A Challenge To All
By ATWadmin On March 25th, 2010Before you is a lecture, it is One Hour and Ten Minutes Long. It was given by Mark Levin at the Reagan Library on March 5th. It explains the beliefs of me and my ilk. In other words the Majority of Americans. I challenge you to watch it and explain to me what you find wrong with the contents of this lecture.
I do not expect many comments for the majority of you truly can not debate civil beliefs in a pro or con manner, but mostly because there are probably only 3 of you that have the attention span to sit that long let alone grasp a subject not delivered to you in 30 second sound bites.
The Troll
You always claim to be among the majority but some how always take up minority positions, care to explain the dychotomy
explain to me what makes you believe that mine is the minority position. One freak Election, Sean be a man take up the Challenge and you might actually learn where and why the real majority of America is.
but you won’t take the time
the majority of americans are in favour of the health care bill for one thing
And that makes 3 out of the last 5 presidential elections as freak elections and that would make it hmmm 60 % which actually means the freak elections are the majority
Ok – I have taken you up on your challenge. I would say that it is a rather odd the way that you feel it necessary to insult people but putting that to one side, I listened to it. In fact I listened to it three times to make sure that I wasn’t leaping to conclusions; once driving to the gym and twice at the gym – so that is a pretty good workout I had as well as a chance to hear someone I had never heard before.
My overall impression is that as a polemic it is very good. As a call to the party faithful it is excellent -and his audience certainly felt that way. But is is not a lecture.
I am not qualified to comment on the particular aspects of the US constitution so I have no way of assessing the soundness of his arguments in those areas. So instead I approached the whole thing as an exercise in critical thinking – testing the validity of his arguments and the logic.
As is inevitable in a political polemics of this kind, it is riddled with logical fallacies – the most common being straw men argument. His central premise is a false dichotomy. His assertion is that there exists a binary world – the two poles being liberty or tyranny. Clearly that is false. Simple set theory would easily show that. But of course it suits his purpose.
Where the speech is at its best is when it deals with the economic reforms of the Reagan era – and he constructs a reasonable inductive argument. Although he is presenting it as deductive, and actually even there his argument is not valid (in the very strict sense of the word with regard to critical reasoning). He makes the assertion that essentially boils down to Reagan cut taxes, the economy got better, therefore cutting taxes makes the economy get better. Well clearly that isn’t necessarily true. You can construct a possible world in which cutting taxes does not make the economy get better – so at best it is an inductive argument – and frankly a rather weak one at that.
But at least in this part of the talk he actually produced some facts – and used them to form an argument – and those are things you can test.
He is a very skilled orator. He knows all the usual tricks and hits all of the buttons.
The call to a lost golden era, the casting out of false prophets (what he calls pseudo Conservatives) that lead the faithful astray (see, it wasn’t our fault – it was contamination by those from outside), the association with unquestionable virtues and the implicit precept that if we are associated with these unquestionably good things, then the opposition must be associated with their negations. He redefined terms to suit his argument constantly and then shifted those terms. He did the usual appeal to authority (I am not sure that Aristotle would agree with his definition of Civil Society).
And of course the oldest rhetorical device of them all – ourselves alone. Only we hold the truth, that everyone is against us (I think he cited the media, hollywood and academia as being against them), that if we fail then everything else fails so we must form the bulwark against the tide at the same time as wrapping himself and his followers in the flag.
There was a bit of logical problem there – and he got slightly lost in his own argument. At times he was asserting that the views he held and were ascribing were those of the majority of Americans. But at other times he seemed to suggest that it was only the faithful who held these views and it was up to them to convert the others. Well if you already are the majority then you don’t need to do that – and you will inevitably hold the balance of power.
It was at its weakest when he simply produced a whole raft of assertoric statements for which he provided no evidence but merely tossed them out. There was a lot of that. However for an audience that is what they want to hear. That is the red meat stuff that any group of party faithful wants. We are good, they are bad – and look how bad they are. They want to do all of these things. Take it from me.
