| Jeff's Book Review: Just Another Laugh-Producing Look at Mark Levin's "Ameritopia" |
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| Written by Jeff Koopersmith | |
| Monday, 02 April 2012 | |
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Jeff Koopersmith reviews the latest from one of right-wing radio's shrillest and most unhinged ranters – an excellent book for a ninth-grade "social studies" student raised by Tea Party loons! Matthew Cantirino at First Things writes about Mark Levin: At first glance, Levin’s basic defense of ‘real people’ against intellectual and political abstraction is well taken. This point has been a recurrent theme in the American conservative movement for a long time, from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’ “defense of people” to William F. Buckley’s famous quip that he’d rather be governed by a random selection of Americans from the phone book than the faculty of the Harvard sociology department." (First Things is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.) In fact, First Things is a push-ad for embracing Republican Jesus, teaching gays not to be gay, and peddling high-end propaganda from the "religious" fringe. However, Mr. Cantirino reminded me of two important conservative thinkers: William F. Buckley and John Locke. Levin tries to tackle the long-debated argument that all cultures face a choice between “utopianism” and “realism.” Andrew McCarthy, not the sharpest knife in Goering's old drawer praises Levin’s thesis, Cantirino finds McCarthy's "enthusiasm is a bit surprising given how inchoate Levin’s argument sounds." Inchoate is not the correct description of Levin or his writing - more on point - and in defense of "people" I would offer Levin’s Ameritopia as an example of sophomoric porosity. I agree with Buckley and would also prefer a random selection of Americans from the phone book or Facebook than what we suffer today in congress and state legislatures; Not because they would do a better job of governing - but because they might be tougher for greedier types to bribe. Buckley was more of a "personality" than an intellectual like Locke. What is hilarious is Levin' s inclusion of John Locke, considered to be the father of Western Education, as part of his self-defined "realism" cult. In fact is was Locke that most famously told the world that "The masses are asses" an adage that should be printed on the first Tea Party bank notes when they win over the United States. This is what Levin believes alongside his sub-equals Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and Laura Ingraham. Yet they helped deliver dozens of "asses" to seats in Congress and sealed the deal giving them powerful positions on House Committees that could destroy the true American culture as it has grown over 1,450 years from the first settlements in the Carolinas to the end of the Vietnam War, where many of Ronald Reagan's "pals" sold him and his presidency down the river for the sake of greed. Now they hope to deliver MItt Romney to 1600. God help us. |
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