Mark Levin: "Take Back Our Institutions"

John Hawkins has an awesome interview with Mark Levin at Right Wing News:

Let me play devil's advocate right off the bat here. What would you say to someone who said George Bush campaigned twice as a conservative, won both times and yet he did curtail our freedoms. He did increase the power of the state. He also opposed gay marriage, which means he wanted to limit freedom. So given that, isn't conservatism statist as well?

Well, I think somebody who says that is conflating Republican Party labels with conservative philosophy. There is no perfection in any politician and just because they become President doesn't change that -- and that's certainly the case with George Bush, who on the way out, declared free markets basically dead. There is a lot about Bush I admire and there is a lot about him that I regret -- and I would say that about his father. I'd say it about Richard Nixon. I'd say it about Gerald Ford.

This has been a struggle within the Republican Party, frankly, since the New Deal and I think it's time for conservatives to rally. We are not responsible for the baggage of non-conservatives. We're more than happy to explain it but it doesn't get us too far.

As for the issue of gay marriage, the American people speak to this time and time again when they're permitted to -- and they're opposed to it. So who favors it? The elite, the courts, maybe the Vermont Assembly?

But for the most part, the overwhelming majority of Americans and their representatives oppose it. So, it's not a matter of statism when the people oppose something that they believe is inappropriate -- and we're speaking to the proper role of the state not to the gay lifestyle, per se -- at least I'm not.

So, the question is who decides and how is it decided? For the most part it appears that the courts decided that they're going to decide. Well, why should they? Just because you declare something a civil rights issue doesn't mean that you get to destroy the nature in which our government was established. Same sex marriage, which is what it is, is not a civil right. It is a political issue and it should be decided in that context, not by the courts who are trying to constitutionalize their viewpoints.

Read the whole thing at the link. I really love Levin's response to the question of what to do about the left's dominance of America's cultural institutions, in the schools, the media, and in cinema:

The way we do that is to start becoming part of those institutions. You know, the statist doesn't have a birthright ownership to Hollywood or the media, generally speaking, or the school system and, you know, we conservatives for a very long time believed in "live and let live" and that's completely understandable.

We believed in doing the best you can for yourself and your family and going to church and synagogue and being a good citizen and that's very, very important. But now, I think we have to extend that being a good citizen means being open to being a professor or schoolteacher or an editor or reporter or a director or assistant producer in Hollywood -- and there is no reason why we need to feed forever these very crucial institutions to the statists.

We need to fight back on all levels. We need to become smarter and more numerous. We need to explain to our children and our grandchildren, regardless of what they learned from television and their schools, that America is a magnificent place -- that when we wake up every morning, we should thank God that we're here and that unlike the statists, we are here to preserve and better our society -- not to destroy it and then transform it. These are the over-arching principles that we need to spread. We need to spread the word about the greatness of America. We need to start in our homes and in our own communities.

And check Memeorandum as well.