Liberty or Socialism?

Mark Levin's new book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" has gone number one on Amazon the first day of its release. While I have not yet received my copy, I have been able to read excerpts from bloggers who have received and read theirs, and posted book reviews. One such review is here, and an excerpt follows. One innovation that Levin makes deserves to be made a permanent part of the lexicon: the false label “liberal” that the Left has bestowed upon themselves is replaced with the more descriptive and accurate term, “statist”:

It is observed that the Statist is dissatisfied with the condition of his own existence. He condemns his fellow man, surroundings, and society itself for denying him the fulfillment, success, and adulation he believes he deserves. He is angry, resentful, petulant, and jealous. He is incapable of honest self-assessment and rejects the honest assessment by others of himself, thereby evading responsibility for his own miserable condition, The Statist searches for significance and even glory in a utopian fiction of his mind's making, the earthly attainment of which, he believes, is frustrated by those who do not share it. Therefore he must destroy the civil society, piece by piece.

For the Statist, liberty is not a blessing but the enemy. It is not possible to achieve Utopia if individuals are free to go their own way. The individual must be dehumanized and his nature delegitimized. Through persuasion, deception, and coercion, the individual must be subordinated to the state. He must abandon his own ambitions for the ambitions of the state. He must become reliant on and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state -- not family, community, and faith, all of which have the potential of threatening the state. Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state.

The Statist's Utopia can take many forms, and has throughout human history, including monarchism, feudalism, militarism, fascism, communism, national socialism, and economic socialism. They are all of the same species -- tyranny. The primary principle around which the Statist organizes can be summed up in a single word -- equality.

Equality, as understood by the Founders, is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor, and to be treated impartially before a just law. Moreover, equality should not be confused with perfection, for man is also imperfect, making his application of equality, even in the most just society, imperfect. Otherwise, inequality is the natural state of man in the sense that each individual is born unique in all his human characteristics. Therefore, equality and inequality, properly comprehended, are both engines of liberty.

The Statist, however, misuses equality to pursue uniform economic and social outcomes. He must continuously enhance his power at the expense of self-government and violate the individual's property rights at the expense of individual liberty, for he believes that through persuasion, deception, and coercion he can tame man's natural state and man's perfection can, therefore, be achieved in Utopia. The Statist must claim the power to make that which is unequal equal and that which is imperfect perfect. This is the only hope the Statist offers, if only the individual surrenders himself to the all-powerful state. Only then can the impossible be made possible. ...

For the Statist, the international community and international organizations serve as useful sources for importing disaffection with the civil society. The Statist urges Americans to view themselves through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, to doubt their institutions, and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders -- as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. They need to listen to the voices of condemnation from world capitals, and self-appointing global watchdogs hostile to America's superior standard of living. America is said to be out of step and regressive, justifying the surrendering of his sovereignty through treaties and other arrangements that benefit the greater "humanity." And it would not hurt if America admitted it's past transgressions, made reparations, and accepted its fate as just another aging nation -- one among many.

The Statist must also rely on legions of academics to serve as his missionaries. After a short period of training and observation, academics receive a sinecure -- a personal stake in the state via lifetime employment through a system of tenure. The classroom is to shape the beliefs and attitudes of successive generations of malcontents and incubate the quiet revolution against the civil society. Academics help identify the enemies of the state, whom their students learn to distrust or even detest through distortion and repetition -- corporations as polluters, the Founding Fathers as slave owners, the military as imperialists, etc.

This is a concise statement of the several positions that I have taken on the utopianism of the consequentialist, Atheist Left. I am anxious to receive my own copy in a few days and spend the night reading it.

I am currently engaged in some other books along the same vein, although they might not have the same impact. These include The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism, and The Road to Serfdom, both by F.A, Hayek; Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg; and the striking book, United in Hate, by Jamie Glazov.

There is also blog chatter about depression amongst the lovers of liberty. One comment stands out: the disaster has already occurred; our situation now is one of response to the disaster.

This is a time for action, not for depression. As another says, the cure for depression is action. The response will determine the future of our culture, whether socialist equal outcomes, or personal liberty to pursue one’s own path.