GLENN: A top adviser in the Reagan administration, author of multiple best-sellers, chairman of the Landmark Legal Foundation, also the syndicated talk host and host of Levin TV, Mark Levin is with us now. Hi, Mark, how are you?
MARK: Glenn Beck, I'm great. How are you and the family?
GLENN: I'm really good. Really good.
MARK: Good. Good.
GLENN: Mark, I want to jump into --
MARK: Can I just say real fast, I like what you like. I like HGTV. And I love the Gaines. They're terrific.
GLENN: Me too.
MARK: Yeah, I know.
GLENN: They remind me of what America is supposed to be.
MARK: A time gone by, right? Yeah, exactly.
GLENN: And it's good to see that people still believe in that. And, quite honestly, it has replaced the news channels in my home.
MARK: Me too.
GLENN: And with the kids, it's replaced the Disney Channel. I can't trust anything, but I can trust Chip and Joanna with my kids when I walk out of the room.
MARK: All right. You want to hear something funny? When I have to leave my dog for several hours, I keep the TV on HGTV.
GLENN: I got to tell you, I don't know how HGTV is not the number one channel in all of cable.
MARK: Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, sorry about that.
GLENN: All right. I want to jump to the back of the book here, where you talk about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. And you talk about how this was not set up to give people rights. This was set up to restrain the government from infringing on those rights. And that, you know, you make the point through the book, we really -- we need to stand up for our rights and our natural rights and stop the government from stealing those liberties.
But it seems, Mark, that at every turn, we try, but it just doesn't -- they don't care.
MARK: First of all, people need to know what these rights are so they know what they're defending. And we always discuss them at a surface level. And they need to understand these go back since the beginning of mankind, thousands and thousands of year. This idea of progressivism is old-time tyranny.
And what I try to explain to people is -- you know, we talk about freedom. July 4th is coming up. What does all that mean? And where did the Founders of our country get these ideas from? They didn't invent them. And these philosophers didn't invent them.
You know, we rely on people like, believe it or not, folks, Aristotle and Cicero and Locke and Montesquieu and Burke, and they're not taught.
The other side relies on people like Marx and Hagel and Rousseau, and they are taught. And so you're not going to get -- your children are not going to get what they need to get from our public schools, our colleges, and universities. They're going to get the opposite of it. Because one of the efforts of the progressive movement 100 years ago -- and they've succeeded -- is to take their ideology and make it in the classrooms and teach it in the classrooms. You know, John Dewey talks about this with our -- their positions are not going to be advanced unless they can control what people are thinking.
And so, even look at this Obamacare debate, is there any discussion among the political class whatsoever about individual decision-making, about individual freedom to pick whatever the hell you want to pick and for somebody to sell you whatever the hell they want to sell you.
GLENN: No.
MARK: I mean, when it comes to toasters and refrigerators and cars and so forth, we get to make those decisions. But when it comes to our own well-being and our own lifestyle -- and I try to dig in -- and, Glenn, you're familiar with these things -- I try to dig in and explain to people, cut through all the static, all the chatter that's going on, on TV, and even some radio and so forth and understand more deeply what's going on here, or we're going to get caught in the weeds and we'll never get out of the weeds. So that's the purpose of the book.
GLENN: Yeah. So let's look -- because I was so thrilled that you were really engaging in the fight on progressivism in a -- in a historic sense. And you talk about the early leaders of progressivism and where it came from and how it's working now.
We're seeing this now play out. And we're seeing it play out in -- in this Obamacare discussion. And, you know, they're -- they're lying. They're absolutely lying. And I mean the progressives like Mitch McConnell.
MARK: Exactly.
GLENN: I don't know what game is being played. But this has nothing to do with the parliamentarian. And I don't know if they just are trying to sweep out any constitutionalists and discredit them. I don't know if they really do want a single-payer system. But, I mean, you can't trust the Republicans because the Republicans have -- they were the guys who started the first progressive party.
MARK: Yeah. That's right. Theodore Roosevelt. I mean, let's be honest, the Republican Party is a progressive party. The Democrat Party is a radical progressive party.
