The liberal instinct to attack conservative voices on the radio rather than promote liberal alternatives mirrors the left’s approach to the economy in general. The president of the United States and his apologists insist on raising taxes for the rich as a top priority without explaining how those additional burdens on the most productive are supposed to help the poor and the working class in their struggles. Since Obama acceded to the nation’s highest office, the percentage of Americans in dire poverty has sharply increased, and the unemployment rate for blacks remains stuck at 14.1 percent – nearly twice that for whites (7.3 percent). Democrats make no real attempt to show that raising tax rates on the prosperous will change this situation for the better (especially since higher rates generally produce more tax avoidance, not more revenue), but they do suggest that punishing the rich might at least make the downtrodden feel less oppressed.

The logic seems to suggest that since we’re suffering at the moment then at least we can make you suffer too; we may not be able to help the poor but we can certainly hurt the rich.

This reflects the similarly resentful attitude toward powerful voices in radio. There, the left argues that since we can’t get our own messages out to millions of enthusiastic fans, then the least we can do is to stop Limbaugh and colleagues from imparting their dangerous messages to an immense and eager audience. At this point, the critics of the conservative talk medium seem far more concerned with shutting up right-wing voices than with raising left-wing voices as a constructive alternative.