United Liberty
Rush Limbaugh: Champion of Big, Powerful Government
Thu, 02/12/2009 - 8:09am | posted by Dr. Charles Kennedy
To those “conservatives” who look to Rush Limbaugh as a spokesman for the cause of limited, constitutional government, this should silence any doubts as to where Rush stands when it comes to big government. His rant just about sums up everything that is wrong with what the “conservative” movement has become especially during the eight years of the Bush Administration (but clearly getting underway with the “Gingrich Revolution”). The so-called conservative movement is dead, and anyone who wants to understand why would do well to read Rush’s actual words here. I don’t think he was joking at all when he said, “It’s going to be a bigger, more powerful, stronger government — and we’re going to turn it against the left in ways they could have never imagined.”
Rush is correct to be outraged at the massive amounts of power sought and wielded by the Democrats who are now in control, but he turns a completely blind eye to the very same thing experienced under the Republican control of the Bush years. All the while condemning what the left is doing with the disastrous “stimulus” package and other such outrages, he totally ignores the horrible things done by so-called “conservatives” that helped set the stage for the events happening now. The answer is not to use tyrannical power as “payback” for what the “liberals” are doing to consolidate their own powers. The answer lies in something which brings all of us together, regardless of our political party affiliations, religious backgrounds, racial identity or ethnic origin: freedom. Freedom brings people together. This is the beauty of the new movement that has grown out of the Ron Paul presidential campaign, which continues through various groups and organizations such as the Campaign For Liberty, Young Americans for Liberty, the Future of Freedom Foundation, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and United Liberty.
Forget Rush Limbaugh. Let him be angry and rant and rave all he wants. He does not stand for liberty. He stands for power and vengeance. If this is what the “conservative” movement has come to, then let it die. There’s a new movement bringing people together to promote the things the “conservative” movement once claimed to stand for: freedom, limited constitutional government, and the rule of law.
Rush Limbaugh is a champion of bloviating.
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson
Dr.Kennedy, Conservatives did not cause the economic chaos we are in. Carter started Freddie mac and fannie mae to allow low income families to own a house. Clinton gave them more power. guarrenting people that could not afford a houes. An audit was ordered in the last two years. The Dems.(in control)rejected the audit.”We are going to continue to help poor people” That caused the uncontroled growth in the housine marked. SEE WHERE IT GOT US.
“Dr.Kennedy, Conservatives did not cause the economic chaos we are in. Carter started Freddie mac and fannie mae to allow low income families to own a house. Clinton gave them more power.”
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Incredible… simply incredible! You go back to Carter and try to blame HIM for the situation the Nation is in today? Unbelievable!
Considering the fact that since Carter’s term ended, Republicans have been in the White House for TWENTY of the last THIRTY YEARS and the ten years, from 1994 until 1996, the Republicans were also in FIRM control of Congress… how do you right wingers ALWAYS blame EVERYTHING wrong on the Democrats while trying to claim EVERYTHING good was brought about by Republicans?! Do you people actually believe this is true and you’re not just saying this HOPING The People will fall for it!?!
The fact of the matter is that, despite right wing claims, Republicans were STILL in control of the Senate after 2006. In 2006, there were 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats and two Independents in the Senate. The 2 Independents can and have voted along with either party depending on the issue. Since the Vice President, Dick Cheney, presided over the Senate HE cast the DECIDING vote in the event of a tie… for all partical intents and purposes the Republicans were STILL in control until 2009.
I’m sorry to have to be the one to break the news to you, but EIGHT years of TOTAL REPUBLICAN control of this Government the blame for the situation this Nation faces today! When Bush43 was installed as POTUS, depsite the fact he LOST the popular vote by more than half a million votes, the Republican Party went out and threw itself a party and began EIGHT YEARS of spending like a drunken sailor on a 24 hr pass.
Republican “tax breaks” did NOT work under Reagan/Bush41 and they did NOT work under 8 years of Bush43. The Republicans were resoundingly defeated in the 2008 election… doesn’t that tell you something? Isn’t it OBVIOUS that the American public does NOT want MORE of the same? How can the Republicans STILL cling to the failed policies in spite of the fact Americans, OVERWHELMINGLY want change, NOT morre of the same?!
Your montra, “Democrats are evil and hate America” just might give you some sort of piece of mind while you meditate, but no matter HOW many times you repeat it, it CANNOT change history.
And all the while, while all of you are trying to blame the politicians, the bankers are holding the strings. Both sides are in bed with the money, both sides are more interested in their own power than the liberty they have been sent to represent and both sides have too much power in the form of despotism that will eventually bring our doom.