There were two things that struck me as a non-American listening to the speech. The first was his concept of liberty (oh, his assertions about property were rather odd as well. He ascribed a quasi-moral aspect to property which conveniently ignored inherited property). For him liberty or freedom is a state of absence of constraint. It is the freedom from government oppression, the freedom from tyranny. This is a classic definition of freedom, but as Berlin among othershas shown – it suffers from the happy slave paradox. It is a theory of negative freedom – best put as freedom from. By contrast positive freedom is an active state – freedom to. He doesn’t seem to hold that as belief – or if he does, it isn’t a central tenet of his argument.
The other thing which was telling – and I don’t know if this was a rhetorical device, or was part of the US culture, was the insecurity he showed. His closing quote from Reagan was something quite unrecognisable to a Western European audience. I don’t know if that was a belief he really held – or if that was part of his call to take up arms on the barricades.
I did laugh when he accused Obama of suffering from a messiah complex, when his opening remark about being at the Reagan library was to describe it as a "sacred place" and the constant reverential tone he adopted throughout when talking about Reagan.
So thank you for drawing my attention to it. It is interesting to see what the champions of those on the other side of the divide have to say. As a lecture it was deeply flawed, as a speech it was better, and as a polemical call to the party faithful it was very good – using all the right rhetorical devices. His audience came expecting something – and they left with exactly what they wanted. I am sure they were very happy indeed.
first of all 85% of Americans were and are against the health care bill, Sean proves a point, mostly that he has one on top of his head now I will read a serious post from Jaz and be done with the petty annoyance of the inbred ill informed Sean
First of all Thank You Jaz that was the most honest decent commenting I’ve read on this blog in months.
Calling it a lecture rather than a speech would be more a fault of mine. A wrong turn of a phrase, speech is more accurate.
The Speaker Mark Levin is a constitutional Lawyer that served in the Reagan administration, he is the head of the Landmark Legal Foundation and a couple of years ago was roped into doing a radio show buy two of his friends, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
It is a shame that you are not that familiar with the American constitution because it has caused you to view things with a little less understanding of why he used the terms liberty, tyranny, and property.
Your section here: As is inevitable in a political polemics of this kind, it is riddled with logical fallacies – the most common being straw men argument. His central premise is a false dichotomy. His assertion is that there exists a binary world – the two poles being liberty or tyranny. Clearly that is false. Simple set theory would easily show that. But of course it suits his purpose.
From an American point of view Liberty or Tyranny are the only two states of mankind it is the whole underlying theme of our constitution and the founding belief system of our nation. What the point of the core of the American public majority is that over the past 60 years the nation has been pulled by one party more to the side of tyranny than should ever have been allowed and this current administration is trying to shove the nation completely over that cliff.
your section here: And of course the oldest rhetorical device of them all – ourselves alone. Only we hold the truth, that everyone is against us (I think he cited the media, hollywood and academia as being against them), that if we fail then everything else fails so we must form the bulwark against the tide at the same time as wrapping himself and his followers in the flag.
You may see as a rhetorical trick but, the facts are that those 3 institutions are overwhelmingly influenced by and supporters of the false utopia that Marx preached, and they work in unison to ridicule any view opposite of theirs. They are in fact the real minority but they have control of all but one mode of mass communication and the entire Higher Learning Academies and the early learning free schools. giving that minority the ability to both appear larger than they are and exert more influence to selectively portray things in a view that meets an agenda rather than a reality.
This part of your statement: There was a bit of logical problem there – and he got slightly lost in his own argument. At times he was asserting that the views he held and were ascribing were those of the majority of Americans. But at other times he seemed to suggest that it was only the faithful who held these views and it was up to them to convert the others. Well if you already are the majority then you don’t need to do that – and you will inevitably hold the balance of power.
