Last week, the day after Dr. George Tiller was murdered by an anti-abortion activist in the vestibule of a church, Tucker Carlson was asked the following question by a Washington Post reader:

Over the past few years, Bill O'Reilly has made the following comments about Dr. Tiller:

- He "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."
- He's guilty of "Nazi stuff,"
- a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida
- "This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union"
- "operating a death mill"
- "has blood on his hands"
- "executing babies about to be born

Tucker, I'm not saying Billo wanted some kook to kill him, but isn't this playing with fire?

To which Carlson replied:

Every one of those descriptions of Tiller is objectively true. I sincerely think it's appalling that he was murdered. But Tiller was a monster, no doubt.

This week, Carlson got asked another question on the subject of abortion:

if Roe v. Wade is overturned and abortion could once more be made illegal in various states, what is the appropriate punishment for providing or obtaining an abortion? Who should be charged? The abortion provider? The woman? Those pressuring the woman to obtain an abortion? Is it pre-meditated murder? Manslaughter? Generally, those questions never seem to get addressed, but is it worthwhile to ban abortions when we shrink from imposing any penalties? What is the use of such a law? Thanks.

Carlson’s response:

Good question. Let me dodge it: Laws exist not simply so we can punish those who break them, but to inform those who are considering doing so. They're moral statements, in other words. Let's start by agreeing that abortion is wrong, because it so clearly is, and then decide what we think the penalties ought to be. You can hardly do one without doing the other first.

If we wind up deciding to treat abortion like suicide -- illegal but rarely prosecuted -- that'll be a huge improvement over where we are today, when many politicians (Obama included) can't even work up the strength to condemn abortion for purposes of sex selection.

I guess it would be too much to ask that Carlson do a little soul-searching about why his first instinct is to dodge the question.

Maybe because answering it honestly and directly, especially given his loathsome response to the Tiller murder, would be just too revealing and too ugly.

No doubt if Roe V. Wade is overturned and women and physicians find themselves stuck in prison or even executed for performing, seeking, or undergoing abortions, he'll pronounce himself suitably "appalled."

A lot of liberals like to say that it’s okay with them if Texas secedes. Good riddance! they declare. We can do without that hatchery of bigots and redneck authoritarians. Who needs it?

I’m going to be charitable here and assume that these liberals are saying this unthinkingly, as a “joke.” Not a very good joke, I’ll grant you – a joke kind of like what Ann Coulter says when she thinks she’s being funny -- but a joke nevertheless.

Because examining why so many Freepers and other right-wing knuckle-draggers want Texas to secede provides the very reason why so many of us should oppose it. They want Texas to secede because they want to have the “freedom” to mistreat Americans they dislike – Texas liberals, black Texans who vote Democratic, Hispanics, gays, the poor, etc. They want to live in a place where political freedom as we know it simply doesn’t exist, where their neighbors and fellow citizens are carefully vetted to only include those who hold a very specific and narrow set of opinions.

From Free Republic Threads on Texas Secession:

If Perry promises to kick all the Libs out.. it’s a done deal.. I’m there!

”If we did secede, we would have to expel all the liberals to succeed.”

A more harsh treatment might be more in order.

We have a lot of Democrat free-loaders in the cities now. I would love to see a line of buses to transport out the people who don't believe in states' rights.

Just remember this liberal media..You are any of your ilk will not be allowed in our country..no Terrorist, no Commies, no Muslims..We won't give these so called special interest groups a chance. we need to let every one know what will be ahead of them if they decide to stay on the outside....If you want to be a citizen of this state you all of you will have to pass a test..and a back ground check..

Hopefully Texas would become aggressively anti-Leftist and not beat around the 'Bush' so to speak and just flat out - outlaw any sort of LeftWingNut-ism whatsoever. Its time to just put a stop to the advance of Marxism. Anyone who didn’t like it - gets dumped on the border or put on a raft and just be glad they weren’t shot for being an enemy agent.

Why do you think Uncle Ted moved here. And Chuck Norris. And the thousands from the upper mid west in the late 70’s. And the thousands from Kalifornia in the 90’s. And the thousands from Mexico for the last 20 years. And the hundreds who left New Orleans after Katrina. Right to work state. No state income tax. Decent weather. Lots of folks like those at the tea party in San Antonio on Fox. Just don’t bring your goofy liberal ideas down here to infect our state. Austin is our liberal blight. Leave the rest of the state alone.
4th generation Texan.

I believe that if we do that no one should just be able to “move” to Texas. Too dangerous. You guys should have no problems getting citizenship but visas should be issued to people who would have the best interests of a conservative Texas and anyone coming in should be able to show ability to support themselves or have a sponsor...meaning Texans that will help the immigrant get set up...no public housing, government assistance, free health care etc. JAT What do yall think?

I can almost guarantee the social programs would stop overnight, and anyone who didn’t like it would be dropped off at the east/west borders - on the other side of the wall.

We in Texas must take care to properly indoctrinate our new arrivals and to use what ever tactics necessary to convert them to being Texans or convert them to being gone. Don’t let the same thing to Txas happen, which has happened to Florida, Arizona and Nevada, where the local culture was overrun by “Damn Yankee” “Damn Mexican” or “Damn Californian” immigrants, who are trying to convert the states to Liberal Blue.

