The Real Problem

Rush has said hateful and ignorant things for many years. That his latest rants are earning headlines surely makes him smile.

But it really isn't Rush that is the problem here. He often says things members of his audience think and ardently believe, but lack the nerve or the guts to utter in public.

They declare it entertainment, smile and deny their bigotry, sexism, racism, and intolerance. It is his audience that are the enablers. Their acceptance of his positions perhaps validates the attitudes they do not share in mixed company.

No boycott of sponsors will have much impact because those who would gladly boycott do not listen to his nonsense or buy many of the products advertised on his show or even on the stations that give him airtime.

There are people who smile about each snide attack, laugh at all the sophomoric parodies, and nod their heads as anyone in disagreement is ideologically labeled. They have no need for fact checkers, because the facts cannot get in the way of their narrow beliefs.

The enablers though, have wives, daughters and girlfriends. Presumably they enjoy their relationships with the women in their lives. Many of those women have likely used birth control. Some, likely find the nasty attacks on women and their social independence distasteful and mean spirited.

It is these women who could have influence on Limbaugh's overwhelmingly male audience.  Will they sit quietly as this man makes statements that make most gangster rappers sound tame?   Even on the right, there must be limits.

Then, of course, there are the declared social conservatives. Will they speak out in defense of womanhood, or continue to ignore the nastiness aimed at their sisters, daughters, and divorced or widowed mothers?

Women have ways of making their displeasure known. Politicians could feel the heat at the polls, but Rush's mean and smiling minions may find it kind of chilly at home.  

Why Hate the Government?

Society needs its institutions. There are families,churches,  tribes, towns, cities, states, countries and more. None of those institutions are perfect. People who believe in them work to make them better.

Dissatisfaction with an institution does does not mean it cannot be improved, but few improvements come overnight. You push, prod, inch and drag what is good about it toward something better.  That's one of the reasons the United States has continued to evolve over more than 200 years.

People have looked at where the nation was in their times and worked to make it better. Some of the things that government has done include:

1) Identifying and promoting better farming practices so that the land, crops and livestock we depend upon to feed our families will be able to do the same for future generations. That solved the erosion problems that devastated farm families in the 1920s and 1930s. It also led to the banning of D-D-T and other chemicals that nearly killed off dozens of species in the interests of increasing yields.

2) Beating diseases like smallpox, yellow fever and polio. While private pharmaceutical companies will do some research, coming up with ways to manage, prevent or cure the most crippling diseases has always taken a combination of public institutional research, private sector investment and a good dose of government cash to produce results.

3) Providing basic minimum standards of education critical to the nation's defense, economic competitiveness, and basic cultural identification of what it means to be an American.  While local and state control may be important, sharing concepts on a national scale does play a tremendous role in making sure that people have some basic similarities when they need to function as a unit representing America.

4) Tying the country together so that people from coast to coast, and even in flyover country have access to the same goods, the same technology, and the same services. If you go to certain parts of the eastern United States, you will still find remnants of private  pikes, canals and railways that served portions of a state or region, but withered  because they did not connect to merchants to markets they needed to serve.

5)  Building codes and other safety safety and health standards. If the free market was always the best option, we would still be using leaded gasoline in our vehicles and asbestos in our floor coverings and break linings and lead paint in our homes. The government, through Congress, exercising the will of the people, has brought us many standards that have helped to create a standard of living unrivaled in much of the world.

6) If people were always fair and honest, we would not need to be concerned about human rights. But people have a weakness for acting in their own individual self interests. When people at the local or state level pass ordinances, adopt policies or enact laws that result in institutional unfairness,  government has an obligation to intervene. This is the United States of America so "if you don't like it, move" is just not an option.

So, when people go on the stump and start talking about how government has abandoned or is ignoring the people, they are pandering. In most cases, they do not suggest ways of making government better. Instead they harken to a past time when government was not doing its best by all of its people.

Talk of restoring the nation to its freedoms does not mean the same thing to all people. If you are disabled, elderly, female, an ethnic or racial minority or live outside of the social norm, it could mean a return to exclusions, restrictions or persecutions.

All of these things are part of America's past, yet even now, there are movements to eliminate or minimize their significance in the text books used in the nation's public schools. There are no perfect institutions, like families, countries do not always treat all of their children the same. And like people, acknowledging flaws and working to get better makes any institution stronger.

Don't hate the government or the courts for encouraging change. In the end, only change will make the nation stronger.

Against Their Interests

 "History repeats itself." That adage is familiar to most of us. It can often explain why people who otherwise should have "no dog in a fight" will risk everything they have by taking up a cause that is not their own.

Terms like "class struggle" and "politics of envy" are being used to paint a curious picture of the wealthiest Americans as victims of some unfair conspiracy designed to strip them of their hard-earned riches.

The logic is that "fair-minded people" will see this as a great crusade to redistribute their wealth and rally to their aid by voting for candidates who won't allow such injustices to occur.

The way the last few years have shaken out, we have expanding poverty and we also have expanding wealth. While the number of poor in this country has grown, the richest Americans have seen their net worth expand.

In the center, is the so-called middle class. Most statistics indicate that they have lost ground. Some of them have slipped back into poverty and others have hung on, marking time and hanging tough against the battering waves of  economic  turbulence.


America has been this way before. History tells us that the Civil War nearly destroyed the union. Ninety years after the birth of the nation, more than 618,000 people died in four bloody years of fighting. Slavery and economics were central causes, and rhetoric about states rights fanned the flames and passions between North and South.

Yet, only 7 percent of southerners owned slaves in 1860. That slave owning class represented perhaps one or two percent of the total population of  the nation. Still millions marched off to war willing do die to defend the rights of a very exclusive club.

Now, as then, we have inflammatory rhetoric, enraged passions, and dramatic struggles for support of divisive causes. On the one hand, there are calls for social and economic justice, on the other, there are  demands that we return to or preserve the values and institutions of the past.

 The nation is gripped by the words, voices and images of politicians, the admonitions and warnings of orators and the harsh realities of economic uncertainty. The world is changing and those who prospered most under the old system seek to maintain or restore it, even as others call out for something more.

In such times, it is the extremists whose voices rise above the fray, but in the end, the decisions rests in the hands of the center, and where they choose to stand and fight when their comforts are at stake.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 

-- George Santayana, U.S. Philosopher, 1865-1952

TV: It's Like an Education

Is it just me, or does Newt Gingrich's pragmatic style remind anyone else of Pat Buchanan in the run up to the 1996 campaign?

Say anything with enough conviction and years of too much exposure on a cable news show and you will sound more authoritative than most ordinary politicians.

We'll have to wait and see if GOP voters find much substance in his style.