On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, the core difference between conservatives and the modern left lies in their view of the Declaration of Independence, which is a unique, revolutionary document grounded in eternal truths and God-given unalienable rights. The concept of power, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, is central to the founding of the United States, uniquely vesting sovereignty in the people rather than the government. This power establishes individuals and society—”we the people”—as the ultimate sovereign authority. The nation’s structure requires the consent of the governed while protecting individual rights. The left fundamentally rejects the foundational principles of the United States, particularly those rooted in Judeo-Christian values and the Declaration of Independence. Woodrow Wilson was a key figure who dismissed the Declaration’s emphasis on unalienable rights, natural law, and divine sovereignty, viewing them as outdated and mystical. This rejection contrasts sharply with the founders’ vision of individual and collective sovereignty, which Democrats oppose in favor of a more progressive, secular framework. Later, Douglas Murray calls in to explain that the recent killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., reflects how anti-Israel propaganda, fueled by groups like Qatar and the Iranian Revolutionary Government, is inciting Americans to commit antisemitic violence. This incident is part of a broader wave of antisemitism driven by false narratives about Israel’s actions in Gaza, leading to increased violence against Jews. Also, why are federal judges are involved in decisions regarding federal funding for colleges and universities, national security, and immigration policies, which should be handled by the president and the administration. Judges should dismiss such cases, explaining that they lack jurisdiction.
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Rough transcription of Hour 1
Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. Fantastic three day weekend. Let us not forget that Memorial Day and what it’s for. Obviously, you have a day off and you can enjoy yourselves, but take a minute or two to remember all the men and women who died for this country. So that we can live the type of lives that we live today. And this does bring me to a point. What? They’ve died for the. I’m not going to get into JD Vance’s speech today at the Naval Academy, Mr. Producer. We basically said it’s time to abandon the foreign policy, the founders for a new foreign policy. I can deal with that in another day and another time. Actually, like the man very much is a gentleman. He’s smart. I don’t think he’s had exposure to enough other viewpoints. Foreign policies. Bottom line is about prudence, not ideology. Not ideology. And a lot of great things were done in our foreign policy in the past a lot. A lot of people are now free. A lot of people’s lives were saved. And of course, there were occasions when we had quite poor farm policies. That’s the nature of human beings. It’s the nature of institutions. It’s a nature of a republic. But that’s not my purpose right now. It’s not my purpose at all. I promised you yesterday. And by the way, there is a ton to get to today, and we will get to all of it. And we have a great guest in the second hour, our friend Douglas Murray. But before we do. I hope you’ll turn up the volume, sit back and relax. If you’re driving your car. Just obviously watch the road, but be attentive to what I want to talk about. I know a lot of people are on the road this evening as you. You have your vacation plans and so forth. But I think this is very interesting. You know, I try to do history, the constitutional law, economics, philosophy in a way that is interesting. And in a way that is understandable because otherwise, what’s the point? Right. What is the difference as just today between the Democrat Party and the Republican Party? What is the difference? Even more fundamentally? Which wing conservatives. I’d only want to say the Liberals anymore because there are very few liberals, leftists, radicals, extremists on the left. He going to go, Boy, I already know the answer to this. Do you? Have you actually been exposed to the answer? Probably to some extent if you listen to this program. What makes the difference is your Declaration of Independence. Why? You know, the Declaration of Independence says absolutely nothing. That’s new. Nothing. Nothing that’s new. Unalienable rights. Eternal truths. God given power as sovereignty, rather. None of that’s new. What was totally new about it. Was it the substance? But its embrace and its application. What was going to be the birth of a new country. That has never happened before. Ever, ever. And why is that? Why hasn’t it ever happened before? Virtually every other country. Is founded in. Every country is founded differently. Some through violence, some gradually, some suddenly. Virtually ever the country is founded. Without a declaration. A philosophical. Belief and value systems. I can’t think of any. Well, he might say Marxism. I’ll get to that in a minute. What is it that this declaration is talking about when it talks about these things, this natural law, natural rights and unalienable rights and eternal law? What is all this? Is it mysticism, as Mark said? What is it? Is it just the. The terms in the words of a period of time in American history, in human history, is what Woodrow Wilson said have no meaning to to today. It’s the basis for our republic. The Declaration of Independence. The words in the Declaration of Independence. It’s a declaration. Why the colonists were fighting against the most powerful military force on the planet. Why was a representative government That was part of it. Of course, the consent of the government taxation. That was part of it, of course. But fundamentally, what was it? It was over power. Now, here’s the thing