Is the part of America that those outside the nation never see due to the overwhelming unreal portrayal projected by Hollywood and the Liberal MSM. This is the group that they refer to as fly over country. This is also the real sleeping giant in America. These are the people who refused to vote last election because neither candidate represented them. These are the people however that will come out in November and completely flip the balance of power in Washington. You also misunderstand because these are also the people that believe that the beliefs they hold are the right ones but, that does not give them the right to force their beliefs on those they disagree with. They are more likely to laugh and walk away shaking their heads at the Obamas and Pelousies of the nation than waist their time pointing out why they are wrong. That is why he puts them in that context it is also to say to them that it is now the time to stand up that we can no longer laugh at the fools, that the fools are causing to much damage to the republic and now we must act and convince them to turn back to our nations first principals
As to his closing quote from Reagan it is a belief that he holds that I can assure you and the other part of the Reagan thing that you misunderstand is that we the conservatives put Reagan up on that pedestal of what we would view as our royalty. Reagan would never have put himself there. Obama does put himself there. That is a big difference.
Also the speech was held in the Reagan Library and as I said that Levin started his career working in the Reagan Justice Department.
I hope my comments help in your understanding and I once again thank you for your serious response. As for my insult of a challenge that is simple.
The leftists on this site always decry that the right doesn’t debate. The speech above should give them ample ammo to point out why the beliefs expressed in it are wrong and present their reasons why.
Yet as I predicted non of them took that opportunity. Because they can’t articulate why their beliefs are what they are let alone in contrast to plainly spoken views that they should have no problem stating their case against.
Especially Mahons and Phantom, who unlike you would understand some of the more subtle things in the speech as Americans.
Jaz if the speech interested you and your ever looking for something different to listen to on a ride or during a workout go to MarkLevin.com and in the audio section he gives 2 months of his radio show (which is done more lively than his speech was) for free, you can also get the podcasts at the Itunes store for free
I have actually studied US politics as an academic subject – I did a course on it at University and naturally we looked at the constitution and the structures of government. I did that as part of my politics degree.
But I was not going to put my one year external observations of the constitution of a callow undergraduate an embarrassingly long time ago against a man who served in the administration – that would be an arrogance unbridled.
So I made the decision not even to attempt to tackle it on that level.
One of his assertions – that your country is not longer a constitutional government because it has a Supreme Court that – in his view – "re-writes" the constitution. Well that isn’t true. Even if you have a supreme court that re-interprets your constitution that doesn’t render your constitution void. Germany has a very good constitution and also has a constitutional court with the specific task of defending and upholding the constitution and unlike the US supreme court can initiate its own cases. And likewise its relationship between the federal government and the states (in Germany’s case the Länder) is altered by the rulings of the court – and the constitution calls for that. No one would describe Germany as not being a constitutional government.
His main tenet however is not sound. I don’t deny for one second that he believes it, nor indeed that many – if not all- of his audience believe it, but just because lots of people believe something, does not make it right. The opposite of freedom is not tyranny, the opposite of tyranny is not freedom. He constructs a dichotomy because it makes it much simpler to say if you are not for us, then by definition you must be against us. Well no that is only true if the world can be divided into P and Not P. That is only the case for absolutes – like being pregnant. Either you are, or you are not. The set of women can be divided into a subset of women who are pregnant and women who are not such that there exists no intersection and the combination of the two comprises the entire set.
But the set of political environments does not have similar structure – unless you chose to define your terms such that by definition that is the case. In which case you can say that – but it requires a change in the definition of the term freedom – or tyranny – to achieve that.
His definition of liberty and freedom – which are in his use synonymous – is classical freedom thought and he is clear that his concept is freedom from, rather than freedom to.
That is the concept of freedom for man in the state of nature – his free from external constraints. So, for example, the African tribesman who can go where he likes, pays no taxes, and lives the simple life is free in that sense. The only constraints on him are those that inherent in life in the state of nature.
However is he free? He is free from contraint, but is he free to do things.
