Timely because it cuts to the heart of the political struggle playing out in 2012, timeless in that it’s a concise yet thorough primer addressing the two core philosophies that drive all American politics, the depth of understanding of both Liberalism and Conservatism and the critical struggle between them it provides represents a wealth of information and insight to empower the Conservative and political activist of today.

From government in general, to the particulars of the American experiment embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Levin extensively quotes unique and important thinkers, such as Plato, More, Hobbes and Marx on behalf of the utopianist view; with thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu, de Tocqueville and others representing the individualist, or Conservative view as we know it today.

Interspersed with extensive, insightful commentary by Levin himself, one comes to understand the bedrock, theory and practice of two very different political ideologies and how they apply to contemporary American politics playing out on a day-to-day basis, as well as in every election year.

Broadly at issue is, how will man structure himself, so as to function within a society. The utopianist would hold that said society must be structured from the top down, with rules, roles, regulations and laws all purportedly designed for the common good being issued from on high. The individualist, free-thinking, or conservative view would hold that, at the core of all civil society rests the individual, with his natural rights and inclinations, both good and bad, the ideal society being represented by a governmental authority that manifests the least amount of control possible, so as to empower the freedom, happiness and productivity of the individual.

By tracing the development of these two critical schools of thinking from their earliest beginnings, in theory, practice and thought, following them right up to today, one comes to understand American society as existing within a polarity between the two competing schools, with every political decision, be it a vote, or government mandate, as impacting precisely where within said polarity an American must live out his, or her life every day.

By addressing the topic in this manner, Levin allows for the reader to come to understand that liberalism, socialism, Marxism and even Obama-ism are actually all one and the same under the guise of utopianism. The only difference being, where on the utopianist continuum from absolute anarchy (the absence of government) to abject tyranny, or totalitarianism we exist at any point in time.

Because the theory and thinking behind the utopianist vision is always the same, whatever we call it at this time, or that, in this nation, or that, the end result will always be the same – an all powerful government controling much if not all of what any individual may pursue. Self-interest always being subjugated to the state to one degree, or another, with government invariably developing its own self-interest over time, finally, the indivdual, or individualism must always be crushed for the good of the state. The dynamic becomes more a function of time, than of conscious decision by any individual within the state.

So critical is this understanding that, after having come to truly understand it, one might very well make a different political decision, or cast a different vote at any point in time given one’s new understanding of the dynamics behind all American politics as we know it today. As for the Conservative, or activst, coming to understand where precisely we find ourselves betwen these two competing political polarities today – and how any activism, or governmental decision will impact same – one could easily find his- or herself spurred on to action, or more action previously not considered.

More broadly, the wealth of information on, and insight into, this critical subject area addressed in Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, offers the potential to significantly inform and improve one’s thinking as we head towards a critical election. Beyond that, the increased, deeper understanding of American politics, including liberalism and conservatism as we currently know them, will likely empower a generation of conservative thought and activism and beyond.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That quote represents revolutionary thinking driven by a state of tyranny. Ameritopia is not that; it is evolutionary thinking – examining how the two fundamental forces that shape American politcs, utopianism or tyranny, versus individual liberty or perhaps constituionalism, came to be and how they play out every day, as well as against one another.

I’d posit, there is another way to preserve the proverbial tree of liberty, as opposed to refreshing same with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That is to understand what the tree of liberty actually is, it’s roots the thinking and ideas of Locke; it’s trunk the advancement in thought of a Montesquieu, and others, the branches the thinking of the Founding Fathers, with the fruits being the gift of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

If knowing the tree of liberty better in thought, theory and action from a seedling, to today, empowers one to better preserve it – and I’d argue strongly it does – then Ameritopia accomplsihes a grand goal, indeed.

To augment that metaphor, the tree of liberty is absolutely under significant siege today from a gathering storm. Call it it Euro-socialism, democratic-socialism, Marxism, liberalism, or simply the policies of the Obama administration partnered with an ever-expansive government in Washington, in the end the storm has one name: utopianism.

To know and genuinely understand in depth the now more than gathering storm of said utopianism, as addressed in Ameritopia, is as neccessary and important for the Conservative and activist, as is understanding liberty. Perhaps the real genuis of author Mark Levin captured in Ameritopia is his knowing that and sharing it, as he has.

