July 15th, 2025

On Tuesday’s Mark Levin Show, the new word the Marxists are using to justify the fundamental transformation of America is affordability. Marxist regimes produce shortages, impoverishment, and dislocation—not prosperity. This is equality in destitution, enforced by coercion and a police state. New York is expensive due to soft-Marxism: rent controls, high taxes, smothering regulations, powerful unions. It will depopulate workers and businesses, attracting destitute, welfare recipients, and illegal aliens. As unlivable, Marxist grip tightens with unhinged rhetoric. Marxism is failed, inhumane, evil, attracting demagogues like Zohran Mamdani, akin to young Fidel Castro claiming democracy. Over time, the tension between institutional constraints and self-aggrandizement erodes safeguards, turning them into facades that enable soft negative power. The result is authoritarian democracy, which is what Mamdani is promoting. Also, wealth redistribution is destructive to wealth creation, as it discourages producers who may reduce output, stop, or relocate (e.g., fleeing New York City), leaving less to redistribute. It’s a flawed idea requiring surrender of individual liberty to inexperienced ideologues, historically causing mass starvation and death. True equality means just laws for all, not unattainable economic equality . Instead, we should celebrate freedom and capitalism, enabling ordinary Americans—like plumbers or drivers—to enjoy abundant choices and live better than past kings, while government represents socialism and individuals embody capitalism. Success, once valued, is now undermined by DEI.

Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu

The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.

