If you didn't catch Mark Levin's program Thursday evening, you really ought to go back and at least listen to his first hour. This was one of those professorial lessons, which if you're a regular listener, are among the best...
Levin began the program with the above reading of what amounts to John Adams' astonishing foresight into America's struggle with modern-day Marxism, in our own President and many others in Washington. Adams would have no hesitation in calling it tyranny. Then Levin commenced in taking the entire first hour of his show to read and discuss Angelo Codevilla's latest article, discussing how the Republican leadership in Washington has thrown in with the Ruling Class, and how we no longer have representation...something Mark himself often points out...On Thursday's Mark Levin Show: Mark talks about the historical relationships between the government, the citizen and how this has changed over time as the government has become more intrusive and over bearing. Mark stresses how the Founder's believed that private property and the right to own property was such a pinnacle aspect of being able to self-rule one's life. We know that the media won't help us so we need to represent ourselves to the Republicans and Congress and let it be known that we want principled leaders. Mark talks about how the establishment is going to feel politically threatened by us and that the time is now for them to represent us and realize that without us, they won't be able to continue their power grabs. Eventually this house of cards will collapse unless they change course soon; enough with the Karl Rove establishment puppets that are putting the country at risk.
On January 1, 2013 one third of Republican congressmen, following their leaders, joined with nearly all Democrats to legislate higher taxes and more subsidies for Democratic constituencies. Two thirds voted no, following the people who had elected them. For generations, the Republican Party had presented itself as the political vehicle for Americans whose opposition to ever-bigger government financed by ever-higher taxes makes them a “country class.” Yet modern Republican leaders, with the exception of the Reagan Administration, have been partners in the expansion of government, indeed in the growth of a government-based “ruling class.” They have relished that role despite their voters. Thus these leaders gradually solidified their choice to no longer represent what had been their constituency, but to openly adopt the identity of junior partners in that ruling class. By repeatedly passing bills that contradict the identity of Republican voters and of the majority of Republican elected representatives, the Republican leadership has made political orphans of millions of Americans. In short, at the outset of 2013 a substantial portion of America finds itself un-represented, while Republican leaders increasingly represent only themselves.
By the law of supply and demand, millions of Americans, (arguably a majority) cannot remain without representation. Increasingly the top people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old. This marks these political orphans as a “country class.” In 1776 America’s country class responded to lack of representation by uniting under the concept: “all men are created equal.” In our time, its disparate sectors’ common sentiment is more like: “who the hell do they think they are?”
The ever-growing U.S. government has an edgy social, ethical, and political character. It is distasteful to a majority of persons who vote Republican and to independent voters, as well as to perhaps one fifth of those who vote Democrat. The Republican leadership’s kinship with the socio-political class that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has chosen candidates for office – especially the Presidency – who have ignored, soft-pedaled or given mere lip service to their voters’ identities and concerns.
Thus public opinion polls confirm that some two thirds of Americans feel that government is “them” not “us,” that government has been taking the country in the wrong direction, and that such sentiments largely parallel partisan identification: While a majority of Democrats feel that officials who bear that label represent them well, only about a fourth of Republican voters and an even smaller proportion of independents trust Republican officials to be on their side. Again: While the ruling class is well represented by the Democratic Party, the country class is not represented politically – by the Republican Party or by any other. Well or badly, its demand for representation will be met.
Representation is the distinguishing feature of democratic government. To be represented, to trust that one’s own identity and interests are secure and advocated in high places, is to be part of the polity. In practice, any democratic government’s claim to the obedience of citizens depends on the extent to which voters feel they are party to the polity. No one doubts that the absence, loss, or perversion of that function divides the polity sharply between rulers and ruled.
…as the Democratic Party has grown its constituent parts into a massive complex of patronage, its near monopoly of education has endowed its leaders ever more firmly with the conviction that they are as entitled to deference and perquisites as they are to ruling. The host of its non-governmental but government-financed entities, such as Planned Parenthood and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, argue for government funding by stating, correctly, that they are pursuing the public interest as government itself defines it.
Thus by the turn of the twenty first century America had a bona fide ruling class that transcends government and sees itself at once as distinct from the rest of society – and as the only element thereof that may act on its behalf. … The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether “seniors have decent health care…children have enough to eat” is typical.
