Alex Knapp is blogging Mark Levin’s “conservative manifesto” Liberty and Tyranny (here, here, and here so far – he’s only gotten through chapter two). This is good for me because Alex is the one who gets to suffer through Levin’s book, and I get to read Alex make fun of Levin instead. Saves me time and sanity.
Here’s Alex riffing off of Levin’s claim that – because of ‘statists’ – we are living in an age of “diminishing liberty”:
This is an incredibly simplistic way of looking at the world. In most ways — not all ways, but most ways — Americans are freer now than they’ve ever been. Consider the country’s state at the Founding — only landowners could vote. Women couldn’t own property. Blacks were property. Native Americans were being murdered and having their land stolen from them. Asians were prohibited from immigrating into the country. Trials were short, provided very few protections for defendants, and most people accused of crimes were on their own when it came to representation. Most trades were locked down by guilds, which were protected by law. State chartered corporations dominated the economy. Government jobs were determined by who was in favor with the local party bigwigs. You couldn’t have a business open on Sunday or overnight. Blacks, Germans, Irish, and Italians were forbidden from even entering certain towns, or at least staying overnight in them.
Almost 250 years later, can you honestly tell me that people are less free than when the country was founded? The economy is enormously freer. Civil service is determined by merit, not political bootlicking. (Thanks for that, James Garfield!) Women can own property and their husbands can’t rape them. Slavery has been abolished. Equal treatment is the law of the land. Immigration is no longer determined by race. Defendants have much more protection from the depredations of the State. Every citizen can vote regardless of whether they own land.
There are a lot of problems, to be sure. And the federal government, in the name of the “war on terror” has adopted an enormous number of illiberal, unconstitutional policies. But I’ll take today over 1790 in a heartbeat when it comes to personal liberty. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a freer country than it was in 1790.
Absolutely. The rest of the three posts are well worth a read. Not because Levin deserves your attention, but because mockery of Levin deserves your attention. Surely now, Alex will join the ranks of the world’s most deranged bloggers….
freelancer
I’ve been reading and following this exercise in Masochism as well. Funny to read that I’m a Statist and my biggest passion is the pursuit of government power…
E.D. Kain
@freelancer: We are all Statists now.
freelancer
@E.D. Kain:
I applaud the move by Alex Knapp to parse the scribblings of the current bible of Wingnuttia, but then I look within my own webtastic household and see that DougJ wants to apply the same idea to Ayn Rand. I emailed him to ask if he was trolling. He is not. That’s cause for involuntary commitment.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Here’s how it works: As more people who aren’t like Levin are granted rights, the right of people like Levin to oppress them is cruelly curtailed.
Tyranny!
srv
Too much freedom is a bad thing. Like in Egypt, that nation that Hillary says is a stable partner.
Soon they will learn what American weapons and intelligence can do.
burnspbesq
What’s the line about not engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed man? Critiquing Levin seems awfully close to that.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq:Isn’t it more like pointing and laughing?
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
There is a good deal of that, including, but not limited to, the repeated use of the word “simplistic.” I think simpletons the world over have a legitimate beef with Knapp for implicitly comparing Levin to them.
Mart
I betcha the Mormons find 2011 a bit freer than circa 1840. Although it still isn’t easy to be a Mormon POTUS. (Realize they were not around to be absolutely amazed by the Founding Fathers.)
Midnight Marauder
@burnspbesq:
I mean, if Mark Levin is not a simpleton, then we just need to give up on the fucking word.
Irregardless
My favorite review of a Mark Levin book is by Dhalia Lithwick: http://www.slate.com/id/2116087/
Excerpt:
“I use the word “book” with some hesitation: Certainly it possesses chapters and words and other book-like accoutrements.”
burnspbesq
@Midnight Marauder:
The Mayor of Simpleton would like a word with you.
Bootlegger Bootleggerovich
@srv: You don’t think we’re savvy enough to switch sides and back the rebels? C’mon, its Hilary Clinton we’re talking about!
Bubblegum Tate
@freelancer:
I really don’t understand why this is. A lot of the wingnuts I know say that Thomas Sowell and Mark Levin are the smartest men in the world, and I’m at a loss as to why. Levin sounds like every other right-wing blitherer out there, so why do wingnuts elevate him and not one of the other ones saying the same shit? What sets him apart from the others?
Mark S.
Knapp calls this “one of the stupidest paragraphs I have ever read in my entire life” and I can’t disagree:
Equality: the root of all evil.
E.D. Kain
@Irregardless: That’s a good one for sure.
Mark S.
Ack! Anyone want to fish me out of moderation?
Bootlegger Bootleggerovich
@Bubblegum Tate: His voice inflects in the right places, stirs the loins of good Murkans.
Spaghetti Lee
To the Mark Levins of the world, it’s about a certain kind of liberty. You know, for a certain kind of people. Their assessment of how much liberty there is is directly proportional to their theoretical ability to play Galitan God-King/Master of his domain on some private estate somewhere, and that’s one thing that was much easier to do back in ye good old days.
