Product ReviewsLiberty and Tyranny : A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin (2009, Hardcover)

Mandatory Handbook for Conservatives

Written mostly during the final year of the GW Bush presidency, Mark Levin does an outstanding job of defining and promoting the principles of personal liberty and constitutional conservativism, while demonstrating government's tendency to assume ever-increasing control over the population. The author makes an overwhelmingly compelling case that the current government and the Democratic party are moving rapidly toward tyrannical statism.Read full review...

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most important book in recent years

Being familiar with Mark because of his radio show was a plus but not really necessary to enjoy his book. The book is packed with facts and figures but more importantly, every fact is footnoted so there's no doubt of the veracity of his statements. If you view our country as veering in a direction you don't want, you would be advised to read this book to confirm and address your suspicions as to how and why we are going down the wrong path. I intend to reread this book before giving it to someone else. I've also purchased two other books: one for my daughter for instruction; and one for my girlfriend for corruption. Just maybe I can drag her from the dark side. Enjoy!Read full review...

A book that falls flat on its purpose

When an author writes a book about a subject that meets the reasoning of a lot of folks, this book will surely receive high praise from those folks. After all, that's exactly what they wanted to hear.

High praise increases the buzz and the louder the buzz is, the more books are sold.

The recipe of success of "Liberty and Tyranny" is based exactly on that: The unhappy (the "conservative" losers) playing hard on the happy (the "statist" winners) so all the unhappy around are cheered up and feel like they might be right after all. There is no better sensation than knowing that someone of a supposedly higher intelligence thinks the same way we do.

Basically, what the author does throughout the entire book is to put all evil existing in politics in charge of the Democrats (called pejoratively as "statists"), accusing them to create the basis of what's not working today and to sponsor practices and thoughts that keep Americans struggling over time. A perfect "The Blame Game - Pointing Fingers" way of thinking. Accusations that do not prove to be true in historical terms are simply called hypothesis - or personal thoughts - or simply gossip. As a writer, one can easily manipulate facts throughout time to try to make things concur. The point: "Liberty and Tyranny" is a compilation of hypothesis not explicitly proven true.

Although footnotes citing sources are provided in some parts and you might find one or another statement that makes sense, the book itself fails to prove the points it tries to. Citations are good and recommended, but if by the end of the reading you don't understand exactly where the author wanted to reach, the job is not done.

So there is not much to say except that this work is just a pure piece of opportunism from a Republican/Conservative who still grieves and use the feelings of others to share of his pain and, mostly, to cash in over it. However, it the election result was the opposite, I am pretty sure that some Statist around would write a book bashing the Conservative anyway, as opportunism can be found in any field of knowledge.Read full review...

Great Expectations, yet weak in delivery

This is an important book because Mark Levin's nightly radio commentaries keep real Americans -- those of us committed to the IDEALS OF LIBERTY as laid out by the Founding Fathers and expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and contemporaneous writings and common law of the time -- encouraged and honestly hopeful that those ideals of government can be recovered.

At this time July 3rd, 2009, the Federal Government has grown into a monster, a Liberty-crushing Behemoth. The White House is held by a man of smooth tongue, who seems bent on utterly destroying the nation, a man who may not even be a citizen, and who is by dint of the Kenya Africa, citizenship of his father, certainly illegible to hold the office of President. The Senate is made up of wholly greedy pampered men and women, and the House largely of the same. We are printing money without any backing, trillions of dollars are spent by Congress on inscrutable. pork laden, mega bills of 1501 pages like last weeks energy 'cap and trade' bill are voted on and signed with reading, and even -- like that cap and trade bill -- were not even finished being written when teh votes were tallied!

Special interests rule the Federal District, that beltway area grows rish while the nation's wealth is depleted, hundreds of volumes of niggardly Federal regulations -- over 20,000! of pages -- dictate every little thing a citizen may do, own, use.

The Government creates special classes of people and beggars others, the government demands worship of s perverted secular national church where homosexuality is forced upon children, marriages are encouraged to be broken, women are encouraged to have children by bastardy. Two out of five children are born today without having father married to the mother.

These are dark times for Liberty.

Yet we stand firm and are beginning to fight back coherently against the Marxist social deconstructionists and against the Islamic terrorists and against the godless and against the massive corruption of Congress. We are attempting to cut the massive Behemoth down to a size, much smaller, that would be tolerable to Liberty.

We are emboldened by the words of men and women like Mark Levin, and Mr. Levin has written this particular book to be a guide in the present darkness, in the present civil war -- a war of ideas and political fights for incredible power at this time. Yet it is a true civil war. It is in fact, a Global Civil War. In other nations around the globe similar battles fro Liberty are going on at this time -- in Iran, in Honduras, in Venezuela, in Africa.

