Plunder and Deceit came out in 2015. It’s a couple of years old now, but it might be more relevant now than ever before.
My father-in-law gave me and my wife a copy and my sister-in-law and her husband a copy. He said, “All I want for Christmas is to have all you guys read this and then tell me what you get from it.”
I think I’m the only one out of us to actually read it. Of course, we all gave him real gifts as well. But I think his assignment for the holidays of 2015 actually helped me learn more than any other gifts I’ve gotten in a while.
Mark R. Levin is a prominent voice in the Republican realm. He has a B.A. from Temple University and a J.D. from Temple University Law School. So, he’s extremely educated in law and politics. He is also a prominent author, having written five other books in support of the Republican party and conservative ideas.
His 2015 book Plunder and Deceit is all about how big government exploits the younger generations. Everything from continuing to issue government loans for college, which is now the number one cause of debt in the United States, to how big government can, and does, abuse and coerce the entertainment industry to help support and approve their political agendas.
Levin uses facts and numbers to back his arguments. Sometimes this frustrates people because facts don’t always line up with what seems like it would be right at the first glance.
But as Ben Shapiro and many other conservative voices have said, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
Levin just proves that government that is larger, is more strict, and causes more financial issues than anything else. They play with people’s empathy and sympathy instead of what will cause lasting effective change to truly help the masses.
In college, I took a course on essay writing. We learned about logos, pathos, and ethos. Those are the Greek words for logic, emotions, and credibility, respectively. The most effective arguments use all three elements to craft the most effective argument. The downside is that sometimes the best argument may be lacking in pathos simply because facts are boring.
Leftist, which can and should be distinguished from the politically liberal but get coupled together under the political party of the Democrats (in the same way right-wing fascists and the politically conservative both get lumped under the umbrella of the Republican party), tend to appeal, with extreme effectiveness, to people’s emotions. Their credibility lies in the fact that they are politicians and get a lot of Hollywood support.
Because of this, people, like Greta Thunberg, have incredible power to appeal to people’s emotions, get promoted despite having zero logic and facts to their arguments.
Levin makes the arguments that I just made, but he has a full book instead of a short book review to expand. All his sources are cited. He doesn’t fudge numbers to make you feel like his argument is correct.
The biggest weakness that Levin makes in Plunder and Deceit is that he isn’t the most exciting author. He doesn’t add any flare or dumb the arguments down enough to make them easily digestible.
This is actually my biggest critique of the conservative political system.
The liberal side of the aisle has promoted college, and liberal arts at that, which caused people to go to college, but not be able to afford it. Since they can’t afford it and their liberal arts degree only allows for two major outcomes, a famous person in the entertainment industry or a teacher.
Statistically, only a fraction of a percent of people actually makes it big in the entertainment industry, which means a large portion of the liberally educated goes into teaching. This only perpetuates the problem.
It also has changed the term from “humanities” to “liberal arts.”
That change means that instead of learning humanities that are absolutely vital to a successful society, things like philosophy, ethics, literature, public speaking, etc., are taught by progressively more liberal teachers making them less humanitarian and more liberal.
A common liberal belief is that governments should support their citizens. The level of support is perpetuated to continual growth and ends up being total dependency through the use of liberal propaganda of the entertainment industry and a form of brainwashing to the younger generations to vote for the government to become a larger entity.
Levin makes a lot of his argument simply based on an economic basis. I’m not taking anything away from Levin because his argument is absolutely solid and makes total sense, but it is a pretty boring read unless you’re actively interested in politics.
This actually leads me to my major criticism of individual thinking and the politically conservative as a whole, the right side of the political aisle fails in reaching a young audience because they neglect the entertainment industry.
A good way to look at this is in the Harry Potter series the bad guys are portrayed to be racist in a magical sense. They don’t like people that can’t use magic. The bad guys are then shown, in the book and the movies, as hooded figures which elicit imagery of the KKK.
Now think about how massive Harry Potter is culturally on a worldwide scale. This has gotten the general public, which the majority of people in the world, simply based on stats of book sales and movie sales, have consumed, to associate any sort of racism or discrimination as being associated with pure evil.
So, when a claim is made about racism toward the conservative politicians, the conclusion of them being evil is automatically drawn.
Though that isn’t what is meant by every statement, such as the recent presidential debate when Trump was asked if he would denounce white supremacist groups and he said, “sure…” but continued on to call out the other side of the aisle. The fact he was asked this question and Biden wasn’t asked the same question or about ANTIFA, was a way to manipulate the masses to draw a connection between Trump and white supremacy.
That was an absolutely atrocious debate because of questions like this, but that’s neither here nor there.
I will sum up the review in sayin, EVERYONE should be exposed to the ideas of Plunder and Deceit. I would recommend reading this book, but I can also understand the aversion to a less than exciting read. It doesn’t connect on a personal level like it should.