Neocon Deluxe, David Frum, Damns Rush

Conservatism,libertarianism,Neoconservatism,Political Philosophy,Republicans,The State,War

            

Neoconservative David Frum has really done it this time. Recall, for disavowing the war in Iraq, and being critical of the amorphous, ever-morphing War on Terror, he went after paleos, daring to call the likes of Pat Buchanan unpatriotic. (I responded on LewRockwell.com: “FRUM’S FLIMFLAM.”)

Now Frum is gunning for Rush Limbaugh in the most poisonous manner. As you know, I’m no ditto head. I’m beholden to nobody and nothing but the truth, as I call it (and I’ve called it quite well, I might add).

However, I’d defend Limbaugh over and above a neoconservative of the deepest dye such as Frum, who has likened Rush to Jesse Jackson:

“Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s,” writes Frum, a former Bush speech writer who stabbed his own boss, George Bush, in the back.

The encomiums Frum offers to Obama have certainly landed him many a favorable interview in mainstream media—don’t those unwatchful dogs love centrists, even when the latter have been instrumental in agitating for unjust wars. (Ones where young people not their own fight and die.)

Here’s Frum juxtaposing Obama to Limbaugh (I’ll tell you now-now why this comparison is so singularly statist):

“On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.”

And Rush:

“And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.”

[SNIP]
What left-liberal pabulum. The focus on Rush’s exterior and the “self-indulgence” dismissal is repulsive. The free market, for the most, is how Limbaugh has earned the dough with which he feeds his alleged insatiable needs. I grant you that the man is excessively enmeshed with political power, but, overall, it’s fair to say that Limbaugh did not capture the market share of ditto heads he enjoys by political force.

Obama, on the other hand, has never earned an honest dime in his life. The president may be lean, fit and ascetic, but he has done so on the backs of taxpayers; he’s the very definition of a PARASITE of the political class.

For the most, and as much as I disdain his Bush alliance, Limbaugh has made his living via the economic means. The political class and its sycophants—senators, congressmen, presidents, their speechwriters, lawyers, and lobbyists—they utilize the political means to earn their keep. The first relies on voluntary associations and is free of coercion; the last is coercive and involuntary.

As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard reminded, these “are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth”—the economic means is honest and productive, the political means is dishonest and predatory…but oh so very effective.

The fact that Frum can’t tell the two apart tells us all we need to know about David. In this particular tiff, better to cheer Rush Limbaugh than slip between the sheets with Frum and his ilk. These effetes also campaigned against Sarah Palin because they look down on her. (And perhaps because their wives are such gossips.)

An excellent start for movement conservatives in reclaiming conservatism, the Republican Party, and exciting the base, would be to distance themselves from neoconservatives, starting with David Frum.

Let me preempt: Too many libertarians sit on the fence, holier than thou, refusing to engage the issues of the day, because oh-so superior. I disagree with such aloofness. Although I come from a different ideological solitude than Frum/Rush, I am convinced of the need to remain engaged, so as to keep proving that mine is the better perspective. This cannot be achieved without getting involved in the day’s rough-and-tumble.

3 thoughts on “Neocon Deluxe, David Frum, Damns Rush

  1. EN

    Centrists are evil.

    “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit” Ayn Rand

    And this from Ed Anger.
    http://weeklyworldnews.com/opinion/ed-anger/6709/ed-anger-says-gop-gang-of-pansies/
    “Every since their big get-together last week, everybody’s fighting about “the future of conservatives.” Namby pamby Beltway big shots tell us to dump Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, and get more classy and “intellectual” like them!

    Heck, some of these “conservatives” even voted for Teleprompter Jesus himself!

    Don’t listen to these stuck up sons of Benedict Arnold. Has Ross Douthat or David Brooks ever won a chili cook-off or fired a few rounds off a .45? David Frum probably can’t even change a tire without his Filipino nanny helping out.”

  2. Gunner Sykes

    We need to send the neocons back to the Democratic Party from whence they came, find a true conservative to unite behind, and raise some serious hell.

    Oh, and they can take Jamie Kirchick and the parlor libertarians with them.

    I much prefer Paul, but Palin will do.

    David Frum and his ilk make my skin crawl.

  3. Myron Pauli

    ( 1 ) I cannot understand how some shmoozer with a telepromter yabbering about “change and hope” is per se “more intelligent” than Cheerleader Palin. Frum, Brooks, Parker, and the other “intellectual snobs” on the right fall for style over substance. //
    ( 2 ) If Limbaugh’s obesity makes him stupid, does Ann Coulter’s anorexia make her wise beyond belief? // ( 3 ) A radio bloviator such as Limbaugh owes it to his sponsors to be entertaining and provocative – not to be “nuanced” and sound like a sonorous professor at a professional society. I fail to see why one should either damn him nor praise him on account of the nature of talk radio. If Limbaugh’s own rants (such as apologizing for Bush statism while condemning Obama statism) are philosophically inconsistent, that is fair game. His STYLE (as Ilana points out) is dictated by the inherent nature of talk radio and the need to keep the dittoheads entertained.

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