Wonderful idea, let us Texans declare war against the rest of the US, and gradually take back our country, one state at a time, and we can let the bluest of the blue to last, while they starve.

”What are you going to do with Austin? "

Fumigate it, and what does survive, gets put on a work farm...

Gas ‘em to death or stick them in labor camps… Hmmmm… I’ve heard that somewhere before…

We need to keep up the pressure. The Libs are LIVID...and some may even be afraid of We the People who believe in the Constitution as written by our Founding Fathers...including the 9th and 10th Amendments!!! What a good warm feeling that gives me!
Keep Your Powder Dry Patriots!!!

Actual secession is, of course, highly unlikely. What’s disturbing, however, is the level of personal contumely that is driving many members of the right to advocate for it. They are buying up guns. They are talking about their dreams of a liberal-free state. They are speaking of their fellow Americans, including the president, as their enemies.

There’s a lot of room here, well short of of secession, for liberals in Texas, or even just perceived liberals, to be targeted for vandalism, threats, even actual assaults.

So guys, please, don’t wish – even as a joke – for Texas to secede. You may not realize this, but saying that secession is all right with you is saying it’s all right with you that Americans be uprooted, assaulted, or otherwise abused for the “offense” of being a liberal in a predominantly conservative state.

That may seem to like an abstraction to progressives living outside Texas and the south. It may sound laughable, like something that could never happen.

But to liberals living there, especially those who remember the 1960s, it’s not an especially remote possibility.

On April 3rd, an editorial by Charles M. Blow appeared in the New York Times. Its title is “Pitchforks and Pistols.” Its subject is the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from the right, and the danger it poses when coupled with a drastic upsurge in gun purchases:

As the comedian Bill Maher pointed out, strong language can poison weak minds, as it did in the case of Timothy McVeigh. (We sometimes forget that not all dangerous men are trained by Al Qaeda.)

(Please note the date of this editorial by the way. April 3rd – the day before Richard Poplawski decided to murder three cops, apparently because he believed they were going to take away his arsenal. This very young, very troubled, very violent white supremacist had several guns, one of which was an AK-47.)

The picture of Mr. Blow that accompanies the editorial indicates that he is African American.

Time for yet another adventure in cognitive dissonance in Freeperland.

Some of the people at Free Republic seemed, weirdly enough, outraged because they agree with Mr. Blow about the possibility of violent rhetoric leading to violent action. These are naturally sprinkled with occasional comments from Freepers like this guy, who apparently don’t bother to read the messages that surround his:

“And Michelle Bachman and ‘armed and dangerous’? It's this thing called a figure of speech.” !

Riiight. A figure of speech. That’s why the thread is replete with posts like these:

”After that we need a million-patriot march on Washington. ”
(replies) “Doing that would be a stunning achievement; Doing it armed would be another.”

“Doing it armed with torches and pitchforks along with lots of tar and feathers might be effective.”

Be sure to wear your bedsheets and hoods while you’re at it. That’ll give such a march the touch it would need to put it in historical context.

And here come some more, uh, “figures of speech.”

”As you also uneasily note, we have also spent some time buying up every bullet in sight, perhaps in case your ilk decide to press the issue to it's ultimate conclusion, perhaps not….Mr. Blow, just because you love the chains which still rest lightly upon your arms doesn't mean the rest of us also desire them or will accept them without a whimper just because you and your masters plan your revolution to be slow and bloodless…If you and your masters are wise, you will back off!”

”Since you are entertained by our pain caused by the destruction of all that is good and just... the very essence of the Nation that GOD through our Founders gifted us with... perhaps some day I too will be entertained by your pain... a pain that could be very real and very well deserved.”

“The Left wants to take over the country without a shot being fired because they hood-winked the stupid young and paid off the welfare class to win a plurality in ‘08. After all the blood shed by people much more valuable than they, they think we should forget freedom and don the serf’s rags without a whimper because they are now in charge. They should expect a fight from patriots.”

(How DARE this uppity member of the “welfare class” object to feeling physically threatened! Doesn’t he understand that this is as it should be?)

And then of course, there’s his race to consider:

“I refuse to believe there's a black man named Charles M. Blow.
Decatur Washington or Rufus Ellerington maybe ... but not Charles M. Blow.”

“ (Accompanying a picture of Charles Blow) “Any reason to believe Mr. Blow is incapable of independent thought?”

(Messages posted in response to the above) “Looks almost clean and articulate...dont he?”

“Looks im-potent”

“Another affirmative action hire at the New York Slimes?”

“I guess if he really wanted indigestion, he could read about the Founders. Given his skin tone and attitude, I wouldn't be surprised if he considered them nothing more than white slave owners.”

Aside from the content of this guys article, it is obvious that he was an Affirmative Action hire based on his prose.

One of them posted Charles M. Blow’s email address. I wonder if there’s going to be a follow up column from him that includes some of the “Free Republic” inspired messages he got. It would be interesting, that’s for sure.

And help to drive home his original point.

Limbaugh’s oeuvre is best described as “much of a muchness,” which is to say he embraces shallowness, incuriousness, and mendacity and wants his listeners to do the same. It’s not so much that Rush Limbaugh is lying to his listeners. It’s that he’s encouraging them to lie to themselves, showing them by example how, if they inadvertently stumble upon statements from President Obama that directly contradict their own assumption sthey can edit and twist them to fit those assumptions.

