State of the Debate: The Libertarian Conceit   Isaiah Berlin,
edited by Henry Hardy, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas
and Their History (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997).  David
Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer (Free Press, 1997).  Charles
Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal
Interpretation (Broadway Books, 1997).  amazon.comYou can buy
any linked book through our associate program with  Government
is out of fashion. Reporters and pundits describe politicians'
statements and actions never as expressions of conviction,
always as strategic maneuvers. Increasingly, assuming that
politicians are fatuous and suspecting that politics is futile
seem requirements for sophistication. With a President who
shifts like a political wind sock, a Congress by turns
ideological and inchoate, and a pair of parties frankly devoted
to fundraising and re-election, it is sometimes hard to recall
why it matters so much that the cynics are wrong.  Three new
books, all explicitly skeptical toward politics, help t