term costs. Third, he would have long-term budget scoring in present-value terms be applied to both taxes and spending. Fourth, the currently weak PAYGO rules (which ostensibly require any increase in federal spending or reduction in taxes be offset by other fiscal changes) would be reformed so they better adhere to long-term, honest budgeting principles. Fifth, he wants to establish a systematic method of addressing any political impasse that could result in a government shutdown. Sixth and most importantly, he wants a way to enforce these recommendations, suggesting that members of Congress must remain in Washington, D.C. (and away from family members) until the necessary compromises are reached.

Lastly, he confronts the public’s distrust of the Federal Reserve. According to a November 2013 Rasmussen survey, only 34% of Americans viewed the Fed favorably, while 50% held an unfavorable view. He addresses some of the public’s major criticisms of the Fed, and makes short shrift of them. For example, some Fed-bashers argue that it should follow some explicit “rule” when making monetary policy. However, he notes that if history provides little guidance on the relationship between Fed policy in the short-term and its effect on inflation, a rule that works well at one time might prove disastrously inappropriate at another. As for critic demands to “audit” the Fed, Lindsey points out that all expenses incurred by the Fed are already audited extensively by both internal and external auditors, and the Federal Reserve balance sheet is disclosed and audited. This demand, he argues, is really an effort to “second guess” Fed policy. Finally, he dismisses “End the Fed” sloganeering, pointing out that another institution, such as Congress, would step in to set interest rate and money supply targets, unless the nation returns to an inelastic currency, which raises the specter of sudden financial crashes like those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Lindsey offers what he characterizes as a modest “reform” proposal (yet “philosophically populist and operationally libertarian”): pass a constitutional amendment that protects people’s right to use something other than Federal Reserve notes to write a contract. That right does exist today, but it can be suspended at any time by presidential decree, as Franklin Roosevelt did in 1933.

Lindsey concludes his book by arguing that the progressive Ruling Class is eroding economic opportunities in America by “actively compressing, enervating, extinguishing, and stupefying us with complex rules, taxes, and obligations.” The Ruling Class, he says, views America as a country and not as a cause, and has “nothing to offer but empty promises built on the quicksand of ever-increasing demands on the resources, energy, and freedom of the rest of us.” In contrast, in his philosophy, liberty and the subsequent advancement of humankind is the moral high ground, and this political philosophy will be the foundation for permanently breaking the Ruling Class’ grip on the levers of power.

Populist and libertarian? / The phrase “philosophically populist and operationally libertarian” sums up Lindsey’s political and policy approach to throwing off the shackles of the progressive Ruling Class. As he notes, his academic training as an economist allows him the comfort of thinking in terms of “tradeoffs” in public policy and winning elections. After 100 years of embedding themselves in public institutions, it will be a daunting challenge to remove progressives from their Ruling Class positions.

His “populist” approach to regaining a pro-liberty majority will not make die-hard libertarian/​constitutional conservatives joyful, but it may begin to turn the tide of modern progressivism in federal institutions. How? Through the successful election of more pro-liberty political candidates who will begin the arduous task of changing government from its increasingly active role as coercer/​regulator of the American populace to a return to the Founding Fathers’ vision of government as the protector of individual rights.

While most of his public policy proposals have broad public support and have a strong “common sense” basis to them, I take issue with a few of them. Granted, attempting to deal with key provisions of the ACA could effectively implode the legislation. But repealing it and immediately legislatively substituting a real health care reform law that embraces market-based options, supports individual choice in health care management, and offers the potential for real cost controls (and limited government oversight) would be a far more effective response than keeping much of that 2,700-page legal and regulatory monstrosity in effect. Allowing Congress to actively reembrace its rulemaking authority—if it were circumscribed to being mandatory (as it is presently optional and rarely operationalized) for major rules, i.e., costing $100 million or more—would be a welcome first step for the legislative branch exercising its constitutional authority. I would also agree with Lindsey that his recommendation for a constitutional amendment to use something other than Federal Reserve notes to write a contract is a “modest” proposal. I doubt, however, that this would be any game-changing policy for a pro-liberty candidate to run on successfully, and may actually appear to many voters as an avoidance of what is emotionally their primary issue: the continued existence of the Federal Reserve.

I enjoyed reading Lindsey’s book. He provides a wonderfully accessible description of the foundations of Ruling Class philosophy throughout the ages, and a thorough, empirically based analysis of the failures of progressive Ruling Class public policies in recent decades. I also appreciated his honest approach to legislatively dealing with the national budget and the need to directly discuss major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare on an annual versus continuing basis. While I like his overall approach to evaluating public policy issues, and I think it has merit as a practical approach to politically coalescing a pro-liberty majority of voters, I did find myself a little disappointed by his policy prescriptions in the final section of the book. Nevertheless, he writes exceptionally well, with a remarkable ability to blend data with a measured narrative flair—no mean feat for an economist. I certainly would recommend this book for anyone who values liberty and would like to be a better informed voter in this election cycle.