Defending the invincible

Almost every column written in defense of Rush Limbaugh over the last few days, following the vicious campaign to slander him as a racist, has included a statement along the lines of “Rush is rich, powerful, intelligent, and articulate, so he can take care of himself, and he’ll be just fine.” I don’t mean to disparage the authors of these sentiments, but I must disagree. I know the most popular conservative broadcaster in America doesn’t need some anonymous guest-author on a blog to defend him, but I’m going to do it anyway, without the slightest reservation due to his wealth and power.

Much strife and misery has been visited on this country by the idea that the rights and prerogatives of the rich and successful are diminished by their fortunes… that we should feel no remorse about seizing their property, or insulting their honor, because they’ll still be comfortably rich at the end of the day. We have become much too relaxed about laughing off vile slander, because the target can nurse his wounded soul from the plush accommodations of a West Palm Beach mansion. Honor is as valuable to the millionaire as to the pauper.

I’ll probably never be part of a consortium that purchases a football team, but I understand what it means to watch a dream bleed to death. My hopes and ambitions may be smaller than Rush Limbaugh’s, but they have exactly the same value to me. Whether those dreams are carved from pixels, paper, or platinum, they are equally priceless. It requires only a drop of the moral imagination utterly lacking in the people who slandered Limbaugh to guess what it feels like, when a man whose life revolves around words and ideas sees his dreams boiled away by words he didn’t speak, and ideas he has never held.

The events of the past week were about more than simply thwarting Limbaugh’s desire to buy into a football team. There was the naked greed of parasites like Al Sharpton, desperate to maintain his relevance in a world that has wisely stripped him of the power to destroy a man’s life with a phony rape allegation, or launch murderous riots. There was the blind personal hatred of Limbaugh, by people who long ago tired of watching him rewrite their plans for the part of America that refuses to submit to them. And, of course, this was the latest offensive in a bitter war against the ideas that Limbaugh has long served, as their most cheerful and effective defender. Limbaugh’s enemies in that war are angry because they’re frightened. They’re frightened because all of their estimates and projections said they should have been able to claim victory by now.

Backed up against the wall, and forced to admit the most damaging quotes used against Limbaugh were forgeries, his accusers are left stammering that he’s simply too “divisive” to be involved with ownership of an NFL team. What a bleak example of the totalitarian mindset! If you disagree with the approved ideas distributed by the collective, you’re “divisive” and unfit for membership in polite society. I suppose Limbaugh is saturated with divisiveness particles, whose half-life will extend for decades, but the warning to others is clear: rid yourselves of those “divisive” ideas and get with the program.

Perhaps the President could direct one of his many czars to prepare a list of certified “divisive” positions, and which aspects of society are closed to offenders. It would save people like David Checketts, the investor seeking to purchase the Rams, the time he wasted inviting Limbaugh to join his consortium. Imagine how much more convenient it would have been for Checketts, if he could have pulled up a handy whitehouse.gov web page and learned Rush was too divisive to be minority owner of a football team! The Homeland Security spectrum of terrorist alert levels could be used to measure divisiveness ratings. I’d be willing to give them an email address, so the system could send me a warning message when I approach Level Orange. What do you suppose the divisiveness rating for someone like Jeremiah Wright would be? He built a tidy personal fortune from his Ministry of Hate – would he be allowed to buy a stake in an NFL team?

Only the most gullible dupes, and people who rely on CNN for “news”, seriously think Rush Limbaugh is a racist. The dishonesty and cynicism behind dimwitted assertions that he wanted to buy an NFL team to role-play the life of a plantation owner is breathtaking. His accusers don’t really think he harbors some elusive racist demon, which he suppresses just long enough to become friends with Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, and Tony Dungy. The people who read this crap should be at least as angry over the insult to their intelligence as Limbaugh is about the insult to his honor. This kind of weapons-grade stupidity is one of the things America can no longer afford.

Limbaugh’s accusers want him burned at the stake for the crime of effective conservatism, not the racism they were so eager to lie about last week. The American public should think long and hard about which side of this ideological struggle should be on trial. Rush Limbaugh’s ideas did not produce a titanic deficit, double-digit unemployment, and global adversaries who can barely stop laughing at our President long enough to pretend they respect him. His ideas did not put disciples of Saul Alinsky, Chairman Mao, and Alex Jones in positions of power. His words are not deployed to conceal hundreds of billions in stolen “stimulus” money, thousand-page Mad Lib bills riddled with blank paragraphs, and massive offenses against individual liberty. His EIB Network endorses $1500 Sleep Number beds, not “saved or created” jobs costing half a million bucks apiece. Unlike the “Hope and Change” Administration, he doesn’t spend his three hours on the radio each weekday listing all the things you will no longer be allowed to do. He is the champion of ideas so powerful that his enemies fear the merest taste of them.

Rush Limbaugh has raised his voice in defense of freedom countless times over the years. I’m happy to exercise my freedom to raise my voice in defense of him. I invite you to do the same. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t “need” it. He deserves it. All of us do. There is little we can do to reverse the injustice of the St. Louis Rams affair, but we can make it up to Rush by giving him the chance to deliver a hell of a show on the day after Election Day, next year. If CNN is foolish enough to continue employing cretins like Rick Sanchez by then, all of them should be turning in a very enjoyable performance on that day, as well.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

Blowback