Something to keep in mind before voting in November...

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy collapses over loose fiscal policy … always followed by a dictatorship."

 —Alexis de Tocqueville

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

by Mark R. Levin (Threshold Editions)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6285-6

Suggested Retail: $25.00

Book Review by Armand Vaquer

Conservative talk-show host Mark Levin has a new book out, and it has been number one on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks since it was published.

It is Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.

Levin started this book before Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president, but the points he made in the book have been proven time and time again by the actions of President Obama and the Democrat-controlled congress.

Since we are nearing the Independence Day weekend, it is a book you should consider getting and read over the holiday.

Levin points out that the word liberal meant, in the classical sense, the opposite of authoritarian. Today's "liberals" (or "progressives") should be referred to as statists. This means that a statist believes in the supremacy of the state, specifically the federal government with centralized planning. The modern liberal believes that "the individual's imperfection and personal pursuits impede the objective of the utopian state. In this, Modern Liberalism promotes what French historian Alexis de Tocqueville described as a soft tyranny." Levin says this soft tyranny becomes more oppressive and potentially could lead to a hard tyranny (or totalitarianism).

We see this now in the current news involving cap-and-trade, health care "reform," and the current moves by Obama to grab more power through executive orders and the appointment of "czars" with more powers than cabinet secretaries and without any oversight. Leftist bloggers such as J. Clifford at the Irregular Times pooh-pooh the concerns many of us have over these governmental actions that the statists couch in sugary terms such as "common good."

Levin's book covers a wide range of topics and ends with a conservative manifesto on different issues, which are based upon the foundations of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

This is a must-read for all U.S. citizens. This book should also be required reading in political science classes.

We're Becoming Frogs In Obama's Soft Tyranny

President Obama, since January 20, 2009, with the power of his pen, has increased the power of the State over the individual, thereby implementing a soft tyranny. Obama is implementing soft tyranny through executive orders without bothering to wait for congressional action.

What we have now is a government that believes that it is the sole decider on what’s in the best interest of citizens, as opposed to the people themselves. Normally, elected representatives and the courts would provide a check and balance to what the chief executive can do. Since January 20, Democrats (now with large majorities in Congress) who share Obama's ideology have not provided any checks or balances. In fact, many took the lead in implementing the Obama Administration's policies. The Republican Party has been weakened during the last three election cycles, thus being rendered impotent to thwart Democrat excesses.

Presidents have used Executive Orders since 1789 although there is no provision or statute that explicitly permits Executive Orders exists in the U.S. Constitution. In our history, the Supreme Court has overturned two Executive Orders. Again, the system of checks and balances have been missing in action.

Alexis de Tocqueville coined the term soft tyranny in his 1835 work entitled "Democracy in America." This soft tyranny occurs whenever the social conditions of a people hinder any prospect of hope among its members, with soft tyranny comes hope lost and freedom lost for the individual and a movement for the "good of the collective."

This soft tyranny is manifesting itself in the people's desire for the government to "do something" about the current economic situation, without any consideration that what the government is doing may be harmful to their civil liberties and the free enterprise system. It is the old story on how to boil a frog. If you drop a frog into boiling water, he will jump out of the pot. But if you sit the frog in cool water and gradually turn up the heat, he will be boiled before he knew what hit him. Per Wikipedia, "In the boiling-frog allegory, the frog represents the citizenry, whilst the gradual heating of the water represents the incremental encroachment of government." It appears that we have become frogs for the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress.

C.S. Lewis wrote "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" which expressed that this soft tyranny is the most oppressive. "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Unless the people wake up to what is happening in their country, we will become the boiled frogs. Once implemented, these policies will be extremely difficult to undo.