In celebration of Presidents' Day 2024, the Presidential Greatness Project asked a list of “presidential experts” to rank all past and present American presidents — and the final list reveals just how little the “experts” know.
525 respondents were invited to participate, and the result was a list of presidents ranked in order from best to worst.
Number one was Abraham Lincoln, which both Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere disagree with.
“He’s in the top five,” Glenn says, before Stu reveals that he would replace his spot at number one with George Washington, who was placed at number three by the “experts.”
“Washington was one that demonstrated how to use power,” Glenn explains, adding that he “was a reluctant president.”
Number two is Franklin Roosevelt, which Pat Gray vehemently disagrees with.
“FDR is one of the absolute worst. He’s bottom five, bottom five for sure,” Gray says, to which Glenn and Stu agree.
At number four is Theodore Roosevelt, which Glenn recognizes as “another progressive” who’s all about state power.
Thomas Jefferson came in at number five, which is understandable as he penned the Declaration of Independence — but is another progressive.
“I guarantee, some of these historians, if you looked at their Twitter feeds, would be advocating for the tearing down of their statues,” Stu says. “Look at their George Floyd feeds at the time, as they were encouraging Washington and Jefferson statues to come down.”
Barack Obama came in at number seven and Joe Biden at number 14.
“Biden being there is not all that shocking because of recency bias. Obama I’m expecting, and you know the end of this, of course, everyone probably knows by now, is Trump in last,” Stu says.
To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
G.K. Chesterton, a critic of the kaiser and the barbarism of Berlin, noted ahead of the First World War that the "true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
While, as the title suggests, hatred is thematically central to BlazeTV host Mark Levin's latest book, "The Democrat Party Hates America," the penetrating analysis contained therein is unmistakably motivated by love — the author's love for the United States, a nation that is now, more than at any other time, at risk of becoming something unrecognizable.
Unlike Chesterton's idealized soldier, however, Levin appears pitted against an adversary that attacks not from without but from within and from the top down.
In his new 400-page book, Levin details a multitude of transmogrifying trends, attitudes, and events spanning well over a century, all of which have the Democratic Party in common. What the implicated Democrats have themselves shared in common is a desire to abandon the "American experiment" and to try something altogether new.
They've done little to make this desire a secret, having gone so far as to campaign on the proposal.
For instance, in a moment of increasingly rare clarity ahead of the 2020 election, then-candidate Joe Biden suggested, "We won't just rebuild this nation — we'll transform it."
Obama gleefully indicated in 2008 that the U.S. was on the brink of fundamental transformation. His wife, now thought by some politicos to be a real contender in the 2024 presidential race, underscored, "We're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation."
Levin highlights also how Woodrow Wilson — whose leftist verve and dislike for the common man's common sense is explored at length in George Will's "The Conservative Sensibility" — regarded the Declaration of Independence as a non-binding "theoretical document" and was, like his Democratic successors, stricken with the misapprehension that he could best the Founders at nation-building.
Like the husband who would seek to radically transform his wife into somebody entirely different, Levin argues that those in the Democratic Party desperate for an American Year Zero don't love that which has been entrusted to their care.
While readers may not be surprised that America's refashionment is the goal toward which the Democratic Party strives, they might be troubled by Levin's insight that the party's champions are motivated by something far more cynical than just another case of Marxist utopianism.
The Democratic Party does not seek to acquire and maintain power in order to destroy America. It seeks to destroy America in order to acquire and maintain power.
"For them this is about power," according to Levin. "The party comes before country, and the revolution is top down."
With this coveted power, still only partially realized, those whom Levin terms "American Marxists" would "rule over the citizenry and remake not just society but mankind into the kind of image that these would-be masterminds prefer and demand."
This insight, bolstered by evidence throughout the book, is the key to making sense of the Democratic Party's lunatic policies and seeming inconsistencies.
Why, for instance, do Democrats castigate law-abiding gun owners while championing lawlessness in cities across the land? A defenseless population routinely subject to danger may one day accept the imposition of an omnipresent police state.
Why incentivize the breakdown of the nuclear family while bemoaning the consequences? Doing so creates malleable foot soldiers for Democrat surrogates in the education system, more dependents on the paternalistic state's welfare programs, and more clientele for the regime's lab-coat loyalists.
Why promote racial division and identitarian propaganda while urging unity? Greater balkanization diminishes the likelihood of resistive coalitions and justifies statist interventions disguised as anti-racist correctives.
