Monday, January 6, 2014

Mark Levin’s Intellectual Envy

I had respect for Mark Levin.  That is until he ran from intellectual debate from Thomas Woods.  Before that, I was impressed by him.  I had a signed copy of Liberty and Tyranny and enjoyed many of his points.

These days I wonder where his loyalties stand.  I am inclined to believe that he is a Statist operative of the Republican old guard who doesn’t desire for a balanced budget, but for government to work for Republican interests.  Either that or he is an intellectual child who hates the fact that other people have good ideas for freedom.

Case in point, here is his recent quote regarding nullification:

the nullifier kooks are neo-confederates wasting a lot of our time & diverting our focus; they're a small, fringe group

Why is this a diversion?  As far as I can tell, given what happened with marijuana legalization in Colorado, nullification is a much faster process for liberty than working within the Federal system of government.

I’ll grant that Mr. Levin’s amendments he has proposed are not bad ideas.  I would be happy to see all of them adopted into the Constitution.

But I think Levin forgets the one key factor involved in implementing laws: that is the power to enforce them.  And when you pass a law that limits the government, who is going to enforce it?

The government is not qualified to police itself.  As it does this already, we have seen the terrible results, from police wantonly being able to murder citizens without repercussions to an Attorney General who has been caught selling (or donating) weapons to drug lords.

Nullification is not just a remedy to reverse bad laws, but a way for groups of citizens to hold the CentralFederal government accountable for the unconstitutional laws they pass like indefinite detention, prohibition, or forced health insurance.  In effect, it is a means for a collection of people operating under a sovereign state to challenge the decrees of the higher state.

Of course, Mark Levin probably knows this.  I know he isn’t stupid, he is just extremely envious that other people have better ideas than his own.

And so he resorts to age-old liberal tactics like playing the race card.  What a chump.