Quotes from Mark R. Levin

Let us remember, for the progressive, historical progress is said to be a process of never-ending cultural and societal adjustments intended to address the unique circumstances of the time, the ultimate goal of which is economic egalitarianism and the material liberation of "the masses.

It is, after all, far easier for today's statists to dole out money not yet earned by future generations not yet born and be lauded as compassionate, thereby reaping media plaudits and political benefits for generational wealth redistribution, than to be accused of denying subsidies and programs to a growing list of "worthy" and needy recipients and suffer the media and political backlash.

In its latest audit of the federal government, the GAO concluded there are significant and material weaknesses in the accounting performed at all levels of the federal government.

As should be clear by now, businesses make adjustments when the minimum wage is increased. Cato Institute scholar Mark Wilson explains that "all economists agree that businesses will make changes to adapt to the higher labor costs after a minimum wage increase." "The higher costs will be passed on to someone in the long run; the only question is who."40

And at the center of what is left of the American republic is the Constitution. The Constitution is the bedrock on which the nation was built. As Thomas Jefferson explained, "Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction."2

Cicero argues that the source of justice, truth, virtue, etc.—in a word, morality—is natural law. It is permanent and supreme, unalterable by man or his institutions.

Locke said, as have others, that natural law is forever and enduring, and man-made law, which may vary from place to place and time to time, clearly is not. That which is just and virtuous is just and virtuous regardless of the passage of laws or time.

These days, the law is frequently used by the statists against the individual—to exploit his labor and expropriate his property, to repress his free will and compel his conformity. Rather than securing liberty and ensuring justice through the Constitution's prescriptions and proscriptions, the statists' perversion of law has become the government's most potent weapon against its original purpose.

Thwarting the steadily growing tyranny of an illimitable federal government by re-establishing constitutional government is of paramount importance if future generations are to live and prosper in a free and open society.

In 1999, USA Today analyzed the statistical link between CAFE standards and traffic fatalities and reported that "46,000 people have died in crashes they would have survived in bigger, heavier cars…since 1975."32

Of course, the irony is that the kind of centralized administrative state Croly advocated, and which surrounds us today and is managed by a relative handful of architects, is all but immune from the popular will and completely impervious to direct popular sovereignty. In

Among other things, witness the massive welfare and entitlement state, which is concurrently expanding and imploding, and the brazen abandonment of constitutional firewalls and governing limitations. If not appropriately and expeditiously ameliorated, the effects will be dire. And the ruling generation knows it.

Consequently, the degrowth movement has attempted to conceal its paganlike militant opposition to fossil fuels and carbon dioxide by mainstreaming its agenda with politically generated and well-funded campaigns promoting what was once called "man-made global cooling," then "man-made global warming," and now "man-made climate change.

In his farewell address to the nation after serving two terms as president, George Washington urged his fellow citizens to "avoid . . . the accumulation of debt not only by shunning occasions of expense but by vigorous exertions to discharge the debts, not throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."76

journalism has become an overwhelmingly progressive enterprise, and the disingenuousness with which it is mostly denied, defended, or even celebrated often leads to a pack mentality, groupthink, repetition, and even propaganda presented as news.

newsrooms and journalists have also traveled far from the substantive principles and beliefs that animated the early printers, pamphleteers, and newspaper publishers who gave birth to press freedom and American independence.

Marxism provides a theoretical and institutional framework through which they can project their own limitations and weaknesses onto "the system" and their "oppressors" rather than take responsibility for their own real or perceived plight.

Money speaks louder than the public, problems overwhelm it, fatigue sets in, attention falters, cynicism swells. A

THE LARGEST SINGLE COMPONENT of the federal budget, and perhaps the greatest and most financially devastating burden imposed on younger people and future generations, is the Social Security program. This is not a recent development. Since 1993, it has outspent defense appropriations. As a percentage of federal spending, Social Security's expenditures have ranged from 0.22 percent during World War II to 24 percent in 2013.1 And Social Security costs are actually skyrocketing.

Even the most diligent parents have little effective input into what their children are taught in these classrooms. Indeed, they have no adequate or routine influence in the selection of teachers and professors, curriculum, or textbooks, which principally advance, either openly or through insinuation, a statist agenda and ideological groupthink hostile to the civil society and the American heritage.

Moreover, the bureaucracy will be of the noblest and most virtuous sort, with no personal, political, or ideological agenda, motivated solely and completely by its technical know-how in and public-spiritedness for the general good and welfare.

Phaedrus: 'They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the reputation of knowledge without the reality?' "6

If you retired in 1960, you could expect to get back seven times more in benefits than you paid in Social Security taxes, and more if you were a low-income worker, as long as you made it to age 78 for men and 81 for women. As recently as 1985, workers at every income level could retire and expect to get more in benefits than they paid in Social Security taxes, though they didn't do quite as well as their parents and grandparents. Not anymore.

There is also no doubt that major market-oriented reforms and overhauls are required immediately to address unsustainable federal health-care entitlements and avoid the devastating economic and societal consequences awaiting younger people and future generations from decades of extravagance, political manipulation, and rampant bureaucratic intervention in the private health-care system.