Mark Levin offers a thoughtful, if biased at times, look into the current crisis that government has become in “Liberty and Tyranny”. Most of the information is not groundbreaking, but badly needs to be disseminated if we are to avoid an utter collapse into tyranny here in the United States. Levin’s main antagonist in the book isn’t Barack Obama or even George W. Bush (he does accurately place blame on both presidents for continuing the explosion in government and the stripping of its citizens’ rights); the antagonist is simply the generic power-hungry statist, which exists in both political parties and promotes government solutions for everything. Levin’s idea is simple, the purpose of government is to protect liberty, but the main thing that differentiates government from other organizations is its authority to strip liberty from its people–a striking contradiction that needs to be addressed.

After a solid summary of the current status, Levin offers suggestions of what needs to be done to correct our wayward ship:

1- taxation – eliminate progressive income tax and replace it with flat tax
2- environment – eliminate tax-exempt status for environmental groups, litigation allowances
3- judges – legislative veto over judicial decisions
4- administration – sunset all independent federal agencies each year
5- gov. education – eliminate monopoly
6- immigration – eliminate chain migration
7- entitlements – educate about the programs; defeat national health care
8- foreign policy – reject treaties that have at purpose the supplantation of US interest to a global interest
9- faith oppose all efforts to upend nation’s roots
10- demand all public servants uphold the constitution and justify their acts under the constitution

Most of Levin’s suggestions are right on, notably the idea to sunset all independent federal agencies and to institute a flat tax instead of the current progressive income tax. He does, however miss some very important concepts: he defends using torture on terrorists (a positiion that cannot be morally defended as it is not a sure way to garner information and there is no way of determining for sure if such people are guilty), and he misses the boat on environmentalism: we should be allowed to live in a clean environment–anyone who disrupts that is stripping us of our unalienable rights.

Overall, “Liberty” is a good read with wise ideas. Hopefully, it will lead to strong, definitive action.