Posted on 01/30/2006 11:43:14 AM PST by smoothsailing
From NationalLedger.com
COMMENTARY
The Eleven Lessons of Rush Limbaugh
By Chris Davis
Jan 30, 2006
It has been two long years since I wrote the essay; Rush Limbaugh is "The Passion." Since, conservatives have reelected President Bush, retained both houses of Congress, and are threatening to reform the out of control Supreme Court of the United States. These labors have shown that Americans support the conservative ideology, largely because of its guiding principles, not the vehicle behind that ideology.
It is the same with Rush Limbaugh. A little over two years ago, Rush Limbaugh announced his addiction to prescription drugs. The media, the Palm Beach prosecuting attorney, and some conservatives were ready to walk Limbaugh down the gang plank to the feasting sharks below. This isn't all that common in today's America. Charges are made and it is automatically assumed that the person is to be burned at the stake. The prosecutor has to be right. This is not a partisan vehicle for agendas. Rather than throw myself on my sword, I waited until Roy Black's appearance on Hannity & Colmes, January 27, 2004.
The facts of the story emergedemerging with passionand it soon began to appear that the only thing Rush Limbaugh was guilty of was having a prescription drug addiction. Being addicted to prescription drugs was hardly a crime. If anything, it only proved to make Limbaugh all the more human, and even more American. Those torturous days between Roy Black's appearance and his victories in court have shown a man that will stop at nothing to advance the conservative agenda. Limbaugh's radio show"The Passion"hands down daily lessons for conservatives, rebuking liberalism and the mainstream media. He continues to be steadfast in his approach, remaining on top of the radio world. Never has he been so popular. Never has he been as strong as he is today. Never has he been so steadfast in his conservative zeal. He is supported by Americans, conservative Americans that share those same guiding lessons he handed down. I am just one American, echoing those sentiments of these lessons taught by Rush Limbaugh. These lessons are:
(1) America is guided by moral laws, having an origin in God. Conservative Americans are guided by the principles handed down by the Founding Fathers. These principles are rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic, and our laws our governed by a morality that could only come from God. It is our sworn duty as conservatives to continue this tradition. It is this America that the Founding Fathers envisioned and it is this America that Limbaugh advocates.
(2) Variety is the sole characteristic of the American civilization. Conservative Americans fight tyranny and the uniformity that it creates. Liberalism, in its warped philosophy, wishes to make all Americans the same. Conservative Americans know that America can only be great if individuals are allowed to prosper in their unique differences.
(3) Americans have a right to their personal property, rewards achieved through their abilities. Conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, know that for America to be great, Americans must be rewarded for their achievements. Different achievements require different rewards. America can never prosper if achievements are taken away by tyranny or an out of control judiciary.
(4) American freedom and economic gain are forever connected. There can be no vitality rooted in liberalism. At the root of economic leveling is liberalism. Americans must be able to gain economically to achieve true freedom.
(5) Courts and prosecutors are full of danger. Courts and prosecutors can spread tyranny through irrational and unconstitutional rulings. Conservatives know that power unchecked is corrupt, and that courts must exhibit the limited power that the Constitution gives them. They know that a partisan court or prosecutor can be as dangerous to Americans as an invading force.
(6) American history is replete with wisdom. The conservative American believes that we must govern ourselves by the traditions handed down by our Founding Fathers. It is through their wisdom, writings and Constitutional teachings that we will prosper. It is their moral relativism and divine truth that separates liberals from the great minds of American history.
(7) America needs true community. The conservative knows that through its community, its churches and volunteer organization that it can breed a healthy, thriving community. A community that will set examples for the world. Conservatives at their essence are not selfish, but rather are beacons of spirit in their communities.
(8) America should set an example in the 21st Century. It is inalienable rights granted by God that set men and women free. Therefore, the American conservative knows that it should not dominate the world, yet set an example of liberty that all should long to cherish.
(9) Men and women are not perfect. Political institutions are made of imperfect men and women. Law cannot solve all the problems in America; instead, it tends to complicate uncomplicated matters. Solutionsknown by conservativescan be presented through community far greater than through government. Because imperfection is scene everywhere, it is the conservative that knows Americans are better off left alone.
(10) Men and women are completely and irrevocably different. Conservatives know that the gap between sexes cannot be attained through legislation. The traditions of the American family have been handed down for over 200 years, separating these differences between men and women through society. It is not the role of government to act in trying to eliminate those differences; rather it is economics and the community that will continue to demonstrate the roles between the sexes. At the end of the day, conservatives know that a man is a man and woman is a woman, and that women should be celebrated for being women, not men.
