On the very first page, Levin asks, "CAN WE SIMULTANEOUSLY LOVE our children but betray their generation and generations yet born?"
The short answer is an emphatic, "NO!" So why would Americans of all political pursuasions continue electing and reelecting supposed representatives to coalesce around and impose Big Government schemes that do just that?! Levin gives us an excellent framework at the end of Chapter One to buttress against the reasonably principled answer, and both young and old must take heed of the precarious situation that our civil society finds itself in...
The time is urgent for the ruling generation and the rising generation--that is, parents and their progeny--to step up in defense of their joint interests and in opposition to their common foe--a government unmoored from its constitutional beginnings and spinning out of control. The statist abuses and exploits younger people and subsequent generations, expropriating the fruits of their labor and garnishing wealth yet created, as a cash cow for voracious, contemporary governmental plundering, and manipulating and constricting their prospects and liberty even before they are of age to more fully pursue and enjoy them. The ruling generation, upon sober reflection, must stir itself to action in order to untangle the web of societal and generational conflicts produced by the statists' endless and insidious social engineering and encroachment, even though it requires some level of economic self-sacrifice and partial withdrawal from governmental entitlements and subsidies.This is the substance beyond debate, beyond ratings, but of intellect and intuition, simultaneously, that must drive our course.
The equally formidable struggle for younger people is first to recognize the constant and self-reinforcing influences of statist manipulation and exploitation, break loose from them, and then rally against them in their own defense. The rising generation must question, confront, and civilly resist the real authoritarianism that endangers its future and the quality of life of those not yet born, whether preached in the classroom, popularized through entertainment, or idealized by demagogic politicians. Their well-being as a free, self-sufficient, and thriving people is at stake. The real fight they must wage is against utopian statism, which grows at the expense of the civil society and their own security and happiness. Otherwise, the rising generation--and unborn, unrepresented generations that follow--will degenerate into a lost and struggling generation, living an increasingly bleak and hollow existence under steadily more centralized, managed, and repressive rule.
At the beginning of this chapter I asked: Can we simultaneously love our children but betray their generation and generations yet unborn? The answer is no. I also asked: Do they have a responsibility to preserve their own well-being and that of subsequent generations by resisting societal mutation and economic plunder? The answer to both questions is yes. It turns out that the ruling and the rising generations have much in common after all.
In the first place and in the end, we must rely on our individual and collective capacity, albeit imperfect and fallible, for sound judgment and right reason. There are eternal and unchangeable universal truths that no professor, politician, expert, or combination thereof can alter or invalidate. The mission...is to persuade as many fellow citizens as possible, through scholarship, facts, and ideas, to avert a looming tragedy--not a Greek tragedy of the theater and mind, but a real and devastating American tragedy, the loss of the greatest republic known to mankind.
Related link: Plunder and Deceit
It's OUT! Levin's 'Plunder and Deceit' hits the mark
