John Hayward reviews for Human Events readers the proposals popular author and radio host Mark Levin has offered for restoring America’s traditional constitutional order.
Radio host Mark Levin’s new book, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, is one of the most focused, accessible, and aggressive political books you’ll ever find. Levin’s thesis is that the balance of power between the three branches of the federal government, the states, and the American people has been distorted beyond the ability of conventional politics to repair. After all, if the power of the legislature has been diminished relative to the executive, the executive has dispersed its disproportionate power into unelected bureaucracies, and the states are increasingly powerless vassals of Washington, then there is no way for the peoples’ representatives in Congress or state houses to draft laws that would correct the situation. The entire point of this century-long quest to centralize power was to remove it from the clumsy hands of foolish American citizens. We are spectators to a game show in Washington. We might be able to vote a few of the contestants off the show, but we have no control over the rules of the game.
Levin aims to change the rules of the game… or, more properly, reset them, to restore the brilliant system put in place by America’s Founders. With the situation explained and his goals set forth in a few introductory pages, he executes the rest of his book with the planning and precision of a SEAL team taking an objective. Each of his proposed “Liberty Amendments” is laid out in a brief chapter that explains its importance, sources it to the writings of the Founding Fathers, and anticipates the more reasonable objections that would likely be raised. Little time is wasted on the unreasonable objections, for Levin does not intend to address an audience of the stupid, greedy, or hysterical. He also knows his statist adversaries are not interested in rationally discussing the death of the Leviathan they nourished for generations.
A Constitutional reset is necessary because the progressive project is a cascade of lost freedoms, designed so that each step is irreversible, and every inch of ground taken by the State is claimed forever.
