August 21st, 2026

Rough transcription of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811.  877-381-3811. Now, we are stacked up here with audio and wonderful articles to pursue and so forth. But about 5 minutes ago I decided, let’s slow down on that. Because there’s a big debate going on and it’s going to be going on well past today. It’s going to be going on well into the future and right up into the Republican presidential primaries in 2028. And the battle lines are being drawn between the Buchananites. They call them post liberal conservatives. But that doesn’t mean anything to me. They’re the Buchananites. And in my view, the Reaganites and the Trumpites. Now, some of the prominent Trump aides. Sound more like the Buchanan Knights. But part of the debate is over something called national conservatism or not Collins. And more traditional constitutional conservatism. Power. To what extent do we use power? Now, if you listen to some of these people, they could support Franklin Roosevelt if he were around today or Lyndon Johnson if he were around today, sort of socialist lite. The government interventionism of which they speak. They do not explain what the boundaries are. But they’re looking for popular appeal. And so they’re trashing the 1980s where we had spectacular economic growth across the board. Very bizarre. My fear is, even if one of these guys muscles through the Republican primary, even if they’re coronated in some way, they won’t win the general election. That’s my concern. And so it comes down to, as I said, to power. And that’s what this debate is about. Among conservatives and pseudo conservatives, I would argue. And so we’re going to spend a little time on it on this Friday evening, as many of you are in rush hour traffic. Or maybe you’re driving off to a weekend vacation or whatever you’re doing. I’m here with you. And so let’s discuss this again. There are infinite ways to view power in innumerable contexts and circumstances in which to apply it. There’s truly no simple, concise, all purpose definition for what is meant by power. But it is a word that means everything. Everything. Even in your private life. They spent time thinking, talking or writing about it is not a mere abstraction. Power is a term meant to describe some kind of force or energy that surrounds us all the time is both ubiquitous in your life and the life of the entire society, and it’s consequential in every way. Power is a core reality characteristic of human existence. Yet without more to go on such as context and circumstance, it can be ambiguous and elusive. And all human pursuits, including personal pursuits and life events. Power matters as a macro level. Power shapes economics, politics and governments. Moreover, there are many, many variations of power, implied powers, necessary powers and some powers and so forth and so on. For most people. These are unstated and often unnoticed or obscure kinds of power. But they exist and they matter. Indeed, power is inextricably linked to liberty, although it is not to be confused with liberty itself. Power determines if there’s too much liberty, such as anarchy or too little, such as tyrannies, depending on how power is exercised, who exercises it, and if it is bound by human rights. The American Revolution is an important and obvious example of power properly pursued and exercised, the pursuit of which was not to promote. Individuals, per se. But individualism and societal liberty, including by means of representation, limited, divided government that is ordered liberty. Conversely, autocrats of every stripe and in all ages have exploited liberty to empower themselves at the expense of the liberty of others. Fact One’s use of liberty this way, too, expands one’s power to diminish, if not denude the liberty of others is, in a real sense a paradox, isn’t it? And it is a cancer that apparently metastasizes over time within democracies. And of course, there are democracies that have lasted several centuries. But in the end, they have or I repeat, they have all succumbed to the steady increase in the centralization of power and a decline in individual and societal liberty. And sadly, this appears to be the nature of things. To be clear, then, even the most wisely conceived nation states, mindful of man’s abuses of power and establish with the intent of curbing and restraining that power, seem to fail in the in gone or Athens. Gone are Athens and Rome and numerous lesser societies. Democracies struggle against the centralization of power almost from the moment they’re established. And history is replete with examples of tyrants grabbing power in the name of liberty. I don’t want to read the whole book, so I’m moving on like liberty in the context of power. Democracy is another word that is used by the power hungry to deceive and disarm. Indeed, I’ve already made several references to democracy which can be loosely described as non autocratic government. But democracy is often alluded to by those who reject it, and they reject universal individual liberty. And where democracies exist would destroy it. In his book, Politics in the English Language, George Orwell writes about the the perversion of what he says, political words, quote, used in consciously dishonest ways. That is, the person who uses them, has his own private definition, but allows us here to think he means something quite different. He said it’s almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic, we’re praising it. Consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it’s a democracy and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. That’s the word democracy, like the word liberty is frequently used as a theoretical weapon or a rhetorical weapon to deceive the true intentions and conceal the real nature of its abusers. Again, these behaviors and tactics are not exclusive to tyrants and autocrats. It is a real and growing threat in Western societies in our country as they increasingly centralize power in the name of unlimited, egalitarian and so-called righteous causes. And you see this with Mondawmin. And Sanders. And their ilk. Environmental justice. Economic Justice. Social Justice. Equality. Equity Reparations. Nationalized health care. The existential threat of climate change and so forth which require and in fact demand the centralization of power to supposedly ameliorate the perceived, claimed, and in some cases manufactured societal maladies, the final resolutions of which are not only impossible, but are also not necessarily intended