For instance:

President Obama says al Qaida is still determined to harm westerners and that the war in Iraq was a distraction from a shared goal with Europe to dismantle the terrorist network. Obama said Friday that the unpopular war in Iraq undermined Europe’s initial support for America after the 911 attacks. He says he wants to repair that relationship because the US in Europe will have a shared interest in rooting out Al Qaida. Obama says the world cannot expect, because somebody named Barack Hussein Obama got elected, that everything’s going to be okay.

Now, what, what is this? It’s okay to use Hussein in Europe? And it’s okay to warn, “hey, just because my middle name is Hussein doesn’t mean the Islamofascists are going to end up loving us?”

Any rational adult reading or hearing this will recognize it as the kind of deliberate obtuseness children sometimes engage in when they think they’re being clever. It’s so dumb that just explaining why it’s dumb feels degrading. We’re being asked to believe that a man Limbaugh’s age can’t tell the difference between someone invoking President Obama’s middle name in an effort to imply that Obama is somehow a secret Muslim and President Obama referring to the unimportance of that middle name when it comes to dealing with the very real threat of Al Qaida terrorism.

So what does he (President Obama) do? Once again, he goes over to European soil and blames the United States and excuses Europe for failing to join us in not just the war in Iraq but the War on Terror.

Here, Rush seems to be betting on his listeners either not having heard Obama’s speech, or being as willing as Rush is to engage in a sort of internal dishonesty. As anyone who actually listened to that speech knows, Obama specifically denounced European anti-Americanism. From President Obama’s Strasbourg speech on April 3:

”But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognising the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad.

“On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated. They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.”

Acknowledging this, however, would be inconvenient. It does not fit into the myth embraced by Rush and his fans. So, he’s off and running with another story about what Obama and the liberals presumably believe:

But never mind, never mind, President Obama is willing to go over there and continue to spread and enlarge the myth that the only reason Europe didn’t support us is because everybody hated George W. Bush and hated the Iraq war because they thought the US was immoral.

A simpleminded “myth” I’ve yet to hear any liberal offer.

To be brutally frank, Rush most likely says these things because he’s dishonest. Not consciously dishonest, perhaps, but dishonest nevertheless. He’s aware on some level that -- as Stephen Colbert has so unforgettably put it -- reality has a liberal bias. Rather than alter his viewpoint to fit this reality, he attempts to edit reality for both himself and his listeners.

My apologies for the gap in my Klavan challenge entries. Rest assured that , while I may not have posted about Rush, I was dutifully listening to at least one hour of him yesterday morning, and will report tomorrow on what Rush said and why he says the things he says.

But for now, we’ll deal with my third day of Listening to Rush, the Thursday, April 2 show. Naturally the subject was President Obama’s European trip, the G20, and the economy.

I have to confess, after a couple of days, my mind is beginning to wander. It’s like staring intently at a brightly colored plaid. After a while, the pattern jumps forward at the expense of the whole and I have to blink for a minute to return my vision to normal. I’m getting snagged on individual words. A horrible suspicion about the rationale behind Rush saying we should listen for six weeks in order to “understand” him is beginning to dawn on me.

Mind…getting fuzzy. Thinking…more and more difficult…Must concentrate…concentrate…

Obama has been engaged in a slow surrender of the United States best interests. But as I told you, this is being reported as a slamdunk, grand slam, he’s the star of the show. He's the star of the show. The leaders there can't get enough of him and Michelle. They are American royalty. Tingles are up everybody's legs. It's just sickening.

Again with the word “slamdunk.” Rush likes the word “slamdunk.” Why does Rush like the word “slamdunk?” Nuance. Something to do with nuance. Rush doesn’t like nuance, that’s it. He doesn’t want us to like nuance either. People can’t merely “like” Obama. They must worship him. They must see him as the messiah. Liberals and Democrats can’t just be kind of pleased about Obama’s European trip, with some reservations. We must all consider it a “slamdunk” because otherwise Rush would have to go into the details about what liberals like about Obama and what they don’t like…and that would be…that would be…

It's all running together. Obama…G20….Socialism…trillion dollars…clowns…Socialist…The market is up because Obama is out of the country…

What?

I need to slap myself a couple of times. Need to go into the kitchen for more coffee. Lots more coffee. There. That’s better.

He’s talking about something else now. He’s talking about the First Lady. I find myself becoming a little more alert, conscious of a sensation like an itch deep inside my skull. It’s… the sensation of being puzzled. Something he says isn’t making sense. Thank God. My brain hasn’t died completely. I can still tell that he doesn’t make sense! That's something, isn't it?

..Michelle “Ma Belle” Obama and her wardrobe and how she’s taking Britian by storm, and so forth. Now, I have a photo here, I’m gonna show you this on the ditto-cam, let me zoom in, and I’m gonna tell you what you’re looking at there. This is Michelle ‘Ma Belle’ Obama heading off to the theater or some such thing. And she’s wearing, what you’re looking at there is, is an odd, really weird looking sweater. But, she cannot button it. It’s too tight. She’s also missed a button. Ladies and gentlemen, and I want to read to you, now that you’ve seen this on the dittocam…the caption to the picture is “Endearingly, the First Lady may have missed a button on her very busy sweater.”