about power. It’s not an easy concept. It’s a very complicated issue. We can talk about three branches of government and all that. That’s not what I’m talking about. If a nation that was founded on the idea. That the sovereign. It’s not the government. That the sovereign is something bigger. It’s something more. That sovereignty belongs to the individual. And sovereignty as a community, as a society, belongs to we, the people. The individual and we the people. Well, where does that come from? Who says? Your Declaration of Independence and even more, the battle for independence. Ready for This was based on the belief. That got. Gives us our liberty, our rights, and more importantly, our power. God. Now, some of you might be saying, look, that’s that’s all well and good. You know, I go to church, I go to sinning. Well, what is this God stuff? We even have people in the society, obviously, who don’t believe in God. Or maybe they’re agnostic, believe in God, but they’re not sure what it means or they’re just. Don’t care. That’s okay. They believe whatever they want. I’m talking about. How this nation was founded, not what one person may or may not believe. You see the people who are non-believers, that is, who don’t believe in God. They get it. They get to come along for the ride. Now, what does that mean, Mark? It’s not a putdown in any way. This society was set up by people who did believe in God. Now, I’m not here as a rabbi or a pastor or a priest or anything of the sort. I’m not lecturing you about God. I’m telling you about your history. Your history. Some people are more religious than others. That’s perfectly fine. I’m not talking about that either. The fundamental basis. Of this nation’s founding. Was a belief in a sovereign God. And it’s through a sovereign God, our sovereign God. We His children. Have sovereignty over government. That an individual has sovereignty. Let a community of individuals, a society, we the people, have sovereignty. Not government. It’s not a coincidence that Marxism, which is the greatest threat that in Islamism. I’ll get to that in a minute. As an ideology both within our country and outside our country. Not to get too deep into the weeds or roso ism or Hegel ism or Marxism that whole. Cabal of thinking, and I’ll get to that in a second. So when you read the Declaration of Independence. It is the most unique pronouncement or declaration. Are they Revolution, truly a revolution. Ever, Ever. Now our founders. The vast majority were Christian. Not all, but the vast majority. And they had different beliefs within Christianity. And so you have the different sects within Christianity. But they didn’t have to believe the same way as Christians. And you’d even have to be a Christian to believe in the value system. The nation was founded on Judeo Christian values and beliefs. Fused with. An embrace of the Enlightenment. Now, how do I know this? Because they told us. The founders of your country were not bashful about telling us who they were, what they believed, and what they were doing. They told us. Jefferson, who wrote the first draft of the declaration, that key document he tells us in a letter. Responding to somebody who’s inquiring of him near the end of his life, essentially accusing him of plagiarism. None of these ideas are your ideas, you know, And Jefferson said, I never said they were. I never said they were. It was a concise compilation of the views, the beliefs. Of the people who rose up to found a new nation. It’s so unique. Now, again, perhaps you’re listening to this program and you’re an atheist or so forth. It’s okay. But our country was not founded on your beliefs or lack thereof. And you’re able to be an atheist in this country because the country was not founded on your beliefs or your lack of beliefs. You live in a free country? Relatively, anyway. Thanks to the people who founded it. And it’s worth trying to understand what they understood. Sovereignty is about power. Who has sovereignty? The ruling class. The government. Or the people. Now sovereignty in the people doesn’t mean. Anarchy. Mob rule. Majority rule at all times. It means that whatever form of government you construct, whatever form of government you establish. Requires the consent of the sovereign, the people. No. That we human beings sin, knowing full well that we human beings are perfect. This is all in the book. If you haven’t figured it out by now on power, but it’s very important. And so. A government needs to be set up. That does several things. That involves the consent of the governed representative government. People get to vote. What enshrines the principles in the Declaration of Independence. So people get the vote. People get their say, but they cannot steal from you. As a group. You are a sovereign authority. That is your unalienable rights. Now, I hate to do this. I have to take a break, try and have a mental bookmark, if you will. I’ll pick it up. But this is very important because now you’re going to soon understand why we’re different than the Democrats or we conservatives are different from the rest of them. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
I only have a minute or so in this segment, so I’ll pick it up more heavily, more thoroughly after the bottom of the hour. But I want you to think about this, this notion of sovereignty and power. Your First Amendment to the Constitution adopted after the Constitution was adopted. Talks about the free exercise of religion, but also they do not want the establishment of a state religion. That’s because this notion of sovereignty, this belief in unalienable rights and so forth and so on. For the rights of a human being, their individual rights, and they are collective rights within a society, which is what Locke was trying to explain at some some great length during the Enlightenment. So I will pull this all together and then I’ll explain to you what the other side stands for. We’ll be right back.
