There is a Biblical saying that you can’t serve both God and Mammon. At this point I can use the ten misinformation principles to summarize who/what Mark Levin really serves instead of Liberty. There is more left to the book, and perhaps I’ll come back to it occasionally in the future, but here is a three part wrap-up for Liberty and Tyranny for now before moving on to some new features.
Here is an overview of the ten misinformation principles for reference. I should add that I recently noted a mistake in the original document. It should be fixed in past links, but please refer to this list to be sure.
Levin adheres to the dogma (principle #1) of a few Enlightenment philosophers, most particularly the dogma that private property is a natural right and a fence to liberty. All the information he omits or distorts is for the ultimate end of reinforcing this fixed, unwavering (and false) belief whose only verification/legitimacy amounts to something like “because they said so.” His position is almost identical to that of the early Federalists, the party founded by Alexander Hamilton, the party that favored centralized government for the sake of commerce, the party that first packed the judicial branch of government, the party that went through several transformations before becoming the present day Republican Party.
What he omits (principle #2) in his assessments of the Founding Fathers is that they were not all Federalists. Indeed, in numbers they were the minority to the states-rights agrarians that formed the early Democrat-Republicans. Yet the Federalists were the party obviously most interested in federal governance and they had the most impact on the process early on. Because he assumes, or at least presents, that all the Founders thought like Federalists his assessment that federal heavy-handedness began with the New Deal is a gross distortion (principle #3). The first move towards heavy-handed federal government was the formation of the first political party, with the Democrat-Republicans to blame (though, ironically, they formed to curb the heavy-handedness of Federalist government). The most glaring example of heavy-handed legislation early on was the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, so heavy-handed that it became the beginning of the end for the Federalist Party. The Federalists mitigated their demise through the early Marshall Court, which was when the Supreme Court adopted its judicial activist role of Supreme Broker for the Constitution. The New Deal, in terms of fostering a paternal court, was nothing new.
Part Two explores who Levin serves through this misinformation.