Rough transcription of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. There’s a lot going on in this country today. But one of the things that I think I need to do and I’ve done throughout my career here. Is to get into some of the heavy, substantive stuff. Because in some quarters of this country, we losing the debate for America. In other quarters, we have individuals, they call themselves influencers. They are undermining American. And we have still others. Who believe that the the best way to compete against and to defeat the Marxist Islamists is to. The Marxist Islamist lite. And so I think and think I’ve got my work cut out for me. I think you do, too. And I think I want to jump into this right now. Let’s take this case. Of this Mamdani as an example, but he’s only one of many. Using this word now, affordability. That’s the new word the Marxists are using to justify the fundamental transformation of America. Yet Marxist regimes do not create prosperity, opportunity or abundance. They produce shortages, impoverishment and dislocation. This is what they really mean by equality. Moreover, Marxism about coercion in the abuse of power. So individual freedom and rights are seized as a condition of centralizing power in the hands of the so-called masterminds of their ideological ambitions. On the road to the so-called promised land. New York is expensive, in large part due to already existing soft Marxism in the city. Rent controls, high taxes, taxes and user fees galore. Smothering regulations, all powerful public sector unions. And the list goes on and on. Despite being the financial capital of America, if not the world. The governmental practices within the city and imposed on its citizens are heavily socialistic. Equality in destitution. Equality in destitution is what is being offered and a powerful police state to oversee and enforce it. New York City will continue to depopulate at least of those citizens who work, pay taxes, invest and run businesses. It will attract the destitute, more welfare recipients and illegal aliens sinking sanctuary and freebies as as it becomes increasingly unlivable. The grip of the governing Marxist will become tighter and tighter and their class warfare rhetoric angrier and more unhinged. We’ve seen it many times before, albeit mostly in other countries. Marxism is a horribly failed and flawed ideology in every respect. It is inhumane and evil. It attracts the support of politicians who excel at demagoguery, propaganda and deceit. Like Zoran Mamdani and his ilk and little else. Mamdani is only a few years older than Fidel Castro. When he claimed to be a Democrat fighting for the common man. How that turned out. How that turnout. I want to play a little bit of the late, great professor Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate. Because I’m guessing half to two thirds of this audience never heard of Milton Friedman or never heard of what Milton Friedman had to say. We miss somebody like him. Walter Williams and Tom Soul and so many great men and women of the past. And Tom saw the current. But I want to play a little bit and then I want to come. Circle back and get into this even more because I think this is necessary now I’ve got to use this format. I’ve always used it for educational purposes, but I’ve got to do it more now. So here is a Milton Friedman with Phil Donahue in 1979. So that’s 46 years ago. Why Capitalism is Best cut 17 go. When you see around the globe the mal distribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries. When you see so few haves and so many have nots. When you when you see the greed and the concentration of power with it, don’t you ever Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed is a good idea to run on? Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society, you know, that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are really. It’s only the other reason. Unless the world runs on individuals pursuing their self and enters the great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses of escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are, worse, the worse off. Worst off is exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise that it seems to reward not virtue as much as ability to manipulate the system. And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, Excuse me, if you’ll pardon me. Do you think American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you’re taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us. Well, I don’t even trust you to do that. More. Milton Friedman, 1979. Spreading the wealth, creating go. All right. Why is it we have so many are millionaires in everything in the United States and we still have so many empower rich people who try to get up into the world? Why is it we have this lack of money where people who can’t support themselves decently and get a decent job, where all these big man are up on top making all that, all the money, they don’t need it. They can only eat that much eats, you know. So what are you going to do if they don’t eat it and don’t don’t finish them? What do you suppose they heard what I mean? I mean, they put it under their pillow, right? No, they keep investing in investing it in what’s right. What are they invested in. Well, in oil and everything or I mean all these other people, what do they invest in and don’t get off the subject, you know, invested in Well, invested in a lot of different things that the little people mean. Well, do they invest in in factories? Yeah. Some of that money end up in machines. Yes. Do those factories and machines provide ordinary working people with jobs or not? What do you suppose the productivity of this country would be and of the the wage rate would be if the total amount of capital in this country today was what it was a hundred years ago? What do you suppose the improvements in productivity come from, except from the rate of the investment by people of their savings? But let me go to your fundamental question. First place nirvana is not for this world. There is no paradise. Of course. We’ve got a lot of people who are poorly off. But if you look at it over time, if you get a sense of proportion, the well-being of ordinary people has been the main thing that has been improved by economic progress and economic growth and development and residual most residual hard cases of poverty today are the result again of a failure of government. Hmm. And then there’s this go The essential notion of a capitalist society, which I’ll come back to, is voluntary cooperation. Voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is fundamentally force. If the government is a master, if society is to be run from the center, what are you what are you doing? You ultimately have to order people what to do. What is your ultimate sanction? Go back a ways. Take it on a milder level. Whenever you try to do good with somebody else’s money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else’s money unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is by the threat of force. You have a policeman, a tax collector who comes and takes it from him. And this is the whole point of my book on power. Because we can talk about liberty, we can talk about rights, we can talk about capitalism. But in the end, what Milton Friedman’s talking about, there is power. Who exercise it. Who controls it? How it’s used? Under what circumstances? Now this virtue signaling is consistent with the Marxists in the. Economic socialists. Montesquieu. If you’ve listened to this program, you know, he was a philosopher from the Enlightenment period and the most widely read philosopher during our constitutional period, he said. Who would think it? Even virtue, even virtue has need of limits so that one cannot abuse power. Power must check power by the arrangement of things. Hundreds of years later, the late British Christian theologian, scholar, author C.S. Lewis underscored Montague’s point about the abuse of power disguised as virtue. Here’s what he wrote. Of all tyrannies. A tyranny exercise for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, the robber barons. Cruelty may sometimes sleep. His cupidity may at some point be satiated. But those who torment us for our own good well torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven. Yet at the same time, likelier to make hell on earth. They’re very kindness stings with intolerable insult to be cured, if you will, against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will to be classed with infants, imbeciles and domestic animals. He’s saying there they treat you like a moron. They you’re incapable of feeding yourself. You’re incapable of making a living. But for them. Now. The conflict. This is all in my book on power, and it’s very important. The conflict between honoring and complying with the institutional limits placed on power. And we have them in our country and they’re being subverted. And the allure of self-aggrandizement is both real and perhaps inevitable over time. As such, the once authentic and thought to be effective institutions for limiting excesses of power are transformed into Potemkin like fictions used to disguise the true intentions of the abusers, and worse are transformed into tools and support of the exercise of what I call soft negative power. This is, as I mentioned, the other weak authoritarian democracy. That is what this guy Mamdani, is promoting authoritarian democracy. That’s our democracy. When a democracy begins to slide in the form of authoritarianism, not all at once, but steadily, when authoritarian attributes slowly proliferate. And one branch of the democracy begins to envelop, the others over all branches coalesce into a whole. Either way, the exercise of power is steadily centralized and the citizenry increasingly peripheral. I wrote this four months ago. This book comes out in two weeks. Authoritarian democracies adopt and use the tactics of authoritarian regimes, albeit at first with more of a glove than an iron fist. But the underlying attributes are there. For example, legislatures have passed tyrannical laws, but which laws are said to be legitimate simply because the legislature adopted them? Courts that disregard due process for its citizens but which trials are said to do justice because they were held in a court of law? Were defense counts and juries present. The use of law is said to be a legitimate application of power because it’s the law, not because it’s proper, just or moral. Even today, the impact of authoritarian democracy has seeped into our society psyche so successfully that the late Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises observed that one of the worst tyrannies of all Marxism has become part of the West’s psyche. He said to a considerable extent, without knowing it. Many people are philosophical Marxists, although they use different names for their philosophical ideas. Okay, I want to build on this. We’re going to do it all our. I think it’s very, very important right now. We’ll be right back.

