Book Critique: Liberty and Tyranny Essay
Book Critique: Liberty and Tyranny Essay The book Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin analyzes current events from the conservative constitutional view point. The book offers specific insights in the perception of development and conservatism. In this regard, it can be used to touch on various social and political issues in the US. The book gives a summary of the bureaucratic processes that evolve into a tyranny and demonstrated in a more liberal perspective in a bid to further the interests or governance and intervention. A general discussion about the government’s philosophy is included in the book and two basic political philosophies are given by the author. The principles presented in the book also reflect ethical business practices in a way that defines liberty and tyranny in the tenets of organizational entities. This paper will give a critique of this book to examine the many business issues from the view point of constitutional law.
The author defines liberty and tyranny to reflect the constant pursuit of specific interests by individuals and organizations as well. Levin perceives the current government’s attempt to control the dynamics of the society as a disruption of how citizens should pursue individual needs. This results in a tyrannical clash of individualist versus collective interests as it allows people to think liberally. In this theme, Levin demonstrates business ethics in a way that corresponds to the idea of liberalism in present day American politics slows down the structure of addressing social issues. The argument of constitutional reform and implementation of laws is centered on mitigating the influence experienced by the statists while rejecting individual rights. Levin portrays statists in the light of tyranny. He rails against Enviro-Statism by writing that numerous experts are now reporting that “the world is cooling”. On the contrary, reliable experts maintain that the globe is actually on a long-term warming trend that is in fact quite worrying.
Levin discusses the Libertarian philosophy which he refers to as conservatism. This he presents alongside the other philosophy; Statist. Libertarianism is mainly focused on human rights which are mostly based on the Natural Law theory. In this regard, the author proposes that a government that is based on this theory and philosophy of Libertarianism protects its citizens from interference and oppression from others. In fact, the US was founded on the basis of this philosophy. Levin presents more political, economic and historical knowledge in his book than any other non-fiction literature today. He lays out a detailed and concise account of conservative principles and their origins giving the objectives intended by people while applying these principles. The liberals are referred to as Statists to mean those people who worship the government and want to relentlessly expand its power to completely control the interests of the citizens. According to the author, conservatism brings liberty while Statism puts people under tyranny in an iron fist. Conservatism does not have much to do with Statism however, but most Americans are gullible and believe that it actually does. Levin accounts for this premise in various instances. For instance, he emphasizes the need to read the Constitution in its genuine form in order to derive its intended meaning. According to Levin, this can broaden the insight of the average American citizen into the many aspects of the American civil society and understand the ethical implications of the social issues presented in the book. In this light therefore, he touches on the banning of DDT, global warming menace, social security evils, Medicare and the intended role of the federal government in preserving the American civil society.
“Liberty and Tyranny” portrays the state of present-day America as being far away from its founding principles to an extent that the nature of the American government cannot be precisely described. He argues that the Constitution of the United States of America was founded to protect US citizens from Statism through protecting their rights and property. However, Levin acknowledges the fact that the same Constitution has been revised by the Supreme Court and has changed its original meaning to give an opposite intention. Consequently, American citizens have lost their individual rights and freedoms. According to Levin, liberty and property are complementary. As such, when the Statist gains control over one of them, he ends up controlling both. This he expounds when giving excellent points regarding the nature of Statists. The book explains how Statists make false promises to make citizens expect a social transformation and live in a Utopian society. They use this to trespass on private property and justify the act as well. Moreover, Levin explains how the Statists blame the failures of their philosophy on the nature of “free markets”. For instance, the housing bubble created by the Statist with low interest rates at the expense of the mortgage market goes against the Constitutional law and business ethics.
The free market economy has its advantages where the original American federal system is concerned. The federal system provides freedom to citizens to dwell in communities that reflect their values. This is intended on enhancing the quality of life of all citizens to spur creativity, experimentation and checking the balance of local governments. Ethically, the free market economy has no system that discriminates against class, race, religion or social status. Therefore, the economic output should remain unaffected if the government is driven by this principle. Furthermore, the quality of products and services should be evaluated on the basis of their merit rather that the individual characteristics of their producers. Nonetheless, Statists still use false crises to develop and extend government to their selfish programs. Most citizens end up becoming dependent on these programs and in the end, the Statist gets political support and perpetuates political supremacy. In this regard also, Social Security and the Medicare systems have been the foremost products of these Statist programs. They create a constituency of dependents that are used to maintain and increase their power in all aspects of the society.
Levin goes on to present some lame recommendations about attacking the power of the Statists. He suggests that young people need to be educated on these Statist programs in order to know that they are a swindle across generations. The detriment of this recommendation is that most conservative readers would rather maintain their benefits from these programs and are more likely to support any changes to them. The author is therefore not really honest to his readers as far as these entitlement programs are concerned. Nevertheless, Levin’s initial discussion of the political philosophies (Libertarianism and Statism) is excellently presented and the book is quite balanced. He attempts to defend the views of those who dissent from the Statist perspective of the society.
The book is an outstanding tutorial on political philosophy as applied to various aspects of the society. The author fails to address certain issues comprehensively, however. For instance, he does not attempt to address the question of the effects of carbon dioxide on temperature levels when discussing global warming. He only makes a fundamental argument that is based on available evidence from a scientific point of view. He argues from the authority of experts who give an unreliable answer to the menace of global warming. Nonetheless, the book is fair enough for readers who need an honest opinion about the issues covered by Levin.
