Ameritopia_ The Unmaking of America - Mark R. Levin [2]
But what is this ideology, this force, this authority that threatens us, and its destructiveness, which Reagan, Lincoln, Story, and the Founders so feared? What kind of power both attracts a free people and destroys them?
The mission of this book is to delve deeper into these essential questions, the most important of our time, and identify, expose, and explain the character of the threat that America and, indeed, all republics confront. In this way we can better comprehend the existential danger to a free and prosperous people.
In Ameritopia, I explain that the heart of the problem is, in fact, utopianism, a term I discuss in great detail throughout the book. Utopianism is the ideological and doctrinal foundation for statism. While utopianism and statism or utopian and statist are often used interchangeably, the undertaking here is to probe more deeply into what motivates and animates the tyranny of statism. Indeed, the modern arguments about the necessities and virtues of government control over the individual are but malign echoes of utopian prescriptions through the ages, which attempted to define subjugation as the most transcendent state of man.
Utopianism has long promoted the idea of a paradisiacal existence and advanced concepts of pseudo “ideal” societies in which a heroic despot, a benevolent sovereign, or an enlightened oligarchy claims the ability and authority to provide for all the needs and fulfill all the wants of the individual—in exchange for his abject servitude.
By sorting through an immense volume of writings, I chose those books and passages—using the original words of certain classic philosophical works—that best describe the utopian mind-set and its application to modern-day utopian thinking and conduct in America. Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto are indispensible in understanding the nature of utopianism. They are essential works that have in common soulless societies in which the individual is subsumed into a miasma of despotism—and each of them is a warning against utopian transformation in America and elsewhere.
I also contrast the utopian societies created by these writings with the enlightened thinking of philosophical pioneers John Locke and Charles de Montesquieu, among others, who described truisms about the nature of man—liberty, rights, and life—that informed the Founders and became the touchstone of American society. Indeed, their wisdom served as the bone and sinew of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Moreover, a proper examination of democracy’s tendency to descend into a soft tyranny or worse would be incomplete without Alexis de Tocqueville’s prescient insight. Although not a contemporary of the Founders, he wrote elaborately about the unique character of the American people and their government, praising them but also drawing attention to the historical weaknesses of democratic institutions and to the fragility of liberty.
I also endeavor to show how insidiously contemporary utopians or statists have poisoned modern society by changing the paradigms under which governmental action is both contemplated and executed. For example, we seldom question today whether it is appropriate for the federal government to undertake a given task, no matter how significant or minute. In infinite ways, whether we realize it or not, this is the utopian mind-set at work.
Finally, there is a reflexive desire when concluding a project such as this to put a positive spin on the situation. I have not done so here. I remain convinced that we, the people, are at great risk. There simply are no easy answers to the challenges we face. It will take nothing short of a prodigious effort, of the kind I discussed in Liberty and Tyranny, over a course of many decades, to reestablish America as a constitutional republic. However, this is an effort we must make, no matter how complicated and daunting. Otherwise, as Lincoln put it, the nation will surely “die