Driving to work, as I masochistically listened to Rush Limbaugh, I heard him say the most incredible stuff. As soon as I find the transcript, I'll let you all know. For now, I want to share with you some wisdom he spewed forth yesterday, which captures the gist of what he said today, but without nearly the same degree of passion, number of historical references, or level of insanity. So for now, for those of you wondering how the undoubtedly influential conservative Rush Limbaugh – rather than the more cranky, and less mainstream, Michael Savage, whom I usually pick on – sees the American Right vs. the American Left these days, this sums it up:
"There was idealism in [Bush's] speech, the notion that everybody can be free, the notion that we all can experience a better day tomorrow than the day we had today. (interruption) That is not hubris, Mr. Snerdley. Don't give me that. That's not hubris. It may be hubris to them, because the left -- you could argue that the left used to have a philosophical base that was based on idealism: No suffering, no pain, all of this. It was never realistic but at least they were idealists. They were almost Utopian idealists, which was their problem. But what the president did today was make the case for spreading human liberty, defending human dignity, which were once largely the preserve of liberalism. If you go back and look at FDR's speeches and look at the number of times he mentioned God in his inaugurals. Go back to JFK. "We will fight any foe. We'll go anywhere. We will we'll do whatever it takes to spread freedom and liberty." Hey, he couldn't be a liberal Democrat today. JFK couldn't be. Truman couldn't be. They were committed to the triumph of liberty in the world, and that's what this speech was about today, the triumph of freedom and liberty in the world -- and it is now conservatism that is propelling this. Conservatism is no longer the reactionary or defensive movement in the country that is reacting to what liberals are doing. The liberals have become the reactionaries, conservatism is now leading both specifically and philosophically, and so what you have here is a president who laid out a speech today with the full intent of shaping history, not just getting through the next four years, not just coming up with a great approval rating at the end of it all, and not just making sure everybody likes him. This president is intent on shaping history, not impeding it, and this speech embodied all of that today, at least as I heard it. "
There it is. Conservatism is what Democrats were during FDR's, Truman's, and JFK's time. Conservatism is "shaping history." And, in Limbaugh's view, the unpatriotic, unidealistic, reactionary left dares to stand athwart that history, yelling, "Stop!"
