What is particularly interesting to me about the interview is that is shows clearly something I long ago surmised — and subsequently posited while discussing the nascent outlaw! movement (an idea that led to my ouster from polite online “conservative” company, but that now, 4-years later, seems more prescient than “unhelpful” or “fundamentally unserious“) — namely, that the ideas behind Levin’s prescriptions, when divorced from the identity or political label placed upon its author, should have cross Party appeal: former Reagan Democrats, blue collar Democrats affected by bureaucratic bullying and government molestation in their industries, “liberals” who, for their occasional emotional support for certain statist polices, still on the whole believe in individual liberty and would rail against a permanent centralized ruling class dictating their every action, and libertarians and classical liberals who, to my mind, are today’s “constitutional” or legal conservatives — all of these people can rally behind the ideas presented by Levin here (and others elsewhere) that redound to reinvigorating the Constitution’s intended protection of individual sovereignty, and beat back ruling class attempts to breach constitutional protections and create from “of, by, and for the people” a government that perversely turns its owners into subjects.
I think — and I believe both Levin and Reynolds would agree with me here — that the youth vote that the GOP so longs for (but tries to woo with hamfisted panders and empty-sounding platitudes) is well within the grasp of the libertarian/classical liberal/constitutional conservative coalition: after all, the central message we are promoting is that a federal government that was born of reluctant necessity and given specific enumerated powers, and that was designed to be constrained by checks and balances through the adversarial nature of the branches, has grown so powerful that it is now directing what you eat, what you purchase, what kinds of lightbulbs you use, what kinds of toilets your flush, what kinds of showerheads you deploy, etc — and as it does so represents the very kind of nannystatist oppression against which youth are naturally disposed to rebel.
For years now I’ve been preaching that the failure of the GOP as a Party — and of many of its spokespeople and opinion shapers as an appendage to, and enabler of, the Party — is tied to its so-called “pragmatism” or realism, which, if we need to pick out actual dog whistle phrases coming from the GOP, has come to mean a surrendering of principles, and a commitment to attaining numerical power over various branches.
That they have failed — save in 2010, when it was those very “purists” and “true believers” they typically reject who propelled them into leadership in the House an in many state legislatures and governorships — has only persuaded them that they aren’t yet pandering hard enough through a version of the left’s antifoundationalism, and that it is the Hobbits and Visigoths who are hurting the Party, not the Party braintrust, which frankly at this point would have trouble beating an especially gifted chicken at tic-tac-toe, white board strategy or no white board strategy.
And so the key is to go around them, and to engage in local politics, as we here in Weld County Colorado have been doing, however unlikely our chances of survival. Establishment Republicans seem to believe that a fight they can’t win is not worth fighting. Which means, in essence, that they don’t believe in fighting at all, because a tussle in which one is guaranteed victory going in is a rigged match, not a fight.
Here on this site we’ve discussed local civil disobedience, a reaffirmation of the power of Governors, state refusal to feed the federal government or comply with bureaucratic regulations created by an unconstitutional deference of power from the legislative to the executive branch, with the executive branch then stacking the bureaucracies with political fellow travelers unanswerable to the franchise of the citizens.
On a more structural level, we’ve discussed how language plays a key role in the inexorable empowerment of the progressive agenda, and how (and why) we can and must take it back.
Levin’s plan is a great launching point to have begin framing the kernel assertion in all of this: do we or do we not wish to be a constitutional republic, one designed to protect us, in large part, from government and to ensure our natural rights as free people?
Or would we rather just trade in liberty for the promise of a permanent welfare state that, from an economic perspective, isn’t really permanent at all, and must of necessity collapse eventually under the weight of its own deceit?
You can view the interview here.
(h/t JohninFirestone)
. . . the youth vote that the GOP so longs for (but tries to woo with hamfisted panders and empty-sounding platitudes) is well within the grasp of the libertarian/classical liberal/constitutional conservative coalition: after all, the central message we are promoting is that a federal government that was born of reluctant necessity and given specific enumerated powers, and that was designed to be constrained by checks and balances through the adversarial nature of the branches, has grown so powerful that it is now directing what you eat, what you purchase, what kinds of lightbulbs you use, what kinds of toilets your flush, what kinds of showerheads you deploy, etc — and as it does so represents the very kind of nannystatist oppression against which youth are naturally disposed to rebel.