Segment 2
There’s simply no programs on TV or radio. The provide a format for the kind of substantive information, argumentation, knowledge and so forth that I want to provide. And then I’m going to continue to provide to as many people as I possibly can. The ideas that I talk about are not invented by me. They are articulated by me. But there’s a gaping hole in our. In our media, in our society, particularly, young people are not hearing the truth. About freedom, the truth about capitalism, the truth about unalienable rights, the truth about our history. To many people who said, as I sit here wringing their hands, or they’re focused on Epstein or they’re focused on something else. Seems to me the more media platforms we have, the more the more static there is. And so we will be here. We’re going back to basics. Be right back.

Segment 3
So let’s continue our defense of liberty in our country. And apply it to what we see taking place right now. And I want to go back to my book on power, because that’s the nub of the matter. That’s the nub of the matter. There are those, perhaps many who benefit from the government’s use of what I call soft negative power, including when that power is used, for example, to forcibly redistribute the wealth and property of those who produced and earned it for the use and enrichment of others beyond the usual and basic needs of a civil society and justify what would otherwise be considered thievery as noble and even moral. The beneficiaries have such soft negative power, fully aware that they did not earn what they have received, but delude themselves in various ways that they are deserving of it. Democracies have the seeds of their own destruction within them. Did today’s soft negative power. When you read the book, you’ll understand more broadly what that means. Soft negative power is ascendant. That is, the West, which obviously includes the United States, is regressing toward the more primitive way of thinking and governing and the more aggressive form of negative power. The circle of liberty and security surrounding each individual is shrinking as the supposedly common good and public interest, defined and determined by a relative handful of masterminds and politicians, is said to be increasingly imperative and paramount. They assume legitimacy for interference in individual’s life has become so routine. Assumed to be both necessary and inevitable that their justifications had become less important. The growth of centralized government and its attendant authority are presented as and indeed seen by many as predestined. Even essential to human and societal progress. And I go on later in the book about rights, water rights. Well, we know about unalienable rights. We know about the Declaration of Independence talks about an alien or an animal rights. Rights or moral truths. Our God given through natural law and therefore our transcendent and universal. And through right reason man discovers these truths. Or is innately aware of them. And the law. What is the law? Frederick Bastiat. Absolutely brilliant man in his day. Obviously was French. He was more than a politician. He was despised by Marx, as you can imagine. When the law has exceeded its proper function. He wrote it in essays called The Law. It has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective. It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain, to limiting and destroying rights, which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish without risk to exploit the personal liberty and property of others. It has converted plunder into our right in order to protect plunder, and it has converted lawful defense and or crime in order to punish lawful defense. This is what you’re hearing and seeing. I don’t want to go through the entire book this evening, but we will over the course of time. These issues are very, very important. And they’re not getting the they’re not getting the sunlight. They’re not getting the discussion that they require. And you can see it. We conservatives, we own talk radio. Prior intents and purposes. We’re not using it properly. We have big podcasters. They’re not using it properly. They’re into conspiracy theories. They’re into some. Bizarre belief systems. Some of them are in the. Abject bigotry and Jew hatred. Some of them claim to be for America first when they attack American history, the American military and everything American. They are abusing their platforms. They are driven not by altruism, not by sincerity. They’re driven by clicks and hits and subscriptions and God knows what else. Because that grabs the attention. It grabs the attention of the left wing media. It’s a problem. But we hear we can’t fix everything. We can note it. But considering the size of the audience here. On my Westwood One nationally syndicated program, the size of the Audience on my FOX program. And our quite sizeable audience on Blayze on our digital TV program as well as with my books. I have to do what I think is right and I have to do what I have to do. I just feel there’s a whole generation of young people who have not been educated, as many of us have at least been exposed to. The great marvel that is America. And why it is a great marvel. I was watching a clip of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s organization. Watch some of the debates. I didn’t have a lot of time, but just watch some people were sending them to me. And I noticed. There were thousands of young people cheering an individual. Who’s trashing our history. CHEERING him. CHEERING an individual. It was denouncing our military. There’s something horribly wrong with that scene. Horribly wrong with that scene. And so as I was preparing today and I prepare all day and all night, Mr. Producer will tell you. I got to thinking. Well, I spend more time than anybody talking about the founding or declaration, the Constitution digging deeply into it, the founders and the framers. Pre America post. American founding. We get into philosophy now. I got to do it more. I need to do more. Because if I don’t do it, I won’t be done. These people call themselves influencers, and now others are calling them influencers. Influencers for what, exactly? We have one person out there. Our friend Megan Kelly. Who’s raised serious issues about intelligence influence over Epstein. And dismisses the former prime minister of Israel, Bennett. Why should we listen to him? She basically says. I mean, after all, the U.S. attorney in that case, Acosta. Said as much that the intel agencies were involved, it would either be the United States or Israel, she proclaimed. But Acosta never said that. The media outlet there wrote the story and it’s out there for anybody with 2 hours to read, and I’ve link to it twice on my social sites. Said that he was told. That Acosta said that or was aware of it. Now in a court of law that would be called hearsay. That is it’s it’s utterly unreliable. But even outside a court of law, it’s utterly unreliable. So if you believe these things, you should at least contact Mr. Acosta and ask him directly. But there’s flatly nothing zero. And yet these people have spent days and weeks, and I hope to spend weeks more. Why? We want the truth. How do you know you don’t have it? Now you’re in the wrong place if this is what turns you on. Really? We’ve commented on it. We did not raise conspiracy theories. Some people were stabbing the president in the back. We didn’t do that. Some were stabbing the attorney general in the back. We didn’t do that. Not involved in all this crap. The biggest city in America, the financial center of the United States and the world is about to be taken over by Marxist Islamists. We got three guys running. The mayor. Cuomo, who couldn’t beat this guy in a primary, but he seems to think he should be able to beat him in a general an hour, Frank, courteously. They’re all running. It doesn’t appear that any of them are going to get out. Maybe. CUOMO If you know, there’s a full moon and 17 stars are lined up or whatever he said. So he’s going to win. He’s going to win. If that if that narrative continues, he’s going to win. And not with a majority of the vote with a plurality of the vote. How about 100% of the power with a plurality of the vote? So we’ll stay focused here. We’ve got to win this young generation back. And the way you win it back is not to concede liberty, to concede capitalism. They concede morality. To concede your country’s history, to concede Israel, to concede Ukraine. That’s not the way you win it back. That’s what lazy people do. Affordability is the new word. We know it’s the new word because they keep repeating it. Repetition is the coin of the realm. The fascists and the Marxists and the autocrats. Affordability. The Marxists are going to give us affordability. They can’t even produce enough toilet paper for their people, but they’re going to give us affordability, don’t you know? They’re about coercion and power. They must reduce the power of the individual. They must denude respect for the individual. It’s not up to the individual. It’s not the free will of the individual that matters. It’s none of those things. It’s what the masterminds decide. And so they’re going to talk about affordability. They’re going to create these images of equality. We need to force them. You compare something with something, as Milton Friedman once brilliantly put it. Compare real life, tangible, contextual Marxism and socialism. We capitalism in reality. Now. I’m going to take a little break and I want to continue with this. We’ll be right back.

