Dystopia in America

New Criterion.com ^ | 3/1/2012 | Andrew McCarthy

[MahatmaKJ]

Great article about Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, by Mark Levin.

http://www.newcriterion.com/m/articles.cfm/Dystopia-in-America-7299

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting. Interesting review. I have not read Mark Levin’s book yet, but I plan to next week.

[Road Glide]

From the review:
“The stark question Mark Levin poses is whether we are so far gone that the losses are permanent. Do we throw off Ameritopia and pivot back toward liberty and self-determination? Or will we remember this pass as “the good old days,” the soft tyranny in an inexorable disintegration into some harsher variety that has, for millennia, been the fate of failed democracies? Levin—insightful, fact-driven, pulling no punches—characteristically declines to don rose-tinted glasses. Ameritopia is the deep contemplation of a staunch believer in the vision of the American founding, one who sees that if dramatic counteraction does not begin promptly, all will be lost. The chilling part is that he is anything but sanguine about the likely outcome.”

We’ve “been there before”. Last time was the mid-nineteenth century.

I’ve posted here on FR about this before, I’ll do it again.

The country is in the midst of its “second divide”. The differences between the [essentially] two “American factions” are deepening and widening. The chances of resolving these differences are not good — in many cases, the philosophical differences are all-but irreconcilable.

Those of “the right”, that is to say, those who are traditional-minded conservatives would prefer simply to “go their own way”, to live their lives as they see fit, without government intrusion. Regardless of how conservatives are portrayed as being “intolerant” by the left, it is they who would be most comfortable to say to the left, “we’ll let you live as you wish, so long as you let -us- live as -we- wish. Just let us be”.

The left, however, can never permit this. Their lust for utopia can never be satisfied until EVERYone falls under their thumbs, and they will use the full force of governmental police and military power to ensure that no one escapes. There can be no “tolerance” of non-compliance in their perfect world.

That leaves those of the right with only two choices.
Choice #1 is to submit to the left and the ever-growing governmental “Massa”.
Choice #2 is to resist, possibly to separate from Ameritopia. Neither can be accomplished solely “through peaceful means” (see paragraph above).

As I said, we’ve been there before.

How will it go this time?