From: lneil@lever.ncdl.com (L. Neil Smith)
30 Mar 95 07:10:12 -0600
To: lpelerin@osf1.gmu.edu
Subject: Rush on Waco
WHO'S THE WACKO?
by L. Neil Smith
I don't know about anybody else -- that's one of the reasons
I decided to write this, to try and find out -- but I'm
thoroughly fed up with listening to Rush Limbaugh blather, as he
was doing once again just the other day, about "Wacko, Texas".
As Rush informs us smugly in the pizza commercial he's so
proud of, when he's right, nobody in the Known Galaxy could
possibly be more right than he is. And it's unquestionably true
that we get news from him -- or at least a perspective on the
news -- that we can't get from anybody else. Naturally, as a
Libertarian, I disagree with him fully half of the time. But at
least it's a refreshingly _different_ half than I'm accustomed to
disagreeing with the mass media about. And there's always the
inestimable pleasure of knowing the way he makes our mutual
antagonists' blood boil, their stomachs churn, and other portions
of their anatomy pucker and shrivel with even the least of his
pronouncements.
But when Rush is wrong, nobody can even approach the cosmic
magnitude of his wrongness. And Rush is wrong, totally wrong,
embarrassingly wrong -- just as he was totally, embarrassingly
wrong back when the whole thing happened -- about Waco. It's
enough to make you wonder _which_ god his talent is on loan from.
I remember my frustration -- and you probably remember your
own, as well -- at the way Rush sat back on his big fat ratings,
all through the despicable Branch Davidian siege, having a grand
old time at the expense of the dozens of innocent, helpless men,
women, and children whose religious beliefs failed so feloniously
to coincide with his own, and whom the United States government
was working up its microscopic courage to obliterate with a
callousness and brutality seldom witnessed even at the height of
the Third Reich's malevolant sway.
It's all too easy to lose hold of the ugly facts, sometimes,
too easy to let the hated memories fade, of a hundred individual
human beings surrounded, threatened, tortured, shot, gassed, and
burned to cinders by a State whose one and only reason for
existing was the protection of their lives, liberties, and
property. God -- or somebody -- forbid that any of us ever get
protected the same way.
Protected to death.
The reason, one is forced to presume, for the big man's
inappropriately jocular indifference to the Waco atrocity is that
Jackboot Janet and her orcs were only following through -- pretty
damned stupidly, as it turned out -- on a plan conceived,
approved, and rehearsed by their predecessors in the Bush
Administration.
I remember how Drug/Education Czar William Bennett, the
authoritarian bully-boy Rush toadies up to so disgustingly -- a
philosophical thug who amounts to little more than Pat Buchanan
with a vocabulary -- helped to get the whole mess started by
having his staff write up the first version of the so-called
"Clinton" rifle and magazine ban for introduction by Newt
Gingrich in the House and Phil Gramm in the Senate, proposing to
strip millions of otherwise blameless gun-owning citizens of
their social respectability, and turn them into criminals
overnight with the stroke of a pen, setting the stage for what
happened at Waco and for a thousand incidents just like it still
to come.
I remember, too, how the revered and beloved Nancy Reagan
was chosen to cut the ribbon on the War on Drugs -- which we all
know now was really a war against the Bill of Rights -- that made
something like Waco thinkable. And do-able.
What disturbs me almost as much as these appalling lapses of
Republican morality and courage is my perception (correct me if
I'm wrong) that, in this context, the Great Mouthpiece speaks
pretty much directly for the current party establishment, which
has missed the boat again by failing to comprehend the
significance of what history will come to regard as the
definitive event of our times. If so, it means the changes last
November and a future change of Presidential regimes, will bring
us no relief, not from unconstitutional gun laws, nor from the
likelihood that something a lot like Waco will happen again.
So what to do? I won't try to boycott Rush or his sponsors
(proving that I'm smarter than the average liberal). But if you
share my concerns, and you agree with me that the easiest way to
change the course of the Republican Party may be to change the
mind of its _real_ leader, then join me in writing to him at:
Rush Limbaugh
2 Penn Plaza, 17th Floor
New York, NY 10121
Even better, for the individuals most likely to be reading
this, Rush's Compuserve address is 70277,2502. If you're on
internet, like I am, then make it 70277.2502@compuserve.com.
Tell him he's dead wrong about Waco and that he's been dead
wrong for two years. Tell him that, if he ever used _both_
halves of his brain, he'd know he's wrong. (And he'd probably be
a Libertarian, to boot!) Tell him that if he's honest, when he
finally figures it all out, he's going to be more ashamed of
himself than words can adequately express. And if you can't think
of anything better, or you haven't got the time for anything
else, forward this essay to him.
Think of it as an experiment in integrity, Rush.
_Your_ integrity.
================================
L. Neil Smith
Author: THE PROBABILITY BROACH, THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE,
THE LANDO CALRISSIAN ADVENTURES, HENRY MARTYN, and PALLAS
Editor: LEVER ACTION BBS (303) 493-6674, FIDOnet: 1:306/56
Founder: Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus
Secretary & Legislative Director:
Weld County Fish & Wildlife Association
NRA Life Member
.. Pete Wilson: George Bush Lite
--- Blue Wave/RA v2.12 [NR]
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