Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Review of "On Liberty and Tyranny" pt 2

I'll post excerpts almost daily from "The work of generations", a review by Andrew C. McCarthy, of "On Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, by Mark R. Levin. Hopefully, you will be inspired to buy the book and read it this summer:

"The plan, however, is not self-actuating. To be the land of the free, Levin insists that we must also be the home of the brave. Invoking Ronald Reagan, he admonishes: “Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” That is so, as Levin sharply demonstrates throughout this fast-paced book, because the values and core of “the Conservative” are forever under assault by “the Statist.”

"There is no gainsaying Levin’s fighting spirit: a Reagan administration official who served as chief-of-staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese III, he is an accomplished litigator. In recent years, he has been among the nation’s most successful talk-radio hosts, notable for the verve he brings to a nightly dilation of conservatism and his skill— richly on display in Liberty and Tyranny—rendering legal and historical complexity accessibly, but not condescendingly, to the layman. Like Russell Kirk, Levin is a conservative because he is a liberal, in the classical, freedom-loving sense. Hence the choice of “the Statist” to describe his nemesis: he refuses to cede the term “liberal” or to deem “progressive” that which regresses civil society."

(To be continued)
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-work-of-generations-4086

No comments:

Post a Comment