Now, she went to the opera, she can’t button her sweater she missed a button and it’s described as “endearingly!” Let Sarah Palin try this! Let Laura Bush try this!

I have to admit that here I’m kind of stumped.

What’s with the “Ma Belle” bit? What’s the point? It’s a joke? I don’t get it. I know it’s a Beatles’ song -- “Michelle, Ma Belle, These are words that go together well, My Michelle..” but what’s the point of Rush making it into a nickname for Michelle Obama? Does anybody know?

As for the rest of it, this seems to be an attempt to equate some of Sarah Palin’s gaffes (Like her “I can see Russia from my front porch,” bit) with Michelle Obama wearing a busy sweater unbuttoned to the opera. Why he’s dragged Laura Bush into it is as big a mystery as his use of the nickname “My Belle,” since I don’t remember hearing Laura Bush being attacked much on cable news shows – certainly not to the extent Sarah Palin was. Every once in a great while I’d hear a half-hearted joke about her eyes, but she seemed pretty much the standard, rather vanilla first lady. Not much material there.

This waving around of a picture of Michelle Obama may simply be related to the way Rush views women in general, his obsession with female appearance. It’s possible he honestly does think a woman wearing a tacky sweater is the equivalent of her being unable to tell Katie Couric a single example of her daily reading material.

That’s really the best I can do when it comes to explaining “why” Rush says these things.

So on April 1st, the second day of my taking the Klavan Challenge, I emerged with not so much a single quote from Limbaugh as a group of quotes. They logically cancel each other out but still, if you just kind of half listen without remembering what Rush said just a few minutes before, they do maintain the rough integrity of Rush’s premise – which is “Democrats BAD! Republicans GOOD! !”

The subject is the current, very close, NY House race between Democrat Scott Murphy and Republican Jim Tedisco, which Rush describes as “a slam-dunk loss for the Democrats and Obama":

This Democrat candidate Scott Murphy ran fliers, he emailed flyers that had pictures, of me, pictures of Sarah Palin, pictures of George W.Bush. The Democrat candidate in this race ran against me.

(Forget the pictures of Palin and the last president. For most of the next few hundred word, Rush certainly does.)

… They thought it was a slamdunk puttin’ me in all the campaign literature. They believed that putting me out there would rally the Democrat base cause there’s such hatred of me and the Democrat base would be so eager to show up and vote that they would need to be restrained. It turns out that the turnout in this race was average if a little bit below.

Okay, let’s pause for a moment and consider what Rush is saying here. The Democrats, Rush claims, have not just lost in the election between Tedisco and Murphy. It’s been a slamdunk loss because, you see, the Democrats thought it would be a slamdunk win.

And why did they think this? Because they put Rush Limbaugh in their campaign literature! And assuming that’s true, those same “Democrat” strategists are now flabbergasted because the turnout was just “average if a little bit low.” That, you see, is how it’s been a slamdunk loss for them.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Well? Doesn’t it? Of course it does. It just stands to reason.

…And the Democrats are ahead by 59 votes,

Whaaaa? I thought…but you said…

they should have won this in a slamdunk, and they did not and they may very well lose it!

Okaaaaay. I suppose maybe, assuming what Rush said earlier about Democratic confidence in a win is true, and assuming that the Democrats actually started out with a significant lead, that might be reasonably argued…

No time to think! Rush is moving forward on the subject of just how wrong, how corrupted by liberalism is the mainstream press, specifically the website Politico.com:

Now here is the Politico:

“There’s no winner yet in the upstate New York special election, and it might be mid-April before the race is settled. But a few things are clearer after Tuesday’s contest, none of it welcome news to the Republican Party.

The first election to take place during the Obama administration was a push, with neither side winning big or losing big. But that in itself ranks as a defeat of sorts for the GOP, which invested heavily in the…”

But here Limbaugh breaks off because he is shocked! Absolutely shocked!

So did the Democrats! How in the world…you people at Politico ran all of the stories on how I was the Great Satan! I was the magic elixre for the Democrats. Put my name out there, put it on a billboard, put it in emails, and you’re gonna win in a landslide because I am so hated, I am the leader of the Republican party. You people at Politico are dishonest and you oughta be ashamed of yourself….

So, apparently, the way Rush Limbaugh knows that the Democrats were betting everything on invoking Himself in this race is that Politico (which, the listener must assume is the official house organ of Democratic strategists) was saying so, calling Rush the Great Satan, the magic elixre, etc, urging the Democrats to put him on billboards, etc….

And now that it’s not the “slamdunk” win they, Politico, predicted, now that the strategy they pushed invoking Rush Limbaugh, the strategy they swore would result in a landslide for the Democrats, didn’t result in a landslide at all -- they’re not mentioning Rush!

Can you believe it? Politico is acting as if they’d never pushed Rush Limbaugh as the key to the Democrats winning!

Wow. I can see why Rush would be kind of angry about this. Especially given that he’d behaved so modestly during the special election:

I didn’t even go up there and campaign! I didn’t mention this race, Friday or Monday. I purposely stayed out of it. I didn’t mention it Tuesday. I coulda hyped it. I coulda swallowed the bait. I could have tried to make this about me! But that’s not my ego.

Of course it’s not, Rush. You’re just not like that!

I’ll tell you what’s really sad, to me, about this? … this outcome shows me Tedisco could have won this big-time. He did have a double-digit lead. And what pared down the double-digit lead was all the Democrats spending. They say the Republicans were heavily invested in this… But that’s the spin, the drive-bys are going to spin for the Democrats.

