print“The title of this column comes not from Rush Limbaugh’s unfortunate addiction to prescription drugs, but from the eponymous ‘Mr. Big’ hit. (They don’t make musicians like Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan any longer, but I digress.) Nevertheless it alludes to another of Rush’s missed opportunities: Speaking against a war into which he was involuntarily drafted and almost destroyed.”
“Rush rightly denounced the State’s failed war on poverty. It failed not because fighting poverty is not a noble cause, but because, given the perverse incentives it entrenches, government is incapable of winning such a war. The same economic and bureaucratic perversions make another of the State’s stalemated wars equally unwinnable and ruinous: the War on Drugs.”
“Lysander Spooner, the great, American 19th-century theorist of liberty, defined vices as those acts ‘by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which a man harms the person or property of another.’ A conservative worth his salt should know the difference; and should know that government has no business treating vices as crimes.”
“If for harming himself a man forfeits his freedom, then he is not free at all. …”
The excerpt is from my new WND column, “Addicted To That Rush.” It brings together, somehow, the Steele-Limbaugh spat, the Bush/Barack death wish for America, the progressive rock group “Mr. Big,” and much more.
Update I (March 6): Sigh. Over at The View From The Right, Larry Auster and readers discuss (rather obsessively) the one-word change I made in quoting Auster in “Addicted To That Rush.”
Auster had written:
“…their criticisms of Obama will have the stink of rank partisanship.”
I changed that to:
“…their criticisms of Obama will have the [odor] of rank partisanship.”
Let me indulge Auster’s readers: First, the change was introduced quite appropriately, encased thus []. Next, there was no deep deception, just an editorial choice. The reader Leonard D. got the issue of redundancy right, writing:
“My guess as to what Mercer did not like about ‘the stink of rank partisanship’ is that it is redundant, ‘rank’ being almost synonymous with “stinky.”
However, and not withstanding Leonard D.’s valid point, I’d have expected traditionalists to get that “stink” is rather crass and certainly very earthy. A good word, no doubt, but not the most refined one when used by a woman. Again: an honest word, for sure, but I don’t like “stink” because of its connotations (bodily fluids, etc., say no more).
Traditionalists, generally hip to the vulgarization of society, should have been hip to this preference. I simply chose a daintier, less vulgar word.
There is a time and a place for everything, and I have indeed used strong language to describe elected officials on the blog (but not in columns).
Update II: The spouse, also the best guitarist I know, tells me that Paul Gilbert located to Japan, where there is a vast audience for maestros of guitar and progressive rock. It figures: the Japanese also have aggregate higher IQs than the local Coldplay fans, to whom complexity and competence are cuss words.
Great article Ilana!! The only truly Free nation left in the World, has truly become the Late Great America. So where do we go now?
“Desperate times call for desperate distractions.”
Great call, Ilana. And better yet if the distraction can be a living Straw Man to project evil upon, so they can all display their heroism in ganging up to destroy it.
But this strategy might backfire on them. For all his philosophic inconsistency, Rush has a lot of practice at shooting fish in a barrel (skewering liberals). It doesn’t take much talent, and the liberal philosophy is so much more perverted than his own that they are bound to lose any arguments on substance. The best they can do is to try to win the war with insults, a chancy strategy at best. They might end up making him into what they accuse him of — the de facto leader of the Republican party, increasing his prestige and gaining him listeners in the attempt.
I wonder at the idiocy of seizing upon the opportunity to twist his wish for socialism to fail into a wish that “The President” will fail, as if that’s just un-American. That, too will backfire. It only serves to draw attention to the fact that the agenda appears to be aimed at delivering us into communism, and to get the rabble to consider what that might really mean to them personally as they lose their jobs, then their homes, and finally the last traces of their liberty.
How much any of this matters is questionable. The Republican party chose to ignore the new members and considerable strength brought in by the Ron Paul campaign. Steele is an intellectual weakling, even if he is immune to the usual kind of attack by virtue of his race. Republicans in Congress are all in favor of protecting rights and cutting spending, now that they are guaranteed to fail (we know what they did when they had the power).
The government/party/media circus makes up a group that, whatever their squabbles among factions, is united by a single underlying trait that binds them and rejects outsiders — pragmatism. I don’t expect intellectual honesty out of any of them.
Modern liberal: Use government to force one’s pet ideas down everyone else’s throat.
Modern Conservative: Use government to force one’s pet ideas down everyone else’s throat.
I made a point of avoiding talk radio like rabies a few years ago, because I could not stand to hear their ranting for the American invasion of Iraq. However, I fell off the wagon recently, in the midst of the short-lived voter opposition to the Bush Bankster Bailout.
Tuning in for a few minutes to Sean Hannity, what I heard turned my stomach (as usual). Mr. Hannity was meowing about the alleged necessity for the bailout that the “emergency” imposed on President Bush, who in normal circumstances would never ever resort to such measures.
