Liberty or Tyranny?

Modern Liberals are content to bask in the afterglow of the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, waiting for utopia to arrive; meanwhile government grows (16,000 new IRS agents) to a fleet of Titanic ships and the icebergs of reality lurk ahead. Their ships flags wave politically correct euphemisms celebrating their murder of the selfish goose that laid the golden egg: free enterprise. And we conservatives feel like exiles in our own country.

Reasons to read this book:

• If you can’t fit your philosophy on a bumper sticker, read this book.
• If you have been sitting on the political fence, then this book is for you.
• If you don’t know what the problems with government are, then read this book.
• If you want to know or be reminded of the unshakable ideas the Spirit of ’76  philosophy is founded on, then read this book.
• If you want fuel for those talks over lunch with the office friend, then read this book.

Enter Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny. It’s a submarine delivering philosophical torpedoes with deadly accuracy exploding the “liberal” ship of myths filled with dreamy platitudes. The carnage was exhilarating. I was filled with anger and joy as I witnessed the war of ideas waged on the pages. This book is to “liberal” ideology what the iceberg was to the Titanic and it has sent “liberals” scurrying to abort inconvenient ideas birthed among the minds of America. Young people might read it!

This passage from the beginning of the book is a sample of its consistent potency.

“The Modern Liberal believes in the supremacy of the state, thereby rejecting the principles of the Declaration and the order of civil society, in whole or part. For the Modern Liberal, the individual’s imperfection and personal pursuits impede the objective of the utopian state. In this, Modern Liberalism promotes what French historian Alexis de Tocqueville described as a soft tyranny, which becomes increasingly more oppressive, potentially leading to a hard tyranny (some form of totalitarianism). As the word ‘liberal’ is, in its classical meaning, the opposite of authoritarian, it is more accurate, therefore, to characterize the Modern Liberal as a Statist.”

Liberals are not liberal; they are Statist. In modern times, if an American government wants to dominate its free people, then the people have to accept a subtle redefining of liberty. For a large portion of the nation, that redefining has occurred and been accepted. Liberty no longer means freedom from coercion but freedom from calamity and consequence. The reality of this so-called liberty has to be white washed to sustain the fantasy for the masses. Levin shows repeatedly through insightful illustrations that this fight is not so much about Republicans and Democrats, but about the individual verses the Statist Authoritarians. But, the Statist see their efforts as liberating and they see you and I as narrow minded buffoons trapped in tradition needing to evolve.

Levine offers this quote on the book jacket.

“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some, the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln, 1864

What an irony that the freest, most successful nation, the most advanced, the nation whose ideas have changed the world for the better is now on the verge of surrendering its greatness, its future, and its unrealized potential and step backwards in the name of progress, to become slaves to the state in the name of liberty.

It has been hard work but the Statists are now very close to success. It was not easy. To get Americans to accept the all-powerful State, they have to be nice about it and make average folk feel like victims; that they are missing out, impeded by reality.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy bodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity many at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C. S Lewis quoted in Levin’s book on page 22-23.

That removes the sugar from the cyanide of State serfdom. They want us to believe all things dreamed by Statist are good for us.

One of the major players in this debacle continues to be our media, which for the most part is a propaganda wing for Statists dreams. They lampoon our beliefs, our people and books regularly. The strategy they are combating Levin with is treating him as if is persona non-grata. He has embarrassed them by selling over 700,000 copies of Liberty and Tyranny (with over a million in print and flying off the shelves–as of two years ago when I read and reviewed it.) The book was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for 3 or 4 months. Yet, no ‘liberal’ show had him as a guest. He has been virtually ignored. Are there any students doing book reports on it?

Why did it do so well? To put it simply, it’s great. In 205 easy to read pages, Levin leaves the ideology of the Statist authoritarians a smoking ruin. He focuses like a laser beam on major issues facing our country and grounds his arguments in bedrock conservative truth, which is rooted in the wisdom and lessons learned from the ages. He offers insight from many of the great thinkers, Burke, de Tocqueville, Milton Friedman, Reagan, the founding fathers, and the great philosophers. To say this book is important to conservatives, and this nation, is an understatement.

Screen writers know they can’t chose the actor and then write the part for him. You have to write the script and have the actor try out. Well, the role is written in Liberty and Tyranny. If you want to win the role as a conservative leader for the nation, then the part has been written. READ THIS BOOK!

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I originally wrote this review for a Conservative website when the book was published. I’ve made minor revisions.