The New Leviathan’s Suffocating Grasp

By William A. Schambra October 16, 2012

The following article was originally published in Philanthropy magazine. 

 “Read this and be afraid,”  ......The New Leviathan, a book just published by prominent conservative writer David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin. This new leviathan, the authors note, is a sprawling, intimidating “network of billion-dollar tax-exempt foundations and advocacy think tanks that work in concert with government unions and grassroots radical groups to make up the organizational core of the political left.”…..As Horowitz and Laksin point out, the field is in fact dominated by a massive collection of liberal foundations, deploying their resources to cultivate skepticism about the justice of America’s economic and political institutions, aiming to bring ever broader swaths of our public life under government supervision and control….. On environmental questions, the ideological imbalance is even more pronounced…..the authors list no fewer than 552 groups promoting greater government control over the environment with annual revenue of $3.56 billion, compared to a mere 32 groups emphasizing private property and free-market solutions to environmental problems bringing in $96 million per year—an imbalance of over 37 to 1 in favor of the left. In both of these areas, the left’s resource advantage is compounded many times over when government funding is added to the mix, which flows disproportionately to progressive groups even under conservative presidential administrations.  To Read More…….

The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing Money-Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America’s Future
by David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin
Random House, 2012
320 pp., $27