Politically speaking, one can not preserve a thing he doesn’t actually know and understand, or protect it from an enemy he doesn’t know, or understand, either. Ameritopia provides a sound, deep understanding of both utopianism and liberty. I’d highly recommend one give it a thorough read.

These past few months, renting a home in a beach community has allowed my dog and I the opportunity to take a daily walk along the shore, where I hunt for shells, watch for porpoise, and occasionally exchange niceties with the fisherman who set up their poles in the sand, and with the locals who are also enjoying their surroundings. Every day, I thank my blessings that I’ve been given this chance to live in such surroundings but my happiness is often interrupted by dogs roaming the beach, unleashed, in violation of the rules which are clearly posted at each entrance. Not only do these dogs defecate on the sand but often they are not well behaved, running at leashed dogs, children, solitary walkers, and anyone within their proximity.

I do not fault the dogs. I am a dog lover and I understand that dogs are social creatures. My problem is with the owners who clearly do not consider that some dogs may respond aggressively to such provocation, children and adults may be afraid of their beloved pets, and some beachcombers may not want to worry about stepping on dog feces, let alone experience being showered by a dog shaking out its wet fur, when their intention is to savor the sand and water running between their toes. The worst offenders do not attempt to corral their dogs around other people and assume because their dogs are friendly, all is well with the world. They do not comprehend the compromise which allows both dogs and people to enjoy this pristine environment.

The Framers understood the importance of balance, which is clearly needed to allow for maximum individual rights but at the same time allows for people to live together in a community. They believed that factions or groups of people should not be able to impinge on the rights of others.

James Madison explained in Federalist 10,

“… that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Madison understood that factions are inevitable.

“From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.”

In a republic, the good of all needs to be taken into consideration over the individual rights and liberties of people if the sacrifices made for the common good are for the purpose of maintaining these individual liberties.

Getting back to the beach, there are two factions whose interests are represented through compromise. If the dog walkers without leashes had their way, I would be taking my daily stroll on a dog beach, not a public beach which makes allowances for dog walkers. If people who disliked dogs had their way, I would be walking on a private beach which only allowed members to enjoy it without dogs. Instead, I walk on a beach which allows both factions to enjoy it, provided that each faction respects the individual preferences of the other and follows the rules created to respect the individual rights of both types of individuals to the greatest extent without infringing on each others’ rights.

In our Republic, there should never be laws which favor the individual rights of one group over another. As part of the system of checks and balances, the Framers intended to have the will of the people somewhat filtered through the electoral processes, i.e. Electoral College and United States Senators being chosen by the individual state’s legislatures. Madison saw the difficulty for factions to impart their will on the people as a good thing…a natural check on their power in an extended republic. Madison felt that in a republic that the goal of its elected leaders should be to maintain the authority of the Constitution, which of course gets its authority from the people living under its laws. He would have expected the leaders in such a republic to work toward maintaining the liberty insured by the Constitution and to have a higher sense of purpose when interpreting the needs of the people.

Members of a community agree to make sacrifices for the greater good. This means abiding by the rules to which everyone agrees and by which everyone can maximally benefit with minimal individual sacrifice.

The Muslim Brotherhood is coming to power in Egypt, Iran is moving deliberately toward nuclear armament and Europe is proving that socialist democracies will fall at their own hand.  In the midst of this turmoil, the media has our people focusing on why the top 1% paying 50% of all federal taxes falls short of “their fair share” and why entitlements and government needs to keep growing.  We are missing the point – eliminate the noise and the real debate is simply whether our children live free or for the benefit of the state?

Let’s forget all the facts and figures about our growing debt and the increasing involvement of government in our lives and focus on the fundamental definition of liberty: liberty is the freedom from arbitrary control; it is freedom to exercise the unalienable rights endowed upon us by our Creator; it is freedom from oppressive power exerted by government; and it is freedom from all forms of tyranny.  While people demand that their neighbors who may be better off economically should be ordered – by law – to share their success with them, what they are really promoting is the ascendancy of the state over the people.  What they are missing is that they are demanding the suppression of liberty for their neighbors, themselves and their own children.

The systematic destruction of our economic strength through increased regulation, increased taxation on the job creators, a 50% increase in the national debt in just the last three years and an equal increase in the dependency on foreign governments to fund our debt has turned our nation upside down.  We have gone from the world’s last hope to a sideshow and find our great country powerless to help prevent ally nations from economic decline and powerless to stop the rise of tyrannical regimes.