Run that by me again? The Republicans began with a double-digit lead, it dribbled away to the point where they are now 59 votes behind the Democrats –

and it’s a slamdunk loss for the Democrats?

The illogic of all this practically defies summary. As near as I can figure out, Rush is complaining because he feels he’s been unfairly denied credit by Politico for dwindling the Republicans’ two-digit lead to the point where they’re now behind the Democrats by 59 votes –something he defines as a “slam dunk loss” for the Democrats.

I searched in vain through Politico.com’s coverage of the Tedisco/Murphy election for any mention of Limbaugh whatsoever. He just doesn’t come up. Politico.com covered the results of the NY special election as if they’d never pushed invoking Rush as a decisive factor because, in fact, they never pushed invoking Rush as a decisive factor.

So his completely senseless complaint is based on something that's completely untrue.

Which brings us to the question:

Why did Rush Say they had? Why make an issue of an affront that never took place?

Well, it’s possible that Rush actually believes he’s been insulted by Politico. He may be offended by the fact that Politico didn't bother to mention at length Rush's presence in the flyers, and so he has "exaggerated" it to the story he told on April Fools Day. On some level Rush may believe his own story.

But even if he doesn't, there's a method to this madness. Sure, Rush comes across here as an incurable narcissist, but in doing so, he indirectly flatters his own audience. "No," he's telling them, "You're not wasting your time by listening to me for three hours a day! You are among those wise Americans who recognize my significance!

No need for you to read those websites or newspapers. I'll tell you what they say, and what to make of it."

(Recently, Andrew Klavan, in a piece in the Los Angeles Times, challenged liberals to listen to at least an hour of Rush Limbaugh a day, for a week.)

Rush Limbaugh says that he wants me to listen for six solid weeks. That's the only way, he explains, that anyone can grasp the "context" of what he's saying.

Uh.. No.

Sorry.

I have a life. Yes, I know, I’m a San Francisco liberal, which, in the minds of Rush and his friends, means I spend my days on the government dole, strumming a guitar in my flower strewn, patchouli-scented rent-controlled flat in the Haight. Unfortunately the reality is I have personal and financial obligations that don’t include listening to a radio personality I detest for six solid weeks.

However, I’m willing to take up the gauntlet thrown by Andrew Klavan, and make the effort to listen for at least an hour a day for the next few days, and consider:

1. What he has to say.

2. What he’s getting at.

3. Why he says the things he says.

To that end, as a project this week, I’m going to listen to an hour or two of Rush. I will then take a quote that I consider most representative of the whole, and consider what he’s getting at and why he’s saying it.

Yesterday, on March 31st, the subject seemed to be how absolutely vital the Hummer is to American freedom as we know it. According to Rush, the current push towards smaller, more fuel efficient cars is part of a dastardly liberal conspiracy. Their real plan is to get people to like driving less and move to using public transit, which will in turn, lead to people to living in areas where they don’t have to drive, which will then destroy all initiative and invention.

He flatly dismisses the notion that anyone might actually prefer a small car because of the fuel efficiency. Apparently, as far as Rush is concerned, the primary purpose of a car is not transportation but what other people think about it. “People want to seen riding around in these little putput things so they can be seen as having a social conscience.”

The money quote in the broadcast, however, is this:

Self interest is what propels the United States military to victory! Not sacrifice! Not the concept of sacrifice! Sacrifice is giving something to somebody you don’t know! To make yourself feel altruistic! You’re not sacrificing, that doesn’t make you great! But giving something to your family because you provided it for them? That is good! But if you’re running around just giving people who do nothing for you, who’re just worthless, who don’t have anything to do with you, you’re cheating <i>them</i> out of their own self-interest! When you vote for politicians who take from your back pocket to give to others you think it’s compassionate? You think it’s caring? It’s not! It’s depriving the recipient of his own quest for self interest.

Obligatory readings from Ayn Rand follow.

So, what’s Rush getting at?

Conscience is bad. Doing something for people you don’t even know, who “do nothing for you” is stupid and just plain wrong.

You know, like this guy did:



Why does Rush say this?

Well, there are a couple of possibilities. One is that he’s someone who honestly doesn’t understand the concept of a conscience. It’s not normal, but there are people like that. They don’t feel empathy, and so they react to examples of it by redefining it as selfishness, which is something they do understand.

More likely, he does, like most of us, have a conscience based on empathy and a sense of social responsibility. The problem is, these things are so inconvenient to his world-view – and at this point, his career – that they’re carefully buried. The sight of someone doing something Rush senses is socially responsible or unselfish, like driving around in a small car or passing out food to the homeless, is dimly sensed as a rebuke, so he must put people who do these things in the wrong.

Those people can’t really be having a good time in that “put-put” car they’re riding around in. They’re just smiling because they think they’re better than everybody else. That guy can’t really be sacrificing several hours of his time a week serving soup to the homeless because the idea of other people going hungry bothers him and he wants to help. He’s doing it all for the glory, because he knows people are looking at him and admiring him for doing it.

It’s all about impressing everyone else.

In other words, Rush imagines everybody must be motivated by the same things that seem to motivate him.

