It was agility day in the household which means I had to pack my gear and head off to some small building somewhere in rural America to watch my dog navigate obstacles that rival any Spartan race .. well, a least for a dog that stands 9.5 inches tall and weighs a whopping 4.5 pounds. Linda was the official photographer for the event which is why I had to tag along even though there is a mountain of work to do at home (imagine Linda rolling her eyes about now). The good news is I get some time to work on the heavy lifting posts. Whenever it is time for a book recollection, a deep cleansing breath has to be made before diving into a pile of work. Of all the posts, the book reviews are probably the hardest in that they require documenting, verifying and reflecting on all the takeaways from the read. This was especially daunting with today’s featured read, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark Levin. Just to put it into perspective, this was only a 245 page paperback but had over 38 pages of cited reference. If you do not now Mark, he is a true Constitutional Conservative and knows his stuff. I would love to see him live debate someone of a differing political leaning. That would be a mauling like you have never seen one. Mark has been a constant staple on my radio for a number of years now and has had a priority slot during the whole election cycle. We differ on a few things but for the most part we are aligned on our political positions. Depending on where you are at on the spectrum, this is a highly recommended read. It will give good arguments for the conservative left, sway fodder for the independents and well, just might make a liberal’s world explode into tiny pieces. This book was written back in 2009 and has some eerie projects for the future under Obama. Whenever someone is standing in bewilderment on what just happened with the Trump election facts from this book come rolling up. It is pretty clear what the left agenda is and how it is permeating everywhere in our lives. The best way to comprehend it is to arm yourself with knowledge. Knowledge you will not get in the bias and deceitful mainstream media of today or from the established talking heads in our government.
As far as the book goes, it is not a light read. It took me a long time to get through this because every page caused me to spend extra time rereading for validation, bumping up against my own beliefs and then pondering the implications. Being that it is a product of 2009, there are a few areas that did not come to fruition, but 95% of it is dead on and still burning issues to this day. I am not sure what the future holds with Trump as of yet (will at least let him get in office before making any conclusions), but it sounds like draining the Washington Swamp is going to be more like a damn opening. Give it a read – if nothing else when we meet in the future we can pass over all these fact/areas and focus on new areas should we end up debating whether we’ve come to the end of the US yet. Meanwhile think I’ll go corner the market on safety pins and pacifiers – think there’s money to be made there with the potential number of people that are going to need them as of late (ha).

Hit the jump to see all the takeaways (and these were only the items I bothered to note).

• Barack Obama – the most ideologically pure Statist and committed counterrevolutionary to occupy the oval office
• Ronald Reagan: Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?
• The Conservative Manifesto
• Eliminate the progressive income tax and replace with flat or national sales tax
• Eliminate corporate and death tax
• Eliminate special tax exempt status for environmental groups since they are not nonpartisan charitable foundations – in fact, quite the opposite advancing their agendas through litigation on Statist behalf
• Eliminate federal judge tenure and allow legislative veto over court decisions. Huge supporter of term limits in all government roles but the second is a tricky one for me … well until the latest Supreme Court which continues to violate the constitution and feels they have the right to CREATE laws.
• Eliminate unions for federal government unions
• Reduce civilian federal workforce by 20% or more – pretty sure Trump is going to take this head on
• Eliminate monopoly control of government education, eliminate government teacher tenure (definitely support that!) and eliminate the federal Department of Education. Goodbye craptastic Common Core
• End chain migration (that must be the socially acceptable way to say anchor babies now), enforce the borders and promote assimilation
• Fight all efforts to nationalize health care – well, we lost that one … so far
• Reject all treaties that have as purpose to supplantation of America’s best interests to a global interest. You can put the deceptive Iran Treaty square in this category and ultimately the rise of Trump as the society counter
• Stop the Statist attempts to silence opposition through regulation of political speech on outlets such as radio. Clearly Mark is a Statis target for this and I continually see attempts to try and reduce the impacts of Patriot Radio, Fox, Brietbart – I always wonder if they understand this knife cuts both way and the left has far more to lose – talking about your sorry ass for a broadcast MSNBC, the Clinton News Network and quite frankly all mainstream media. This recent election has exposed your hidden agendas and your propaganda outlets would be subject to the same scrutiny.
• Edmund Burke is often considered the father of modern conservatism
• Mark believes the industrial expansion ended the Great Depression, not the New Deal which only prolonged recovery (suggested by a reference study to be 7 years). Apparently there is perpetual arguments about the New Deal’s role in the recovery – I was always under the impression that it was indeed an inhibitor but my brother Ron indicated last we talked that it was still being debated – can’t wait for the real science to weigh in on Obama’s handling of the recovery.
• Statist build a culture of conformity where the ideal citizen is a drone in service to the state – assuming compliance bought by Obama phones and other bribery
• The Conservative does not despise the government, rather tyranny thus the emphasis on the Constitution.