Two philosophies of government at set at mortal odds. One says men need the rule of elite who know better how to use every resource and it is that elite who will dictate to the masses the code by which the masses should live, yet the elite need be exempt from such rules. The other -- OURS -- says "All Men are Created Equal and Endowed by the Creator with Unalienable Rights" ... that Governments are legitimate in existence and action only "By the Consent of the Governed". That is, all men are equal before the same Law, and that the People, not the Government are the master.

Mr. Levin has written a book. He has touched upon many of the key current issues of this civil war, yet his writing is caught too much in the immediate issues, and fails to rise to a great work. Except for the rallying of all behind it due to other reasons, it is only an average work.Read full review...

A jump start to learning our country!

Mark Levin's book of "Liberty and Tyranny", is one of the best books I've read this year. If you are not sure if you are a conservative, a liberal, a repulican or a democrat, this is the book to read to find out where you stand when it concerns the maters that our Country is facing. This is a well written book, that is easy to read and understand. He doesn't speak (or write) above the knowledge of the average "Joe". He helps you understand some of the history of our country and helps you understand how we got where we are and how we can reverse it. This is a great book and I suggest it to anyone who is at a loss of what our country is going through, as a matter of fact I've bought 3 more of them for family members.Read full review...

USA all the way !!!!

Mark Levin is a true patriot and stands firmly with our constitution.He is a 5 star general without a uniform just great love for our country.THE GREAT ONE. .He also has an advanced LAW degree..

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The future is left to those who know the facts of the past.

Every American MUST read this book and others written by Mark Levin. Personal liberty is lost a little at a time, like a slow drip--and then it's gone--maybe forever. The signs are there and vigilance is required. Mark never declares something without references and footnotes and documentation. His books are a little like a text book but still written in a lively interesting manner. Quick read.Read full review...

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reason for review

cannot rate content as I got for a gift for one who likes author's work

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Liberty and Tyranny

"The necessary book of the Obama era."-- Jeffrey Lord, The American Spectator

"Levin has delivered a stalwart conservative manifesto written by a conservative who doesn't want to re-brand and repackage conservatism into liberalism. He draws on founding principles, not polls, to lay out the agenda for the Right -- and to illuminate the fatal flaws of statism."-- Michelle Malkin

"This is quite simply the most important book of our times."-- Scott Miller, The Conservative Post

"This has the answer for everything you've asked yourself about yourself, and why you believe what you believe."-- Rush Limbaugh

"Liberty and Tyranny is Mark Levin: a man who loves his family and country and believes ideas have consequences -- and therefore will fight passionately for what he believes and knows to be true."-- Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review

"While it may present itself as a "conservative manifesto" (and it is that, too) it is also a compelling primer on the most basic principles of the American political order."-- Gary L. McDowell, American Thinker

"Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto couldn't be more relevant or important. It is a masterful restatement of conservative principles that is succinct...and yet comprehensive. It is thoughtful and deep but highly readable. It is timely yet timeless."-- David Limbaugh, TownHall.com

"This is a superbly useful book. It is the perfect companion for the college freshman to fortify the student against what he or she is about to hear. It is an ideal detoxicant for the graduating senior. Most vitally, it should be read by those who do not consider themselves conservatives, because it carefully lays out the central historic, philosophic and constitutional relationship between conservative principles and our individual freedom."-- Tony Blankley, The Washington Times

"If you want to rediscover true conservatism, read Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny. If you want to help preserve liberty, buy copies for your kids."-- Terry Jeffrey, CNS News

"It is a rarity that an important book arrives at its perfect moment. Such is the case with Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto...Against this tidal wave, Mark Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack, a clarion call to roll back the seas of Change."-- Andrew C McCarthy, The New CriterionRead full review...

Liberty and Tyranny

This book should be required reading in all high schools. Mark Levin rips the veneer off the fallacy of feel-good socialism and reveals the "inconvenient truth" that cradle to grave security as promised by an ever bigger government is nothing more than soft tyranny or "smilely faced fascism" as Jonah Goldberg states it in his excellent book "Liberal Fascism" . Each chapter examines how big government, which tells you it is only there to help, is in fact stealing your rights away bit by bit. The chapters on the constitution were especially enlightening as the true meaning of the founding fathers intent has been twisted to the point of being unrecognizable by a public school system that cares more about indoctrination into "liberal groupthink" than examining the greatness of the concept of the American experiment. Unfortunately the "wish list" of ideas in the last chapter to restore a constitutional republic, as existed for over a hundred years before Woodrow Wilson and and the progressives decided they knew better than the founding fathers what America should be, is about as likely to happen at this point than world wide peace breaking out. Still there must be "hope" that the country will wake up to the danger and "change" the current path we are on to an ever enlarging nanny state, and this book is one baby step toward that goal.Read full review...