--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > He loves America - while hating all kinds of > Americans who don't happen to be > exactly like him. Rush Limbaugh succeeds by lying to > the public, by pandering > to their prejudices and to their completely > misplaced resentments and grudges > and envies and greeds. Instead of inspiring them to > be better people, he > tells them it's just fine to be selfish, greedy, > stupid, ignorant shits.
How arrogant. Basically your argument is that Limbaugh is popular because he tricks the stupid average Americans who listen to him, who are too dumb and foolish to see through him - unlike the great and wise Tom, who does. Just like David, you make my case better than I ever could. In the 1950s, Adlai Stevenson, when told that "every thinking person was voting for him" replied that unfortunately, he needed a majority. It is, of course, impossible to imagine Eisenhower (or Reagan) saying such a thing. First there's the arrogance of thinking that a non-entity like Stevenson was somehow more intelligent than the man who led Torch and Overlord and wrote _Crusade in Europe_. Second, the automatic condescension that most Americans don't think. Apparently nothing has changed since then. > William Bennet is permitted to grump publicly about > how everything is awful > and going to hell - why can't liberals? No one says they can't. Bennet doesn't say that things are going badly, so there's nothing worthwhile about the US and it stands for nothing worthwhile. A significant difference. > > Do Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell love America, > after saying the despicable > things they did after 9/11? No, which is why they were ostracized by the conservative movement, absolutely and completely. Far _more_ harshly criticized on the right than they were on the left, actually. > > Okay, I'm rambling here. It's late and I'm very > tired. But don't ever tell me > that liberals don't love America. > > > > Tom Beck No one did. The left, though - which is distinct from liberals, although they overlap, and influence each other extensively. There's a point where the argument that criticism is patriotic becomes stupid, not meaningful. If you see Saddam Hussein's Iraq and George Bush's America and can't choose between them because Bush's America isn't perfect, it doesn't make you a patriot who nobly criticizes his country. It makes you someone without the ability of a chimpanzee to make moral distinctions. When the response of so many to September 11th was to say that we deserved it, or it was a product of our actions, or (as Michael Moore did) that the attacks were mistargeted because they didn't kill Republicans, they weren't prophets engaging in self-criticism. They were self-hating bigots who seek to weaken the defense of Western civilization against those who would destroy it. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