One of those patriotic, freedom-loving Americans at Free Republic offers us all a glimpse of one Freeper's vision of America:

"The day after the election I fired an employee who was an open Obama supporter. If more employers took this attitude we wouldn’t have a Communist in the Oval Office.

Why should anyone here have a problem with making traitors or supporters of traitors pay a price?" Free Republic

...and later...

"Last I heard my former employee has been evicted and the car has been repo’d. I’m also challenging the Unemployment claim because I made it clear during the hiring process that there is no room in my company for liberals or DemonRats. Thus, the individual lied when I asked about political leanings and was subsequently insubordinate, a particular concern in my line of business.

Supporting a traitorous rat of a President and a Congress full of quislings is not a matter of conscience. It is treason. The SOB got what he deserved. If more employers would take this approach we’d have a real conservative in the White House and the DemonRAT party and its followers would be eradicated. " Free Republic

So this scumbag fired someone for his politics -- and then challenged the unemployment claim.

And he brags about it.

Recently, there was a weirdly reassuring piece on Daily Kos about the Secret Service's reaction to the threats against President Obama regularly posted on Free Republic. Apparently the SS has contacted Jim Robinson frequently enough that he's felt compelled to post a message asking Freepers to tone it down.

I'm glad about that, but given other comments I've read from Freepers in which they take it upon themselves to personally punish fellow Americans who dared to vote for Obama (including writing down the addresses of homes that had Obama signs) it may not just be public figures in need of protection.

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So here I am, up from the depths in my scuba gear. Don't get too close, because when you dive down as deep as I've been...well...It can get pretty rank when you get that close to the bottom. I was down in Freeperland a couple days ago, plucking slimy dainties from that thread in which various patriots look eagerly forward to killing/deporting lots and lots of liberals in the upcoming civil war. To offer a few highlights:

“Where can we join up to shoot liberals?”....Just ask your neighbor who he voted for......

Or, just drive to the nearest Unitarian church like that guy did in Knoxville last summer.

I say let's get it on - sooner rather than later. Let's see the big, bad, scary gay, liberal, afraid of taking a single casualty, lacking discipline, pot smoking army come to Texas and suppress us. And in this civil war, the conservatives will be on the side of Liberty, the liberals on the side Karl Marx.

Yeah, like those gay, liberal, undisciplined pot-spoking UUs in Tennessee.

How did that turn out again?

BTW the ones that need to be dealt with are those in the MSM propaganda machine who are foisting this imposter on us.

Surely there are a few more "Chad Castaganas" out there ready to mail out fake anthrax letters to Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann.

...cities would have their water cut off, food cut off, power cut off, and city dwellers are not familiar with the country-side and fire arms so they will not fare well when venturing out. The vast majority of the military will not be on their side - I would guess they might have 35% willing. The RATS would be reduced to eating rats in short order, like sieges of old.

And to think we were actually sorry back in 2001 when we saw all those NYC 'Rats falling to their deaths from the flaming WTC towers! Obviously the more patriotic response is to fantasize about them and their children being slowly starved to death.

Foreigners, Libtards, Dems: Round 'em up and ship 'em east on trains.

We could use cattle cars and call it "deportation east!"

Obama could never win a civil war as long as the people are armed. What he forgets is that we don’t have to go to war against the federal paramilitary force. We only have to take out their leaders. Kill a few hundred prominent ‘Rats and his dreams of a Marxist United States folds like a house of cards. Anyone want to borrow my copy of Unintended Consequences?

I'll even throw in my copy of The Turner Diaries!

I believe only a few dozens head Rats AKA traitors. need to be "neutralized" starting with those who disseminate the socialist propaganda ... MSM heads and leftist academics and this will stop .

Hey, "disappearing" uppity academics worked in Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador...

And finally, here's a recently added glimpse into how at least one Freeper has been channeling his or her outrage over the results of the last election:

We photographed all of the houses with Obama signs. We know who they are. Tories didn't fair too well in New England. Ended up in Canada. Houses ended up as huge emitters of carbon...

What we are seeing here is what I call "The Pinochet Rationale," the increasingly popular right-wing rationalization for August Pinochet's brutal policies. As I've observed before, it's best summed up by the following "logic."

1. Socialists and Communists are all incipient mass murderers.

2. Liberals/Democrats are the same thing as Socialists and Communists.

Therefore:

3: Liberals/Democrats are all incipient mass murderers.

And therefore:

4: Death squads, mass executions, and terror are a valid defense tactic to use against Liberals/Democrats.

As is a military coup against a legally elected leader.

You know. Like they did in Chile.

This bears watching. Yes, yes, I've heard it all before. "Shut up, we don't want to hear about it!" "They're crazy." "They're a bunch of nobodies." "Ignore them and they'll go away."

No. Sorry. They won't.

The people posting these sincerely terrified screeds aren't aware enough of the rest of us to notice or care whether they're being "ignored" or not. They are aware of liberals almost entirely through what they read about us on right wing blogs or watch on Fox News. Get enough of these "crazy nobodies" egging each other on in such an echo chamber and the result can spill over into action. It endangers not just public figures, but perceived proxies like those people Jim David Adkisson killed "symbolically" last summer because he couldn't actually get to Michael Moore or Ted Kennedy.

Violent rhetoric is becoming normalized among the right. Combine that a severe economic crisis, add the kind of irresponsible talk about "secession" and "revolution" that's being casually invoked on some cable shows, and we could end up very soon with what amounts to a ticking time bomb.

