Conservative scholar and talk radio icon Mark Levin is not giving up on the younger generation, and he said on Breitbart News Sunday that he wrote his new book, Plunder and Deceit, for young Americans.
Levin told host Matt Boyle, whom he extensively praised, on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125 that even though the left is destroying the country’s institutions and civil society, “they seem to be more competent and capable in arguing their case” than conservatives “despite the enormous, catastrophic damage they are doing.”
He said that “so many young people in the country under 40 are not persuaded by our arguments because they don’t hear them” while there is a “daily drumbeat” of tenured professors, politicians, Hollywood and culture, and the media spouting the big-government agenda.
Levin’s book discusses the massive debt, the collapsing and unsustainable entitlements, the failing public educational systems, immigration, so-called environmentalism, the minimum wage, national security, and the Constitution. He said the book’s intent is to “expose what’s going on in this country” and “put the blame where it belongs”–on “big-government, autocratic politicians”– and “then make the case for our positions.”
He said the book is for “all generations but particularly people under 40.” Levin said he is sick and tired of people writing off young Americans as “stupid” and “moronic.” He said his response when he hears things like that is simply, “what the hell?”
“Since when do we give up on our children and grandchildren?” Levin asked. “Since when do we surrender them to the left?”
Levin said conservatives cannot break through the many left-wing institutions because the Republican establishment, in many cases, is standing in their way. But just like Levin believes conservatives should not surrender their children and grandchildren to the left, he argued forcefully to not give away the Republican Party to the establishment elitists who have corrupted it.
“Why would we surrender this institution, the Republican Party, to people who have stolen it from us?” Levin said. “Boehner and McConnell and the Chamber of Commerce and these people. We need to take it back and that is why this election cycle is so important.” Levin reminded listeners that Ronald Reagan called for a “new Republican Party” during his 1977 CPAC address. Reagan said then:
I have to say I cannot agree with some of my friends — perhaps including some of you here tonight — who have answered that question by saying this nation needs a new political party.
I respect that view and I know that those who have reached it have done so after long hours of study. But I believe that political success of the principles we believe in can best be achieved in the Republican Party. I believe the Republican Party can hold and should provide the political mechanism through which the goals of the majority of Americans can be achieved. For one thing, the biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over. Rather than a third party, we can have a new first party made up of people who share our principles. I have said before that if a formal change in name proves desirable, then so be it. But tonight, for purpose of discussion, I’m going to refer to it simply as the New Republican Party.
And let me say so there can be no mistakes as to what I mean: The New Republican Party I envision will not be, and cannot, be one limited to the country club-big business image that, for reasons both fair and unfair, it is burdened with today. The New Republican Party I am speaking about is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism. If we are to attract more working men and women of this country, we will do so not by simply “making room” for them, but by making certain they have a say in what goes on in the party. The Democratic Party turned its back on the majority of social conservatives during the 1960s. The New Republican Party of the late ’70s and ’80s must welcome them, seek them out, enlist them, not only as rank-and-file members but as leaders and as candidates.
The time has come for Republicans to say to black voters: “Look, we offer principles that black Americans can, and do, support.” We believe in jobs, real jobs; we believe in education that is really education; we believe in treating all Americans as individuals and not as stereotypes or voting blocs — and we believe that the long-range interest of black Americans lies in looking at what each major party has to offer, and then deciding on the merits. The Democratic Party takes the black vote for granted. Well, it’s time black America and the New Republican Party move toward each other and create a situation in which no black vote can be taken for granted.
The New Republican Party I envision is one that will energetically seek out the best candidates for every elective office, candidates who not only agree with, but understand, and are willing to fight for a sound, honest economy, for the interests of American families and neighborhoods and communities and a strong national defense. And these candidates must be able to communicate those principles to the American people in language they understand. Inflation isn’t a textbook problem. Unemployment isn’t a textbook problem. They should be discussed in human terms.
Our candidates must be willing to communicate with every level of society, because the principles we espouse are universal and cut across traditional lines. In every Congressional district there should be a search made for young men and women who share these principles and they should be brought into positions of leadership in the local Republican Party groups. We can find attractive, articulate candidates if we look, and when we find them, we will begin to change the sorry state of affairs that has led to a Democratic-controlled Congress for more than 40 years. I need not remind you that you can have the soundest principles in the world, but if you don’t have candidates who can communicate those principles, candidates who are articulate as well as principled, you are going to lose election after election. I refuse to believe that the good Lord divided this world into Republicans who defend basic values and Democrats who win elections. We have to find tough, bright young men and women who are sick and tired of cliches and the pomposity and the mind-numbing economic idiocy of the liberals in Washington.
Regarding the 2016 presidential election, Levin said it is vital to elect a conservative president because only then will establishment Republican leaders be cleared out. He said a conservative president can call in lawmakers and say, “I cannot work with these guys.”
Levin said he is looking “for a conservative, looking for somebody who can demonstrate to me that they can articulate our positions, our principles and relate them to what’s going on in our country today.”
“I want somebody who has been a conservative for awhile,” Levin said. “We cannot organize, rally, manage to beat the establishment, beat the Democrats, and then our candidate starts doing things like McConnell and Boehner [that make conservatives wonder] “what the hell is that?”
He also praised Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for calling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as a liar. Levin said that “Cruz is so unique” because “he’s persona non grata on the Senate floor and he is Mr. Smith goes to Washington, isn’t he?”
He said Cruz is “standing up among intellectually corrupt politicains who are lying to you back home, who are conservative candidates and then they are big-governent operators when they are back in D.C.”
Levin suggested that more Americans should decide to take on the left-wing agenda in their own lives, and he said they can do so by becoming “activists in your own life.” He said conservatives need to “stop taking it” and be “more passionate, more aggressive.” He said just like Obama told liberals to “get in their face,” conservatives also “need to get in their face.”
Levin aso called for a “new civil rights movement” that focuses on the debt, Social Security and Medicare, immigration “and how it’s destroying our society.” He blasted the environmental movement as an “anti-capitalist movement” while calling the minimum wage an “attack on young people” looking for jobs. His advice to Americans was to ultimately “get informed, get angry and then you got to get active.”
He said “We the people have to go over the heads of the Republican party, the Democrat party, go around the media, go around the tenured professors” because “You’re not going [see any fight] from Boehner, McConnell, Reince Priebus and the conga line of Republicans who are elected.”
“There are millions of us,” Levin said. “We need to be the Paul and Paulette Reveres.” Levin was one of the most important figures in the Tea Party movement after his book Liberty and Tyranny, which sold over a million copies despite being ignored by mainstream media outlets like the the New York Times. He said he is looking for “another bottom-up, grassroots” movement that challenges the institutional left so, for instance, “no longer can a Marxist professor get away [“with their nonsense”] in a class with a handful of people who know what he is talking about.”
“As tyranny rises, there are a lot of opportunities to fight,” Levin concluded.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.