Segment 3
What I’m discussing here is, is a core aspect of my new book on power, which will come out on July 29th. He can pre-order your copy now. It’s already started. Amazon has to discount it, but it will be discounted much more than it already is and you will receive the benefit of the larger discount until the book is released. That’s how they operate. But I consider it probably the most important book I’ve ever written. I want to get back to this point. What do we stand for? What did our framers and our founders stand for? So this issue of sovereignty. And this issue of sovereignty is directly linked to power. And so as a saying, the individual is sovereign, the collective of individuals, the society, we the people are the sovereigns. No government is legitimate. That’s not a government with our consent with representation. Hence the revolution. Hence my objection over and over again aggressively against unelected judges and what they’re doing to our country. They do it without our consent. Now, that said. By that. The framers did not mean that we just take a vote every time in the majority wins. Why? Why? Because even though you and I have our own sovereignty and we collectively have the sovereignty of the civil society, that’s what we are. Man is not perfect. Quite the contrary. And in fact. History has demonstrated for sure that factions and mobs and even a majority could be very evil, that there is a darker side to mankind. It’s in your Bible. It’s in the Torah. There is a darker side to man mankind. And so. We are to use our God given ability to reason to try and figure out the best form of self control. That would be government. That ensures the fullest extent of our individual and collective sovereignty. In a manner. That doesn’t destroy itself. That makes sense, Mr. Producer. This is me speaking. Me speaking through my book is describing what is meant and what is intended here. And so. Got a sovereign. That sovereign authority is passed on to his children. We the people. You as an individual. Unalienable rights. The Right to Life and Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. What was meant by the pursuit of happiness there meant. To fulfill yourself, basically. And along with this sovereignty, in this power comes liberty and rights. Now, I can’t do the whole book here in 15 minutes. So in the book I get into what do we mean by liberty and what do we mean by rights? And I think you’ll find that fascinating. But not for tonight. And so a government needs to be set up that reflects the will of the people. That involves the consent of the people through representation. And protects us from the mob and protects us from a handful of masterminds. That is the best way to ensure the maximum amount of sovereignty each of us have as individuals and as a group of people. This is where the Enlightenment kicks in. The Enlightenment. Even before the Enlightenment. Aristotle. Even before Aristotle, Plato. But Aristotle primarily talked about power. Not specifically, but enough for us to understand what he was talking about. And then his thoughts about power generally. We’re more sort of massaged, become more tangible when we get to John Locke and Montesquieu. John Locke was the most important philosopher during the revolutionary period. Montesquieu was the most important philosopher during the constitutional period. He’s referenced in the Federalist Papers. How do we know that? Again, they told us they weren’t the only ones, but they were important. So what did they look at? What did they look at when they created this declaration in this constitution? They looked at everything I just told you and more. Everything I just told you were so remarkable. Was the American Revolution so remarkable? Is the declaration so remarkable is the Constitution. No group of people have ever created anything like it. None. None. So. Says power. Who exercises it? When do they exercise? As you can see just from I really barely touched the subject. But you can see just from my. A little taste, giving you a little taste of this. That these were great men. Who did great things. Who restrained themselves. When they founded this nation. They didn’t empower themselves. He didn’t empower a certain class of people. You weren’t even thinking about a certain class of people. Almost all of them had been farmers. Almost all of them worked the land themselves. They were real people. The people who participated in the revolution. Paul Revere was a blacksmith. And go down the list. Serious people. When you look at the declaration and it talks about natural rights and natural law, what does all that mean? Means they’re certain eternal truths. What’s an eternal truth? It’s not manmade. Where does it come from? Comes from God. Those of you who go to church and go to synagogue or go to your mosques or whatever you do. Why do you do that? Why do you do it? Because you know there’s something greater than you. And why do we why do we pretend there’s not when it comes to creating a nation or a government? And so there are certain eternal truths, right from wrong, good from evil. The golden rule is good, killing is bad. The Ten Commandments. These things. Are known. Throughout our country. They’re known throughout every country. Now, that doesn’t mean. That they’re honored. It doesn’t mean. That there embraced. You have evil regimes, you have evil people and so forth and so on. But they’re known to them. They just reject them. This is what’s meant by. Right. Reason. Not just reason, but right reason. Reasoning the right way. This is what’s met by eternal truths. Something that is known. In some cases intuitively, in some cases by experience, in some cases some other way. But it’s known by every person. Even the person who. There’s a mass murder. Knows what he’s doing is wrong. Assuming he’s not mentally ill, knows what he’s doing is wrong. They didn’t care. Again, unless they have. You know there are psychos. And so. These are eternal truths. There are other eternal truths. That men and women. But I’ll use the word men like we used to. Men? Have a dark side. Men have a bright side, but they also a dark side. It’s the nature of imperfect human beings who sin. People are ambitious. People can be greedy. And go down the list of