GLENN: Yes.
MARK: But there's no Constitutional Party. And I don't want to hear about these little third parties that get about 12,000 votes. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the two major parties. And the problem we have here is that we are debating within their environment. It's never about whether the government should be involved in this, it's how much government should be involved in this.
It's never about individual liberty, individual choice, it's always about collectivism. And what the left does -- you hear Bernie Sanders do this now and Nancy Pelosi, thousands of people -- hundreds of thousands of people will die, if we don't have Obamacare. Are you kidding me? I mean, Obamacare, what is it? Eight years old. So now all of a sudden hundreds of thousands of people will die if we don't have Obamacare?
And the problem is, the Republican Party has been conquered. And much of society has been conquered. There's not a single department. A single agency. A single program. A single entitlement that's -- forget about being eliminated, that's been curtailed.
And why is that? It's because we're on this trajectory. So what I'm saying in this book is, okay. Let's step back. Let's understand the genius of our founding. Let's understand what is meant by the Declaration of Independence. We all embrace it. Now, what do they mean by natural law and natural rights? On the other hand, this other side, these two forces that are constantly fighting each other -- although, our force is fighting less these days. What is that all about? That mix of authoritarianism and tyranny and state and all the rest of it, where does that come from?
And, you know, you ignore the academics and you ignore the intellectuals at your own peril. Because in the end, they're the ones that decide our politics. This is a battle over the future of America. It's a battle over humanity. And the centralization of decision-making in the hands of self-claimed masterminds who seek to impose their will and then dress it up as the general good and the general will in the benefit of the people, they are the modern-day tyrants. And they can call themselves progressives all they want. But they are what they are.
GLENN: Is there -- is there a way, Mark, to -- to reach what? 60 percent of the nation. And come together -- and I'm not talking policies -- I'm talking principles of natural law. Do you believe that there are people on both sides that are problems, and both sides that can share the same values, that we can reunite on?
MARK: Here's the problem: I believe there's some people like that. But I don't think there's 60 percent. And I'll tell you why: One of the things the -- the progressive philosophers and then their so-called thinkers, Herbert Croly --
GLENN: Explain -- explain Herbert Croly. People need to know who he is.
MARK: To me, he was the worst of the worst. And he was born in 1868. He lived into the 1830s. He had enormous influence on Theodore Roosevelt, among others. And his parents were, you know, radical leftists. And they -- they intellectualized, in my view, totalitarianism. And he embraces Hagel and Rousseau and Marx in their own way. Mostly Hagel. And so do the others. And it's this: In order to find -- the individual to find their self-realization, that's what they call it -- they have to surrender their personal free will. They have to surrender their individualism if they're to enjoy sort of a paradisiacal existence. So there's a collective. There's a community. And the more perfect this collective and community becomes, the more perfect the individual becomes.
And you're less an individual. You're part of this magnificent society. And you can hear some Marxism in this too. And what this -- this is called, this is the German idealism. It's called historicism. Marx changed it to material historicism. Not for everybody's eyes to glaze over. So Crowley takes this and he, quote, unquote, Americanizes this. And so they have to attack the Declaration of Independence. They have to attack the notion of unalienable, individual rights. They have to attack the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because they have to have conformity. Everybody has to be rowing in the same direction in order to get to this paradise. This paradise, which is nothing more than the personal agenda of these individuals, which they seek to impose on the country.
This massive bureaucracy we have is an outgrowth of the progressive movement. And it exists for the purpose of getting around our constitutional system.
Elections don't matter. They don't go away. It doesn't change the overall direction of the bureaucracy.
They have given themselves tenure, union protection, civil service protection. They're not experts. They're not professionals. They're pushing an ideology. Not all of them. But as a rule.
And so whether we have an election or not, there they are. Redistributing wealth, issuing regulations and fiats, issuing fines and penalties, whether Congress says so or not, the president says so or not, or the American people want it or not, the will of the people here is irrelevant. And yet, Glenn, they always dress it up, when you listen to guys like Bernie Sanders, as populism. They always dress it as popular sovereignty. That people deserve and that people need. And I stand for the people. And yet, it always involves centralized government. It always involves a government-oriented program.
