(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.