Republican leaders neither parry the insults nor vilify their Democratic counterparts in comparable terms because they do not want to beat the ruling class, but to join it in solving the nation’s problems. How did they come to cut such pathetic figures?
There's much more to this article, and I'd suggest everyone reading it's very full two pages worth. But Codevilla's point in all of this is that the Republican leadership is utterly disconnected from the Republican base. Levin uses this superb article to underscore what he feels is the future of the Republican Party and I feel the nation: that we are not represented in Washington. And specifically pertaining to the Republican leadership and the Establishment: “they don’t represent us, because they join the other side in too many respects.” Skipping ahead a bit...
It matters less whether two thirds of Republican congressmen vote against their leaders as they did on January 1, 2013 out of conviction or because their constituents demand it. Fact is, Republican leaders become less significant with every passing year because they have no way of reversing the intellectual trends from above or the popular pressure from below. Recent Presidential elections have shown that contemporary Establishment Republicans elicit scarce, unenthusiastic support even from longtime Republican voters because they are out of sync with their flock. ...Hence the TEA PARTY, Levin adds.
This of course is what happened to the Whig party after 1850. After it became undeniable that party leader Henry Clay’s latest great compromise had sold the party’s principles cheap, the most vigorous Whigs, e.g. New York governor William Seward and national hero John C. Fremont – joined by an obscure Illinois ex-congressman named Abraham Lincoln whose only asset was that he reasoned well – looked for another vehicle for their cause. In 1854, together with representatives of other groups, they founded the Republican Party. Today the majority of Republican congressmen plus a minority of senators – dissidents from the Party but solid with their voters – are the natural core of a new party. The name it might bear is irrelevant. Very relevant are sectors of America’s population increasingly represented by groups that sprang up to represent them when the Republican leadership did not.
This representation is happening by default. It is aided by the internet, which makes it possible to spread ideas to which the educational Establishment gives short shrift and which the ruling class media shun. In short, the internet helps undermine the ruling class’ near-homogenization of American intellectual life, its closing of the American mind. ...Codevilla's conclusion:
The internet also spread the power to organize. Already in the 1970s Richard Viguerie had begun to upset the political parties’ monopoly on organization by soliciting money from the general public for causes and candidates through direct mail. The internet amplified this technique’s effectiveness by orders of magnitude, making it possible to transmit ideas and political signals while drawing financial support from millions of likeminded people throughout the country. Thus informed with facts and opinion, sectors of the country class have felt represented and empowered vis a vis the ruling class. Those on the electronic distribution list of the “Club for Growth,” for example, are at least as well informed on economic matters as any credentialed policy maker. The several pro-life organizations have spread enough knowledge of embryology and moral logic to make Roe v. Wade, which the ruling class regards as its greatest victory, a shrinking island in American jurisprudence and society. The countless Tea Parties that have sprung up all over have added their countless attendees to networks of information and organization despite the ruling class’ effort to demonize them. The same goes for evangelicals, gun owners, etc. Though such groups represent the country class fragmentarily, country class people identify with them rather than with the Republican Party because the groups actually stand for something, and represent their adherents against the ruling class’ charges, insults, etc.
Since America’s first-past-the-post electoral system produces elections between two parties, it was natural for any and all groups who oppose the ruling class to gravitate to the Republican Party. But the Party’s leaders, reasoning that “they have nowhere else to go,” refused to notice that voters were lending their votes out of allegiance to causes rather than to the Party, and that Republican candidates increasingly sought votes through the medium of groups that advocate these causes rather than through the Party Establishment. It was shocked when candidates won Republican primaries by aligning themselves with such groups, against the Party itself. The flood of votes that such groups energized in 2010 signified that the groups, not the Party, had come to represent opposition to the ruling class. But post 2010, the Republican leadership continued to pretend to be the county class’ representative while not actually representing it. Its donors buried opposition to Mitt Romney in attack ads and picked its own kind of candidates wherever it could.
After the leadership’s electoral disaster of 2012 and its subsequent pathetic fecklessness the only vision of a possible future in Republican ranks – the only programmatic and organizational coherence –was among the Party’s dissident majority in the House and dissident minority in the Senate. By 2013 it was less meaningful to ask what the leadership would do with the dissidents than what the dissidents would do with the leadership. The answer seemed to be: increasingly to ignore it, to go one’s own way; more and more, to go along with conscience and with voters. By 2013 as their numbers continued to grow without counter trend, it was difficult to imagine how the leadership might reduce their numbers.
