Book Recommendation: Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America by Mark Levin
With Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin established himself as a major current political thinker, able to convey complicated concepts in clear, concise language. Therefore, I was looking forward to finding the time to read Ameritopia. It did not disappoint, and should be required reading for anyone to serve in public office, not in place of, but in addition to Liberty and Tyranny. Levin reviews utopian political thought, from Plato to Marx, and contrasts it with the political thought of Locke, Montesquieu and de Tocqueville, which are so foundational to our limited government Republic. Levin demonstrates with frightening precision how far the Republic has strayed from the principals that guaranteed our freedom and prosperity. I wish I had this book when I was wading through these writers while majoring in political science at the University of Massachusetts, though many of my professors were ivory tower utopian statists.
Some of the quotes are gems. From Montesquieu: "When legislative power is united with executive power in a single person or a simple body of magistracy, there is no liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically. Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separate from legislative power and from executive power." One immediately thinks of Czars, Executive Orders, ignoring Congress on the War Powers Act, and the attack on the Supreme Court. Levin points out that, "America has become a society in which the people are wise enough to select their own leaders, but too incompetent to choose the right lightbulb." Indeed.
