Thinking About "Liberty and Tyranny" by Mark Levin

I regret to inform you that I am part of the smeensy minority of Amazon reviewers who does not love "Liberty and Tyranny" by Mark Levin with a-hunk-a-hunk-o-burnin' love. I liked and appreciated it, and gave it four stars. This blog post is for writing about the book without being subject to the Amazon reviewer guideline.

It's not controversial that FDR is the archetypal American statist.

I confess to having been unhappy when comparisons were made between President Obama and Franklin Roosevelt. But reading Levin's book made me reconsider. Obama and Roosevelt both ran as sober, responsible, centrists, then did massive bait-and-switches after being elected, engaging in massive government expansions and interventions that were for the purpose of strengthening political alliances instead of benefitting the country. History is pretty much repeating itself.

This book is a reasonably good description of America's current predicament. But as I read that Statists were power-mad, dishonest, doublethinkful, irrational villains (which they are a lot of the time) who turn everything they get their grubby mitts on to ruin (which they do a lot of the time), I wondered "If Statism is so awful (and I truly believe it is) why is it so successful?" This is a question that largely goes unanswered in this book.

There's something about Statism that an average person (unfortunately) finds quite appealing. Statism taps into the powerful human drive to avoid personal responsibility for one's actions. Levin frames the debate as an intellectual argument between two competing systems. But he fails to demonstrate how enticing statism can be to people.

Statism has become the dominant philosophy in Europe, under the label of "the social-democratic state." But how much the state controls and takes care of its citizens isn't really up for democratic debate anymore. What people get to vote on is whether they want chocolate government ice cream or vanilla government ice cream, or whether they want government sprinkles or not on their government ice cream. All you have to do is read "America Alone" by Mark Steyn to see how this is headed to a long, Eurabian night of ruin.

By the time I got to the end, and read the Conservative Manifesto, I was thinking to myself, "None of these things are ever going to happen." Levin himself provided the answer as to why none of these things are going to happen. The Republican Party has decided to brand itself as the Statism Lite Party, a me-too disher-outer of goodies, a me-too pusher of the opium of entitlements. They nominated a nominal conservative with statist tendencies as their standard-bearer.

Even discussing a conservative manifesto is pointless until Americans recognize the corrosive effects of statism on their adulthood and their character. Americans were nervous when Newt Gingrich talked about dismantling the welfare state in 1994. They should have been celebrating in the streets. But they weren't, because they loved government sprinkles on their government ice cream more than being free. And those things won't happen until there is some sort of radical change in the way Americans feel about certain things.

For example, as long as FDR is thought of by Americans as the warm, friendly voice of the fireside chats, instead of someone who lied through his teeth about his agenda, extended the depression, permanently expanded government to buy a majority with the taxpayers' money, bullied the Supreme Court into rubber-stamping his agenda, etc., the best conservatives can hope for is a few minor victories here and there, now and then, along the glide path to serfdom.

As long as there are a nontrivial number of Americans like Peggy Joseph, the best conservatives can hope for is a few minor victories here and there, now and then, along the glide path to serfdom.



Maybe occasional liberty is the best our species can hope for. Paraphrasing Robert Heinlein...

Throughout history, tyranny is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit libery--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject tyranny. This is known as “bad luck.”