Let's Quit Reading An Get Back To Principles......

....before Obamaism drags us under his socialist umbrella.

David Frum: On Liberty and Tyranny

Posted: June 14, 2009, 10:00 AM by NP Editor

Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny has sat atop the bestseller lists for many weeks. Clearly, conservatives across the country are finding meaning and value in this book. But what?

Unlike Ann Coulter’s books, Liberty and Tyranny is not an exciting read. To his credit, Levin on the page eschews the vituperative style of his radio program. In his serious mode, he expresses himself in the sonorous style of the conservatives of the 1950s and 1960s. The tone of L&T owes a lot to the elder Brent Bozell. But Bozell coined lapidary phrases as elegantly and abundantly as the Mint strikes commemorative quarters. Levin lacks this gift, to put it mildly.

Unlike Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man or Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, Liberty and Tyranny does not assert an arresting or unusual idea. In fact, I doubt that even the most virginal newcomer to conservatism will find in this book an unfamiliar concept or idea.

Unlike Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom or Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, Liberty and Tyranny is a not a book with the intellectual power to change minds or jolt non-conservatives out of their complacency. Levin never argues; he asserts. He tells us that “the Conservative believes” this or that – and then omits to demonstrate that this putative Conservative belief is in fact accurate. EG:

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