I was listening to Rush Limbaugh in my car for a little while yesterday,
Monday March 28, 2005, and I heard an interesting exchange with a caller.

It was fun to watch Rush squirm, trying to courteously deal with the natural
and probable violent tendencies provoked by his own words.

The caller was an older guy who had become focused on the Schiavo case. He
was regurgitating the over-the-top junk he’s been hearing from his favorite
right wing spinwits, and possibly from his favorite TV preachers, and was
calling for, in essence, violence.

The caller likened the Schiavo case to something out of Nazi Germany, and said
that the people should rise up and oppose evil judges who thwart the will of
the people, or something like that. Of course, it’s all the fault of the
liberals.

And he does not understand why the great upstanding conservative, Jeb Bush
(Governor of Florida) won’t rescue Sciavo.

Rush had his hands full.

Rush knows very well that the “activist liberal judge” in Florida who made
the tough decision in the Sciavo case is just one of many judges who have
looked at the case. There have been appeals after appeals, and under Florida
law everything is legal that has occurred in the case.

Rush was trying to explain to the caller that violence and law breaking by
the Save Schiavo forces is not appropriate.

Each time Rush would try to say violence was inappropriate, the caller would
remind him of examples from history where law breaking and violence were
appropriate, including the American Revolution where our patriots broke
England’s laws in revolting.

I wonder what Rush Really thinks about the intellect of the hard core rank
and file religious conservatives with whom he dances. Rush fills their heads
with demonizing name-calling against evil liberals and evil liberal judges.
He says liberals don’t care about life, or similar crap. In other words, he
tells the Faithful that liberals are in effect evil people who are working
their level best to destroy our nation and our religion and our babies and
our helpless citizens.

(Oh, By the Way: Rush is keeping W. Bush’s secret about that Texas law Bush
signed, the one that lets hospitals kill people who can’t pay for care in
some circumstances — Isn’t Rush a nice guy, to help Bush avoid
embarassment?)

But Rush does NOT want to publically endorse violence, even though violence
would be understandable if what he were saying were true, about the evil
liberals and the evil judges and their culture of death. By his choice of
language, he has encouraged but not endorsed Violence to save Schiavo and to
prevent abortions.

But when the caller wanted Rush to actually tell him that violence was OK,
Rush balked. In fact, Rush sounded very off balance. Rush seemed to want to
say some harsh things to the caller, but stumbled around trying to be polite
and discourage violence.

If you think Rush Actually would endorse violence, you’d be wrong. Violence
would mean that right wing radio has become officially dangerous to civil
order, and its popularity among more moderate folks would plunge.

When the violence starts, then the public will recognize that the spinwits’
insane demonizing of liberals and Democrats is NOT all in good fun, and is
Dangerous to our civil society.

We are not a jihadist culture yet, but we may be getting there.

Anyway, it was fun to watch Rush squirm, trying to courteously deal with the
natural and probable violent tendencies provoked by his own words.