This officially begins the deconstruction of Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark Levin, which I am doing at the request from a conservative nephew. Here are links to background information I have provided for this deconstruction. Let me add that at this moment I have skimmed the book only. I will be reading and deconstructing it in its entirety, but I did not want such a priori knowledge to bias how I would present the following background information.
An overview of misinformation principles
A basic understanding of free markets
A basic understanding of property
First, let me acknowledge that you may think I am nitpicking when I uncover the misinformation in the title. However, my job is to uncover misinformation and “getting off on the wrong foot” has consequences. It presupposes the reader to interpret what he/she reads in certain ways. In other words, a misinformed title acts like dogma, the first and foremost misinformation principle.
The meaning of words count for an empiricist. I used the Longman’s dictionary online to provide shared meanings that I don’t otherwise define or model. A manifesto is a written statement for what a political party believes or intends to do. Literally, then, A Conservative Manifesto would be claiming what the Conservative Party in Great Britain believes and plans, since there is no Conservative Party in America. One could extend the meaning of manifesto to include interest groups, certainly the founding fathers considered political parties as odious interest groups, but there are now many conservative interest groups and they do not all believe and plan the same things.
Levin could not possibly be writing a manifesto for the Conservative Party in Great Britain, or even the official manifesto for any number of interest groups (though some might choose to adopt Levin’s work as their platform post hoc). To suggest otherwise would be misinformation, but I do not believe that is how the subtitle misinforms us. Rather, what Levin writes is likely not a manifesto at all. His writings are an account of what he particularly believes as a Conservative. Certainly there is nothing wrong with that straight up, only in alleging you speak in an official capacity and, in so doing, provide a doctrine that insidiously persuades others to conform their beliefs to yours. Once again, this really gets to the dogmatic foundation of misinformation.
To cut through this misinformation the title should read more like Liberty and Tyranny: The Doctrine of a Conservative. The basic meaning of conservative is someone who does not like changes in politics and ideas. This should make Levin an opponent of both political parties, since both have changed their politics and ideas over time. I do not know yet if this is the case, but I’ll make a wild stab that Levin will probably champion a particular political party during the course of his work. If he does so, then he distorts the true meaning of conservative.
There is another distortion at work. Politics and ideas are broad, but Levin’s title narrows down the particular area for which we are to assume he is conservative. He must have fixed ideas (by the definition of conservative) about liberty and tyranny. Yet no matter what fixed ideas he holds he presents a great irony. There has been no liberty as important to the survival of the human species as the independence to change our minds based on new experiences. A Conservative, by definition once again, cannot be for all liberties, or even the most important liberty of changing our mind based on new experiences. The argument against changing beliefs is embedded in stability, a desirable ideal certainly, but not the same ideal as liberty.
The title does not state whether Levin supports Liberty or Tyranny. If he supports Tyranny, the unfair control of others, then his conservative ideas probably stem from the original conservative thinking of Thomas Hobbes, who alleged that government needed to save us from our bestial selves. As much as I disagree with this assumption, it does provide an excellent rationale for Stability and Levin would not be distorting information.
Of course Levin is going to champion Liberty, which reveals that either he does not know the meaning of the terms he is using, or he knows too well the problems with equating Conservative with Liberty but wants us to mindlessly equate the two. More to the point, he wants us to equate Stability and Liberty as if the two are synonymous. In doing so he wants readers to believe there is such a thing as a “free lunch,” refuting the position of someone Levin likely admires (Milton Friedman). He likely wants to brand those who oppose his “free lunch” views as supporting Tyranny.
To recap, Levin’s cover alone uses the first and third misinformation principles to get his readers to believe he is more of an official spokesperson or authority than he really is, and to gloss over the inherent problems with equating Conservative and Liberty.
Tags: Liberty and Tyranny, Middle Class Politics, Misinformation
Wow… This seems like a very academic and rather rediculous deconstruction. Hopefully it gets better. All persuasive writing uses techniques like the ones levin uses – it’s not new and to offer a critique of it as a serious evaluation of the work seems to indicate a bias ( ironically ). Using the measuring stick you’ve laid out here, virtually every book title could be construed to be misinformation. (is hope really audacious? Obama would have us believe it is). Was mary’s lamb’s fleece really as white as snow, or was she giving us the runaround. Perhaps the fleece was slightly off white but for her own political purposes, she wanted to equate it with snow.
You present as logic that since some other books besides Levin have distortions in the title, then “virtually every book title could be construed as misinformation.” We could play a game where you cite one title that misinforms and I respond with one that does not and that game would go on for quite awhile. Maybe you would “win” in the end but your statement simply is not true. What prompted you to make a false statement should be of interest to you.
Where such a broad statement from you would ring more true would be your reference to bias. It seems that empiricists are more open and aware of the role of bias in everyone’s experience than scholars such as Levin, and perhaps you. I do indeed have a bias and, in fact, beat you to the punch of admitting to and laying that bias out. I’m assuming you just dropped in to this snapshot within a series and do not know the whole context so I would encourage you to dive a little deeper. See: Liberty and Tyranny and Grassroots Empiricism in particular before commenting further.
You will note that a main focus of this web site is misinformation. Indeed, I wrote a 564 page book about misinformation (and I challenge you to detail how the title of my book misinforms). That is one of my biases. I have a bigger problem with misinformation than with information I don’t agree with. I also am biased in favor of free markets and independence, given what those terms really mean. Thus, I’m more likely to focus on misinformation about free markets and liberty than information about free markets and liberty, or any information/misinformation about socialism.
Ah, but the question now is what is your bias and how well do you acknowledge that bias in the evaluation of the information/misinformation you process?