Positive freedom is more problematic than negative freedom as it ascribes to freedom more than a state of negative being. For philosophical reasons he doesn’t want to subscribe to positive freedom, because such a state is achieved out of the state of nature. So to go all technical – Hegel for example – saw the state as the highest form of man’s existence. It was only through being a member of the state that man could achieve his highest aims. And historically that certainly seems to be the case.
Of course there is more historical context here. America has this history as a frontier society, and the frontier is very much a state of nature. The problem, of course, is that the state of nature is a pretty brutal place, and is not really compatible with advanced society. And that, of course, explains the closing quote – it was an appeal to the frontier spirit.
That is something that is a huge cultural difference between the US and W Europe. I wonder if, ironically, there would be more of an understanding of it in E Europe – not the frontier thing, but the idea that all of this can be taken away at a moment’s notice. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance – I don’t think that many in W Europe would agree with that, while I suspect that in the US and probably E Europe they might.
The Reagan thing just made me laugh. Again he makes the assertion that Obama has a messiah complex – but doesn’t produce any evidence – yet he certainly sees Reagan as a messiah – or at the very least a prophet. It was the juxtaposition that I found amusing.
I thought a bit more about the speech. Were I a conservative I would be very happy to hear a speech like that – but even then, I am not sure that it is quite the intellectual tour-de-force that some have made it out to be. Actually when you listen he is very light on evidence. That is fine for the sort of speech he made. I thought it was going to be a lecture on the nature of conservatism in the Obama world. It wasn’t that – but that isn’t to take away from what it was because looking back at it, it was never intended to be that and he is not an academic, but a public figure.
also the people that believe that the beliefs they hold are the right ones
Everyone believes that. In fact you can’t hold a belief that you don’t believe in – it is epistemologically impossible to believe a false belief. The nature of believing something is to ascribe to it truth. No matter how hard you try you cannot hold the belief the moon is made of cheese if you know it isn’t.
The sleeping giant theory is an attractive one for polemicists. If only we can show the people the true way then surely they will rise up and follow us. It has been tried throughout history. He seems to be wanting it both ways (hence the attack on the false prophets). At once we are both an oppressed and put-upon minority, and there exists this conspiracy to put us down, but if we rail against it, then the people will rise up. The only problem is that the people did vote – and in big numbers – and it wasn’t for them. And their political philosophy was rejected (and he had to explain that through the false prophet story).
Now I am sure that come November it will be a different picture – but we will see how different. November is a long time away and who knows what will happen.
Of course he may well be right. He could be bang on the money – and there is a sleeping giant and it will wake and it will do all of these things. The evidence for it isn’t great, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And that is what his audience wanted to hear – and that is what he gave them. He did an excellent job.
Jaz excelent analysis, that you sat through that drivel 1 time never mind 3 times makes you a better man than me.
Troll
85%? Did it take surgical intervention to pull that load of crap out of your ass and are you insured?
Jaz I am off to work but I will respond to your response latter on most likely in the wee hours over there, there are a few points in your response to mine that I disagree with and a few I would like to ask you questions about, but as I said off to work and today will be a day from hell it’s that time of the month on the job so I won’t be able to respond till I have time at home which probably won’t be until about 3-5am your time.
Sean you just prove to be the fool more and more and that 85% is pulled from the liberal NY Times poll and even the Democrats acknowledge that, that is the percentage of americans satisfied with their health care before this obamanation was passed.
But keep posting I enjoy the laugh
So 85% are satisfied in your pea brain translates to 85% against reform? no wonder you graduated from Penn State
I polled my employees and 78% of my employees are satisfied with what they are getting paid, so I reported that 78% were against getting a raise
no wait that is just the funniest thing I have ever heard it also might provide an example of the froup mentality on this issue from a european perspective.
Your comparing with your numbers that 78% of your employees don’t wan’t a raise because 78% are satisfied with their wages.
So your perspective is that I am saying or rather the 85% that are satisfied means that they would be happy with better healthcare. Well your probably right.
But that is what makes me wonder if your father did marry his sister, the fact that you think that the Government will provide better health care.
