Mark R. Levin, Liberty and Tyranny

In his book Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin writes that "In a civil society the individual has a duty to respect the unalienable rights of others and the values, customs, and tradition, tried and tested over time and passed from one general to the next, that established society's cultural identity." The sentence is okay up to "the unalienable rights of others. To that point most of us, liberals included, can agree. But we live in a free country and don't have to respect the values of others. Pluralistic societies like ours consist of conflicting values and different cultural identities. We can respect their rights without respecting the values or opinions of any particular person or persons.

"In the civil society," writes Levin, "private property and liberty are inseparable." True enough. He adds the rule of law as a requisite for a civil society. True again. Then as an advocate for a cause -- conservatism -- he launches his criticism of the required enemy: the "Statist." "The Modern Liberal," he writes, "believes in the supremacy of the state, thereby rejecting the principles of the Declaration and the order of civil society, in whole or part."

It is a fact that the modern nation state, supported by conservatives and liberals alike is the world's primary social organization. It has policing powers and resorts to violence to restrain and enforce the law. It tolerates no Timothy McVeighs using violence to enforce what they imagine to be justice. Religious practices that violate its laws remain forbidden. The state taxes, and the state regulates. The question is how much to tax and how much to regulate. Whomever Levin would label a "Statist" would be someone that he believes taxes too much and regulates too much. This is a subject worth pursuing in some detail.

Levin describes his villain, the "Statist," as having,

... an insatiable appetite for control. His sights are set on his next meal even before he has fully digested his last. He is constantly agitating for government action... The Statist veils his pursuits in moral indignation.

I was under the impression that Levin's "Statist" was someone with a distorted economic and political point of view. But creates a straw man who "cannot abide the existence of Natural Law and man's discovery of "unalianable rights..." which he mixes with an obligation to adhere to his theology:

The Statist cannot abide the existence of Natural Law and man's discovery of "unalienable right" bestowed on all individuals by 'their Creator."

Levin's "Statist" ought not to study law, because:

The Statist is not interested in what the Framers said or intended. He is interested only in what he says and he intends.

Levin's "Statist" is not someone who goes a little too far on an issue, to explain that would require a description of balance in a spectrum of choices. Levin's "Statist" is, like Satan, intentionally malevolent and evil.

The Statist, therefore, created instability and unpredictability across various industries with detrimental consequences, intended and unintended, across the globe.

Levin's "Statist" is not as good as he in evaluating not only nature but science.

The Statist seeks to impose on individuals a governmental and economic structure that is contrary to human nature.

...it is actually the Statist who abandons science -- just as he abandons the laws of nature, reason, experience, economics, and modernity -- when he promotes what can best be characterized as enviro-statism.

In his first paragraph, Levin wrote that he was not attempting to give birth to "totally new theories." That would have required a better discription of those he disagrees with and a better exposition than he gives on what is liberty and tyranny. His book is just a little above rant. As a "Conservative Manifesto" (Levin's subtitle) the book will not add clarity to the conservative cause nor the nation's political debate. I'm sorry I bothered with the book.