Why Defend Rush?

Dr. Zero over at HA, great piece on the hit job inflicted on Limbaugh by race-baiters, charlatans and hacks. He makes several excellent points, one that resonates with me: unfair is unfair, whether it's unfair to a wealthy man, or a poor man.

I'm swiping a long paragraph, but go read it.

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.

Something that cuts to the core of most Americans is our strong sense of fairness. We conservatives suffer a lot at times because of it, our unwillingness to dive down into the truly nasty and vicious tactics used by our opponents. We have a strong sense of the rightness of fair play. It's the kind of thing that makes us shrug when a player on our team commits an obvious foul on the field, we man up and say "yeah, he was holding", or "no, his knee was down". We just do that because we know in our hearts it's right.

We play by the rules.

I don't think that's a bad thing at all, I rather think it's a value that's worth holding and expressing, even when it makes us willing to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Our willingness to do that makes us better people.

It wasn't just an attack on Rush. It was an attack on me, and most of you. I agree with Dr. Zero, it's worth defending.

posted by Dave In Texas at 06:18 PM

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