I too believe that young people (though I’d not limit this notion to a contingent group of young people on the scene today) long for understanding regarding the world in general and the politics they must inherit, come what may. This in turn means that I believe young people are generally both capable and actually desirous of absorbing the history political philosophy as it unfolded across the ages, and for many reasons, not least that such understanding tends to empower themselves, as well as that it is a deeply satisfying and interesting subject on its own terms.
Older people? Generally speaking, not so much. Us older people tend to think we already know it all — most especially by “it” intending the primary or simplest or most fundamental things regarding politics. Which, ha! It more often turns out we know nothing of the kind — yet more angrily will insist on and cling to this ignorance than any other ignorance of which we may be possessed.
But who, between these two classes, young and old, holds actual political power and the means to enforce opinion?
I can speak only from personal experience, sdferr, but the study of history was wasted on me in my youth. Until I was in my thirties, I couldn’t relate to the people or the circumstances that drove them to do what they did; it was just names and places and dates.
That being said, I’ll reiterate that if the GOP can’t sell independence to the under-30 crowd, then there’s no hope for them and they should go the way of the passenger pigeon.
When you read a post as lucid and rational as Jeff’s current comment, it is an inescapable conclusion that proper and pragmatic “conservatives” have no real interest in liberty. Otherwise Jeff Goldstein would be a feather in the cap of mainstream conservatism instead of someone largely disregarded and discounted.
I’m more particularly concerned with the specific study of philosophical history (and even, to the extent it proves possible as an accidental consequence of exposure, say [and I realize this will not appeal to the vast majority of students as a second step in the recovery of their intellectual heritage, but include the thought merely because it does sometimes, if infrequently, happen] of philosophy in general and political philosophy in the specific itself). The history of political philosophy isn’t so much concerned with names and dates as it is with the appearance of ideas on the stage of life, if I may momentarily treat the parading pageant as theater.
But it’s a long (and necessary) argument to make, evenso.
An oldy but goodie, albeit from a dead white guy, like a hundred years ago:
“[A] man should live as he pleases. This, they say, is the mark of liberty since, on the other hand, not to live as a man wishes is the mark of a slave.” — Aristotle Politics
Perhaps the youth can appreciate such sentiments.
Or, Aristotle, Politics Book I, 1252a:
*** Every polisis a community [commonwealth] of some kind, and every commonwealth is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the polisor political commonwealth, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good. ***
. . . polis is . . . polis or . . .
the study of history was wasted on me in my youth
American History in 8th grade was all about tariffs and the Teapot Dome Scandal.
Srsly.
Nothing about Woodrow Wilson segregating the troops or approvingly screening Birth of a Nation in the White House.
Or the tug-of-war between liberty and order.
Or the political ideas that have run through the body politic and what the effect was.
Or anything INTERESTING.
And I’m certain that was on purpose.
At Drudge, headline: Senator calls for Constitutional Convention
Ok, sez I to m’self, which one? Ah, Sen. Tom Coburn, I see, the ob-gyn doc with the flighty attachment to principle.
And what’s this?
*** “Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., explained to a town hall of his constituents that he wanted to call a national Constitutional Convention after reading Mark Levin’s new book, The Liberty Amendments.” ***
A “national” Constitutional Convention, no less!
***”As the Tulsa World notes, a national convention is called by two-thirds of the state legislatures and is one of two ways the U.S. Constitution can be amended.” ***
But hang on, where’s that mention of the States’ call that speaks of a “national” convention — in contradistinction to a federal convention, i.e. a convention of federated States as states? And what about the States’ conduct of the Amendment Convention as an “amendment” convention?
Hell, for that matter, where’s the mention of the simple “Amendment” intention of the thing in the first place?
Hmmmn, nowhere.
That’s some sparkling journalism right there, that is.
If by “sparkling journalism” we mean foggy-bullshit intended to becloud an issue rather than bring any clarity to it.
