No one will ever accuse Mark Levin of not getting to the point.
The top-tier national radio host has several best selling books, including The Liberty Amendments, which I reviewed in 2013. Levin described his project as follows:
“I undertook this project not because I believe the Constitution, as originally structured, is outdated and outmoded, thereby requiring modernization through amendments, but because of the opposite — that is, the necessity and urgency of restoring constitutional republicanism and preserving the civil society from the growing authoritarianism of a federal Leviathon. This is not doomsaying or fearmongering but an acknowledgment of facgt. The Statists have been successful in their century-long march to disfigure and mangle the constitutional order and undo the social compact.”
If The Liberty Amendments framed one answer, Plunder and Deceit clarifies and documents the problem.
The problem is a problem Levin has been focused on for years — Progressive Plunder. In this audio addressing teachers’ unions opposition to Scott Walker’s public sector union reforms, Levin is blunt: “It’s plunder! Plunder! That’s what progressivism is.”
Like I said, Levin doesn’t waste time. The very first sentence of Plunder and Deceit asks:
Can we simultaneously love our children but betray their generation and generations yet born?
In that seemingly simple question, Levin hits on the essence of what is happening to our country.
Levin then goes on to explore the answer to that question, on topics such as the Debt, Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare, Education, Immigration, the Environment, the Minimum Wage, National Security, and the Constitution.
Andrew McCarthy at National Review writes of the book:
If nothing else, Plunder and Deceit is a book about facts. It presents the hard evidence that the federal government and its ever-expanding administrative state, under the control of both major political parties through the better part of the last century, have increasingly stolen future prosperity to provide current comfort….Levin rolls out the numbers on our ocean of debt — the staggering deficit spending by which Barack Obama has doubled down on the profligacy of the Bush years; the politically crafted and economically ludicrous structure of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the “entitlement” edifice that will, in the foreseeable future, crowd out all other federal spending except interest on what government must borrow to keep the gravy train rolling.
Jeffrey Lord in The American Spectator also notes the extensive documentation behind the thesis of the book:
Working his way through Social Security (“it will stop with a crash”), Medicare, and Obamacare (federal control of health care “another impending fiasco”), immigration (“assimilation no longer means Americanization”), education (“too often driven by statist ideology and objectives, academic fads and social experimentation”), the environment (a war on capitalism conducted by extremists “whose real ideology and agenda extend far beyond clean air and water”), the minimum wage (“ a job killer”), and more, Mark patiently connects each to the fate of the “rising generation” that is America’s future.Suffice to say, as the title of the book illustrates, none of this is good news for those who will someday themselves become “the ruling generation.”
But it would be wrong to view Plunder and Deceit as a mere catalog of woes. Rather, the documentation is the predicate to answering that first question.
The problem, Levin notes, is that it is hard for even well-intentioned people to know what to do once they recognize the problem of the decline of “civil society”:
“For them, the difficulty lies not in knowing how to effectively influence the omnipresence and complexity of a massive governing enterprise that is less republican [my note: small “r”] and more autocratic…. There is no comparable corporate structure shoring up the civil society and counterbalancing the federal government’s discrediting and impositions.”
Younger people, Levin writes, are most harmed and least equipped to address these problems, in large part because of the educational system:
“In particular, underlying the rising generation’s ethos … is the relentless indoctrination and radicalization of younger people, on a daily basis and over the course of many years, from kindergarte through twelfgth grade to higher educations in colleges and universities, which engrains within them a vulnerability to exploitation and zealotry. It builds among them acceptance or even clamor for self-destructive policies and conditions that ensure future economic and political instability.Even the most diligent parents have little effective input into what their children are taught in these classrooms….”
Depressed yet?
I don’t think that’s Levin’s intent. Rather, in one of those the darkest hour is just before the dawn type moments, Levin calls on the current ruling generations to recognize what they have done:
“At the beginning of this chapter I asked: Can we simultaneously love our children but betray their generation and generations yet unborn? The answer is no. I also asked: Do younger people wish to be free and prosporous? Do they have a responsibility to preserve their own well-being and that of subsequent generations by resisting societal mutation and economic plunder? The answer to both questions is yes….”
Consider Plunder and Deceit something of a self-help guide for the plundered generations to come:
“The consolidation of power, a mortal threat to the individual and liberty, is now the primary object of government… This book is, against heavy odds, an appeal to reason and audacity. It is intended for all Americans but particularly the rising generation, which is the primary, albeit not singular, target and casualty of the federal Leviathan’s improprieties. It is an appeal to younger people … to stand up as individuals and collectively against the strong hand of centralized government, which if left unabated will assuredly condemn them to economic and societal calamity.”
I say self-help because the younger generations have the most at stake. Levin calls for A New Civil Rights Movement:
“What is required is a New Civil Rights movement — not of the sort that exists today, which has been co-opted by statists, is often led by hucksters, and serves as a surrogate and advocate for centralized government and its pervasive agenda. But a truly new civil rights movement organized around fostering liberty and prosperity for younger people and future generations and against their continued exploitation.”
Levin then details an all-of-the-above approach for younger people: Take that fight to every level of society, live it as a fundamental part of your lives.
That will, of course, be easier said then done. But the first step is for the younger generations to recognize the problem. Plunder and Deceipt serves as a clarion call.
Get your teenage and college age kids to read Plunder and Deceipt . They may not like the taste of this tough medicine, but they’ll thank you for it.
(You can order the book at Amazon.com)
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