Our people remain divided on why others need to be ordered to do for them rather than why they should find a way to do for themselves.  Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party leadership, with the financial and political support of both public and private unions, have openly declared class warfare and are shamelessly promoting larger government as their definition of what they mean when speaking of “fundamentally changing America.”

It is interesting to ask the question, “Are there any Democrats who love the basic principle of liberty that our country was founded upon?”  The answer demonstrated over the past three years has been an extremely loud “No!”  Republicans are not blameless and have also contributed to the loss of liberty in our country.  If not for the 85 members of Congress identified as TEA Party Republicans – all of whom have been vilified by the media, the Democrats and many establishment Republicans – the question could just as easily be “Are there any politicians who love liberty?”

Now what can we, the citizens of a still free society, do to make sure that our children live in the sunshine of liberty rather than bound to the yoke of the state?  First thing we need to do is to recognize that we are fighting for our children’s future and put aside any near-term relief government enforced entitlements may bring.  Those entitlements paid out today, must be paid for by our children tomorrow!  There is no magic here only a zero-sum game.  What the government gives you today will be taken from your children tomorrow.

Secondly, Republicans needs to wake up to the reality of politics and stop looking for the perfect candidate to oppose Mr. Obama in 2012.  We must recognize that another four years of an Obama presidency will be four more years of economic suicide that will drain liberty from the lives of our children.  This president’s failures are many. His domestic policies have failed.  His foreign policies have failed.  His ideology is counter to liberty and if reelected would set our nation on four more years of self-destruction, resulting a loss of prosperity, security and liberty.  Republicans need to rally behind the only candidate in today’s field who could focus the entire 2012 election on Mr. Obama’s failed presidency.  That candidate – like him or not – is Mitt Romney.  We need a Chief Executive in the White House at this point in our history, not an ideologue.  Working to surround Mr. Romney with a conservative House and Senate will assure that our children will have their chance for liberty.

It is time to rise above all the noise and all the deflection by the media and the Democrats.  We need to think about our children and remember all those who shed blood so that they would have their chance at liberty – true liberty.  It is time to stop missing the point and focus on what needs to fall into place to preserve liberty for one more generation.  It will then be in their hands to pass it forward.

Most of the time I can go about my life following a routine that includes working on the Constitutional Literacy curriculum for our BasicsProject.org website, writing articles about the relevance of our Fundamental Law, taking my daily constitutional along the beach, and performing the chores that demand my attention, but never far from these distractions is the daily reminder that there are men and women who have dedicated themselves to our security; who have placed their lives in harm’s way to protect this absolutely ordinary life I am privileged to lead.

Perhaps the best way to really understand this reality is to contrast it with another. Around the world there are people who live in countries where citizens have never experienced the freedoms that our government was instituted to protect, who will never have the opportunities afforded to Americans to innovate, lead, and maintain the lifestyle to which we are accustomed. It is almost obscene to think that in some countries, children are subject to diseases long eradicated in our own country, hungry because there is never enough food to satisfy their appetites, and whose safety is at risk because fighting factions are unconcerned about the accidental loss of life during skirmishes and all out war between groups vying for power.

Every four years we experience an election in this country in which power of office is transferred peacefully from one person to another. How many Americans have endured a coup, war between an enemy power and our troops on native soil, or lived with the uncertainty which can stem from a majority faction taking power and changing the laws under which we operate. This is because our written Constitution was designed to preserve our rights while providing the stability to grow stronger and wealthier as a nation.

On this Thanksgiving, I give thanks for being fortunate enough to live in the United States of America; free from hunger, sheltered and safe. I give thanks to the Founders and Framers who understood the opportunity freedom from British rule presented. I give thanks for teachers who understand the difference between education and indoctrination and who do not treat people differently based on color, class, or religion. I give thanks for the consistency of family, for the unknown which lies ahead, and for the simple fact of being alive on November 24, 2012.

And to all those reading this commentary, have a blessed Thanksgiving.

That video looked at the relationship between economic freedom and various indices that measure quality of life. Not surprisingly, free markets and small government lead to better results.

Now they have a new video that looks at recent developments in the United States. Unfortunately, you will learn that the U.S. is slipping in the wrong direction.

The entire video is superb, but there are two things that merit special praise, one because of intellectual honesty and the other because of intellectual effectiveness.