However, I am very hopeful that I am woefully wrong.
IKW
amen to that!!!!
Hey Anonymous, if you blame this on fannie and freddie, you have no clue as to what is happening, they are very minor players in this disaster if you know anything about economics. Please people, get an education before you open your mouths.
Gregory, I think you are over reacting when you say that conservatives are blaming Carter for the mess we are in. I believe that you have to really be honest with yourself and stop the ridiculous mantra that the left-leaning main stream media has pounded into us that Bush is to be blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong in the last 8 years. Various laws and practices that have transcended the last 20 years have brought us to this point. If you consider that the Democrats in 2006 said that they would bring “oversight” to Washington, did they mean that the banking and investment arena weren’t included in this oversight? They were supposed to clean up Bush’s government but I see no sign of that having happened. So let’s get a firm grip and try to get ourselves out of this as individuals and not rely on the government to bail us out, since it won’t happen. We need to live our lives in a sensible way, not overspending and working to make our families less dependent on government because we are bound to get less and less as the government spends us into astounding amounts of debt.
“Gregory, I think you are over reacting when you say that conservatives are blaming Carter for the mess we are in. I believe that you have to really be honest with yourself and stop the ridiculous mantra that the left-leaning main stream media has pounded into us that Bush is to be blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong in the last 8 years.”
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Wayne, did you even read the post to which I was responding?! It was the poster I responded to that suggested Carter was to blame… NOT ME!
As for the “ridiculous mantra that the left-leaning main stream media has pounded into us” I do NOT let the media or anyone else tell ME how or what to think. Furthermore, if you actually took the time to read my post you will clearly see that I don’t blame “EVERYTHING that has ever gone wrong in the last 8 years” on Bush43. Instead I clearly stated that many of the problems stem from the Reagan/Bush41 era, Bush43 just continued Reagan’s failed policies.
It would be nice if the posters on here did a bit more homework before espousing their views as factual. There is plenty of blame to go around. Democrats want individuals with low-incomes to be able to buy houses. Republicans want no governmental oversight. Combine the two ingredients, and you have the mess we are in. Absolute views typically fail. Our country needs to be run with a greater degree of dynamic thought.
First of all….
“Fannie Mae was established in 1938 as a mechanism to make mortgages more available to low-income families. It was added to the Federal Home Mortgage association, a government agency in the wake of the Great Depression in 1938, as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in order to facilitate liquidity within the mortgage market. In 1968, the government converted Fannie Mae into a private shareholder-owned corporation in order to remove its activity from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget. Consequently, Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages, and that responsibility was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae). In 1970, the government created the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), commonly known as Freddie Mac, to compete with Fannie Mae and, thus, facilitate a more robust and efficient secondary mortgage market.”
Second….
“In 1999, Fannie Mae came under pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans to low and moderate income borrowers. At the same time, institutions in the primary mortgage market pressed Fannie Mae to ease credit requirements on the mortgages it was willing to purchase, enabling them to make loans to subprime borrowers at interest rates higher than conventional loans. Shareholders also pressured Fannie Mae to maintain its record profits.
In 2000, due to a re-assessment of the housing market by HUD, anti-predatory lending rules were put into place that disallowed risky, high-cost loans from being credited toward affordable housing goals. In 2004, these rules were dropped and high-risk loans were again counted toward affordable housing goals.
The intent was that Fannie Mae’s enforcement of the underwriting standards they maintained for standard conforming mortgages would also provide safe and stable means of lending to buyers who did not have prime credit. As Daniel Mudd, then President and CEO of Fannie Mae, testified in 2007, instead the agency’s responsible underwriting requirements drove business into the arms of the private mortgage industry who marketed aggressive products without regard to future consequences: “We also set conservative underwriting standards for loans we finance to ensure the homebuyers can afford their loans over the long term. We sought to bring the standards we apply to the prime space to the subprime market with our industry partners primarily to expand our services to underserved families.
“Unfortunately, Fannie Mae-quality, safe loans in the subprime market did not become the standard, and the lending market moved away from us. Borrowers were offered a range of loans that layered teaser rates, interest-only, negative amortization and payment options and low-documentation requirements on top of floating-rate loans. In early 2005 we began sounding our concerns about this “layered-risk” lending. For example, Tom Lund, the head of our single-family mortgage business, publicly stated, “One of the things we don’t feel good about right now as we look into this marketplace is more homebuyers being put into programs that have more risk. Those products are for more sophisticated buyers. Does it make sense for borrowers to take on risk they may not be aware of? Are we setting them up for failure? As a result, we gave up significant market share to our competitors. “
And you Sir, are so bogged down in the weeds of “facts” that you are incapable of seeing anything other than what you put in front of your face.
