Posted on 10/13/2003 10:36:31 PM PDT by Diddley
He starved roughly 7,000,000 in the Ukraine alone.
Basically I agree with you, but your wording suggests a point I'd like to discuss.
There are many ways of "supporting" someone. There's nothing wrong with people having sympathy for Rush (though I can't say I have any myself). There's nothing wrong with people continuing to listen to his show, buy his books, or attend his speaking engagements. There's nothing wrong with people expressing their admiration for the admirable qualities that he does have. There's nothing wrong with conservatives continuing to look to him as one of the leaders of their movement.
What I take issue with, is not what I would call "supporting", but "defending", or even more precisely "making excuses for".
The attitude conservatives should take toward Rush, is the one so many of them _claim_ to have toward homosexuals - hate the sin, love the sinner.
I am genuinely surprised at how little "hate the sin" I have seen at FreeRepublic. Those conservatives who do criticize Rush, mostly fret about how the scandal may affect "conservatism". So far I haven't seen one full-throated roar against Rush for hurting _the society_, for endangering our families or our neighborhoods, our "standards of behavior", or "the survivability of the American way of life".
I know the conservatives think the charges of hypocrisy are themselves an insincere political tactic. But I am frankly surprised to find how hypocritical they really are, how little stock they themselve put in the cant of the drug war. That makes it all the more horrifying that they are nonetheless willing to lock people up in its name.
In Rush's case the drugs were legal and prescribed for the management of pain."
Worth repeating---and remembering.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/4543017.htm
Oops. Too late.
President Kennedy needed pills to survive each day, historian says
By TRACY CONNOR, New York Daily News, Nov. 17, 2002
NEW YORK - Racked with pain, President John F. Kennedy turned to a cornucopia of drugs - including painkillers, stimulants and anti-anxiety pills, his secret medical records reveal.
Historian Robert Dallek got unprecedented access to documents from the last eight years of JFK's life for his upcoming biography, "An Unfinished Life."
He found that at various times Kennedy took codeine, Demerol and methadone for pain, the stimulant Ritalin and anti-anxiety drugs meprobamate and Librium, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
The records also showed that Kennedy took barbiturates to help him sleep, thyroid hormone, the blood derivative gamma globulin and the anti-diarrhea agent Lomotil.
At the time of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy was taking antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, medicine for colitis, salt tablets and hydrocortisone and the male hormone testosterone to build up his strength and energy.
The medicine - as many as eight drugs a day at times - helped Kennedy cope with chronic and debilitating back pain, irritable bowel syndrome and the adrenal deficiency Addison's disease.
He also had high cholesterol, and osteoporosis left him with three fractured vertebrae that prevented him from putting on his own shoes without help.
The records show that Kennedy's ailments were far more serious than he and his doctors had publicly acknowledged. They included details of nine secret hospital stays for back and stomach illnesses between 1955 to 1957.
Discussing his findings in the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Dallek said Kennedy's secrecy about his poor health could be seen as "another stain" on his character.
But he noted that the medical records exposed the "quiet stoicism of a man struggling to endure extraordinary pain and distress."
Dallek, a Boston University professor, examined the medical files with the help of Washington internist Dr. Jeffrey Kelman.
"The most remarkable thing was the extent to which Kennedy was in pain every day of his presidency," Kelman said.
The Ukraine was like a huge Nazi death camp, with about a fourth of all peasants dead or dying, and the rest so weak and debilitated as to be unable to bury the dead. On Stalin's orders, about 5,000,000 Ukrainians had been murdered through starvation, 20 to 25 percent of the Ukrainian farm population. Another 2,000,000 probably starved to death elsewhere, such as 1,000,000 in the North Caucasus alone. While Stalin intended the Ukrainian deaths, those elsewhere were the unintended by-products of the war on the peasants--collectivization.
Thank you very much.
" Can you sing? :-)"
Not even if my life depended on it. ;o)
I'm impressed. Does this mean we can abolish the prescription system, and let people medicate themselves as they please?
I view that lack of moral condemnation as a positive sign, since there are no reports of anything Rush did to hurt anyone other than himself (unless you include the people he has probably ratted on). Maybe Rush's calamity will eventually lead to a "hate the drug war" mentality.
Notice how the Lib's strategy is "we got Limbaugh, and Hannity's next", rather than "We beat him with our reasoning and the powerful logic of our arguments."
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