It is abhorently fascinating to listen to Hannity and his ilk (read: Republicans) preach and thunder against Obama’s big government spending and “socialism”. Their moral outrage is boundless; their defense of free enterprise is spirited and unapologetic; their worries about the future under Obama are profound.
To observe that Radio Republicans exhibit a blatent double standard is whitewashed understatement. What we are witnessing is cognitive disintegration.
Great column. Unless Republicans come to terms with the evil Jorge then it’s not worth seeing them take office again. “Conservative” commentators like Davids Frum and Brookes are were licking their lips at the opportunity to socialize our health care system. I reject out of hand the notion that we are capitalist in any sense of the word. Maybe BO is doing the country a favor by destroying the rotting Socialist system that Republicans have helped create?
While the power-hungry Republicans may eventually get back “in power” following inevitable Democratic screw-ups, they will only increase government more themselves, albeit with some rightwing slant and nominal “free enterprise rhetoric” thrown in. Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulters … are philosophical pygmies who champion McCains, Bushes, Nixons (I go back a long way) — all big government Republicans. Most of the clean-cut Kendolls I saw at CPAC were “Addicted to the Rush” with POWER as the ultimate Aphrodisiac. You will never see Republicans eliminating anything significant of Obama’s socialism just as you will never see Democrats eliminating anything significant of Bush’s Warfare-state. However, the REAL purpose of government to these statists is not to secure our rights (its proper purpose) nor even to uplift the poor (its ostensible purpose) but to give from every free American back to every DEPENDENT American via themselves as middlemen – making ALL of us dependents of Uncle Sam (and I mean ALL – bankers, academics, farmers, physicians, children, elderly…). To John Danforth: Ron Paul and the Founders do not represent considerable numbers – their strength, sadly, is mainly one of IDEAS – not one of popularity. Limbaugh just deals out raw meat to the yahoos.
Ilana,
As a woman, I heartily appreciate your word choice. Good call!
Hi Ilana
Fabulous article.
This is exactly what’s wrong with these kool-aid drinking Republican blowhards – all of ’em – Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham, Coulter, Levin, etc. They just can’t get passed GWB. They’re stuck on stoopid. Literally.
Just look at who they picked in their CPAC straw poll to lead them out of the wilderness – Mitt Romney. See what I mean? Stuck on stoopid. They’re hopeless.
Who did Hannity have on his show last night? Ann Coulter, Bobby Jindall and Dr. Phil.
Does is get any more pathetic than that?
Ilana,
Reading your column, “Addicted to That Rush,” I opine that the thing we are seeing is that as long as there are parties, Republican, Democrat or whatever, there will be partisans, and those partisans will go along with whatever their party is doing, while condemning the other party for doing the same things.
It has been that way since Whigs and Federalists and it will probably remain that way as long as there are two or more parties. I don’t know the answer to our problems, but I know that adding another party will not be the answer. Eliminating the two party system would be good, but only if there were no parties at all. I would rather let each man running for whatever position he is running for, on his individual merit, and not by the sponsorship of a conglomorate like the RNC or DNC. It is a shame that most Americans align themselves with a political party and let that alignment influence their thinking when it comes to who they will choose as their next polital leaders.
I won’t live long enough to see such changes, but hopefully, they will come. If not, we are doomed to elect continually, those less qualified to operate the government the way the founders designed it to be operated.
I really like your columns, keep up the good work.
Darrel Mulloy
Lakeview, OR
Ms. Mercer,
I couldn’t agree more with you. The idea that Mr. Bush was good for our country and that most self proclaimed conservatives, who tout their love for the constitution, cannot be taken seriously until they see as you do. Thank you for shining a light on the truth here.
Ms. Mercer: Great points! Your decision to edit the quotation showed discretion and a welcome contrast to a great deal of the sewage (e.g., see hip-hop lyrics) routinely sprayed on us by our popular culture!
Hi Ilana. Another well-written, thought-provoking column. I’ve often thought of attempting to call Rush and inform him that if our conservative “leaders”, such as he, were, in fact, conservative, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess as deeply as we find ourselves today. Limbaugh, Mitt Romney-loving Ann Coulter, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, etc.; they aren’t true conservatives. Do you want to know who is a genuine conservative? Alan Keyes, and he’s practically ignored by so-called conservatives nationwide. That’s one big reason why true conservativism is getting its rear end kicked lately. Conservatives aren’t conservative!
I will respectfully disagree with Scott Evans in that when 95% of “conservatives” (e.g. Romney-Bushites..) cheer the welfare-warfare state, that becomes (by consensus) what “true conservatism” is. Frankly, if there were a group that believed in limited government, negative rights, and free enterprise and called themselves “communists” or “kangaroos” – I’d gladly take up the name. Finding a “conservative” who would cut government is like finding a member of Hamas who wants to live in peace with Israel or finding a future Nobel-prize physicist in your local ghetto high school. Possible in theory but nearly impossible in reality.
Ron Paul gets it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YwPAlcf11M&eurl=http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/03/07/whos-afraid-of-rush-limbaugh-not-ron-paul/