Ameritopia, by Mark Levin

I have heard Mark Levin's radio show occasionally, and fully expected his newest book, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, to match his show: well-informed but loud, bombastic, and confrontational.  There was a little bit of that, but mostly Ameritopia was a thoughtful, almost academic treatment of political theory applied to current U.S. politics.  I should known to expect more.  He does have a law degree from Temple University and worked in the Reagan administration.  Plus, I read and enjoyed an earlier book of his, Men in Black, about the Supreme Court.

Levin does a great service in Ameritopia, taking the reader of a Cliff's Notes tour of several important political thinkers with a utopian vision: Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, Hobbes's Leviathan, and Marx's Communist Manifesto.  Then he spends several chapters discussing the political writings most influential on the founders, particularly Locke and Montesquieu, as well as Alexis de Tocqueville's assessments a few decades after America's founding.  These sections make up at least 75% of Ameritopia.  No matter what your feeling is about Levin or his well-known political leanings, you will benefit from this mini-course in political theory.

But all of that is just preparation for the last two chapters, in which Levin describes how utopian thinking came to displace the Founders' vision, especially with President Wilson's Progressivism and the growth of the federal government's power under President Roosevelt's New Deal.  The administrative state, in which the "mastermind seeks control over the individual" has become so prevalent in the United States that we take it for granted.  The regulatory state has become so entrenched in every bit of our life's minutiae that we hardly notice--to our peril.  The entitlement culture has so many people dependent on the federal government for their basic needs that dismantling it or even reducing its scope has become almost unmentionable.

Levin paints a pretty bleak picture.  I hope his voice and others like it will be heard above the constant clamoring--from both Rs and Ds--for a more powerful central government.