negative things that you know about other people, perhaps yourself or people in history. God didn’t create perfect people. You have sovereignty. People in a society of sovereignty. But that doesn’t mean we’re perfect. It doesn’t mean we’re always good. And so here on earth, we try and create institutions that nurture and recognize our human sovereignty, but at the same time. Protect us, one from the other from the darker side of humanity. Making sense so far, Mr. Producer. This is all in the book in plain English. Why does it matter? It matters. It goes to the core of every damn thing that’s going on in this country and in the world. Now. There’s a lot lot more to this, but I don’t have all night, so I want to move on to the other side. Okay. So understand, I’m stipulating right now, you read the book, you’ll know a lot more about this. There are many tributaries to what I’m talking about here. I hope it pique your interest. But it’s something I want to convey regardless. What about the other side? The Democrat Party, the left, the Marxists, the rest. They don’t start at the same premise that you and I started. They don’t start with the same premise. That the founders of our country did. They literally reject the Judeo Christian values and belief system. They won’t admit it. Some of them go to church and synagogue. I don’t care what they admit, I’m explaining. It’s not a matter of whether you go to church or synagogue or do anything else. It’s a matter whether you embrace. Embrace the whole notion. Know what it is that God has done for his people. So let me explain. Let me try it this way. Woodrow Wilson spent a lifetime. When he was an academic and he became president of Princeton and obviously president of the United States. His impact was significant in the intellectual and academic world, even much more significant when he became president of the United States. He rejected the Declaration of Independence. If you’ve read any of my books, I’ve quoted him. He rejected them. The Declaration of Independence. Over and over and over again. He mocked the Declaration. He denounced the declaration. In sum, what Woodrow Wilson said, and there were many. I’m just using him as an example, but an important example. He said, Look, we can’t be bound by the beliefs and the attitudes and the mindset of the 1700s and these men who met. The second continent, Philadelphian, come up with this document, the declaration, or the man who went back to the same place, Independence Hall, and came up with this constitution and so forth and so on. What does that have to do with us? He says they had the right. They had the right. To write those documents to determine what they believed and try and impose their will on the nation. And so do we. We have the right to say no, that we don’t accept. The nature or even the text of what they said. He said, Look at the declaration, all those fancy words at the beginning. That’s not the important, important part of the declaration, he says. It’s the second part where they lay out their specific allegations against the crown. That’s what we should focus on. What’s all this stuff? About unalienable rights. About natural law. Natural right. What is all this stuff about? Providence? What is this? And. And this. Listen carefully. He was regurgitating. Karl Marx. Karl Marx called essentially the declaration. He didn’t call the declaration directly, but the people who think like this and he was talking about America. As embracing mysticism. Blinding them to the modern world. All this stuff about God and God’s children and sovereignty passed on to the individual and the people. That’s archaic. Does it make any sense? And it obstructs the ability of modern man to think for himself tied. Tied to this mysticism. We have a right to create the kind of society we want right now, right here. More when I return.
Segment 4
So for Woodrow Wilson, for Bernie Sanders or Hakeem Jeffries? For all of them. The principles of the founding very irrelevant. This is why they all talk about the fundamental transformation of America, fundamental transformation away from the founding to something else. And that’s something else. Is that an ideology? An ideology that I think where there were overlaps between Rousseau and Hegel and Marx, Rousseau first and Hegel and Marx, and I’m not going to get into them in any great detail here. I did get into them in great detail in prior books, but no point in doing that now. And essentially, whether it’s materialism or historicism or this ism or that ism. The bottom line is you’ve got to destroy the existing society. Stop focusing on individual sobriety. And Rousseau talked about the individual being fulfilled most comprehensively through the state. Hagel did much of the same thing, but with it really a much different process in mind. And then, of course, we have marks. Everything, material and economic. He basically steals from Hagel and then puts his own touch on it. Again, it’s not important to understand every aspect of it. I will get into it. You will see some of it in the book related to Marx. But let me go on. And so they believe, as the modern progressives of the late 1800, early 1900s, what I call American Marxists, because they’re the progeny really of Hegel and Marx, but mostly Marx. They read Marx, they like Marx. They spread the Marxism. I mean, the ideology of Marxism through different avenues. You say No, no, no. The world begins today. We’re going to rejigger, man. We’re going to rejigger society. None of this talk about sovereignty. If anybody has sovereignty, it’s the ruling class. If anybody has sovereignty, it’s quote unquote, the Politburo. If anybody has sovereignty. You get the point. It turns the entire. Our entire founding on its head. That’s why you never hear the Democrats or the media or the left speak, as I spoke in the first half hour of this hour. And they keep talking about rights through government liberty, through government equality and equity through government. An increasingly centralized government where the states have no say, where the people have no say through international organizations, where we literally convey our governing sovereignty to international organizations, where we have no individual sovereignty. I’ll be right back.