Posted by
Weisshaupt on Monday, April 06, 2009 11:03:27 AM
Last Week Andrew Klavan issued a challenge to Liberals to actually Listen to Rush Limbaugh
“Therefore, I am throwing down my gauntlet at your quivering liberal feet. I hereby issue my challenge -- the Limbaugh Challenge: Listen to the show. Not for five minutes but for several hours: an hour a day for several days. Consider what he has to say -- the real policy material under the jokes and teasing bluster. Do what your intellectual keepers do not want you to do and keep an open mind. Ask yourself: What's he getting at? Why does he say the things he says? Why do so many people of goodwill -- like that nice Mr. Klavan -- agree with him?”
Well, the editorial staff at the LA Times answered the challenge
There was no metion of ANYTHING corresponding to Rush’s policy positions. Did any of them actually listen to the show with an “open mind” or did they listen to it with the assumption that everything Rush says is a Lie, or is mean etc. Not one concrete example of a difference of opinion on a substantive matter.. One of the liberals was even engaged in an act of “self-affrimation” – building up his self esteem by never once questioning that his beliefs and worldview could in any way be wrong. He derived a sense of superioirty from disagreeing with what Rush said:
Herein lies my own confession. Like the ditto-heads themselves, I also listen to Limbaugh strictly to reinforce my preconceived views. When I am feeling most powerless, most misanthropic, most suspicious of the ability of humanity to think clearly, when I'm flooded with fears that we might be living in the twilight of the bipeds, there's absolutely no one better than Rush Limbaugh to reaffirm my views. Thanks Rush."
I couldn't have put it better.
In his original article Klavan threw out list of possible Liberal answers as to why they refused to listen to Limbagh:
“Let me guess at your answer. You don't need to listen to him. You've heard enough to know he's a) racist, b) hateful, c) stupid, d) merely an outrageous entertainer not to be taken seriously or e) all of the above”
Based on the response, I would like to propose another option: "The people who listen to Rush are stupid, and that is why people listen to him."
Liberals simply
are unable to respond to what someone says,
they can only respond emotionally to the people who disagree with them. The Left’s “enlightened tolerance" simply doesn’t extend to people who hold different views than they do. Consider
this clip from the daily show. Jon Stewart demonstrates elegantly both the intolerance of the Left and why the Daily Show should never be considered "news."
Mr. Klavan of course
got direct responses as well, that were just as filled with vitriol and hate - domonstrating the liberal inability to understand even the simplest context. Self-parody comes naturally to them - I think Mr. Klavan describes the effect eloquently:
“Leftists have always confused their good intentions with actual virtue. The tyranny allowed to spread by left wing appeasement, the neighborhoods and families destroyed by their corrupt welfare programs, the millions of lives snuffed out by environmentalist hysteria—these don’t show up on their moral scorecards because they meant so very well. Indeed, so swathed are they in the warm glow of their purposes, any question about the actual results of their actions strikes them as shockingly cruel. A mere rough joke, an outrageous remark, the least untoward language from a conservative—and they reel back, appalled by the display of pure meanness.”
In the end, liberals have so completely integrated their view of themselves into their view of the world, attacking one is the equivalent of attacking the other. They can’t accept new facts or information that confliucts with their worldview without also being confronted with the possibility that they are not as enlightened, smart, or wonderful as they desperately want to believe themselves to be. They are forced into attacking the messenger rather than the message, and hence find it difficult to rise to higher layers in the
argument effectiveness pyramid.
In the end liberals simply aren’t interested in truth or reason or facts. They are ill equiped to deal with them. They just want to feel good about themselves and they just want anyone who disagrees with them to shut up.
As Mr Klavan declares, "Shut Up" is the ONLY liberal argument. With Obama implementing Socialism and repealing the Constitution, turning their backs on the declaration of independence, and advocating ideals that are 180 degrees opposed to those of the Founding Fathers, silence is the one thing that Real Americans can no longer afford to do. Our government was founded in the Age of Reason, a time when Facts and Logic held sway, and a time when Reality was not determined by Liberals finding "Consensus" on what they think the world SHOULD BE LIKE, but rather in dealing with the world as it is.
It is Time to Speak Out. You cannot resolve a debt problem by contracting more debt, you cannot bring World Peace by disarming, you cannot Have Socialism and Individual Freedom. Free us from the Narcissist in Chief and his followers..