You wrote a very informative article, of that which has already passed. However, it doesn’t seem like you have any ability to look forward and make a logical conclusion of what the current course of action will render.
When I need a historian I will be sure to call, but until then just keep sharpening your pencils while those who can look ahead and see the forrest put things into perspective.
IKW
Stupid fuck.
I heard Rush say the other day that Bush was not Conservative. I guess he hates to say anything against the Republicans. It is obvious that this last administration did not do a good job and is one of the reasons we now have this Liberal bunch in control. McCain didn’t have a very good campaign. He should not have been nominated. Apparently there isn’t many from either party that has done what they should have.
Charles, this is a great article. Finally, someone puts Rush in his place. The droves who listen to his rants need to wake up. Anyone who thinks Bush is either “conservative” or “compassionate” is still drinking the kool-aid and has no understanding of what the term “conservative” has traditionally meant.
You are right on Charles, the problem is that we keep playing the blame game, trying to pin the blame on the “other side”, while each expecting the government to solve our problems for us. We the people are the solution to our nation’s problems, not the government. If we get bogged down in the false left-right paradigm and divide ourselves, we can never wake up and identify the powers behind the throne.
Regardless of which party has been in power the Nanny State has grown, Big Brother has come of age, the National Debt has increased, the Bill of Rights has been disregarded, & tyranny has become the federal modus operandi. The left-right paradigm is being used to divide the people and dupe us into believing that a simple change of party in power will change the course we are on.
But the people are waking up, the revolution is growing, the American people are re-learning the value of freedom and that not only is freedom worth fighting for, but if you want to be free, you must be prepared to fight for it. Words will not stop the government, we need action from the grassroots.
Evan, it sounds like you completely understand what I was saying in my first post.
My apologies to the group for inadvertently putting it up so many times.
IKW
Ikw; keynes answered the questions.You seem to be able to disparage his writing, but offer no solution. He gave some of the reasons for the problems. You just gave a critique. How thoughtful
Let people listen for themselves before you write some hair brained article. You are doing no good to the movement by pushing your jaded perspective. Think before you write.
You might want to read my comments to another poster further down, to understand even better where I am coming from. I would make clear, however, that I think the “movement”, if by that we mean the “conservative movement”, has had great harm done to it by people like Rush Limbaugh. He does say things from time to time that are true, or contain truth, but his emotionally over-charged rants come off as childish and petty, and I think this particularly one was especially revealing of his true colors, and is but one example why the conservative movement has been so sullied by people posing as “conservatives” who seem to become interested only in promoting power and revenge over people they disagree with. My views about such people have been pretty well formed over the past decade or more as I’ve seen so many “conservatives” argue for things that are in fact contrary to the movement Barry Goldwater inspired with his 1964 presidential run (which was further by Ronald Reagan, culminating in his 1980 election). Whatever else might be said, Goldwater and Reagan were not interested in using government power to seek revenge over “Liberals”.
Ignorance is cleary well and alive with writers such as this. He does not understand the conservative movement, the people who shape it and the direction the Republican party has taken, The conservatives have never fully controlled this government. During RR term, he had the democrats stopping him. Bush one and two decided to allow them full authority. As for the media, they twisted every move that the republicans made, but when it comes to Obama who they got elected, they could care less if its bad for this country or not. Limbaugh has a lot of points that are correct, but if you truly want real change, dump the democrats and republicans and elect truly conservatives. That is a real change to believe in, not the Pelosi and Reed show and this one term president
On the contrary, I do actually “understand the conservative movement, the people who shape it and the direction the Republican party has taken.” I have studied the conservative movement for the past nearly 25 years, reading a significant amount of material that was published during the Goldwater years (the late 50s up to his 1964 campaign) and beyond, and following the movement by subscribing to and reading numerous periodicals over the years as events unfold. You are correct in saying that conservatives have never full controlled the government. That has in fact been true all along. It is true that Reagan couldn’t get much of his agenda through the Congress under the control of the Democrats. There were numerous instances, though, where Reagan did not follow or even attempt to follow a truly conservative (i.e., small government) agenda. There is not the space here to go into those specifics, but a proper amount of research will find plenty of examples.
