Liberty & Tyranny (My take)

I recently got the opportunity to read Mark Levin's book Liberty & Tyranny. As a individual who is very critical of the Government I found some aspects of the text very interesting and agreeable while I also disagreed with some of the text as well. Liberty and Tyranny is a very strong text that challenges the very fabric of the United States government. It presents the ethical imbalance that the government presents and how as time goes on the government moves further and further away from the roots and ideologies that the country was built on. As a country built by individuals running from the tyranny of their mother country there should be a sense of not wanting or allowing history to repeat itself, especially when the past history is in direct relation to what drove the country to fight for its independence. Liberty and Tyranny looks to prove that not only has the country forgotten or simply ignored its past history it is assuming the role of the mother country it once ran from. The biggest difference is that the country now presents itself in one manner while possessing an ulterior motive that it is in complete opposition with the principle of democracy that the country claims to be built on.

One of the very interesting parts of Liberty & Tyranny is the reference to individuals known an statists. Statist are individuals in the constant pursuit of increasing their power. Not only do they to look obtain continuous power they’re willing to obtain in ways that are often in direct opposition with the law. The Statists look to essentially bypass the opposing laws in their way by altering them in a way that permits their actions. Levin explains that Statist gained a lot of momentum during the enactment of the New Deal by President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930’s. Levin believed that with New Deal, the firewalls of the constitution were breached due to the fact that many of aspects of the documents intended interpretation were ignored and changed in order makes the New Deal a reality

Liberty and Tyranny essentially calls for conservatism in order to curb statist and their continuing efforts of the government to gain more power. As with anything though, the progression of time must bring about some degree of change. The time period in which this country’s constitution was written was one free of the many technological advances we possess today and more importantly written in a time period followed by events such as slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, and the placement of the Japanese into concentration camps. These events were all enacted by those in the lineage of the writers of the document thus giving the impression that the sentiments of those who wrote it can be called into question. Therefore the appropriate changes needed to juxtapose the document with current day are understandable, but on a similar token those changes should be done in a mediated manner that doesn’t give unbalanced authority in a society rooted in freedom and equality for all.