The real question you should poll them on is if they needed their appendix out how many would go to have a doctor do the operation, and how many would go to the corner butcher shop to get the operation.
because that is a more honest comparison Schmuck!
Allright Part 1:
One of his assertions – that your country is not longer a constitutional government because it has a Supreme Court that – in his view – "re-writes" the constitution. Well that isn’t true. Even if you have a supreme court that re-interprets your constitution that doesn’t render your constitution void. Germany has a very good constitution and also has a constitutional court with the specific task of defending and upholding the constitution and unlike the US supreme court can initiate its own cases. And likewise its relationship between the federal government and the states (in Germany’s case the Länder) is altered by the rulings of the court – and the constitution calls for that. No one would describe Germany as not being a constitutional government.
His main tenet however is not sound. I don’t deny for one second that he believes it, nor indeed that many – if not all- of his audience believe it, but just because lots of people believe something, does not make it right.
What his point omn this subject and the context he means it in, is that the Supreme Court and otherf lower activist courts have made law. In doing so they void and ot do the power that they are bgranted under the constitution. In the US ONLY the legislative branch can make law and if it is a law that changes a basic context or factor spelled out in the constitution the law can only be created through the amendment process which is clearly spelled out.
Lower courts can here a case based on a law or an interpatation of a law and make a decision onit, but the Supreme court thanks to Marbury vs Madison is the only court that can validate a new law without it going through the ammendment process. That in itself is a violation of the procedures and Duties of the court who’s constitutional job was to do one thing interpret whether a law had a constitutional basis or not. That is what has been corrupted and places a lot of the supreme courts into a codition of un-constitutionaliality. His tenant is sound because the court acts outside the law that both binds them and that they are tio interprit not change in any manner.
Your statement is: The opposite of freedom is not tyranny, the opposite of tyranny is not freedom. He constructs a dichotomy because it makes it much simpler to say if you are not for us, then by definition you must be against us. Well no that is only true if the world can be divided into P and Not P. That is only the case for absolutes – like being pregnant. Either you are, or you are not. The set of women can be divided into a subset of women who are pregnant and women who are not such that there exists no intersection and the combination of the two comprises the entire set.
But the set of political environments does not have similar structure – unless you chose to define your terms such that by definition that is the case. In which case you can say that – but it requires a change in the definition of the term freedom – or tyranny – to achieve that.
Is flawed and wrong on its very first line. If the opposit of freedom is not tyranny and the opposit of tyranny is not freedom, then please pray tell what is. I would love to hear your explanation and vreasoning on that one. For thast is the whole underlying basis of truth that our constitution was structored on if the people are not free and hold all the power than they are rulled in tyranny by a govt, whether that be a soft tyranny or a harsh makes little difference except for the suffering of the man who’s freedom has been robbed. For us it does not require a change in the terms for they are already the terms.
Your Statement : His definition of liberty and freedom – which are in his use synonymous – is classical freedom thought and he is clear that his concept is freedom from, rather than freedom to.
That is the concept of freedom for man in the state of nature – his free from external constraints. So, for example, the African tribesman who can go where he likes, pays no taxes, and lives the simple life is free in that sense. The only constraints on him are those that inherent in life in the state of nature.
However is he free? He is free from contraint, but is he free to do things
Is OUR exact definition of Freedom. Our constitution states man is born free with his freedom granted by natures god, man then lends some power to first the stat and then the Federal Government. ALL OTHER ACTIONS AND FREEDOMS ARE RESERVED TO THE INDIVIDUAL, the only thing the Fed is Constitutionally allowed to do are the 17 exact things spelled out in the constitution. It is a document designed specificly to restrain Government NOT the people. Remember the first thing our Founding Documents stat is this freedom comes from God not man.
What you refer to as adavanced society our nation fled from and rejected at it’s founding and I can’t speak for E Europe but I assure you it is the bedrock that we forged our nation in. Which is why the growing internal revoltion of the majority of Americans against the wonder boy. He was very careful when he spoke of change not to give the details that what he meant was to flip our bedrock from freedom in the strictest form described above to one based on the false utopia dreamed of by Marx.
