Mark America

or This?

Rightscoop.com picked up on a fascinating call Mark Levin took on his show on Friday evening, and what made the call interesting on its surface was the subject matter, and the identity of the caller, Nicholas from Paris, France, and why he thought the world was in trouble given his country’s swing to the hard left in the recent election.  The caller was concerned for the US, and the notion that we are turning into France.  While that’s very important, and certainly bears examination, there’s something else in this call that I found revealing.  I want you to pay attention to what Mark Levin says in response, and what it portends for our future, here in the US. It’s not that it wasn’t clear, but that the context of the call actually serves to hide the worst, most frightening aspect of what was said in the exchange, and if you’re like me, you heard it too:

Levin responds by re-stating the caller’s root question:

“Your question though is “how do you get out of this?”

He then warns the caller that the answer isn’t pleasant:

“I’m going to tell you and you’re not going to like it.”

“The system will have to collapse before it can be rebuilt.”

Think about the context of this remark.  I don’t believe Levin intended it to be taken this way, but everything he tells the caller about France applies to our domestic political situation, including the way we “get out of this.”

I offer this to you because in my few spare moments lately, I’ve been giving some thought to the apparent futility of many of our efforts.  We hear from this caller that in his country, there is only the socialist answer for everything, and I wonder how familiar that this has become to us.  Whether it’s the leftist front and the Democrat Party, or the Republican establishment with their so-called “compassionate conservatism,” all of the answers are big-government, and all are oriented toward socialistic ideas and ideals.

This may come as a shock to a few, but I have long thought that what Levin here admits is true, and that in logic, this system cannot be sustained indefinitely is clear, but the fact that we will likely go through an excruciating collapse is less clear to many people.  The reason is simple, and Levin makes the argument correctly: There are too many people who depend upon this socialist welfare state.  There are too many interests invested in continuing as-is, and virtually none interested in stepping back from it.  The idea behind “austerity” is to try to get back to a sustainable basis, but as you can see from Europe’s results over the last few weeks, austerity simply won’t hold up over the longer run because people are too consumed with short-run comforts, particularly those obtained without effort through the welfare state.

If you believe that same mindset isn’t prevalent here in the US, you’re mistaken.  We are not immune to this thinking, and there is every evidence that we are on the same course, though perhaps a half-step or so behind.  This causes me dread, because what I am coming to believe is that until this country collapses, we will never rebuild it, and I am terrified that those who rebuild it will not be of the same character and temperament as those who established this nation in the first place.   More, I think we may see horrifying conditions erupt along that path, with violence unlike any we have seen or known since the Civil War, and perhaps much worse. In short, collapse seems inevitable, but what that collapse may bring could be even worse, and there is no guarantee that we will emerge as anything even roughly approximating the nation we had known.

or even This?

It is true to say that Obama and his acolytes will have a hand in driving us over the precipice, and indeed, they already have, but let us be circumspect in our evaluation of our situation:  The establishment wing of the GOP has been right there, guiding us in that same direction, albeit somewhat more slowly, but no less indefatigably leftward.  Mitt Romney might be our next President, but if so, what of it?  He, who established Romneycare in Massachusetts will be no more likely to lead us away from socialism than, for instance, Nikolas Sarkozy in France.  In fact, it’s fair to say that Sarkozy is probably a fair analog to the sort of “conservative” leadership Mitt Romney offers, which is to say: It’s not conservative, and it will not change our general direction, or the long-range result.  It will serve as merely one more delay or postponement.

It’s not my intention to cause you undue worry, but it is important that we remain somewhat clear-headed in our view of what it is we’re out to accomplish.  We may see a complete collapse of our country, and it may get as ugly as ugly gets, but I also believe, like Levin admits here, that it is probably inevitable.  What it means to the greater body of the American people is that if you ever wish to return to a free society, you had better start agitating and educating on behalf of such a society now.  Historically, few of the societal makeovers through which nations proceed are bloodless, never mind painless.  More importantly, however, only one came out as well as our adopted Constitution, but what it has demonstrated is that statism, given any loophole, either in the law, or in the culture, will multiply, magnify, and overpower all the restraints thought to have been place upon it.

Our founders attempted to give us a Constitution that would withstand such turmoil, but in the main, avoid it.  It was an imperfect document, but it offered the best shot at a nation built on the basis of individual liberty the world has yet known.  It’s  restraints upon the aggregation and growth of power in the Federal government were not strong enough, and while they may have been plain in the language of our founders, still the language was not plain enough to prohibit the power hungry from perverting the meaning, not merely of the text, but of the very words that are used throughout.  The academics have taken “the people” to mean a collective body, rather than “all individual citizens,” and in this way, we are slowly having our liberties stripped away and delivered to collective notions of “rights,” all to the detriment of individuals.

Ladies and gentlemen, Levin may indeed be right about this, whether he intended it or not, and it’s another warning you should take care to heed.   We are in desperate trouble, and much of it arises from the very contradictions that are slowly consuming us.  Many Americans claim to be “constitutional conservatives,” but I wonder what commitment there is to that idea in practice. Are you willing to undo all the statism that this characterization should imply?  I am, but for my part, I recognize that I am of some tiny minority that would be considered “extreme” both in France, and in the United States, in “polite” political circles.  I read the US Constitution plainly,  and I am versed in the context and meaning in which our founders wrote it.  I neither wear the rose-colored spectacles by which one might imagine into existence rights that cannot exist in logic, nor do I wear the dark masks of those who wish to conceal their grasp for more power.

Our nation cannot survive on its current course.  Cannot.  Will not.  Whether the election in November provides us another four years of the aggressive, lurching tyranny that is Obama, or the more careful, plodding nanny-statism of the Sarkozy-like Romney, the direction is the same, with only the speed along our course varied by the result.  The fundamental issue that confronts us in our time is the same as that which confronts the French or the Greeks, and what would be required to see the salvation of our nation is that which people across Europe now seem to refuse: Austerity.   Austerity is merely the willingness to tell oneself “no” in the short-run, at pains on behalf of a better long-run, and to date, I have yet to see any evidence that a majority of voters (never mind legislators)anywhere are inclined to such self-imposed discipline.  Knowing this, the end of the story may indeed rest in the sentence uttered by Mark Levin:

“The system will have to collapse before it can be rebuilt.”

If it’s true of France, and one could suppose that it is, one might ask whether it isn’t also true of the United States.  What will we be, as a nation, and as a people, when we have been reduced to a sort of atavistic tribalism in which volitional production is replaced with legalized looting of one’s neighbors?  What will the context of that culture impose on the sort of law and governance that emerges?  Do we dare to hope it might in any way resemble  the masterpiece of 1792, much less exceed it?  My pessimism on the subject may reflect my own recent experiences, but history’s judgment is no less worrisome.  If we are to become again a free people, we must change our course entirely. We must identify our malady, and cure it.  Instead, what we now seem to do is to pretend it away.  Until we learn to say “no” and to mean it, we are merely bringing a birthday cake ablaze in candles and gaiety to a what is instead a terrible funeral, with a dirge as our melody.  For those who have mistakenly thought “it could never happen here,” however one might define “it,” the simple truth may be that we’re already well on our way.

It may well be inevitable.