(11) Political reform can be disastrous. Conservatives know that sudden and swift political reform in governmentwhether it is a courtroom or in a legislative bodycan be disastrous. Reform must be made slowly to conserve a society and its moral traditions. It must be welcomed before it is accepted by America. Conservatives know that in such sweeping change as Roe vs. Wade that Americans are no better off than before the judicial activism that forced Americans to change. It is this kind of policy that is inherently dangerous to the American citizen and should, in itself, be struck down so that it can be determined by the American people.
Conservatism is not just the concern of the rich. Rather it is more representative of the modest American. All Americans derive benefits from this great Republic. It is therefore fitting and proper that all Americans should determine their role within this community.
Conservatives know that for liberty to flourish it is best to limit the growth of the federal government, keeping its power checked to prevent absolute corruption. These eleven lessons have been handed down to me. I cherish each and every one of them. I gladly celebrate Rush Limbaugh's success. For if it was not for Rush Limbaugh, I may never have discovered conservatism. I would still be dwelling in that miserable purgatory called liberalism.
It is hard for some conservativesthose that have always been conservativesto appreciate the true impacts of the accomplishments of Rush Limbaugh. Many can remember his first broadcasts. Many celebrate him, thanking him when they call on his show. There are those that still wish to throw him to the wolves because of imperfection. Those individuals have obviously never been locked within the suffocating grasp of liberalism.
So, today, January 30, 2005, I celebrate those eleven principles handed to me by Rush Limbaugh, and congratulate him on two great years of broadcast excellence since the invasion of his civil liberties.
I, one conservative American, then ask this question: What does Rush Limbaugh mean to you?
.....................................
Chris Davis is the author of Elective Decisions and In Defense of Liberty, two political thrillers from the Whiskey Creek Press.
© Copyright by NationalLedger.com
True enough; but none of which will do us any good if the country is bankrupt, or fully in the grips of socialism, or both. I have to wonder how one can be a strict constructionist on one hand and a believer in the nanny state on the other. It doesn't compute.
I agree with your last sentence. I heard Fred Barnes on talk radio say last week that we shouldn't be pushing to decrease the size and funding of the Federal government now because we aren't going to get it. If we forget about it now, it may be totally forgotten. A most alarming comment from Mr. Barnes. I am very concerned that Bush conservatism is going to win over Reagan conservatism.
FGS
Were Rush aware of it, he might have some additional reasons for not suppoting this plan, BUT Rush has said repeatedly he will NOT run for office because he is too uncomfortable with putting his hand out. He hates the idea of raising money.
Understand I understand you are NOT suggesting Rush run, but you are suggesting he could raise the money. Rush HATES the idea of raising money.
Really? I had no idea. He sure has made a sizable pile of it, so it's not like he as an aversion to it. I suppose I can understand his reluctance to plow new ground; he certainly doesn't need to. He would be stepping out of his comfort zone, so to speak. Maybe that's the problem for many on FR as well???
FGS
Stepping out of one's comfort zone can be most unpleasant. It can be worth doing for a good cause.
There are those days when I want to choke Rush for not going far enough, but then I remember that his audience is wide and that many people are new to the ideas that he articulates.
Rather than being the doctorate level that many of us would like, he must appeal in many ways as the Conservatism 101 course. Those that he does reach, he whets their appetite to learn more on their own.
I wonder if he has ever considered the fact that having probably succeeded beyond his wildest dreams with his God given gift for gab, he may owe somebody something??? Not being judgmental; just asking.
Campaign Fund Raising is the almost insurmountable deterrent that keeps almost every independent conservative from seeking public office. Asking for money is degrading and humiliating. Promising something, even promising to consider or to think about something in order to get money is degrading. Career politicians have no problem turning themselves into prostitutes, ("Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. Ive come to realize there is a very close resemblance to the first,) but for conservatives this is an insurmountable challenge to their own principles and character.
The single most important facet of this plan is that it makes campaign fund raising unnecessary and a non-issue for the Reagan Wing Republicans. The beauty is that Rush will be able to provide the $600 million to our Founder-like candidates without any fund raising at all. Rush won't be raising money for himself; Rush's role in this is that he can effortlessly raise and provide it to our Reagan Wing candidates. He will be raising it for them. Rush, and maybe only Rush, can painlessly tap the two separate and independent sources of income that make this possible.
Call it fate, but through a long complicated series of events lasting almost five years, I discovered an idea that has a greater than 90% probability of being true, but it is an idea that might not be possible to protect by patents. Warren Buffet likes businesses that have what he calls "sustainable competitive advantages". Patents offer genuine sustainable competitive advantages. Coke is the model for some other forms of sustainable competitive advantages. The Coca Cola formula was never patented; in the early years of the company it was protected as a "trade secret", another form of sustainable competitive advantage. No one has ever marketed as much or as successfully as the Coca Cola company. Over the years, "Coke" has spent more than 100 billion dollars establishing their "brand name". Brand name is yet another form of sustainable competitive advantage. How does all this relate to Rush?