Segment 4
When you redistribute wealth, what do you do? What do you do? You destroy the creation of wealth. So there’s less and less the redistribute. Why do you destroy the creation of wealth? Because the people who create wealth aren’t going to create as much, but they’re not going to create it anymore because you’re taking their wealth and you’re redistributing it. This is just basic stuff. This is human behavior and it’s proper human behavior. It’s normal human behavior. I’m going to take my stuff. I’m not going to create it anymore. I’m going to create less of it. In the case of New York City, I’m going to leave here and create it somewhere else. So the the idea of redistributing wealth is a flawed, phony, defective idea right out of the gate. And then when you have to surrender your individual liberty and power, your your free will to some 33 year old who thinks he’s Fidel Castro. Because he thinks this ought to happen or that ought to happen. And the guy has never held a private sector job in his life. That’s not rational. That’s just pure power. Based on an ideological framework. And that pure power based on an ideological framework has resulted in the starvation of millions, tens of millions, and the death of tens of millions. And that’s the basis for the ideology. Not that that would be the outcome, but that’s disastrous enough, is it not? They talk about equality. Well, what does that mean? Equality without freedom is a prison camp. Equality without freedom is a is a prison camp. You need freedom. And when we speak of equality, we mean a just law that applies to everybody. The equality of law and the application of the law has nothing to do with economic equality because there’s no possible thing called economic equality. Look at Cambodia. They killed 25% of their population and they never, in their view, Pol Pot. Never got equality because sometimes. Too poor peasants in the rice fields. One guy had more rice in his basket than the other. That’s the nature of the beast, isn’t it? What does it mean? Equality. I’m not LeBron James. I can’t play basketball. I’m not as tall as him and I’ll be gifted as him. So I’m not a billionaire. He is. Okay, so how is that supposed to work? When you watch sports, are you looking for equality or are you looking for superior athletes? We used to. We used to appreciate success in this country. That’s now a bad word. It’s the easy. The high. This is the only country in the face of the earth. Only country in the face. There were taxi cab drivers were plumbers, electricians. Construction workers and on and on can walk into a supermarket, have available to them all kinds of bread, meats, fowl, fish, you name it, 25 different types of deodorant. It goes on and on and on. Where we live better than kings and queens lived 100 years ago. That’s not due to Marxism, That’s due to capitalism. And capitalism is you. That’s what it is. You are capitalism. The government is socialism. You are capitalism. I’m going to extend my remarks on this later after the top of the hour. We’ll take our top of the hour break. We will be back. I will continue on this. We will move on to some other areas. But I just feel it’s too important. It’s too important not to use this platform to help get our country back. And that includes understanding why it’s so great. And we, the American people, are so great. I’ll be right back.