to be solvable. The agitations, the demands and related propaganda are sledgehammers with which to pummel the limited and divided institutional barriers to centralize power in democratic governments. Is this interesting, Mr. Producer? So far, we’re all right. So let us narrow the focus here. I start with the observation. Remember we’re talking about power. And from my book on power, which I believe is historically indisputably a potentially controversial and what you can infer from what I’ve already written, that over the millennia, mankind has generally suffered more from the abuse of power and the concomitant diminution of liberty than from its humane and righteous application. There important exceptions, of course, in the individual’s everyday life and society generally. But narrowing the focus even further in the long history of mankind, and even in modern times, the most pervasive form of governance under which most human beings live and have lived is authoritarian. Today. One need not look. Excuse me today one need look only at the membership of the United Nations to prove the point. Some 70% of the world’s population currently lives under brutal autocratic regimes. And this raises an unpleasant question. Is this the natural state of mankind? At least in the communal sense. Even if individuals themselves wish for and seek liberty. Now this is important. I term this negative power. I term this negative power. And I discuss it more fully later in the book. That said, in a democracy, negative power typically takes the form of a steadily increasing centralization of authority that starts slowly, but eventually spreads more quickly to cover all corners of the nation. Moving closer toward a quiet, autocratic model. It occurs primarily in three general ways. First, the imposition by the few, for example, the judiciary, the peaceful vote of the many, number two, where the people willfully vote for their own demise. Or number three, the slow institutionalization of an acquiescence to, as Thomas Hobbes characterized it, a leviathan that is a dominating and domineering army of non-representative bureaucrats. Of course, there are degrees to which centralization develops and occurs some more aggressive and ominous than others. Centralization in moderation, that is, centralization in moderation, which is intended to secure liberty that does not exist or undergird existing liberty that is threatened or diminished by factionalism. Mob rule or anarchy is of a different character than power secured for power sake or with a tyrannical mindset or purpose. Again, looking at our own history, in the early days of our Republic, the Articles of Confederation were abandoned because the national government lacked the power to do much is explained in the National Archives just a few years after the Revolutionary War. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington feared that the young country was on the brink of collapse. America’s First Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, gave the Confederation Congress the power to make rules and requests, that is, request for funds from the states. But it had no enforcement powers, couldn’t regulate commerce or print money. The states disputes over territory, war, pensions, taxation and trade threaten to tear the young country apart. It’s all quite true. Thus the need for the Constitutional Convention, the birth of a new constitution. I term this. Positive power. Positive power. Explore that later in the book as well. The framers knew of both positive and negative power from, among other things, their own experiences with the British monarchy and their familiarity with the writings of ancient philosophers and contemporary revolutions such as the French Revolution, that the centralization of governmental power, if not carefully and rightly designed, would destroy the new nation rather than serve its best interests. Now, we’ll take a short break here. When you hear of the Democratic Socialists of America wanting to destroy the Constitution, this is why it’s negative power, as I call it, the centralization of power, the creation of a tyranny and an authoritarian regime to impose their ideological will dressed up, of course, as for the people dressed up as against the oligarchy, against capitalism and all the rest. But it is what it is. I’ll be right back.

Segment 2
Just for our affiliates and our program directors or GM ownership and so forth. I find the audience loves this kind of program wherever I go. They asked me to do more and more of it. I obviously I limited. But this issue of who has the power to do what is front and center. People may not realize it. Those of you who actually do real jobs for a living, those who run stations or own stations may not realize it, but this is a big battle that’s going on right now for the future of the Republican Party and and and the presidential nominee. So I just alert you to this, which is why I’m taking the time to do it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t. And as for my book on power, it was for sale last year. I’m not promoting it this year. People are interested. They can get any of my books on Amazon. But that’s not the point of this. This is the point of this is to share real knowledge, real information, so you can in turn share and use it when you’re listening and watching these things too. So let us continue. We only have a little while right now. We’ll continue more after the bottom of the hour. But this issue of power and this book on power, which I think is one of the best I’ve ever read, and it’s also one of the tightest I’ve ever written. It’s clearly relevant, the word power and what goes on, it’s always relevant. First of all, let’s think about your own life. The people you work with. Maybe it’s a business you work with, whether you’re working from home or not, you still have to report to people and so forth and so on. There are power dynamics in your family. Immediate family, extended family who’s going to make decisions about what, why and when their power dynamics in the work environment. Whatever you do in the work environment, you may be your own employer and employee, but you’re dealing with outside suppliers or outside marketing people or you’re online, you’re dealing with somebody. These are power issues. I’m not getting into all that psychological stuff. I’m getting into the use of power, the individual groups of individuals, that is the civil society and government. And it’s important that we understand these things. I’ll be right back.

