An Option to the so-called Benedict Option?

While Dreher has spilled a tanker-load of virtual ink over at his blog about his so-called eponymous "Benedict Option", he hasn't yet figured out what he means by it.  OTOH, our discussions have identified at least two salient characteristics:  it's self-promoting if not self-aggrandizing (Dreher being the "self"), and it is essentially rolling into a ball and letting others do the fighting.

But just like the question of what the Repubs in Congress are going to propose in place of Obamacare should the Supreme Court (rightly) drive a stake into Obamacare, it is a fair question to wonder whether there are any options to the utopian Dreher Bunker Option.  Only here at EQE, unlike the weak-kneed GOP leadership in Congress, we're going to try to answer that fair question.

Some time back I linked to a blurb of a new book by Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart (which I highly highly recommend) and co-author of the much-discussed The Bell Curve.  The new book is By The People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission:

In last Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Murray contributed the Saturday Essay (read the whole thing, as they say -- no paywall) in which he summarizes this promising concept. Here are a couple of pull quotes:

It was our boast that in America, unlike in any other country, you could live your life as you saw fit as long as you accorded the same liberty to everyone else.... Americans were to live under a presumption of freedom.... 

We now live under a presumption of constraint....The number of federal crimes you could commit as of 2007 (the last year they were tallied) was about 4,450, a 50% increase since just 1980.  A comparative handful of those crimes are "malum in se" -- bad in themselves.  The rest are "malum prohibitum" -- crimes because the government disapproves....

Whether we are trying to raise our children, be good stewards of our property, cooperate with our neighbors to solve local problems or practice our religious faith, the bureaucrats think they know better. And when the targets of the regulator state say they've had enough, that they will fight it in court, the bureaucrats can -- and do -- say to them, "Try that, and we'll ruin you." 

For example, see the sub-headline here :

"relatively unregulated, but that could change".  I bet it could, and I bet it will.

So what to do?  Here's his proposal:

And so my modest proposal:  Let's withhold that compliance through systematic civil disobedience. Not for all regulations, but for the pointless, stupid and tyrannical ones....

The risk in doing so, of course, is that one of the 70-odd regulatory agencies will find out what you're doing and come after you.  But there's a way around that as well:  Let's treat government as an insurable hazard, like tornadoes.

Sounds promising.

At the nudging of others (thanks!), I'm about to start reading Murray's book on the subject.  I'll drop a post here every so often during the process for comment if you are so inclined.  No, not in Dreherian canto-by-canto-Dante style so you can tell me how awesome I am.  Nor will I be fishing for a publishing deal on my book about how someone else's book helped me deal with (sorta, kinda, but not really) my peculiar problems that others caused me.  But maybe, if this makes sense, we few -- we happy few -- can find a way to take action instead of heading to the bunkers.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE (already) :  Great minds ... etc.  Pauli's contemporaneous post immediately below hits this very same point at the very same time.  This passage he quotes is right on point with the above:

...the Catholic enclaves will have to be defended by Catholic lawyers and political activists.

The reference to Catholics is because the piece quoted was written to Catholics.  But as we of course know from history and as Murray notes above, it isn't just the Catholic enclaves that will have to be defended, but the founding idea of the Nation.

UPDATE 2nd:  Thanks, Pauli, for pointing out that I omitted the title of the Murray book.  Fixed that above.