When the United States was born in 1776, Americans viewed the role of government as the protection of their individual rights, or liberty. At that time, and now again 200 years later, the enemy of individual liberty is an intrusive and regulation obsessed government. Over time, the ideology of democracy—the idea that the role of government is to carry out the will of the people, has displaced the ideology of liberty. Holcombe narrates an account of the political history that transformed the fundamental principle of American government form liberty to democracy. And why that shift from the protection of liberty to democratic collectivism has serious and negative economic and political consequences.