In 2009, I was working part time in talk radio in Charleston, South Carolina as an on-air personality. I was also the token conservative columnist for the local, liberal free weekly paper. I wasn’t making a lot of money, but I was working in the field I was most interested in at the time. Paying my dues.

This is when I was personally targeted by nationally syndicated talk show host Mark Levin.

This might sound bizarre. It was. Allow me to explain.

In my radio “career” during this time, my antiwar libertarianism was not shared by many of my fellow South Carolinians, but in a post-Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign environment (I quickly became the Ron Paul guy™ at the station), and along with a rising Tea Party movement that defined the right for a few years back then, I fit in well enough for it to work. I spoke at Tea Party events. We had Ron Paul on the air during his presidential campaign.

At the time, this also meant constantly, and necessarily, chipping away at the neocon myths and lies that had so badly damaged the Republican party and twisted so many conservative minds during the Bush-Cheney era.

Mark Levin was one of the major national conservative talk hosts my station carried. Sean Hannity was another. I was primarily a part of the local morning program, but also a frequent fill-in for the afternoon drive time host, where I would often point out when Levin or Hannity would say things on their programs that didn’t really make sense. Think “If we don’t fight them over there we’ll have to fight them over here!” type rhetoric. I called it out as neoconservative propaganda. Obviously, neither man heard what I said on local Charleston radio, so it was never an issue other than arguing with callers, which was the point: debate and discussion.

At a national level, I had been lucky to begin contributing columns at The American Conservative and also the website Taki’s Magazine, published by Taki Theodoracopulos. Also in 2009, Levin published his book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, which became his latest New York Times bestseller.

I reviewed the book for Taki’s. Titled “The Tyranny of Mark Levin’s Liberty,” I gave the book some deserved compliments up front, noting that the radio host really did understand some of the nuances and facets of American conservative history.

But I had to call out the preposterous parts, of which there were many. Obviously he defended the wisdom and necessity of Dubya’s Iraq War, as most neocons did and still do. But also, strangely, he would also use the word “Statist” as a pejorative for liberals or civil libertarians who might have a problem with some of the U.S. Global War on Terror tactics.

For example, criticizing anyone who dared oppose the PATRIOT Act, Levin wrote, “The Statist has also opposed the interception of enemy communications, such as email and cell-phone contacts, without approval from a court. But his position is contrary to all legal precedent, historical practice and highly impractical, given the speed by which such communications occur.” On waterboarding Levin wrote, “The Statist has succeeded in characterizing something as torture that is not torture, for the purpose of banning its judicious use.”

You get the picture. Oppose the PATRIOT Act? You are an enemy of his bizarro version of “liberty” and therefore a “Statist.” Oppose waterboarding? “Statist” (always capitalized). You oppose the Iraq War? Well you must be the biggest “Statist” of all.

This was obviously pure neocon drivel, especially from a 2025 perspective. But his propaganda was an integral part of the madness that defined the stilted pro-war, anti-liberty neoconservatism of the George W. Bush era.

So I called this out. In a review that anyone could read online.

That’s when I got called out by Mark Levin.

There are two sides to every story, but I can only recall what happened to me. My program director asked to speak with me. He told me Levin had contacted the head of our parent company, angrily, who in turn called him. Levin apparently knew where I worked, within the same company he did.

My program director told me Levin wanted me fired. My boss did not want to do this because I had been a team player, doing anything asked of me; on-air, producing, I even did traffic.

I worked in a second rate or even smaller radio market, part-time. Now it appeared a wealthy, big time nationwide political pundit wanted my head. The few folks involved at my station, the morning host and others, seemed bewildered that someone at Levin’s level would be going after someone at mine. What I had actually criticized Leven about wasn’t even part of the discussion. It was the bullying that they couldn’t believe.

There was eventually a compromise; what parties were involved, I have no idea. I could keep my job so long as I didn’t talk about Mark Levin on the air anymore. I agreed. I needed, and liked, my job. I was lucky I had a program director who was willing to stick his neck out to his corporate bosses to show me, a virtual nobody, some grace.

In the years since, I have still detested Levin’s religious neoconservatism, but also have thought about how small he is. The insecurity. The sheer pettiness. Particularly at his level in this business.

Was my episode when the perpetual warmongers began to understand, even a decade-and-a-half-ago, that their worldview was finally crumbling and any chinks in their mythology, however small, must be rejected outright?

I don’t know. I do know that in 2025, Mark Levin is still absolutely hell-bent on preaching the Bush-Cheney neocon gospel, despite major MAGA figures on the right mocking him for it, and he’s powerless to shut them down.

In 2009? Not so much.