1. The refreshingly honest aspect of the video is its non-partisan tone. It explains, in a neutral fashion, that Bush undermined prosperity by making government bigger and that Obama is undermining prosperity by increasing the burden of government.

2. The most important and effective argument in the video, at least from my perspective, is that it shows clearly that a larger government necessarily comes at the expense of the productive sector of the economy. Pay extra-close attention around the 2:00 mark.

It’s also worth pointing out that there are several policies that impact on economic performance. The Koch Institute video focuses primarily on the key issues of fiscal policy and regulation, but trade, monetary policy, property rights, and rule of law are examples of other policies that also are very important.

This video, narrated by yours truly, looks at economic growth from this more comprehensive perspective.

The moral of the story from both videos is very straightforward. If the answer is bigger government, you’ve asked a very strange question.

You will not get to safer streets nor a self-rule without smaller government first, and that will not come as long as there is gun control. Everything else, every delay, every complication, is lip service, designed to waylay our time, energy and spirit away from anything productive, giving us the feeling that we are directing things, but actually wasting our time.

We’ve made some friends and allies in Congress and we have unseated some foes of liberty, but some of us still have the impression that we’re not getting the cooperation we need. Somewhere in there, the new freshmen believe, there is such a thing as sensible gun regulation.

There isn’t. Gun laws are incompatible with liberty. All gun laws.

In Part I, I said that in time of violence, when the target of crime is armed, there is more law present, more public policy present, and more public interest served than by all 20,000 gun laws in force. With a majority of states affirming second amendment latitude, it is clear what their public consensus is. The major cities are out of step.

In Part I, I said that we are the Sovereign, and that our 2012 candidates must acknowledge this on the stump. They should be asked outright and they must affirm this by the repeal of all gun laws, please.

The repeal of all gun laws will unveil one powerful societal dynamic, and that is the personal independence of the individual. When crime is fought best at the scene of the crime and not exclusively after the fact, say, for instance, detection, interdiction, apprehension and the administration of justice, it is because independence has been brought to bear on the problem when it can do the most good. Our greater independence from our own public servants is critical to everything from personal safety to prosperity. Our independence from our servants is critical to self-rule and safer streets.

Centralization is the foe of all of these. Centralization is greater independence from the electorate [corruption] with the electorate’s ever-increasing dependency on the government; republicanism is our greater independence from our servants. In centralization, there is no accountability, much less any exits or alternatives to the State, only dependency.

I have a new video out which teases the point of how the armed citizen is identical to the CPR-trained citizen. I gave a talk last week to a republican womens group – the Pistol Packin’ Petticoats here in L.A. – about a concept I formulated I call The CPR Corollary. Highlights were captures on video and made into a tease for my new book. Like most groups I speak to, they were hearing the concept for the very first time; how the armed citizen is identical to laymen trained in CPR and First-aid;  — and how it makes for smaller government.

Centralization grows because bureaucracies justify themselves by need, or crisis. They do this by smothering safeguards which work so well that bureaucracies are in fact not needed, programs which look silly at the very proposition.

But gun control is one such example of removing such a safeguard and then growing costly agencies bent on anti-violence missions when citizens can largely handle violent crime if officials would get out of the way. Officials did not oppose training citizens in CPR; that would have been an outrage. Instead, they examined Citizen CPR and, by golly, they got out of the way.

To our way of thinking, gun control is an outrage because it has the same effect as if someone told you not to do CPR, or not permit you to know it, much less administer it in coming to the aid of another.

Physicians examined the prospect of Citizen CPR and found it worthy. Today, three decades later, forty-plus states find the armed citizen worthy, and understand it for the very same reasons: police cannot always arrive with a life-saving response time any more than EMS can, hence, the training of persons to act in the interest of the community in the absence of first responders. I call it the attitude of latitude. Other people call it Freedom.

The repeal of all gun laws would be an immensely beneficial reset button for our society in reducing the size of government, and then we can see what sort of regulation the people would like if they had another chance to revisit the issue. My bet is that they would take their time. Gun control groups don’t count because they go against a civil right secured by law.

The repeal of all gun laws would reduce government because many bureaucracies might be very hard put to justify a second time their very existence if they had to do it all over again; this time in light of citizens who can fight violence where it is fought best: at the scene of the crime. Many of those costly bureaucracies would never get to second base if citizens were armed where they would like to be armed, free to question the need for another agency. Much of our money would remain where it fights centralization best; in our pockets.

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