Why push climate alarmism at the expense of the truth and the public's well-being? The proposed remedies to the abstract threat largely involve greater centralization of power, confiscations of wealth, increased regulations of citizens' behavior, and increased dependencies on Democrat-controlled institutions.
A critical part of remaining in control and gaining even more is neutralizing the regime's opposition.
"Unlike the Republican Party, the Democrat Party is more than a political party," writes Levin. "It is the state party. It seeks to monopolize the political system, the culture, government, and society. And while the Republican Party exists to try to win elections, the Democrat Party plays for keeps — that is, election defeats can never be allowed to interfere with the ideological trajectory the party imposes on the nation. And when the Democrat Party wins elections, it continues building upon the permanent parts of the government infrastructure it firmly controls."
"Thus, the Democrat Party single-handedly builds permanent centers of power," continues Levin, "including in the vast federal bureaucracy, subsidized nongovernment organizations, lifetime activist judges, tenured professors and teachers, party members in the media, etc. The Democrat Party uses the culture and politics to empower itself and its agenda. And Democrats have no intention of surrendering control of either."
Everything within the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state.
Levin notes the various ways in which the Democrat regime is working to cement its one-party status. These include de-legitimization of the Supreme Court, Electoral College, and other institutional impediments to government overreach; suppression of dissenting views online; further weaponization of federal law enforcement and the surveillance state; bastardization of language to frame the terms of debate in the regime's favor; dilution of the electorate by waves of leveraged foreign nationals, thereby ensuring opposition by historical outliers is neutralized; co-option of big business; and the criminalization of its opposition, as seen in the political persecution of former President Donald Trump and pro-life groups.
The party of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, slavery, the Confederacy, identitarian eugenics, critical race theory, child genital mutilation, and Japanese internment won't play fair because power, like the justice system increasingly under its control, is blind to its sins.
The exercise of raw power against enemies of the regime will become more and more brazen as the opposition is further whittled down, suggests Levin.
Rod Dreher, author of "Live Not by Lies," has suggested that America has become a soft totalitarian state in which coercion comes in the form of threats to comfort and status contra threats to life and limb.
Levin, noting parallels between Freedom House's past evaluations of authoritarianism in Russia and in China to the state of play in the U.S., alternatively suggests that hard totalitarianism, if not already here, is surely coming thanks to the American Marxists.
Although Levin does not ultimately provide a step-by-step guide on how the Democrats' hard-totalizing efforts might be stopped, he indicates that it is his "deepest hope that this book, like a Thomas Paine pamphlet to the early colonist, will help alert our fellow citizens to the existential threat and rally them peacefully to the cause before darkness descends on the republic," adding that "every legal, legitimate, and appropriate tool and method must be employed in the short and long run to shatter the Democrat Party and its anti-American 'fundamental transformation' agenda."
True soldiers abound, as many appear to still love the United States. Time will tell if they will heed Levin's warning and ensure the party of radical transformation fails in its ultimate quest.
Mark Levin: The Democrat Party must be 'obliterated'youtu.be
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The best way to try to prevent tyranny is to divide the power.
That’s why judicial, legislative, and executive each have their own branches within the United States government.
And as Mark Levin says, “That’s why the delineation of the authority as best as they could under each one of those branches is spelled out in the most fabulous governing document in the history of man: the United States Constitution.”
“Everything I just told you was rejected by the Democrat Party,” Levin says.
“If you’re trying to put together an autocratic centralized regime, you’ve got to get around the Constitution. And today, you’ve got to get around the Constitution if you want to implement the Marxist agenda,” he adds.
According to Levin, Joe Biden himself repeats Marxist phrases.
“Joe Biden is a very stupid and sick man, but he knows how to repeat phrases. When he says, ‘Bottom up and middle out,’ what he’s trying to say is ‘I want you to follow bottom up and middle out, but we’re not really about bottom up and middle out,’” Levin explains.
Marx did not use the same phrasing, but he did talk about the same thing.
“Marx talked about bottom up and middle out without using those phrases. It was called the proletariat that was going to overthrow the management and executive class, as he would call it,” Levin adds.
When you look at the Democrat Party through the same lens as dictators and philosophers past, it all starts to make sense.
“They’re repulsive, they’re unconscionable,” Levin says. “The Democrat Party projects onto the Republican Party everything it’s done to this country. From racism to anti-Semitism to economic dislocation and on and on and on.”
Levin believes the only thing standing in the way of their all-out takeover is the Constitution.
“The Democrat Party hates the country. It’s trying to destroy our constitutional system,” he says. “It’s all about power.”
To enjoy more of "the Great One" — Mark Levin as you've never seen him before — subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
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