Book Review: Liberty and Tyranny

Mark Levin is a very smart guy with a popular radio talk show, and he has written a very smart book about conservatism, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. Levin (his radio nicknames include "The Great One" and "F. Lee Levin," which was given to him by Rush Limbaugh, owing to his status as a lawyer and former Chief of Staff to the U.S. Attorney General. I have one gripe with Mr. Levin: his voice. He spends a great deal of his time on the radio yelling in a high-pitched, nasal tone that reminds me of some overzealous geek after one too many cocktails. And that's a pity, because like I said, Levin is a very smart guy, but his hysterics and histrionics often get in the way of an audience's enjoyment and understanding of the points he's trying to make. That's the bad news, if you decide to pick up his radio show as a regular habit (5-8 p.m. on WVNN 92.5 FM here in Huntsville). The good news is that none of that agitation is evident in this book.

What Levin has done in the space of 256 pages--more or less, I read the Kindle edition; more on that in a moment--is provide a primer the historical origins of contemporary conservatism and apply those principles to contemporary governance, covering issues ranging from national defense to environmentalism and immigration. And unlike a talk show, where the host can make assertions out of the blue and treat them as facts, Levin really is citing facts. About one fourth of the book is footnotes, citing his sources so you know he's not making things up. Nitpickers like me appreciate such things.

Levin's primary purpose is to provide his conservative fan base--and even non-conservative Americans with a direct contrast between liberal and conservative approaches to governing the country. To hammer his point home (which will no doubt irritate liberal readers), he dispenses with the word "liberal" early in the book, preferring instead to use the term "Statist." He isn't much nicer to neo-conservatives in the Republican Party, whom he refers to as "neo-Statists." And what, exactly, is a Statist? I will refer to the New Oxford American Dictionary, which is resident on the Kindle 2 (one of many advantages of an e-book):

statism, n. a political system in which the state has substantial centralized control over social and economic affairs.

In any case, Levin provides concise, non-hysterical examples of "Statist" approaches to governance, quotes American Founding Fathers on the issue at hand, and then adds his own explanation of the contemporary effects of liberal policies. It is an effective approach.

Another advantage of the Kindle is that you can highlight, underline, or "mark up" passages without feeling like you're screwing up your chances of reselling the item at the university bookstore. The machine also has a menu function that allows you to go back and reread all the passages you underlined or highlighted. So, for grins, here are the items that caught my attention in Levin's book:

Reason and science can explain the existence of matter, but they cannot explain why there is matter. They can explain the existence of the universe, but they cannot explain why there is a universe. They can explain the existence of nature and the law of physics, but they cannot explain why there is nature and the law of physics. They can explain the existence of life, but they cannot explain why there is life. They can explain the existence of consciousness, but they cannot explain why there is consciousness.
Science is a critical aspect of human existence, but it cannot address the spiritual nature of man. In this respect, science is a dead end around which the Atheist refuses to reason.

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The Conservative may ask the following questions: If words [in the U.S. Constitution] and their meaning can be manipulated or ignored to advance the Statist's political and policy preferences, what then binds allegiance to the Statist's words [in judiciary precedents]?

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Liberty and property go hand in hand. By dominating one the Statist dominates both, for if the individual cannot keep or dispose of the value he creates by his own intellectual and/or physical labor, he exists to serve the state.

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If homeless people lack a place to live, it is not because of God's will or nature. it is because the rules of property are invoked and enforced to evict them, if necessary by force. (Quotation by Former Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein and President Obama's pick to run the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs)

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Of course the best way to stimulate the economy would be for the federal government to slash capital gains taxes, corporate income taxes, and individual income tax rates, thereby increasing liquidity available to individuals and businesses to make decisions about their own economic circumstances.

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Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. (Quotation from F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom)

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When the individual or even a large business makes a wrong decision, its impact is limited and more easily absorbed by the free market. However, when the Statist makes a wrong decision, its impact is far-reaching, for he uses the power of government to impose his decision on as many individuals and businesses as possible, which distorts the free market itself.

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The waiting times for surgeries [in the United Kingdom] is a systemic disaster. Patients wait between one and two years to receive hip and knee replacement surgeries. Across specialties, one in seven patients waits more than a year for treatment. Children must travel to the United States to receive certain cancer treatments that are unavailable under Britain's health system.

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A few well-placed political appointees and their bureaucratic support staff ration health-care resources and decide who gets treatment and who does not and, ultimately, who lives and who dies.

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But the technology most despised by the Enviro-Statist is the automobile because it provides the individual with a tangible means to exercise his independence through mobility.

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No society can withstand the unconditional mass migration of aliens from every corner of the earth. The preservation of the nation's territorial sovereignty, and the culture, language, mores, traditions, and customs that make possible a harmonious community of citizens, dictat that citizenship be granted only by the consent of the governed--not by the unilateral actions or demands of the alien--and then only to aliens who will throw off their allegiance to their former nation and society and pledge their allegiance to America.

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Moreover, rather than Americanize aliens and use public and private institutions to inculcate them with the virtues of American culture, language, mores, history, traditions, and customs, the Statist is cultivating a cultural relativism in which the cultures from which the aliens fled are given equal accord with the American culture.

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And most important, how can the alien comprehend the nation's founding principles and pledge allegiance to them if he cannot be sure of their intended meaning?

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[T]he moral imperative of all public policy must be the preservation and improvement of American society. Similarly, the object of American foreign policy must be no different.

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[F]oreign and domestic policy were supposed to serve the same end: the security of the people in their person and property.

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Certainly America cannot export democracy everywhere simultaneously. For one thing, it is impractical. There are cultures and regimes that are not receptive to such overtures. Furthermore, the loss of American lives and the enormous financial costs in chasing such unrealistic ends would threaten the preservation and improvement of American society. It would demoralize the population and desensitize it to real threats that endanger the society.

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The key is that these decisions must never be motivated by utopianism or imperialism but by actual circumstances requiring the defense of America against real threats.

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The Conservative believes that unalienable rights attach to all human beings, but it is not necessarily the responsibility of the United States to enforce those rights.

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The benchmark, again, is whether any specific path will serve the nation's best interests.

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Terrorists, the earliest of whom were pirates, have never been considered equivalent to regular armed forces by any president up to now.

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Republican administrations...more or less remain on the glide path set by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The latest and most stunning example is the trillions of dollars in various bailout schemes that President George W. Bush oversaw in the last months of his administration. When asked about it, he made this remarkable statement: "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."

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Reject all treaties, entanglements, institutions, and enterprises that have as their purpose the supplantation of America's best interests, including its physical, cultural, economic, and military sovereignty, to an amorphous "global" interest.

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The book's epilogue is a call to action for conservatives to get educated on what conservatism is, how to apply it in their daily lives, and get involved in the political process before the statist approach Levin decries becomes the law of the land.

If you've never heard Levin on the radio, read this book first. It'll give you a better appreciation of the man's intellect. If you have heard him and he annoys you, you'll find this book surprisingly free from hype and hoopla. If you've heard him on the radio and enjoy his antics, you might be in for a surprise: this is a calm, hysteria-free approach to conservatism that will probably have you looking for a copy of the Federalist Papers after you're done with it. That, in itself, is worth the read.