Mark S.
@Bubblegum Tate:
If I ever met someone who said Mark Levin was the smartest man in the world, I would run like hell. I think I’d have more respect for them if they said they thought the smartest guy in the world was Hannity. I’ve never heard Levin say anything remotely intelligent, let alone express any emotion that wasn’t bile.
Bubblegum Tate
@Mark S.:
They fuckin’ love him. I’m at a loss to explain it.
Villago Delenda Est
Levin’s totally lost in a wingtard fog, claiming that monarchies are liberal plots. He’s got no fucking clue as to what the fuck he’s talking about.
Ailuridae
@burnspbesq:
Any individual Levin mistake is problematic but are any oh them as bad as not understanding what a monopoly is?
Fargus
@Bubblegum Tate:
I don’t get it either. I sort of relish in it, though. I listen to right wing talk radio sometimes, just to hear what bullshit they’re up to, and it always makes me laugh to hear Hannity and Limbaugh denouncing the cult of personality around “the Messiah” Barack Obama, and then in the same breath unironically refer to Mark Levin as “the Great One.” Levin’s show’s own intro includes reference to him as “our leader.”
I think my favorite bit, though, is that sometimes they play a recording of Levin shouting the time (“It’s seven o’clock–under God.”) in the angriest way you can imagine.
I picked up Liberty & Tyranny this weekend for free at a free bookstore in Baltimore, partly because I’m a masochist, but mostly so that nobody who might actually want to read it could get it.
And the Horse He Rode In on
How old is Mark Levin? His titles on his list of “most deranged” bloggers are about the level of a five-year old (my daughter is six and she’s more mature than him). I guess in his world, “Most deranged” means “people who disagreed with me”, “people who said something mean about me” or “Andrew Sullivan stole my lunch money”
burnspbesq
@Ailuridae:
I don’t know that there is much to be gained by trying to identify the worst of Levin. That’s like asking which of three piles of dogshit smells the worst. Even if you can choose, at the end of the day it’s all dogshit.
matoko_chan
@E.D. Kain: Standard EDK format. Mark Levin is baaaaad, im just like you, soon we segue to the both sides are just the same eumeme, and fap-fap-fap markets!
go away you fucking poseur.
EDK stayed up late last nite thinking of something to burnish his credibility with the juicers.
you dumb cudlips fall for it every time.
Kyle Cupp
“Not because Levin deserves your attention, but because mockery of Levin deserves your attention.”
Well said. And, of course, Alex Knapp deserves our attention.
Alex
What Levin meant was that rich, white Protestant men are less free now, since the statists have deprived them of their right to own slaves, rape their wives, and obtain monopolies, massive tracts of land, and wealth producing positions of power through political influence. Hell, we can’t even keep Chinamen, the Irish and brown people from coming into the country.
matoko_chan
Lets have EDK address his cherished validation of the fetus = slave eumeme HERE where he cannot control the comments like he does at the League.
Big whup, Mark Levin is baaaaaaad. even that WATB Friedersdorf talks about that interspersed with his weepy pleas for “divided government”…..
Fat lot of good it does. Levin still tops the bookcharts, he still demogogues the “low information” base with eumemes.
GIVE THIS FUCKER THE HOOK.
El Cid
I am amazed that someone would actually take Levin’s screeds as a serious topic.
Bulworth
Oh c’mon. We all know what Levin means when he says Libertay! He means, um, what does he mean?
Elvis Elvisberg
@Mark S.:
“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.” — George W. Bush, Eternal President of the Republican Party.
Moik
@matoko_chan:
“Mark Levin is baaaaad, im just like you” – OMG THIS IS PROBABLY WHAT HE’S THINKING! WHY ADDRESS WHAT HE SAID WHEN I CAN ADDRESS HIS INNERMOST THOUGHTS!
“soon we segue to the both sides are just the same eumeme, and fap-fap-fap markets!” – WOO I’LL JUST MAKE UP WHAT HE’LL SAY NEXT AND ARGUE WITH THAT WOO!
“Lets have EDK address his cherished validation of the fetus = slave eumeme HERE where he cannot control the comments like he does at the League.” – I DON’T LIKE THE CURRENT SUBJECT SO LET’S HAVE A DIFFERENT ARGUMENT ALTOGETHER!
“Fat lot of good it does. Levin still tops the bookcharts” – THIS IS AN IRRELEVANT WASTE OF MY TIME, BUT SPAMMING IT WITH COMMENTS MAKES IT WORTHWHILE!
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
“go away you fucking poseur.”
If a vote were taken on the question of whether to banish you or Kain, it wouldn’t be Kain who would be gone. You calling anyone a poseur is rich stuff indeed.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: @Moik: keep sukking down that recycled conservative shit, boiz.
taste good?
Moik
@matoko_chan:
“keep sukking down that recycled conservative shit, boiz.
taste good?” WOO WITTY REJOINDER GRACIOUSLY DONATED BY AVRIL LAVIGNE WOO!