The people did vote, they voted however on an agenda that was never explained and on a man who’s philosophy and history was deliberitly hidden by the MSM. The next election will be show of what happens when you poerpetuate a lie of the magnitude that was sold to the public
What will be seen between now and November will be the push to legalize the illegals and the implementation of cap and trade along with a VAT tax.
Unemployment is at 20% it will continue to grow until november and the wrath will be vented at the Democrats and Obam.
Do youself a favor and when your at your computer stream a few of his shows I think you’ll wind up enjoying him whether you hold thr same beliefs or not..
Is flawed and wrong on its very first line. If the opposit of freedom is not tyranny and the opposit of tyranny is not freedom, then please pray tell what is. I would love to hear your explanation and vreasoning on that one.
His logic goes thus:
P: All societies that are not free are tyrannies
Q: Country A is not free
Therefore: Country A is a tyranny
On the face of it that seems to a deductively valid statement.
However, let us look a bit closer at the terms. What do both of them mean, and what do their concepts entail?
If you consider the superset of all possible political societies it will contain a subset of societies that are tyrannies. Now you can chose to define, if you so wish, the negation of the subset to be free societies such that there exists no intersection between the two and together they comprise the entire set. But what happens if you do?
If we accept for now the logic of that argument, what causes a society to be a member of one or other of those sets? In his argument that is determined by freedom. Either you are free, or you are not. And herein lies a problem. He is saying that a necessary and sufficient condition of being a tyranny is the absence of freedom. He has postulated a dichotomy – either you either live in a free society or you live in a tyranny.
Under that definition no society is, or can ever be, anything but a tyranny for it is a necessary condition of society that some freedoms are lost. All civil societies, by his definition, must be tyrannies, for there exists only F and not F – I can either be free, or not free.
It is not that all societies that are not free are tyrannies – it is, by his logic, all societies are tyrannies. If that is the case – that it is inherent condition of society that it is a tyranny – then the term society subsumes the term tyranny.
And if that is the case then his conclusion and one of his predicates are simply saying the same thing – and all you have done is affirm the consequent (all horses are mammals, a horse is a mammal therefore a horse is a mammal).
Hence the argument is not valid.
Now we have to be careful here. Originally I wrote that if P is false his conclusion must be false. Actually that isn’t true. The premises can be false but the conclusion true. If that is the case then this is not a deductive argument (which preserve truth), it is an inductive argument. And inductive arguments are neither true nor false, they are more or less likely to be true.
The only way for his argument to be deductively true would be to widen the terms of P. Lack of freedom is a condition for tyranny, but is not a sufficient condition. Other things are required.
There is no such thing as a single definition of Tyranny or a single definition of Freedom. There are only varieties, interpretations and individual experiences of both. The wealthy crony of a corrupt government afforded special privileges and a lavish protected lifestyle would hardly consider himself living under tyranny , while the incompetent floundering homeless individual living in a State that genuinely limits government power and leaves it’s citizens to sink or swim of their own accord would probably not cherish the ‘Freedom’ his government permits him.
There is no such thing as a single definition of Tyranny or a single definition of Freedom
Quite right – but for polemical reasons this chap wants to do a land grab for his definition. Which is fine – he is entitled to do that – but he has to realise that his entire argument is then constructed around that premise.
what you miss is his whole argument and premise is based on a knowable factor. The Constitution of the US.
Where the defenition is quite simple, the power flows from god to the people from the people to the state and from the state to the fed. That is freedom
There fore any deviation or more so in this case reversal of that flow of power is a tyranny soft or hard
Troll,
"the power flows from god to the people from the people to the state and from the state to the fed."
You forgot the talking snake! I’m not sure where it comes, between god and the people, or between the people and the state. For all I know it’s between god and the fed. But it’s in there somewhere. Trust me.