I was shocked the other day to hear that Mark Levin had responded on the air to my prior post in which I offered helpful hints on how to tell true conservatives from pseudo-cons like Levin.

The reason I was shocked is that I found out that there are still people out there who consider Levin to be a conservative.

Who knew? I had always assumed that everyone knew this guy had long ago revealed himself as a liberty-hating left-winger, as you can see from his remarks about Ron Paul in the above video.

Check at the 1:30 mark where he tells the Ron Paul supporter "You're the ones who don't understand the Constitution. You're the ones who misread the Constitution."

Now this is odd behavior, even for a "neo" conservative like Levin.

Everyone who knows anything about the Texas Congressman knows that of all the members of both houses of Congress, Ron has the voting record that is most in tune with the Constitution.

Paul, who is a medical doctor, has acquired the nickname "Doctor No" precisely because he regularly records the sole vote against any of a number of measures that gain otherwise unanimous support. He does so because he is a strict believer in the limited powers of the federal government imposed by the Constitution and will not vote to expand those powers.

Levin, by comparison, has built his career on posing as a believer in a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Yet when confronted with the emergence in the 2008 presidential race of a true adherent to strict constitutional interpretation, his knee-jerk reaction was to denounce Paul.

Why is anybody's guess, but I imagine it was because the presence of Paul on the scene unmasked Levin and the rest of the neoconservatives as imposters.

I realize that most people are incapable of telling the difference between a true conservative like me and a poser like Levin.

Here's one hint: The minute I heard Paul was running for president I endorsed him. Any conservative would have. No presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater has represented such a faithful adherence to conservative philosophy in America.

So I got a good laugh when the radio Republicans like Levin and Sean Hannity flew into a rage at the mere mention of Ron's name.

That's the key to understanding why these guys are not real conservatives. Note in the above clip when Levin says "the founders were not libertarians."

What founders is he talking about? Certainly not John Adams, who said "The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."

Certainly not Sam Adams, who said, "Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum."

Certainly not Thomas Jefferson, who said ....

But why bother? I could provide a hundred quotes to the effect that the founders were, above all, libertarians. The Constitution they wrote consists of one restriction after another on the powers of the federal government and of the majority. And no one shows more fealty to that document than Ron Paul.

The big lie of the neocons is that American conservatism is no longer inherently libertarian. It was throughout history, until the neocons took over. As late as 1964, we had a libertarian running for president as a Republican, Barry Goldwater. That was also the year that the liberty-loving congressman Howard Buffett died, and was called an "ultra-conservative" in his obituary precisely because he held the same small-government views Paul now espouses.

Those views were not compatible with the neocon idea that the Beltway crowd should use American taxpayer dollars to extend the American welfare state to Iraq. That's why these guys hated Ron Paul.

But that's not the worst part of this clip. Note at the end where Levin calls Ron Paul "RuPaul."

Is he so sophomoric that he thinks this is witty? For this to be witty, there would have to be some underlying joke, i.e. if Ron Paul was a large African-American transvestite running for president, it might be funny to call him "RuPaul." But he's not. And it's not the least bit funny, any more than Levin's "laugh" lines about "The New York Slimes" and "The Washington Compost."

Levin owes Ron Paul an apology. He should be a man and admit he was wrong and Ron was right.

So if you like Levin, do him a favor. Call him up and tell him you want to hear him admit he was wrong about "RuPaul." Tell him that if he wants to claim to be a conservative, it's time for him to make a public apology to the single most prominent proponent of the Constitution in America, as Glenn Beck did. Here's an excerpt:

Beck would like the time machine to take him back eighteen months. Why? To go back to when he was calling Ron Paul a "crackpot on so many issues." Now, he laments, "Gosh. I'd like to reexamine all those issues."

Until Levin re-examines how wrong he was on Ron Paul, just tune him out and listen to Michael Savage on WOR in that time frame. Both these guys are essentially entertainers. And Mike is a lot more entertaining - and a lot less irritating.

ALSO NOTE: The Southern Avenger's take on Glenn Beck's apology to Ron Paul.

COMMENTS: I'm getting a bit tired of comments from people who claim not to understand the difference between true or "paleo" conservatives such as Ron Paul an the fake "neo" conservatives. Here is a site that gives a good rundown on real conservatism. Read some of the links and familiarize yourself with the nature of real vs. neo conservatism before commenting. This is mandatory reading. Do not comment until having done the assignment, boys and girls.