2009 – Rush Limbaugh Home
The only regret I have concerning my encounters with Rush is that I couldn't have influenced him more toward the libertarian philosophy than toward the Republican Party neo-conservatism where he has wound up. I have to admit that back in the 80s I was a little intimidated by the conservative environment of Southwest Florida so that I did not fully express my libertarian beliefs of legalization of prostitution and drugs and opposition to our interventionist foreign policy.
Conservatives are supposed to respect traditions and the market that have stood the test of time. There are not many traditions that go back farther than prostitution. After thousands of years of buying and selling it should be apparent that a young woman's body has acquired a market value, the attempted suppression of which is just causing more problems for society. Laws against prostitution and drugs are nothing more than welfare for the justice system and the executive branch, not to mention the damage they do to the lower classes. George Washington and most of the founders of this country either grew and/or smoked marijuana.
After I got out of prison in 2005 I started listening to Limbaugh again on my lunch break and by 2007 in Florida it was obvious to me we were headed for a financial disaster but Rush was oblivious to it. He's still talking about what a wonderful economy we have under Bush and supporting the wars when the country was already bankrupt and headed for a financial collapse. It seemed to me he went out of his way to ridicule any reports in the news of an economic downturn. This was especially irritating to me since I knew I was going to be laid off soon with no prospects in the near future. Apparently I was in a better position on the bottom to see all the people who were in over their heads on their mortgages than Rush was.
As soon as Obama was elected all of the sudden Rush began to acknowledge our financial problems and blame them on Obama. It was a little early for that. There will be plenty of reason to blame Obama by 2011. Of course it wouldn't have mattered if McCain had won. He would have had the same response as Obama - bail out and take over the large banks, the large insurance companies, and the auto industry. However our memories are quickly being refreshed about just how bad the democrats are also. Unbelievable the arrogance they have in trying to stuff health care reform down our throats and we don't even get a reduction in our foreign policy interventions. God Damn – will you voters please put some libertarians in power.
The country is addicted to debt as bad as any crackhead is addicted to crack. (I know from direct experience – see my journey through the crack world). It is not politically possible to stop our financial destruction. All we can do is push it further down the road until it becomes impossible to ignore and we finally have to acknowledge our bankruptcy (a bankruptcy Rush was oblivious to while his anointed one was President) by defaulting on our public debts or trying to inflate them away.
To me Rush had become too much of a mouthpiece for the Republican Party and had joined the forces ridiculing Ron Paul for his non-interventionist foreign policy beliefs. By the 2008 election I was so disgusted with Bush and the Republican Party that I would rather have Obama win than McCain. At least Obama could speak in an intelligent manner and had enough sense to talk about getting out of Iraq and not continue to waste our resources trying to police the world (our military is in 140 countries). Of course the foreign policy establishment will eventually bring him around to their suicidal bromides of trying to control the world while our republic crumbles from within just as Rome did.
Bush's acquiescence to the drug benefit plan was the last straw for me. A bankrupt country taking on another huge financial burden. The drug addicts want someone else to pay for their dependence on prescription drugs that do nothing but mask symptoms and create side effects that require more drugs to mask those symptoms making everyone more dependent on the drug industry and medical establishment that doesn't cure any diseases while they try to suppress their own research which shows how dangerous these drugs are while the FDA looks the other way and harasses the natural health food industry and alternative medicines that are the answer for curing our health care crises.
Maybe if Rush knew more about health he wouldn't be on his way to an early death due to his dependence on prescription drugs and the medical establishment and his ignorance of the costs of eating processed foods and the benefits of natural foods and supplements. How can anyone expect the body to be able to adapt so quickly to such a radical change in eating habits as has happened in the last 100 years after a million years of eating natural foods?
We are going to become poorer as a nation until the debt issue is resolved by defaulting. As I explained in what went wrong the debt can never be paid back. This will probably result in sections of the country seceding from the union which will be a good thing because the people living in those sections will have more individual and economic freedom. They will no longer be supported by the nanny state. It is only then that people living in the geographical area now known as the United States will be able to prosper again.
Back in the 80s I was asking for conservative commentators with a sense of humor to come forward to compete with the liberal commentators at the time. Well Rush heard me and came forward and was a refreshing force. He never was enough of a libertarian for me but then he never claimed to be. Now however his message has become tainted to me because of his Republican Party bias which became obvious with his defense of some of Bush's statist policies. However I do expect him to perform better with a Democrat in the White House when he is not inhibited by the same party affiliation as the President.
I now have to make another plea for a politically independent truly libertarian commentator with a sense of humor and irreverence to come forward. With Ron Paul's popularity with the younger generation surely there is a market for a libertarian Rush. Glen Beck is good and getting better but he is either trying too hard to be funny or he gets too maudlin all the time for me. Also I prefer political commentators who keep their religious beliefs to themselves. But recently his attempting to educate the public on the connection between the early progressive movement of the early 20th century and our bloated Federal government today has been very positive.
Hannity is as neo as they get and he also totally missed the economic bubble that was brewing. Please give me a non-interventionist, libertarian commentator not affiliated with any political party who understands the importance of sound money, abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending our expensive Foreign adventures, and who understands how important small business is to a prosperous economy and the damage the Mussolini inspired Fascist policies of subsidizing big business are doing. Also let's start talking about abolishing all these less than worthless Federal agencies and getting the Feds out of public education. Fiat money creation has corrupted the people and the nation and put the money junkies in charge while the divide between the rich and the poor only accelerates.
1/17/2011 Update – Hallelujah!! - My prayers have been answered. Peter Schiff (Schiffradio.com) has arrived. After weeks of listening the only disagreement I've had with him so far is on patent law. I believe that should be done away with also. One should not forget that Ben Franklin was talking his book when he lobbied for putting patent protections in the Constitution. He had the most to gain at the time from patent protections. I don't buy the argument that without patent laws the number of inventions would be diminished. Even without patent protections there is still plenty of financial incentive for anyone who invents something that the marketplace values. The first creator has an advantage in the marketplace and it should be their responsibility to ensure that they retain that advantage. Once a product is sold it is the property of the purchaser and if they want to take it apart and figure out how it works and copy it and sell their copy they should be free to do so. It's up to the first creator to convince consumers that they should buy the original and not the knock-off. Billion of dollars a year are being wasted on the patent system and it's just not necessary. It amounts to a subsidization of thousands of producers at the expense of millions of consumers.