At the same time, the groups that represent the country class’ pieces were mounting and winning more primary challenges to Establishment Republicans. The establishment responded with its main asset: money. The New York Times reported a concerted effort by the Party’s biggest donors led by longtime Bush staffer Karl Rove (yes, the Rockefeller wing) to support Establishment candidates in the primary process. But establishment candidates are already better funded than dissidents, usually massively so. The establishment candidates who have survived dissident challenges have seldom done it through sheer cash, but rather by fuzzing the differences between themselves and the dissidents. ...
A new party is likely to arise because the public holds both Republicans and Democrats responsible for the nation’s unsustainable course. Indebtedness cannot increase endlessly. Nor can regulations pile on top of regulations while the officials who promulgate them – and their pensions – continue to grow, without crushing those beneath. Nor can the population’s rush to disability status and other forms of public assistance, or the no-win wars that have resulted in “open season” on Americans around the world, continue without catharsis. One half of the population cannot continue passively to absorb insults without pushing back. When – sooner rather than later – events collapse this house of cards, it will be hard to credibly advocate a better future while bearing a label that advertises responsibility for the present. ...Angelo Codevilla has seemingly given up on the Republican Party because of the Republican leadership, because it doesn't represent anyone anymore. It doesn't even represent two-thirds of its Republican members! And in the Senate, the leadership's representation of its own members is even smaller. Levin says, "His point is those of us who believe in gun rights, those of us who believe in traditional marriage, those of us who believe in fiscal responsibility, those of us who believe in the Constitution, those of us who are believers in the American heritage, will go elsewhere. And in 2012, he believes millions of us decided 'to hell with both parties' and chose not to show up." Finishing the article, Levin reads...
To represent the country class, to set about reversing the ills the ruling class imposed on America, a party would have to confront the ruling class’ pretenses, with unity and force comparable to that by which these were imposed. There will be no alternative to all the country class’ various components acting jointly on measures dear to each.
...the country class, to defend itself, to cut down the forest of subsidies and privileges that choke America, to curb the arrogance of modern government, cannot shy away from offending the ruling class’ intellectual and moral pretenses. Events themselves show how dysfunctional the ruling class is. But only a political party worthy of the name can marshal the combination of reason, brutal images, and consistency adequately to represent America’s country class.By going through this in meticulous detail with his audience (and I've even skipped through sum of Levin's reading), Mark warns that if the Republican Party doesn't embrace conservative, American, founding principles, then it will destroy itself. We cannot survive the Karl Roves, the Bush dynasty, or a tepid Speaker. Levin's final message to the Establishment: "You either join with us, or you're finished." That is to say, get on board with conservatism, or you won't simply be asked to go your own way...your party will cease to exist.
ADDENDUM: And for those who are still with me and daring enough to enter Levin's 2nd hour, the Great One enters into examples of what Codevilla is talking about:
theRightScoop: Mark Levin blasted Obama for going on Al Sharpton’s radio show and smearing not just your representatives, but you. And then he torched Republicans for being so weak that they end up throwing in with Obama’s mindset.See, you only care about the rich, according to the President. You, the country class, are not worthy of a respectable response, you're not worthy of the Ruling Class, you're not worthy of the Statists, so you have to be put down. He has to go on Al Not-So-Sharpton's radio show to disgracefully smear you. Then worse, the Republican leadership throws in with Obama! They fear shutting down the government, not even for a day. They have to surrender; they want to surrender. They pretend to be with us, while they want to defeat us...
Cowards. Pathetic. Rather than explaining to the American people, day in and day out, the dire financial straits the nation is in, they're worried about whose gonna get the blame? They want to pass a bill giving the President cart blanche in deciding what to cut and what to leave? And this view is supported by National Review? And of course Karl Rove. Rather than explain what a tiny 'cut' this is (that's not actually even a cut), they're worried about blame? This is not representative of any responsible action whatsoever.WashingtonExaminer: Congressional Republicans are considering a proposal that would give the Obama administration authority to choose what gets the axe under the automatic spending cuts required by sequestration. The measure is intended to negate the “across-the-board” nature of sequestration while still maintaining the size of the spending cuts, sources said.
“Those conversations are happening and they’re happening at a leadership level,” a Senate source told The Washington Examiner. “The bill would not try to replace the cuts, [but] it would instead give the president maximum authority to prioritize.”
