Comments on Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto

Comments on Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto

A friend asked me to look at this book, published March 24, 2009, and comment on it. My comments follow.

Mark R. Levin is a “Conservative” radio talk show host in New York City. He could accurately be characterized as being at the extreme end of current (2009) American Conservatism.

Pages 2 and 3 he describes people wanting the pursuit of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, that people have God-given natural rights, . a social contract or civil society, who lives by a moral order and who is “restrained, ethical and honorable. He defines those people as Conservatives. And then, on page 3, says the Conservative “rejects the relativism that blurs the lines between good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust, and means and ends.”

On other words, there are no shades of gray, no other point of view, that my way is the only way. But then goes on to say that the individual has a duty to respect the unalienable rights of others.

Then as soon as page 4 he defines the Modern Liberal as someone who believes in the supremacy of the state and who rejects the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the order of civil society. This, of course, is absurd.

On that same page he decries a government where the few dictate to the many, and in the next sentence decries the rule of the mob.

According to Levin, the problem started with the New Deal, which “breached the Constitution”! Roosevelt effectively intimidated the Supreme Court. The New Deal prolonged the depression. World War II is what really ended the depression. The Democratic Party and the Federal Government are intertwined.

Levin makes the same mistake that Karl Marx made. He believes that people are not greedy and that everyone will freely and independently work cooperatively to the best of their ability and that will take care of the needs to the less fortunate and less able, and will somehow provide for a civil society that builds roads and achieves the common good. Ironic that this arch Conservative makes the same error as Karl Marx!

Chapter 2 is almost too absurd and self-contradictory to even comment on. It is too bad Levin is disdainful of academics and thinking people, because he could benefit from an awareness of Maslow’s hierarchy, He doesn’t understand that as America achieves a higher and higher standard of living, in all respects, for everyone, that we then go on to achieve even higher standards of living and quality of life. Like the ayatollahs in Iran and other primitive regimes, he is afraid of growth and evolution and condemns change as evil.

Not worth the time to more than skim the rest. His assertions are often incorrect, and almost always devoid of an ethical basis. He ignores the “social contract” that he acknowledges in the first chapter but clearly doesn’t understand. In the Manifesto that concludes the book, in fact, he advocates completely dismantling America’s social contract. Alas.

I wonder if Levin ever actually read Rousseau’s The Social Contract -- and thought about it. It is not necessary to agree with all of it, but it interesting to contemplate a real thoughtful, philosophical look at how people must interact in a modern society. It is online at http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm. A useful extract is at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Rousseau-soccon.html.

I recommend Rousseau, but I wouldn’t recommend Levin’s book to anyone.

Has part of the country gone nuts?

The President of the United States is giving a speech on Tuesday, September 8, to elementary and high school students across the country encouraging them to do well in school and to graduate. Right-wing broadcasters and extremists are objecting!!!! Are they nuts?

The White House has also provided schools with a list of possible, age appropriate, discussion topics for before and after the broadcast. Things like "what do you think the President should tell kids?" and "What did you think of the what the President said?" Here are links to the materials: http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/lessons/prek-6.pdf and http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/lessons/7-12.pdf

But the agitators and those that listen to them are so opposed to anything that a black President (or worse, a multiracial President) does, that they can't even agree that encouraging kids to stay in school is a good thing! One acquaintance told me that the administration is "arrogant and people don't like it." I'm surprised he didn't say the President is "uppity"!

Arrrggghhh!