And so the point is that this war on our founding, this war on the Declaration, this war on the Constitution -- separation of powers is the greatest disaster to these people because they need a centralized authority that imposes its will so that we can get to the end of the rainbow. That's why you see the attacks on the Constitution.
But what I put in the book are the exact quotes, these people smearing these principles, attacking the Declaration, attacking the Constitution. They call -- the individualism that you and I and our listeners believe in, they call "old individualism." There's a new individualism, where you surrender to the state.
You and I talk about liberty. For liberty to you and me, that means the circle of liberty around us that Aristotle talked about and that de Tocqueville talked about and that Locke talked about, this circle of liberty that the government may not penetrate. And the extent to which the government is involved in our liberty needs to intervene. It must not seek to do so to dominate us.
And that's not what Obamacare is. That's not what all these things that they've created, on the left. It is intended to change us, to remake us. And the reason you get increased centralization and increased police state policies and tactics, is because it goes against man's nature. It goes against history.
All right. Rambling.
GLENN: No, no. How long do I have you?
MARK: Let's see here. 10:30, maybe.
GLENN: Think about it in the break. I'm going to come back.
All right. Hang on for just a second. Let me take a quick break with Mark Levin. Because I want to pick it up where he just left -- I have a couple of questions on how we can come together because he's right. That is the problem.
Now, how can we change that? Back in a second with Mark Levin.
[break]
GLENN: We have Mark Levin on. He is the author of rediscovering Americanism. It's his new book. Friend of the program. One of the more brilliant people.
MARK: And friend of Glenn Beck.
GLENN: Thank you very much, Mark.
We have become good friends over the last year or so. And, you know, we don't always agree on everything. But who does?
MARK: Right.
GLENN: And we agree on for more than we disagree.
MARK: That's right.
GLENN: Mark, you said on your radio show about the Senate health care bill, that the two parties have abandoned capitalism. It goes really to the point of your book. If we don't -- if we abandon our principles, we never get the country back that we remember as a kid, all the good parts without all the bad parts.
We are -- I mean, the -- the Republicans are abandoning all of that. So let's use your book. And how do we get people to understand that this is a really bad deal that Mitch McConnell has just given us and we got to stand up for our own individual right?
MARK: I think, first of all, we have to stop defining ourselves through the Republican Party or Washington or whatever.
GLENN: Right.
MARK: It's a cesspool.
GLENN: Yes.
MARK: We have to get back to our own souls and our own hearts and our own belief systems. And it's going to take the citizenry to do that. And, you know, I include a letter in this book from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, which he looks back at Rome and he basically says Cicero, Rufus, Cato, none of them could save Rome because the people lost their virtue. No system could be put in place to save them.
What I'm saying is we, the people, with our families, with our friends at the grassroots, we don't need to run everything by Mitch McConnell or the public school system or whatever. We can read. We can talk. We can have the discussions like the colonists did and so forth and so on at the dinner table, at our restaurants, and our churches and synagogues and so forth. But we can't have those discussions if we don't really know the nub of the matter. And that's what I'm trying to get at.
I don't know if this will have any influence or not. If it affects 1,000 people, that's a good thing. I don't expect it to change history, Glenn. It's taken us over 100 years to get here. It's probably going to take us, if we can, over 100 years to get out of this. But I don't know.
GLENN: Boy, I couldn't agree with you more. And it's the reason why I've kind of let my shoulders kind of go down a bit of taking on such a big fight. The fight has to be fought by the individual, and we all have to choose to be in the fight or not.
Mark Levin, the name of the book is Rediscovering Americanism and the Tyranny of Progressivism. Mark, always good to have you. Please say hi to Julie for me. And good luck on everything you're working on.
MARK: And your beautiful wife too. God bless.
GLENN: God bless. Rediscovering Americanism. Mark Levin. Back in a second.
