Why old-school politics has died How theWeb will killliberalismThe Internet's political revolution Revolution by computer

August is upon us, beaches beckon and Michele Bachmann has setthe self-improvement bar high. She recently told the Wall StreetJournal, "When I go on vacation and I lay on the beach, I bring vonMises." The congresswoman may be the first person ever to dribblesun lotion on the section of Ludwig von Mises's Internet says it'svon meez-us, hence 's "Human Action" wherein the Austrian economist(1881-1973) discussed "the formal and aprioristic character ofpraxeology."

Autodidacts less exacting than Bachmann should spill sand on thepages of "The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian PoliticsCan Fix What's Wrong With America" by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch.These incurably upbeat journalists with Reason magazine believe thatnot even government, try as it will, can prevent onrushing socialimprovement.

"Confirmation bias" is the propensity to believe news thatconfirms our beliefs. Gillespie and Welch say that "existence bias"disposes us to believe that things that exist always will. Theauthors say that the most ossified, sclerotic sectors of Americanlife - politics and government - are about to be blown up by newcapabilities, especially the Internet, and the public's wholesomeimpatience that is encouraged by them.

"Think of any customer experience that has made you wince or kickthe cat. What jumps to mind? Waiting in multiple lines at theDepartment of Motor Vehicles. Observing the bureaucratic sloth andlowest-common-denominator performance of public schools, especiallyin big cities. Getting ritually humiliated going through airportsecurity. Trying desperately to understand your doctor bills.Navigating the permitting process at your local city hall. Wasting aday at home while the gas man fails to show up. Whatever you come upwith, chances are good that the culprit is either a directgovernment monopoly (as in the providers of K-12 education) or aheavily regulated industry or utility where the government is thelargest player (as in health care)."

Since 1970, per pupil real, inflation-adjusted spending hasdoubled and the teacher-pupil ratio has declined substantially. Butmath and reading scores are essentially unchanged, so we arespending much more to achieve the same results. America has theshortest school year in the industrial world, an academic calendar -speaking of nostalgia - suited to an America when children wereneeded on the farms and ranches in the late spring and early autumn."No other industry," Gillespie and Welch write, "still adheres to acalendar based on 19th-century agricultural cycles - evenagriculture has given up that schedule."

In the 1950s, A&P supermarkets (remember them? You probablydon't) had a 75 percent market share. What used to be the GeneralMotors Building near Central Park South has an Apple store where theautomobile showroom once was. When Kodak loses customers, itwithers.

But when government fails, it expands even faster. This is,Gillespie and Welch say, because "politics is a lagging indicator ofchange," a sector of top-down traditions increasingly out of stepwith today's "bottom-up business and culture" of: "You want soy withthat decaf mocha frappuccino?"

A generation that has grown up with the Internet "has essentiallybeen raised libertarian," swimming in markets, which are choicesamong competing alternatives.

And the left weeps. Preaching what has been callednostalgianomics, liberals mourn the passing of the days when therewas one phone company, three car companies, three televisionnetworks, and an airline cartel, and big labor and big business werecozy with big government.

The America of one universally known list of Top 40 records is asgone as records. When the Census offered people the choice ofchecking the "multiracial" category, Maxine Waters, then chairingthe Congressional Black Caucus, was indignant: "Letting individualsopt out of the current categories just blurs everything." This isthe voice of reactionary liberalism: No blurring, no changes, noescape from old categories, spin the world back to the 1950s.

"Declaration of Independents" is suitable reading for this summerof debt-ceiling debate, which has been a proxy for a bigger debate,which is about nothing less than this: What should be the nature ofthe American regime? America is moving in the libertarians'direction not because they have won an argument but becausegovernment and the sectors it dominates have made themselvesludicrous. This has, however, opened minds to the libertarians'argument.

The essence of which is the common-sensical principle that beforegovernment interferes with the freedom of the individual and ofindividuals making consensual transactions in markets, it ought tohave a defensible reason for doing so. It usually does not.

georgewill@washpost.com