Scientifically, based on my medical knowledge and training of how the brain and body work together to swing the golf club, there is a greater than 90 percent probability that I know how to build a better golf club than anybody has ever been able to build, but it may not be possible to patent either my theory or their resulting designs. Brand name protection is my best bet for achieving a certain sustainable competitive advantage for my designs. The problem is that I am a nobody with no realistic possibility of branding in my own right. Rush Limbaugh is a wonderful brand name as Excellence in Golf would be. In my hands, my ideas are virtually worthless. In Rush's hands, they form the foundation of a billion dollar business capable of generating more than $100 million dollars of free cash flow each and every year. Rush could use that free cash flow to fund the campaigns of our Reagan Wing candidates. Rush could also turn the company into a publicly traded corporation using the billion or more dollars raised from the IPO to fund campaigns for our Reagan Wing candidates.
But there is an even larger more reliable source of funding that Rush can tap, and only Rush can tap this one with certainty. In an average week, there are 22 million Americans, mostly conservatives, who tune in to listen to Rush. How many of those 22 million would be willing to send Rush a ten dollar bill every year to fund our Reagan Wing candidates? How often or how many times during his three hours of broadcasting every weekday would he have to ask? Admittedly, he has never done anything like this before and clearly his thinking has opposed any asking for contributions except for his annual leukemia fund raising effort. New information and new ideas change the way intelligent people think.
No one in the last seventy years, not even Ronald Reagan, has believed that the Constitution can be completely restored and socialism in the United States ended completely. The Reagan Wing of the Republican Party offers this potential. The Democratic Party belongs on the ash-heap of history right beside their socialistic brethren in the Soviet Union. Ever since Plutarch warned the Greeks, Bastiat, Von Mises, and the Founders have warned the world that unless it is abandoned completely, socialism will bring about the fall of civilization itself.
From the words of Ronald Reagan, "We have come to a time for choosing; we will preserve for our children this the last best hope for man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness." It is socialism that has undermined the ability of Americans to save. It is socialism that has prevented the compounding of those savings that would have allowed Americans to invest in themselves in order to maintain our productive advantage. Now without the benefits of those invested and compounded savings, American jobs are being outsourced to cheap labor in China, India and elsewhere. Socialism and capitalism are incompatible. Socialism consumes the capital base fostering dependency and a disincentive to both investment and to production. Socialism is a failed and doomed economic model that will inevitably fail every time it is tried. Socialism can only exist as long as there is saved capital to consume and income from entrepreneurs to confiscate.
Gokhale and Smetters have provided substantial evidence that the US is nearing the end of its ability to support the current level of existing socialism, and that it is a mathematical certainty that it will not be able to meet the socialistic obligations of the boomers. History is unambiguous; all democracies end in bankruptcy or hyperinflation whenever the public learns to vote itself benefits. Gokhale and Smetters tell us that we could be as little as a decade from that point and probably no more than two. If you believe that President Reagan was right, "We have come to a time for choosing; we will preserve for our children this the last best hope for man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness," then Rush Limbaugh and the Reagan Wing are the last best hope for the United States.
And if Rush thinks he is having more fun now than a human being should be allowed to have, wait until he is building the best golf clubs in the history of the world and using his evil "PROFITS" to build the Reagan Wing that will restore the Constitution by sending the Democrats and other socialists to the ash-heap of history where they belong.
Do you bother to listen? I don't think so. Long live Rush Limbaugh.
Yes I listen when I can. The one thing that can be said about him is at least he's not as shrill as Hannity
bttt
I would hope and think that Mr. Levin and his listeners will find this and the rest of your posts on this thread to be extremely intriguing and worthy of their careful consideration.
Republicans have no fire in the belly. At best any more, they are backslidin' 1960's democrats.
That's my opinion.
You are not going to get a valid argument from a genuine Constitutional conservative (don't worry you aren't one if you have to ask). I pinged you and the others in hopes that you would read and understand that HopefulPatriot's plan contains the very elements needed to replace Democrats and RINO's with genuine Constitutional conservatives. If you don't look, you will never know what you are missing and neither will Mr.Levin or his friend Rush. If we are going to get over this hump, somebody has to keep pushing the ball up the hill until it gets to the top. Once we get the people at the top involved, restoring the Constitution will be an all downhill trip from there. Mr. Levin is right next to the top of this food chain or the top of the hill (Rush).
As with most organizations, it's the little guys at the bottom of the heap that are closest to the action where the problems and working solutions are perceived first. But to implement policy and add permanence to the solution, somebody has to get it up the hill. Please help, if you can.
bump
Amen to that..!
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