Levin Cites Ben Franklin to Argue GOP Needs to Stay Focused on Biden Admin, the 'Enemy of the Republic'
Fox News host Mark Levin exhorted House Republicans to keep their eyes on the prize of stopping the tyrannical and destructive acts of the Biden administration.
His remarks on his program “Life, Liberty & Levin” on Sunday came at the end of a week-long fight over who would be the next speaker of the House of Representatives.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California ultimately won the gavel on the 15th ballot by a narrow margin — 216-212 — early Saturday morning, with six Republicans voting “present.” Levin chastised those six Republicans for voting that way “despite the fact that, I think, all the rules that they wanted … they got.”
Some of the concessions the Freedom Caucus members won included McCarthy agreeing to floor votes on a balanced budget amendment, term limits, a border security plan and an end to all remaining COVID mandates, the New York Post reported.
Further, bills offered must be single-subject, instead of massive omnibus spending bills like the $1.7 trillion one passed last month, and members must be given a 72-hour window to read them.
The now-speaker also agreed to a select committee to investigate the political weaponization of the FBI. Finally, a single member will be permitted to submit a “motion to vacate,” calling for a vote to remove the speaker.
Levin argued, “If we don’t have virtuous members of the House, the rules don’t matter.”
“Meanwhile, the enemy of this republic, the Biden administration, the Democrats, our Stasi — the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security — they’re chugging along,” he said.
The talk show host and best-selling author read some portions of Benjamin Franklin’s closing remarks at the Constitutional Convention on Sept. 17, 1787, to highlight the importance of the GOP lawmakers working together to thwart the Democrats’ liberty-stealing agenda.
Franklin was 81 at the time and in ill health, so he asked fellow Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson to read his speech, Levin noted.
“I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present, but sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise,” Franklin wrote.
“It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and to pay more respect to the judgment of others,” the elder statesman added. Franklin pointed out that it is common for people to think they are “in possession of all truth” and judge others who differ from them clearly in error.
On the whole, he believed the Constitution established a form of government that may be a “blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years.”
Franklin predicted it would only end in despotism “when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”
He asked if “a perfect production” can be expected given the different backgrounds, passions, prejudices, local interests and selfish views of those involved.
“It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does,” Franklin said. “Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure that it is not the best.”
He encouraged those who had differences over the final product to turn their “thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it well administered.”
Franklin concluded, “On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
In like manner, Levin exhorted GOP House members to focus on administering well the trust they have been given by the American people.
“I just want to warn the Republicans in the House: If your majority deteriorates into personal attacks, into getting nowhere, into getting into the weeds about this rule or that rule or another rule,” it will be of no account, he argued.
Levin pointed to the major issues that must be addressed, including the border crisis, fentanyl deaths, the FBI’s targeting of pro-life supporters, and the DOJ “trying to indict a former president of the United States.”
The Biden administration and the Democrats are “destroying our economic system, and they’re destroying our constitutional system,” he said.
“You can all declare victory from what took place last week. God bless you,” Levin acknowledged. “But if you don’t unite to fight tyranny, the people will rise up against you.”
A version of this article originally appeared on Patriot Project.
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