Segment 3
I used to love this-I still like it, but because the commercials used to crack me up, if anybody remembers the commercial or when SNL was actually a really great show, they used to dance to this song. Mr. And you remember that It was with the heads Go on, and they listened to that with their neck. That’s right. It was so funny. Yeah, but I still like it. Oh, yeah. We’re going to get back to this. Let me just see. Let’s see. All right, That’s good. That’s good. That’s good. All right. We’re alive and national. Hello? Yes, we be. All right, Done. Here we go. Let’s jump back in. This kind of stuff isn’t even taught in college anymore. Graduate school anymore. So I pull it to get it for you, and I try and put it in plain English. So then there was a need, you see, for a constitutional convention in the birth of a new constitution. And I’ve talked about that. Let me see if I can find out where I left off here. Richie Rich, do you remember? Let’s see. There we are. That’s right. Page 11. It’s that way. I have a different page number than you. All right, let’s do it this way. Thus the need for the Constitutional Convention. You’re right. In the birth of a new constitution. Again, I term this positive power. Positive power. The framers knew of both positive and negative power, as I mentioned before. They knew both. And among other things, their own experiences with the British monarchy and their familiarity with the writings of ancient philosophers in the French Revolution. Human beings are imperfect. This is not much of a revelation to you. Yet it seems downplayed or ignored by too many in democracies who acquiesce to or even cheer for governmental centralization when wrapped in promises of larger welfare, state, ethnic, racial, economic empowerment, or godlike fixes to natural disasters and climate events. But the idea that the centralization of power, which necessarily concentrates authority in the hands of fewer imperfect individuals and whose base of knowledge is naturally narrow is a recipe for societal improvement, progress, stability and well-being is not only counterintuitive, but contrary to everyday human experience and mankind’s history. Indeed. What makes these individuals more perfect as decision makers, more moral as people, or more informed, wise or prudential than anyone else? Nothing. Autocrats are not known to possess such qualities or demonstrate them. When exercising power, most excel at acquiring power, but not much else. Indeed, those who achieve such a station exhibit a greater affinity for the darker side of human behavior, including corruption and dishonesty, immorality, hubris, irrationality, anger, vainglory, ego, man, egomania, bigotry, and so forth. Although a rare, good or perceived benefit may come from their wielding of power. Such as the claim that attain fascist Benito Mussolini made that the trains run on time, by the way. That’s a myth. It’s farcical. And besides, they didn’t. Where is the evidence? They concentrated power in the hands of an administrative state where the bureaucracy used to consist of specially trained experts and societal organizers who know what is best for the people and know how best to achieve these ends. Where is the evidence? Where is it ever existed? Anywhere. That they know what they’re doing. Certainly not in America. Contrarily from Aristotle and Cicero to John Locke and Montesquieu and numerous others. Philosophers and scholars have argued for the wisdom of diversified, dispersed and mixed power within governments. That is where power checks and balances power, which provides a greater likelihood of enlightened leadership and administration, greater respect and appreciation for civil society in the nongovernmental parts of society, and more protection of individual sovereignty and free will and essence. A positive power structure attempts to contain and control the darker side of the human character and to contain and control the darker side. Of. Society generally. It emphasizes the capacity for a civilized and just society again in our country. The American Revolution and establishment of a Republican government was intended to secure the traditions, customs and values of the society concisely set forth in the Declaration. Unlike the French Revolution, the purpose of which was to destroy the existing society, not only the ruling monarchy. Indeed, our declaration is one of the most concise, yet brilliant statements about humanity and society ever offered. This is not to say that other Western democracies lacked similar intentions, but America’s purpose was known and declared before it was even a functioning country. That is from the beginning and its ultimate governmental design. The national constitution was a direct outgrowth of this purpose, not an imposition by an elite few. Since the representatives of all the colonies participated in its development from the Constitutional Convention to the state ratification conventions. Now when establishing our own national government, the debates among the delegates to the Constitutional Convention and later in the state ratifying conventions focused almost entirely on how to balance the necessity of centralized power to secure the civil society and preserve individual liberty with the recognition that in creating such an entity, they risked imperiling the American experiment, if they conferred power, was not offset by competing powers. This is crucial, crucial, crucial, crucial. For the framers, the answer was a mixed government, in essence. They adopted John Locke’s overarching governmental model of separating power and Montague’s more precise description of governmental divided by government, rather divided between and among three entities the