Rush-ing to Judgement

By now, enough ink has been spent on the “Rush Limbaugh outrage” to fill Lake Erie, and countless hours of TV and radio air-time has been devoted to slamming the King of Talk Radio. It seems like the Left is looking for their own “Betray Us” moment to harp on and score some easy political points. I’m not sure what disgusts me more, how much traction the lies of a far-left hack website like Media Matters have been given by supposedly reputable news sources, or the fact that elected officials have wasted tax-payer money drafting legislation to condemn him based on that lie. Both are full of absolute and unapologetic hubris. Neither is good for the country.

In full disclosure, I have to admit that I’m a Rush fan, a dittohead if you will. In fact, I owe much of my entrance into political thinking – particularly my conservative bent – to his radio show. It was during my college years that I was introduced to Rush Limbaugh. I used to wake up to the radio in order to get up-to-date weather reports before heading out. Since I was living off campus at the time and had to either walk or bike to classes, it was extremely important to know whether to expect rain or snow or the like, especially in the Boston area. One day, I was sick and decided to sleep in. I dozed in and out of sleep while the radio played until I heard the, now, all too familiar sounds of his opening song. I listened half-heartedly as I had through the previous few hours of programming until it dawned on me who exactly was speaking. This was Rush Limbaugh. Until then, I’d only heard about him, and then it was usually as the butt of some joke about racists or evil political figures (of whom I paid little attention). So to finally hear the man in his own words was intriguing. And as I listened intently, I realized that all of the things I’d heard about him were not only biased interpretations, but outright, vicious, defaming lies. I know because I agreed with him on just about everything he talked about that day. And as a black kid who grew up in a poor neighborhood, I was supposed to believe things diametrically opposed. Fancy that.

So with my very first experience of Rush being the break-down of so many lies told against him, it’s hard not to look skeptically on what certain media types have to say about him. And true to form, they lied again. The phony story is that Rush called everyone in the military who disagrees with his position on the war “phony soldiers.” But anyone with half a brain cell and the clarity of mind to actually read the transcript would see that Rush was discussing people who have faked their military records in order to create a soapbox from which they could preach their anti-war message. You know… actual phony soldiers like Jesse MacBeth, Josh Lansdale and Micah Wright among many others. One would think that so-called journalists would have the integrity to ask the hard follow-up questions and do their own research before letting the crazed, mouth-foaming denizens of partisan websites dictate their stories.

The second part of this is the worst, though, because we’re talking about actual First Amendment rights violations being passed around the floor of Congress like a blunt at an anti-war protest. So often, we hear people complaining about how their rights are being infringed when no such thing is going on. When you’re disruptive at a private event, the organizer has every right to ask you to leave. And if you don’t do so willingly, you’re libel to get tased, bro. If you actually take the time to read the document with which everyone is so ready to self-righteously wrap themselves, you’d get that the First Amendment begins with “Congress shall make no law…”

People don’t understand that the Constitution wasn’t meant to confer rights on the people, but to restrict the government. Our rights are neither wholly enshrined in that document, nor limited only to those that are there. As the supreme law of the land, it is a document dedicated to placing limits on the government. So here we are in 2007 watching as Senators like Harry Reid and Tom Harkin (himself a phony soldier) sponsor an action intended to use the force of government to intimidate a private citizen who operates his speech under a private entity. Even if the quote they so wrongly attribute to Rush were true, they have no standing on which to use government power to lean on people with whom they disagree.

The fact that these people were elected to serve in the Federal government while not understanding how our government is supposed to work is both sad and disturbing.