Some Observations on "Liberty and Tyranny" by Mark Levin

I finished "Liberty and Tyranny" today. The book is a valuable learning and teaching tool, in that it covers almost every major challenge to American democracy today. Levin gives the history, major laws and constitutional principles governing the following fronts in our war with the left:

1. The Constitution
2. Federalism
3. The Free Market
4. The Welfare State
5. Evironmentalism ("Enviro-Statism")
6. Immigration
7. Self-Preservation (the military and foreign policy)

Levin describes how all of these aspects of our democracy have been undermined by statists, i.e. big-government advocates who misuse each of them to obtain and extend their power. He shows how these efforts have reduced our freedom, our security and our prosperity. Last of all, he describes how all of these areas could be restored to constitutional health.

Levin doesn't just put blame on Democrats, but also Republicans, particularly the weak Republicans who see the battle as lost and their only alternative in "working with the Democrats" or fiddling around the edges of these major areas. What is needed is not tinkering, but deep, systemic changes in our government to restore the nation to its founding principles.

He is critical of George Bush where such criticism is justified, e.g. in putting the damaging "bail-out" plan into operation, the same one that Obama is now advancing and expanding.

I found much of the book truly eye-opening. He shows how Herbert Hoover was not, as is commonly believed, a laissez-faire free marketer by any means. Hoover intervened heavily in the economy in an attempt to reverse the Great Depression. FDR merely took over programs and policies that Hoover started and expanded on them -- a parallel situation to Bush and Obama today.

The chapter on Enviro-Statism was particularly enraging to me, where Levin documents the extent of the environmentalist fraud, particularly as it involves "man-made global warming." These false concerns are merely fuel for increased governmental intervention into the lives of the citizens and the economy. Other leftist accomplishments in this area include the banning of D.D.T., which has resulted in millions of deaths in the Third World to malaria. When you think left, think death -- the two are joined at the hip.

The chapter on immigration was no less disturbing. It describes the insane policies the nation has followed since Lyndon Johnson and Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act in 1965, allowing for chain migration that ended both quotas and preference for European immigrants. The result has been a heavy influx of less educated and more impoverished immigrants who are more apt to go on welfare rolls and are less capable of adding benefit to the civil society. The Statist, of course, sees this change as opportunity, as it provides him with a large influx of friendly voters.

It seems to me that many Americans are too intellectually lazy to read such a book and informing the public won't be an easy task. It will take some cataclysmic event to shake them out of their stupor and motivate them to both understand the problems and devise a means of fixing them. Perhaps the secession of a few red states would do the trick; I don't really know. In any case, the compact agreed to by the various states upon entering the union has been effectively obliterated. With some states, like California and Massachusetts, that's probably a desired outcome. Other states like South Carolina and Texas may feel differently.

In any case, the damage to our Constitution and founding principles is so extensive and deep that I despair of the possibility of turning it around. Still, we must try with everything that is in us.

Two Great Books for Americans: "Meltdown" and "Liberty and Tyranny"

I'm reading two great books simultaneously. It's tricky, but that's why I have two eyes and two hands.

One of those books is "Meltdown" by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. It's an explanation of the causes of the current financial crisis and why the bailout will make things worse. Woods writes an easy to follow, logical analysis and supports it with facts and examples. The federal government caused the financial crisis by insisting that mortgage companies and banks loan money to poor credit risks based on their ethnicity rather than their ability to repay loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac further compounded the problem by buying the subprime mortgages from the mortgage companies and banks so the latter could make even more subprime loans. Fannie and Freddie then securitized the subprime loans and sold the mortgage-backed securities to investors, i.e. banks and pension funds.

George Bush did his share of the damage by initiating lending based on "no down payment" so that even more citizens could buy “the American dream.” Note: bad ideas by Republicans aren’t any better than bad ideas by Democrats and are just as damaging. That’s why we Republicans need to elect conservatives, not liberal or “moderate” big-government Republicans like George Bush or John McCain.

Finally, the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) exacerbated the problem by keeping the interest rate artificially low. Easy credit for one ethnic group soon spread to everyone, and home buying proliferated, fueled by speculation and the belief that the price of homes would continue to rise indefinitely. All of this activity drove the prices ever higher.

When interest rates again began to rise, payments on adjustable rate mortgages also rose and many owners couldn’t make the payments and home loan defaults began to soar. This put a lot of houses back on the market, and an increase in supply generally causes a decrease in price. Soon, thousands of mortgages were collateralized by homes worth less on the market than what was owed on the mortgages. Many people, particularly those with nothing to lose (the no down payment folks) just walked away.

The result of this was a major chain reaction throughout the economy: banks and other lenders failed because payments on their loans stopped coming in; AIG failed because it had insured many of these mortgages and too many of them defaulted all at once, overwhelming AIG’s ability to pay. Thousands of pension funds that were heavily invested in mortgage backed securities lost value, debilitating many people's 401K's.

The major lesson that should be learned (but won’t be learned) is that the government needs to keep its big rotten hands out of the economy. Forcing private industry to finance bad loans and artificially deflating the interest rate was terribly damaging to the economy. The bailout addresses none of these problems and will make the recession longer and deeper. Things will get worse for some time to come. Hope you are ready for hard times.

The second book, "Liberty and Tyranny" by Mark Levin, is a best seller that is going viral and is selling out everywhere. I am only a third of the way through the book so can't fully opine on its contents just yet. Here's my impression so far: Levin describes the country America was intended to be, how the three branches of government were supposed to work, and how the Constitution has been eroded over time. Leftists, or as he calls them, Statists, have slowly but steadily shifted power away from the states to the federal government. Just reading it raises my ire.

So I will spend the lovely spring weather this weekend nursing a cigar in the backyard while I absorb the wisdom of these two authors.

Oh, I almost forgot, check out Robert Ringer's latest articles (follow the link in the left sidebar) on the rise of fascism in the 1930's and its parallels to today. Carol at No Sheeples Here blog also has a great post on this same subject.

Obama is looking more like a brownshirt every day and is following a similar path to absolute power as did leading fascists before him.