legislative, executive and judicial, each with relatively specific and distinct responsibilities. It constantly competing with the others for power. Montesquieu was the most widely read and cited philosopher during America’s constitutional period. He’s referred to in the Federalist Papers multiple times in the spirit of the laws. Montesquieu explained that, quote, Democracy and aristocracy are not free states by their nature. Political liberty is found only in moderate governments. But it is not always in moderate states. It is presently only when power is not abused. But it has eternally been observed that any man who has power is led to abuse it, he continues, until he finds limits. He said, who would think it? Quote, am calling the whole thing. Even virtue has a need of limits so that one cannot abuse power. Power must check power by the arrangement of things. Power, checking power. The Constitution, he said, can be such that no one will be constrained to do things. The law does not oblige them to do or be kept from doing the things the law permits them to do. Now, hundreds of years later, the late British Christian theologian and scholar author C.S. Lewis underscored Montague’s point as well. He said, of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of the victims, maybe the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep is cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscious, they may be more likely to go to heaven. Yet at the same time likelier to make a hell on earth, their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. Right? Mamdani To be cured, quote unquote, against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as well 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. You’re talking about people like Mamdani and others, right? He’s talking about these people who treat us like we can’t make our own decisions, like we’re not intelligent enough to. And Montesquieu further warned that should the distinct nature of these branches dissolve and transition from separation of powers to the concentration of powers, and this is what the Democrats want and the DSA wants. The result would be tyranny. In fact, he specifically wrote, When legislative powers united with executive power in a single person or in a single body of magistrates, there’s no liberty because one can fear that the same monarch or Senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute tyrannical laws. Nor is there liberty of the power of judging. It’s not separate from the legislative power and from the executive power. And he goes on, He makes all those great points. And then I want to end with this. Excuse me. And folks, I’m only on page 12 or 13 here. There’s a lot to this negative and positive power. Okay. A lot. Your Constitution. Is a fantastic demonstration of positive power. That’s why it’s always under attack by the Marxists, by the national conservatives, by the populists, whatever. That’s why they call themselves by different name. Now, as those state conventions were debating whether to ratify this proposed constitution in Federalist number 51, James Madison, considered the father of the document, echoed Montesquieu, and he wrote something which has gone down in the years is very important, he said. Human beings are imperfect and ambitious. So we need a government structure that guards against abuses of power. He said Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. You can hear mud askew in there, can’t you? Matisse said the interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection of on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself? But the greatest of all, reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern, men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. So in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this. You must first enable the government to control the governed. And in the next place oblige it to control itself. Absolute genius. The Federalist Papers are filled with genius, Madison’s notes. These men were beyond beyond belief, and the Constitution was the culmination of it all. Just absolutely incredible. On power. On power. That’s our debate now. I’ll be right back.

Segment 4
What we’ll do next hour. We’re going to move off of on power. You can always call in at the end, near the end of the show. The bottom of the hour three, we can get into this. I love to have these philosophical discussions because these philosophical discussions and these ideas wind up having consequences in your life. And the extent of your freedom and how much you’re going to pay in taxes and so forth and so on. The debate over power again in the context of society and government and so forth, determines what kind of a country you live in. Determines what kind of economy there there will be. It determines what conservatism is. I have no doubt what conservatism is, specifically constitutional conservatism. So these are the things we enjoy debating. We will debate, we will discuss as time goes on especially. We need to know these things. And. More importantly, we need to be able to. To act on them because this government is supposed to belong to us. I know it sounds weird these days, but this government is supposed to belong to you and me. And that’s why I spent the time on it. It’s why I wrote the book. Next door. I want to get into some of the. The crazier stuff that’s going on. I don’t even have to go to the newspapers. We don’t even have to go to the websites. You can just hear it for yourself. What are some of these people are saying? Some good people, by the way. What some good people are saying, but also what some not so good people are saying is very, very important. All right, folks. I will be right back.