I read lots of history throughout the years, both as a schoolchild and an adult, and even eventually went to law school, but I really didn’t start putting it all together until I started listening to Rush in the late 80s. The event that flipped the switch for me was Bush/Gore in 2000 – and i was 48 – and i started with the Federalist Papers and went on from there.
People who “get” the repeating nature of history at an early age are rare and lucky. If we don’t cultivate them ourselves, Levin’s project will not take hold.
apart from history, did you read philosophical works due to an urge of your own RI Red? And if so, where (with whom) did you begin, or what provoked you to begin?
sdferr, in my first run at college, I took one poli sci course that started out with Aristotle and went from there. I considered it mildly interesting, but not at all useful to my narrow worldview of the time. In my second run at college – much more succesful than the first, and after some kindly instruction by Uncle Sam – I took an elective philosopy course and dropped it after three weeks. I knew that I had little interest in it and didn’t want to ruin my then-unblemished GPA.
My interest now tends toward only the subject of political philosophy, as far as it can can be divorced from “the study of core logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics and epistemology” (thank you, Mr. Webster).
The Bush/Gore dust-up really struck a nerve. I was flat on my back for several months with a ruptured disc and passed the time re-learning, or, for many things, learning for the first time, the nature of our political system. I had been generally disgusted by politics and had been able to live my life without worrying too much about whomever was in charge (the state of mind in which most of the constituency exists (OK, I was a low information voter)).
It was around 9/11 that I discovered the Internet, Instapundit and Protein Wisdom, in that order. It appeared that, although I might not be interested in the world as affected by political philosophy, it was certainly interested in me. Threads in Insty and PW got me ordering books online so that I could swim in the depths of the brain pool around here.
When Levin’s Ameritopia came out, I found it to be the right philosophical depth for me. He’d done all of the hard work and synthesized it so I didn’t have to. Not that I can’t wade through tomes; I’ve clawed my way through Victor Hugo. Levin isn’t Reader’s Digest, but he is easy to pick up.
So, shorter answer: Well, there is no shorter answer. Because the nature of life begets no easy answer. /pop-philosophy
Thanks for the reply RI. But so I’m getting it right, you didn’t find your way to any philosophical work of any kind on your own (I mean by this, in high school, or sometime prior to that even), before such stuff was introduced to you at someone else’s will, which is to say, as a matter of a kind of rote (Aristotle, whoever he is, sort of deal)?
Levin, it seems to me, is interested in political philosophy in his (partial) way, though there, not so much for its own sake (as a branch of or a part of philosophy more generally), as for the sake of what he can do with it. But this view of philosophy in general, and political philosophy in particular, is, to put it crudely, very much out of fashion in our time.
Levin Book #1 at NYT, Amazon,USA Today,Wall Street Journal,
Correct, sdferr, it was pure happenstance, although I had high school history teacher whom I admired who stressed the “civics” side of things. But I had no formal exposure to philosophical thinking.
Thinking about it just now, I realized that it was Heinlein who got me thinking about political thinking and the nature of man – Juan/Johnny’s high school history teacher/citizen/veteran and his OCS instructors in Starship Troopers, the revolution in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, all of Stranger in a Strange Land.
So I guess it was more of a self-guided tour.
In a sense, RI, we each have our peculiar paths or stories into our initial acquaintance toward what is for us, an inherited tradition.
But it remains for us as well to consider how it was, how it could have been, for those who had no tradition to inherit: for philosophy at one time simply did not exist, but had to be discovered for the first time, and the tradition we receive to be laid down — in the most fundamental sense of the term first — and to consider what on earth moved them to pursue this strange new way of thinking and being. But that’s a job for another day.
I suspect the seed was planted when homo sap or his predecessors stared into the heavens at night. Either with natural wonder or having discovered the properties of certain herbs or fermented liquids.
“we each have our peculiar paths”
care to sketch one for the pikachu?
In the limited sense in which we possess records of such stuff, it seems to have happened in Greece ’round about 600-500 bc, but you’re exactly on the mark regarding the discovery of nature as understood in contradistinction to nomos (custom, way, law). But the missing element in that account is the “philos” part — the drive to know, the love of the thing, which doesn’t seem to afflict just anyone, or everyone.