Keynoting an event honoring the five-year anniversary of the Tea Party on Thursday, conservative scholar and talk radio host Mark Levin said that the Tea Party movement is the only thing standing between what is left of the country’s republic and the tyranny of runaway government.
Levin said the government that is supposed to serve the people is “devouring” us, while the Constitution’s firewalls are being breached by a lawless president, a feckless Congress, and an all-powerful Supreme Court.
He said it was an honor to speak in front of the Tea Party and thanked those in the movement for having the “spirit and enthusiasm of the founding fathers” and not being afraid to insist “on the federal government’s compliance with the constitution’s limits.”
Levin said that for this, the Tea Party is “smeared and attacked by the ruling class, Democrats and Republicans alike,” in addition to the media and “countless others who are dragging the nation into the abyss.”
Levin said that, under this assault, it is understandable for those fighting for liberty to want to live quiet lives with family and friends and wonder “if it is worth it” and “if it will be able to reverse course.” But he said that he also knew “you are Americans. You cannot be idle. And you will not be silent while a relative handful of self-aggrandizing masterminds seek to lord over you and your fellow citizens.”
“You will not allow your country to fail,” Levin declared.
Levin said that those in George Washington’s Continental Army, before they crossed the Delaware, read Thomas Paine, whom President Ronald Reagan always read and quoted on the stump and to his advisers.
Levin quoted from Paine’s The American Crisis about these being the “times that try men’s soul” and “the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. Triumph we must and triumph we will.”
He emphasized that Reagan was an outsider who was not a part of the establishment and who had the “courage to stand up and be counted.” And like today’s Tea Party, Reagan was blasted by George Will, Nelson Rockefeller – who Levin quipped runs today’s Republican party – and the Wall Street Journal. Levin read their disparaging attacks on Reagan before he went on to win two landslide victories and defeat the Soviet Union.
Levin, who campaigned and worked for Reagan, said that Reagan would have stood before the Tea Party and thanked them for all that they have done. He said Reagan would have been “enormously proud” of the movement and reminded those in attendance of Reagan’s words about freedom being just one generation away from extinction. Levin said that the Tea Party movement is “astutely aware of the peril of the moment and all that is at stake.”
Levin will also be honored with the inaugural “Andrew Breitbart Defender of the First Amendment Award” at this year’s CPAC on Thursday, March 6.
As Breitbart News has reported, Levin’s monumental book, Liberty and Tyranny, sold over a million copies even though the mainstream media did not discuss or review it. The book presaged the Tea Party movement and was published shortly after Obama took office in 2009, and it predicted much of Obama’s statist agenda. Like the Tea Party movement and Levin, “it circumvented the legacy press to make a lasting impact. The success of the book also proved that the mainstream press are no longer the sole gatekeepers in today’s media environment.”
Jeffrey Lord, a conservative writer for the American Spectator and former Reagan administration official, also spoke at the event and said that nobody has done more to bring awareness to the meaning of the Constitution than Levin. Lord called Levin a “national treasure” and said “we owe him a considerable debt of gratitude.”
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