Book Review: Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin

Last week I bought and read the new book Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin. This is a must-read book!

A quick read of just the first few chapters will make it obvious why this book sits atop the best-seller lists. What Levin has done is taken the timeless principles of conservatism and not only contrasted them with liberalism (which he calls statism, and with good reason), but also laid out reasons why conservatism is superior. He then explains why conservatism is the philosophy of liberty—as it was intended by our Founding Fathers and the Constitution—and why statism is the philosophy of governmental tyranny and control.

Levin does all of this in a highly readable, concise way. The chapters are organized topically, with subject matter such as faith, enviro-statism, immigration, etc. I hope to read this book again sometime and blog about these individual topics in more depth.

If you like books with lots of fluff, this may not be for you. If you like a book where no paragraph goes to waste and where each point is made clearly and concisely, you will love this one. If you like books that make you thankful you are a conservative, then you should find and read this book immediately.

Your Government Wants a Lot More Power

Two sobering thoughts to think about—without having to go any further than today's news.

Tim Geithner told a House panel today that the Obama administration desires sweeping regulatory changes over Wall Street that would allow the government to step in and essentially take over a financial company if it deems the company poses too great a risk to the economy. Presumably, this risk will be defined by the government itself, leaving open the possibility that if abused, the government could simply step in and take over any financial institution whose practices it does not approve.

Harry Reid is trying to manipulate Senate rules to make it easier to ram through overwhelming changes in health care and a disastrous cap-and-trade energy policy. Both will have crippling effects on the American economy. He does not appear to care. Even some Senate democrats are opposed to such a brazen abuse of Senate rules.

These two examples encapsulate the fact that the Obama administration and the democratic leadership in Congress seem to have no known limits on how far they will go to get what they want. Where will they stop? Will they stop?

Do they have any respect for the Constitution anymore?

Another Great Blog Posting

Today I encountered the Back to the Constitution blog, with this great article. I will copy the first part of it here:

As I was reading through parts of the Old Testament, and in particular some of the laws God gave Israel, it made me think that God’s laws are a reflection of God’s morality. God’s law reflect who God is. God’s laws told Israel to treat people honestly, to be responsible for your actions and make restitution if you caused harm or injury to another person or their property. God’s law says to honor your parents and the elderly, to honor your spouse, and to honor the sanctity of life. God’s law does not go contrary to God’s person - He is holy, just and righteous and so is His law.

When we look at the laws that men have established we must understand the same concept is in place.

To read the rest, click here.

Constitutional Ignorance, the Electoral College, and the Popular Vote

Every four years, and sporadically in between, many educated people (as well as many less-schooled people) will suggest, "We need to do away with the electoral college and elect our president by popular vote." They speak this as if it were a mere matter of Congress passing a law and making it so, and imply that our government is kind of stupid for not having already done so.

Let me make this abundantly clear: THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

There are two facts, both related to the Constitution, that should make this obvious:

• Article 2, Section 1, later superseded by the 12th Amendment, dictates how the electoral college will function, and how the electors are delegated to the states.
• Article 5 of the Constitution demands that any amendment to the Constitution be ratified by 3/4 of the states (currently, that would mean 38) before it becomes the law of the land. A change in the electoral college system would require such an amendment.
  

And then there is the mathematics of the situation:

• Let's take Wyoming as an illustration. In the 2008 presidential election, approximately 125 million votes were cast. Wyoming cast a little less than 250,000 of those, which is almost 0.2 percent of the national total. However, Wyoming gets 3 electoral votes, which is about 0.56 percent of the national electoral vote total. To summarize: Wyoming's electoral vote percentage is roughly triple the percentage of the national vote which they cast; in essence, 1 Wyoming voter carries the voting influence of 3 voters in a larger state. Consequently, the smaller population states, like Wyoming, will NEVER support such a constitutional amendment.
• In order to pass such a constitutional amendment, the legislatures of 38 states would need to ratify it. While the largest states would likely be amenable to the idea, the 13 smallest states would never agree to it—and they don't have to. There are seventeen states which have 5 or fewer electoral votes, and they know their influence in presidential elections would substantially diminish.

I also think that a national popular vote would keep presidential candidates focused on the cities and more likely to therefore ignore (or pay token homage to) the concerns of those of us who don't live in major metropolitan areas. The electoral college keeps presidential candidates looking in fifty directions—and that's a good thing.

How Smart Is Biden, Anyway?

As if referring to President FDR's famous 1929 TV speech on the stock market crash wasn't evidence enough of his lack of knowledge of social studies (In case you didn't know, FDR wasn't yet president, nor was television yet invented, in 1929)...he misspoke badly about the Constitution's description of the duties of the vice-president during last week's vice-presidential debate.

In this article, you can read what both Biden and Palin had to say about the position. The Constitution says this:

“The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”

Here is Biden's lengthy quote:

"Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive, and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous."

And here is Sarah Palin's more intelligent comment on the matter:

"Of course, we know what a vice president does. And that's not only to preside over the Senate and [I] will take that position very seriously also. I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chooses to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are."

And did anyone notice that the media doesn't notice Biden's rather frequent mistakes?