As a media person Mark Levin has the resources of corporate media to reinforce misinformation (principle #8). His opinions become part of an entertainment package that gets echoed until one wonders who could possibly think differently. As a media person he is trusted by certain segments of the population (principle #9), a trust that would have to be breached significantly before being questioned. He abuses this trust in his book Liberty and Tyranny by demonizing a strawman enemy that does not exist, inducing apprehension, vanity and cynicism in his followers (principle #10).
There is a problem Levin faces with his thesis in that the New Deal Court, and the socialist trends he abhors and caricatures, effectively came to a halt by the seventies, when wealth disparity hit a low point. Since that time the Supreme Court has once again been heavily influenced by corporate lawyers and the economic trends of the country have been towards corporate capitalism or, to be precise, corporate socialism. To suggest that Statists have been ruling the roost since the seventies confuses the normal with the abnormal (principle #7). Without this confusion Levin has no demons to exploit for the sake of rallying people to his version of Liberty.
Why would Levin not title his book something like Order and Chaos, which more accurately proclaims his position? He would no longer have demons to exploit, but that tactic is not necessary when one aims mainly to inform, and Order is a worthy goal to champion with information.
This question brings us back again to the underlying dogma driving the misinformation in Liberty and Tyranny, private property is a natural right and a fence to liberty. I do not doubt that Levin believes that wholeheartedly, as did Enlightenment Philosophers and Founding Fathers before him. It’s just simply not true and no evidence that abides by the meaning of words can provide support. Private property that goes beyond “use it or lose it” can only occur within a paternal structure, by definition an affront to liberty. The social value of private property is precisely order, not liberty. If institutionalized a certain way with a certain political system and certain jurisprudence, private property can be used as a means to instill a just order. But private property can also be used to instill an unjust order, a tyranny, and the more likely we are to confuse property as a natural right or fence to liberty the more likely our jurisprudence and political system will institutionalize a tyrannical economic system, a system that Mark Levin endorses.
Here is previous background material.
An overview of misinformation principles
A basic understanding of free markets
A basic understanding of property
Tags: Corporate Capitalism, Liberty and Tyranny, Misinformation