• Founder’s definition of equality – Every individual’s natural right to live freely under self-government, the rights to property created by his own labor and impartiality before a just law.
• A Deist – someone who believes God created the universe but left it up to man to so sort things out through reasoning (put Franklin and Jefferson in this category)
• Contrary to Christian theory, Mohammed included political maxims, civil and criminal laws and theories of science in his doctrine – thus you know why Sharia is not compatible with our government and I laugh at the irony of arguments to the contrary by those that insist on separation of church and stated in today’s government. It is contrary to my reasoning that there is an outrage when Tebow takes a knee or child is required to say the pledge of allegiance, but okay in the eyes of these same people that a religion is enforcing how you should be governed.
• James Madison is considered the father of the Constitution – putting this here since it is likely to come in handy on trivia night someday… or I guess it should be “some night”.
• William F. Buckley often quipped “I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University”. The same goes for me in relation to just the current Harvard graduate…by the way, it is such a social injustice that Trump will not reveal his taxes – when might we get a look at Obama’s school records?
• In 1942 the Supreme Court ruled that a farmer growing wheat on his own land for his own use was still subject to federal production limits under the disguise of interstate commerce – so our Supreme Court overreach isn’t just confined to our current body.
• The free market creates more wealth and opportunities for more people than any other economic model
• The budget office at the time of the book writing (2009) had
• Top 1% earners paid 39% of the federal income tax
• Top 5% earners paid 61% of the federal income tax
• Top 40% earners paid 99.4% of the federal income tax
• The bottom 40% earners paid no federal income tax
• Middle 20% paid only 4.4% of the federal income tax
• So to those that say the top isn’t paying their fair share (let’s start with Biden) I say bullshit instead of wasting time explaining risk vs reward to those that were let down by our education system
• The 4 events that brought on the housing crisis
• 1977 Congress passed Community Reinvestment Act – that alleged bank discrimination in lending forcing loans to financially weaker applicants
• 1992 Department of Housing and Urban Development pressured Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to purchased bundles of high risk loans so banks could loan even more money to riskier applicants
• The derivative financial instrument – basically the selling and buying of the “risk” that someone will default on a loan.
• The Federal Reserve Board’s handing of interest rates
• The $350B in TARP funds cannot be adequately accounted for
• No new refinery has been built in the US since 1993. Mark also includes the well-known argument against the efficiency of ethanol
• Roosevelt raised the top tax rate to 79% and then to 90%
• Entitlement is currently in debt to the tune of $455,000 per American household or $175K for every man, woman and child – totaling $53T
• 1940 220K received SS checks. 2004 47M + 7M getting cash payments under Supplemental Security Income. 2030 expected to be 84M and 6% of nations economy
• The 47M uninsured number that Pelosi and company keep throwing around is a lie – 9.5M are not US citizens, 17M live in households with income over $50K and 18M were between age 18 and 34 which is generally a healthy age range… and now we are seeing the death spiral of Obama care because the young realize they are would rather take the penalty that be yoked with insurance they don’t need.
• Tom Daschle was forced to withdraw his name from Obama’s Health Care Czar but had to withdraw for … wait for it .. failure to pay federal income taxes – Silly kids, taxes are for the little people
• Mark outlines the very accurate strategy to create an artificial crisis to get you to willingly surrender your liberties.
• Has an interesting explanation of DDT and the millions of lives it cost (in 1970 it was credited with saving 500M lives until Rachel Carson propagated a false crisis to end it) due to its ban (in 1972) around the world thanks to bad science and scheming of environmentalists. I did not know that in 2006 the WHO reversed its policy on DDT to control malaria outbreaks – a little late for all those Rachel cheated out of life.
• Those costly compact fluorescent lightbulbs our Congress forced us to start using … well they contained highly toxic mercury – brilliant but then again, the government always knows what is best for its servants!
• Had an interesting discussion on how the green movement has caused the deaths of thousands thanks to forcing lighter vehicles to meet emission standards.
• 3.4 to 5.2% of land in continental US is consumed by urban sprawl
• 1988 Newsweek announced all scientist agree on Globull Warming – say it with me … Fake News! To Gore’s best attempts the data just doesn’t fit his agenda. Case in point the infamous hockey stick graph. If you are not a skeptic by now, Mark goes into a lot of detail debunking this wealth distribution movement. Oh, and we’ll just let Dr. Hansen of NASA revise his numbers AGAIN when real scientists call him out on his bad science.
• In 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control act granted a one time amnesty to roughly 3M illegal aliens under the condition of tighter border control etc. – that condition, of course, never materialized
• 31% of adult immigrants have not completed high school compared to 8% of natives. Since 2000, immigration has increased the number of workers without a high school diploma to 14%. Proportion of immigrants with at least one member on a welfare program – 33% compared to 19% for natives. And the most chilling of all – 34% of immigrants do not have health insurance compared to 13% natives.
• The American government governs by consent of its citizens, not by the consent of aliens and their government
• George Washington – to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace – amen