I’m an incurable bleeding heart. Always have been. Almost anybody having a bad day short of Charlie Manson gets at least some measure of sympathy from me. (And I even managed a wince for him when I heard he’d been set on fire.)

There are times, however, when my sympathy contends with – what is the word I’m looking for? Not schadenfreude, because there’s no element of pleasure in it.

It’s something more akin to amazement and best summed up by me withdrawing the hand I’ve been using to pat the other person comfortingly on the shoulder, sitting back, opening my eyes wide and asking “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

That’s my reaction to Alexandra Penney’s two recent pieces, one at The Sunday Times Online, the other at The Daily Beast about her savings being wiped out in the Madoff scandal.

It’s not that I blame her for being unhappy, for feeling violated, bewildered, bereft. Her savings have been taken away, savings she earned through her own hard work. All her assumptions about her future have now been seriously shaken.

But self-pity and hyperbole among the very rich – even among the very rich who’ve been cruelly bilked of their savings – is a sure-fire empathy killer. I depend on San Francisco’s transit system to get me where I want to go, and if I want an ironed shirt, I iron it myself, and have had to since I left for college more than thirty years ago. So naturally, when the indignities being brokenly imparted to me include having to ride the subway, and giving up the freshly ironed shirts provided by her soon-to-be-fired maid, I have a hard time relating.

When someone declares that she has “nowhere to turn” and then adds “At least I have the offer of my son’s adorable back house in Santa Monica,” a certain sense of alienation sets in. When that someone goes on to say she has “nothing” and to prove it cites the fact that “The cottage in West Palm Beach is already on the market, my little country house is being appraised, and I can’t even think what will happen to my apartment…” I have to wonder about her definition of “nothing.” That sounds like a hefty chunk of equity to me, even in today’s real estate market.

And the sense that I’m listening to someone from another planet entirely is made complete when she is driven by desperation to “call my good friend Ed Victor, the literary agent, and say I need to write something, anything.”

Golly. As a freelance writer, I sure wish I had the option of calling my pal, one of the worlds leading literary agents, and asking him to rustle up an assignment for me.

In short, Alexandra Penney has nothing, absolutely nothing but a well-off son willing to offer her a cottage in Santa Monica, the money from the sale of at least two high end properties, and wealthy, influential friends willing to offer her a helping hand. Not to mention the royalties from her bestselling book, How To Make Love to a Man.

And the no doubt hefty advance for her next book, which hopefully, will be written in a calmer frame of mind, and with a better sense of perspective.

He has spent more than 29 months in solitary confinement over the past four years, allowed out of his narrow cell during some of that period only to stretch his legs, alone, for one hour a day. In solitary, he has almost no contact with other human beings. He is allowed no radio, no TV and, in a disorienting twist, no watch or calendar to mark the brutal grind of passing time.

With so little stimulation, the brain begins to work against itself. Prisoners in solitary have described delusions, even hallucinations. It can drive a man mad.

"Karma really is a son of a gun!" says Charles Graner, infamous as the torturer of Abu Ghraib….” Salon, 12/1/08

What is it about the sentence, “Torture is wrong and unacceptable” that so many people have trouble grasping?

Yes, driving someone insane through the kind of isolation described above qualifies as torture. If someone kept a dog under similar circumstances, locking it up in a bare room, with no contact with anyone or anything beyond being fed or occasionally sedated and examined by a vet, they’d be denounced as inhumane and filmed being led away in handcuffs on Animal Precint.

So to all you people who denounced Abu Ghraib with such righteous indignation, but are now smirking, and puffing out your little chests, and practicing your Clint Eastwood sneers in the mirror while you jack off to the idea of Charles Graner’s brain being turned to mush –

Don’t kid yourselves. You’re not that much better than he is. And you’d better hope and pray that, as an atheist, I’m right about there being no afterlife, because I have a feeling that if Jesus exists, and he has questions to ask you after you die, “Did you only get off on the torture of bad people” is not going to be one of them.

Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck on the recent Bill Ayers interview on GMA.

O’Reilly: But when I go out on the street and I say, "William Ayers, does that bother you?" Just as many Americans say, "No, I don't care." What is that mentality when they don't care about a guy like this? What does that tell you?

Beck: Cakes and circuses and too many dumb people. I mean, we should thin out the herd, you know what I mean?

Why no, what do you mean? As one of those “dumb people” who’s not especially bothered by Barack Obama’s tangential relationship with Bill Ayers, I’d really like to know.

Beck: ….There is a disconnect in America. We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance, and I think we're at a crossroads here. We're still about here , where the roads are just starting to split, but pretty soon, this side and this side are not gonna understand each other at all, because we're living in different universes.

And then what, Glenn? Is that when you guys start “thinning the herd?”

A website that shows Obama and McCain supporters reaching out.

"Dear 52

We may not agree on everything. We picked differently. But we're one people and one country."

We all need this.

Dear Friend,

The spirit of Winston Churchill was alive and well on Tuesday night at Focus on the Family Action headquarters.
You may recall that in the most desperate days of World War II – when Great Britain was being pounded daily by Hitler’s Luftwaffe – that Winston Churchill called on his countrymen not to despair from danger but to rise to the challenge.

