Political Frenzy

I received another letter from one of my many conservative fans (who thought?), my uncle Roger

Dear Attack, I do have a few questions from reading your blog on DL. Do you believe we should have a national govt. or fed govt? Should the will of the people always be served? And have you ever really listened to Rush for an extended length of time? Or are your thoughts and beliefs molded by people who hate Rush? I can understand your thought process if you listen to Rush once in a while, because he does have many inside jokes, but I would be surprised if you called him names after listening to him for 6 weeks. It must be 6 weeks to wash away all your pre-conseived notions. Now there is a challenge. I have done the same with Air America and National Public Radio. I believe as you listen to Rush your teeth grinding will be less and less each day.

Answering the last question first:
As a full-time student, I’m on the bus and in class from 9am to noon, when Limbaugh’s show is on. And I don’t have three hours to just sit and listen to anything - I have hardly any time just to blog. Believe it or not, I don’t even watch the TV news, and rarely read the newspaper. My information primarily comes from books and the internet press.

My beef with Rush comes from the basic fundamental hypocrisy of his political stances and his personal actions. There are some things I wholeheartedly agreed with him on, for instance this quote: “Too many whites are getting away with drug use…Too many whites are getting away with drug sales…The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too”

He’s right, many rich white people get away with severe drug use while inner city youths are put away for years for possession of marijuana because selling drugs is the only job they can find in a crippled economy. The problem is that Rush Limbaugh became one of the rich whites doing drugs, becoming addicted to OxyContin and hydrocodone eight years after making the above statement.

In his path he has left a wake of divorces: a three year marriage to secretary Roxy McNeely, seven year marriage to Michelle Sixta who was a college student at the time, and the marriage to aerobics instructor Marta Fitzgerald which didn’t last a month. So much for sanctity of marriage.

All I need to know about the man is his fundamental philosophy and his personal actions. I can have no beef with men like John McCain, who lives the philosophy he preaches, but Limbaugh’s “do as I say, not as I do” way about things leaves me with little faith in the man’s moral character.

For the record, I don’t listen to Air America, and the last time I heard or read anything from Al Franken it was on a YouTube video of him on Conan. And to balance my criticism of Limbaugh, here’s a little of what I think of Franken.

Al Franken was a very funny liberal satirist with a keen wit and wonderful delivery. And then I read the first chapter of “The Truth (with jokes)”. It was so filled with self-righteousness and total moral outrage, I just felt that he had turned himself into Luke Skywalker and I expected Dick Cheney to jump out of the pages and cry “I AM YOUR FATHER”. Franken has turned politics into a life-or-death struggle of right and wrong, painted his knight’s armor in brilliant chrome, and thrust a crown of tyranny on the president’s head. As a moderate, I find this kind of epicism very unsettling and rather irresponsible.

Answering the first question:
I believe you’re asking if I think a Federation or a true Union would be better. I believe both have the capacity to serve the American people greatly. A Federation where the independant States have great autonomy and are federated in the interest of regulating commerce would be wonderful, but could possibly fall victim to regional cultural discrimination (see: Southern Reconstruction) and while this form of government is originally what the Founding Fathers had in mind, the invention of national parties and federal crimes - which have no precedence in the constitution - have made a Federation impossible in the U.S. A true Union, which has the national government working in preeminence over subordinate provincial government, is what the U.S. has been trying to become for decades, but cannot due to the electorate system and the bicameral legislative branch. The imbalance of influence per capita is not congruent to the influence of the federal government on the individual. There is no way to rationalize Rhode Island’s two senators and New York State’s two senators with the current powers and influence of the Congress.

I don’t have a preference between Federal or Union - they’re both awesome when used properly. But right now we’re in some kind of diabolic limbo, which will only result in a total self-destruction and ill-serves the American people. As for the other part of your question, yes, as a populist, I believe wholeheartedly that the interests of the people should be served at all times. But this is not an invitation to tyranny of the majority. I will never say that the majority of the people’s interests should be made law, but that all people should be afforded their basic Lockean rights.

Hope that answers your questions!

Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, a bunch of smegheads