Mark Levin’s new book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, arrived just in time. Last week, I wondered how “equality” had become the watchword for the gay movement and engaged in a spirited discussion in the comments section on the values on the founders’ notion of the concept.
I had always believed the founders’ focus was on liberty, freedom, with a concern for equal rights. Their concern for equal rights was a response to the privileges of class, then inherent in the British system. Levin understands how today’s left has twisted the notion of equality to serve their statist ends. And given the political make-up of the gay groups, it’s pretty clear they have borrowed that idea of equality.
In short, Levin gets it:
The primary principle around which the Statist organizes can be summed up in a single word–equality.
Equality, as understood by the Founders, is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor, and to be treated impartially before a just law. Moreover, equality should not be confused with perfection, for man is also imperfect, making his application of equality, even in the most just society, imperfect. Otherwise, inequality is the natural state of man in the sense that each individual is born unique in all his human characteristics. Therefore, equality and inequality, properly comprehended, are both engines of liberty.
The Statist, however, misuses equality to pursue uniform economic and social outcomes. He must continuously enhance his power at the expense of self-government and violate the individual’s property rights at the expense of individual liberty, for he believes that through persuasion, deception, and coercion he can tame man’s natural state and man’s perfection can, therefore, be achieved in Utopia. The Statist must claim the power to make that which is unequal equal an that which is imperfect perfect. That is the hope the Statist offers, if only the individual surrenders himself to the all-powerful state. Only then can the impossible be made possible.
Levin helps summarize why I fear then notion of “equality” when on the lips of gay activists. Most of them have a background in left-wing political movements and show a commitment to the Democratic party and its leftist ideology. They readily turn to the state to seek solutions to problems, real and imagined, which confront our community.
I’ve only read 18 pages, barely 10% of Levin’s book and I’m already hungry for more. this new book may well be a manifesto for the coming conservative resurgence.
Equality of opportunity, not equality of results. Equal standing before God and the law; not equal misery and slavery imposed by the State.
My copy just arrived in the mail this morning.
I am refreshingly surprised every time I read the articles on your website. There are many parallels in the Human Services field. The most notorious one being “…best interests of the child.” Adults are always claiming to do things in “the best interests of the child” which are so often to egocentric ideas of the all knowing, all powerful “County Social Worker. It is easy to understand how the Statist comes to his conclusion about running government.
Rush said it best when he said that the smallest minority was the individual.
I predict that some of those who hold themselves up as something of a conservative will find Levin’s book as good as an annotated Bible is to a JimmySwaggart choir member.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyiFjTNT6fs
But I have to think that Levin will spend far more time trying to twist the Founding Fathers into pretzels who resemble today’s conservatives and there in lies the greater danger –as conservatives or moderates, we lose sight that we have little in common with the radical men who Founded our Country… or the men who now stand in hisotry as the anti-Federalists (who were really the true federalists) or their brave Confederate successors.
Granted, I’ve only read the title of Levin’s new book (smile) –but I did read his other books and have read his more prized writings for the vonMises’ folks. I hope you write more, Dan, about what you gather from Levin’s new book and it’s application to the revival of the modern conservative movement.
#6 Michigan Matt,
How’s about you read the book. Then you can return to tell us you missed the mark. Levin does not morph the founders to fit the modern conservative mold.
If you find his book wanting after a thorough reading, I would be greatly interested to read your deconstruction of Levin’s points.
Well, helio, two pertinent points to draw to your attention, with respect.
First, this isn’t my blog and it is Dan’s and I hope, sincerely, that he does engage in greater detail an analysis of Levin’s book after he’s had the opportunity to read it, think about it, digest it a bit. A little time spent in reflection always helps analysis –but not when action is required, no?
Second, am I to understand that you’ve read Levin’s book and thought a bit about it? ’cause if you have, you’re in a far better position to offer some insight than I since you are so certain “Levin does not morph the founders to fit the modern conservative mold”.
My comment was to encourage Dan to so write when it’s pregnant or ripe.
I only know Levin from his earlier writings and some of his work inside the Reagan WH –having met him once but, to TGC’s chagrin, never had a “cocktail” with him. He has a reputation for a certain, well, willingness to say things so that his opinion is injected into the discourse at hand… whether warranted or not. I don’t know if his entertainment gig on talk radio has concentrated or dissipated that tendency.
Look, the liberals often try to take Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and others and morph them into some icon of the Left. Reagan was great to embrace Jefferson and the Roosevelts even tho’ they would have rebelled against the act… how many times this fall and winter have we heard Obama invoke Lincoln for nearly everything… so much that it makes people familiar with ALincoln wonder if Obama has even a grasp of a basic cartoon sketch of that great American and President.
I think the modern conservative movement has more to do with Goldwater and Reagan and Kirk and Buckley and others than it does the Founders. And if the Founders, then maybe more to do with the AntiFederalists (who lost the policy debate of the day) and not those who wrote the Constitution. And certainly more in league with the Confederacy than with the Union of the time.
I believe it was Bork in Slouching Towards Gomorrah that said the difference between a liberal and a conservative is that the former wants to pursue Equality of Outcome while the latter strives for Equality of Opportunity.
Levin carries this idea well. I believe the Gay Conservative Movement typifies all the positives of this ideal. While I may disagree from a faith based viewpoint, it is because of my faith that I can call any fighter of the conservative gay movement a Brother in Arms.
I’ve long held the belief that the LGBT community can achieve far more and far faster if they would but hold fast to the ideals espoused here on this blog. They stand to gain so much more from a partnership with a more conservative agenda then they would ever gain from a liberal one.
My two cents.