Fundraising from James Dobson’s Focus on the Family sent out 11/6/08, quoted at Unbossed.com

So now we have the nauseating spectacle of some disappointed American right-wingers trying to cast themselves as alarmed observers of the rise of a new Third Reich. Videos of children singing pro-Obama songs are spliced in with shots from movies about Brownshirts. Bloggers begin posts with sinister observations like “Seventy five years ago in 1933 the people of Germany cast their votes. That year Germans legitimately brought to Power the National Socialist Party (Nazis) and made Adolph Hitler the Head of the Government…" and quote what they fondly imagine to be relevant passages about the rise of the Nazi Student League from Robert Jay Lifton: “"Equally important was 'Gleichschaltung' from below: militant behavior on the part of the National Socialist Student League, which organized early and soon came to dominate or replace traditional student groups and formed an arrogant subculture with intense camaraderie and more than a tinge of violence."

This is the point where irony and projection cease to be funny. These same bloggers seem unaware of the extent to which they echo Nazi rhetoric in their obsession with who is or isn’t a “true American,” in the hateful and exclusionary language they use about those who disagree with them. The same blogger who quotes Lifton has this to say about those of us who voted for Obama:

You are not Americans. You are the product of a culturally ignorant, socialist educational system used by unions and politicians to brainwash three generations of young people, who in their blindness have finally delivered the goods, which will forever destroy their future.

Another offered this in his election post-mortem “Requiem for a Dream:”

We must remember that we are conservatives, and not liberals or "progressives" or whatever they're calling themselves today. Politics is not our life. Unlike liberals, if we lose an election, we're still going to be happier than liberals, whose worldview is premised on misery…And unlike liberals, our happiness is where it has always been and will be tomorrow: our family, our friends, our local community, in our work, our faith, and in our country. These will be around whether or not the current incumbents have a "R" or "D" next to their name.

Loathing is being presented as a comfort here. The reader is invited to cling to the belief that as a conservative, he or she is in a fundamental way better than liberals who, one is invited to presume, don’t love their country, their family, their friends, in short, just don’t feel things the way a conservative does.

We can see now why the far right was so attached to “Godwin’s Rule” for the past twenty years. They didn’t want Nazi parallels to be drawn when the Bush administration did things like using a terrorist act as a pretext for rolling back basic civil rights, lying us into a war, detaining people secretly and indefinitely, and torturing suspects. And God forbid it be mentioned in the face of the right wing’s frequent and sinister iteration of the “stabbed in the back” motif (Dolchstoßlegende in the original German)

No, they wanted to save those Nazi parallels up so they could use them to describe the rise of a charismatic and inspiring liberal politician. They wanted their followers to be aware of old newsreels of enthusiastic crowds in 1930s Germany, but not the embrace of hatred and violence and the flat rejection of reason and shared humanity that made that enthusiasm so chilling.

From the unspeakably bad timing department: Most of us have already seen the video of Shirley Nagel, the McCain supporter in Michigan who, on Halloween night, refused to give candy to the children of Obama supporters. To capture the full flavor of the current right wing insanity though, it really should be watched in tandem with an unintentionally funny video posted on Halloween, just a few hours before Shirley Nagel became an Internet star. It seems that Joe Scarborough’s young right-wing sidekick, Willie Geist, decided to film himself trying to drum up support for the McCain-Palin ticket on the Upper West Side in front of Zabar’s.

The result is a searing few minutes of footage aired on Scarborough Country that reveals the ugly truth about the unreasoning hatred boiling beneath the surface of “those people” living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. See Willie Geist reel beneath cutting responses like, “No, ‘fraid not!” when he asks if McCain can count on a passerby’s support, and “I do not, thank you for offering,” when he asks if someone would like a McCain Palin t-shirt! Observe his heart break as an elderly gentleman says, “Well, frankly, I don’t think so,” when Geist asks if putting the t-shirt in the window a Zabar’s would get a good response! Watch as passersby smile and shake their head rather than give him a high-five for McCain, and then reveal their utter close-mindedness by being unconvinced even after he calls after them, “You’re not voting for McCain? You don’t want to put country first, huh?”

And those are just the milder examples. Some of the other things that were said, like, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood,” and “You gotta go to the east side for this one,” truly revealed something ugly in the liberal psyche. There were a few moments when, frankly, I was concerned for Willie’s safety, like when that cheerful elderly lady teased him about his t-shirt, asking, “Is that your Halloween costume? Pretty scary,” and the old guy told him, of voting for McCain, “I don’t know anyone, of any intelligence, who would vote for him.” And surely Madame DeFarge herself couldn’t be more sinister than the lady who answered his question, “You hate me?” with, “Palin, not you. I don’t hate you. But I wish you’d change your politics.”

“That wasn’t very nice,” he said, looking sadly at the camera.

”Wow! That is so troubling and interesting at the same time!” said Mika Brzezniski , who has apparently never before seen opinionated elderly Jewish liberals on the Upper West Side. Mike Barnicle pronounced it “an important culture piece” and added,” It proves why so many people are so ‘right’ (no pun intended) to really loathe so many on the left. I mean those people are so close-minded, that they couldn’t stop to talk to you…”

Well, actually Mr. Barnicle, some of them did, They were described by you on cable TV as loathsome for their trouble.

And then, just a few hours later, we all met Shirley Nagel…