Next week, talk show host and author Mark Levin will be making his debut as a Fox News anchor as the network will begin airing his new show, “Life, Liberty, and Levin.” This is an addition that his fans, who currently watch him on LevinTV, are excited about, and it also adds huge starpower to the Fox News weekend lineup.
Levin took to Twitter to remind his fan base of the new program earlier this week:
Recently, Levin has been in the news trying to use his influence to get politicians and voters fired up about the idea of a convention of states, where the goal will be to shrink government and promote the founding ideals.
In anticipation of Mark’s new show, I decided to analyze his contribution to the political landscape over the course of his long and successful career. Mark’s political and ideological contribution can best be recognized by contrasting his works with communist literatures dating back to the 1500s that have formed an ideology still active today.
In order to understand Levin’s contribution to American political discourse we must understand what exactly his goal has always been. It is clear to me, as a reader of his books, a subscriber to his television network, and a listener to his radio show, that he has dedicated a lengthy career to one thing and one thing only. Fighting tyranny, exactly the kinds of tyranny prescribed in communist discourse
Thomas More’s “Utopia” is the first ever publication about the utopian state; in fact, it’s the work of literature from which we’ve drawn the word “utopia.” More is the philosopher behind many tyrannical concepts, but one of the things he goes after most is private property. This makes sense; his political philosophy is the foundation of tyrannical thought and stripping private property rights is the foundation of tyrannical government. More writes:
I am wholly convinced that unless private property is entirely done away with, there can be no fair or just distribution of goods, nor can the business of mortals be happily conducted. As long as private property remain, by far the largest and the best part of the human race will be oppressed by a heavy and inescapable burden of cares and anxieties.
Here’s how he describes the homes of the residents:
The doors [to the houses], which are made of two leaves, open easily and swing shut automatically, letting anyone enter who wants to — so there is nothing private anywhere. Every ten years, they change house by the lot.
To be clear, they aren’t changing houses because they want to. They are doing so because the government mandates that they do so. By making nothing belong to anyone, by default, it automatically belongs to the government, giving the Statist the control he has always desired.
But, lucky for us, “somewhere under the brick and steel of a nondescript building,” Levin explains to us why More’s societal recommendation would ruin lives, not help them.
He writes in Liberty and Tyranny:
Private property and liberty are inseparable. The individual’s right to live freely and safely and pursue happiness includes the right to acquire and possess property, which represents the fruits of his own intellectual and or physical labor. As the individuals time one Earth is finite, so too, is his labor. The illegitimate denial … of his private property enslaves to another and denies him his liberty.
As Levin explains elsewhere, if the government can tell you what to do in the comfort of your own home, behind your closed doors — hence the leaf doors which literally can not be closed — then there is no area into which the government can’t dig their claws.
That is exactly what happens in More’s “Utopia.” The government tells people what they must wear, what they must eat, and who they are required to sit next to. Allowing government to control something as sacred as your property is, essentially, allowing them to control your life in its entirety.
Next, we examine Edward Bellamy, who started a philosophical revolution in the 1800’s with his book called “Looking Backward: 2000-1887.” In it, he argues that the ideal form of government is one that combines political and financial powers:
The nation… [is] organized as the one great business corporation in which all other corporations were absorbed; it became the one capitalist in the place of all other capitalists, the sole employer, the final monopoly in which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the profits and the economies of which all citizens shared.
It sounds like a wonderful time, doesn’t it? That is until you realize that the residents of Bellamy’s world have no currency; rather, they are given a “credit card” with the amount prescribed to them by their government overlords. That same government, which is naturally incentivized to pay its people as little as possible, also decides the amount of hours their constituents work. In other words, in this system, people don’t have the freedom to choose their employment nor the quantity of hours they work at that profession.
I don’t know if Levin has ever read Bellamy, but what I do know is that he outlines this form of tyranny in his 8-episode review of his most recent book “Rediscovering Americanism and the Tyranny of Progressivism“:
He says that capitalism “separates political power from economic power … and enables the one to offset the other.” This, of course, is the exact opposite of what Bellamy’s system does. Without capitalism, Levin explains, “we cease to be a free people.”
Much of the sentiment discussed by these philosopher kings can be found in Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto.” Any “Levinite” has certainly heard Levin rail on Marxism in myriad contexts. Perhaps the most abhorrent part of the manifesto, however, is when Marx and Engels call for the end of freedom of religion outright:
Communism abolishes eternal truths [can also be read as “natural rights”], it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis.
In other words, all of the rights that the Constitution of the United States of America preserves because they are imperative to our freedom the Statist seeks to destroy by way of “political supremacy.”
Parenthetically, it is tough to blame Marx’s ideological descendants (the leftists) for the manner in which they protest, when it is Marx himself who alludes to their tactics.
But this is why, I’d imagine, Levin spends so much of his time defending the constitution and its originality at all costs. Because he understands that even the slightest alteration to the framers’ original intention can lead us down the path of what is reflected by Marx in his manifesto.
This is what Levin meant when he said:
What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth, and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit, not to transform it or destroy it.
The last form of tyranny I would like to reference — although I have barely scratched the surface — is one that I fear is growing mightily here in the United States: judicial tyranny.
In the first book penned by Levin that I ever read, titled “Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America,” Levin outlines clearly how the courts have overstepped their constitutional boundaries.
First, he shows how many of the justices on the Supreme Court are not as “clean” as we think them to be. Next, he shows that the Supreme Court has been wrong more than just a few times on very important cases. But the most important argument he makes — in my opinion — is that the job of the court is to interpret the law, not actively make it, as he states:
Judicial activists are nothing short of radicals in robes–contemptuous of the rule of law, subverting the Constitution at will, and using their public trust to impose their policy preferences on society. In fact, no radical political movement has been more effective in undermining our system of government than the judiciary. And with each Supreme Court term, we hold our collective breath hoping the justices will do no further damage, knowing full well they will disappoint. Such is the nature of judicial tyranny.
I was introduced to Levin when I was a young high schooler who knew and cared little about politics. Until, one day, my friend showed me a video of Mark Levin. That day my life was changed. He persuaded me to dedicate my life to fighting for freedom. In addition to his great work, Mark must be recognized for creating an army of energized freedom fighters that will continue to promote the cause long into the future.