You suggest that Bush I and Bush II gave conservatives “full authority”. Your analysis is incorrect. The Democrats were fully in control of Congress during Bush I. While the Republicans were in the House majority for 6 years of Bush II, and the Senate majority for 4 years of the same (remember that Sen. Jeffords of VT became an independent after the 2004 and caucused with the Democrats, tipping the balance of power to the Democrats), the policies that were put into legislation could hardly be described as “conservative”. Indeed, my whole point is that the conservative movement is in disarray, largely because so many within its ranks have become more interested in political power than in preserving liberty. This is precisely where things went wrong beginning in 1994 with the so-called Gingrich Revolution. Gingrich, it must be understood, was not and is not a conservative in the sense that word once meant. He is actually a man who possesses no principles, but is only interested in achieving political power, which he can do effectively by making use of traditional conservative-sounding rhetoric. In fact, Gingrich really slid right into the philosophy of the neo-conservatives, even though he wasn’t part of the original group of them. This whole approach, based on preserving political power instead of preserving liberty, has continued largely unabated with the Republican congressional leadership. The tables have turned of course, now that the Democrats hold the balance of power. But it is no different with them, either.
You are correct in pointing to the tendency of the media to distort matters, but this is what they do, whether they are reporting about Democrats or Republicans. It certainly is true that reporting about Obama has much more favorable than about Republicans, but this does not erase the tremendous amount of harm done by Republican politicians in the name of “conservatism” that is anything but conservative in the traditional understanding.
Limbaugh does make points that are correct and are worth making, as seen in his opposition to the “stimulus”, which I commend him for. However, he destroys his credibility and reveals his true colors by saying the kinds of things he does in the particular rant that I linked in my commentary.
As for for the path of the conservative movement and the Republican party, both have been going the wrong way for some time. The conservative movement allowed itself to become infected with the neo-conservative view of foreign policy, one which favors interventionism and war in the name of “making the world safe for democracy” (which, of course, is from Woodrow Wilson, who was in no sense a traditional conservative). This happened easily because of lingering attitudes stemming from the cold war era. A case can be made that the conservative movement, even going back to Goldwater, placed excessive faith in the ability of big government to defeat communism through an aggressive foreign policy. That’s another discussion for another day, I suppose, but it’s one worth having as we seek to understand why we face the threat of terrorism (my view being the same as Ron Paul’s: that it is blowback for our interventionism in the Middle East). Also the conservative movement has tended to put too much stock in the Republican party and its politicians, most of whom have come to accept the welfare state (and the warfare state) as a given. Entire books have been written about this topic. And with the Republican party, it all comes back to building political power as opposed to preserving liberty. Indeed, it’s something of a fluke that the Republican party has come to be associated with small government, given its historical roots in the 19th century as a party of big government (with even associations between its founders and known Marxists from the mid-19th century).
I agree with you on dumping the Democrats and the Republicans. On the other hand, the reality is that the system is biased against third parties, so there is a case to be made for trying to work within whichever of the two parties provides the least hostile environment to the ideas of preserving liberty and promoting the rule of law under the Constitution. The country, sadly, appears headed down the wrong path under the Democrats, the same path it has followed under the Republicans (and both parties in concert). But there is hope, as I point to in my commentary, thanks to the awakening by Ron Paul of the remnant who believe in liberty, who have come together to form a new movement. That is hope, indeed the potential, for change we truly can believe in.
Charles, great commentary (as usual). This particular rant of Mr. Limbaugh is especially disgusting. As I struggle to decide where to place the energy of my fight, it is precisely these types of words which make me recoil in the thought of supporting the GOP.
There is a great commentary by libertarian writer William Norman Grigg on the very same Limbaugh rant I wrote about here. Titled “Limbaugh-Lenninism”, it can be found at this link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w79.html
Spot on Dr Kennedy, and an excellent follow up explanation. I believe we call it ‘voting the best of the worst’ in common terms. You can make people immune to change by introducing it slowly, but you can never take the common sense out of the common people (not including those on Howard Stern’s interview with SOME Harlem voters).
We have a classic example of that here in Britain right now! I’m sorry I can’t give you the facts to view, but three months ago the opposition leader, David Cameron, commanded only 20% of national confidence in solving the current crisis in this country, but now that Labour has come up with its own deliberate annihilation of public funds (same as yours), he is suddenly leader in all the polls. That means, with all the common sense in the world today, people knowingly vote leaders they don’t believe can solve the problems; if you think about it deep enough, it’s an insult to the greatest gift we have; the sense of knowing right from wrong.
We have to choose between the lesser of two evils on a regular basis in life, so I agree it’s there and can happen; but regardless of the title President, Prime Minister or Emporer, they do not have to make life more complicated when the right way brings challenges frequently. In a nut shell, they believe stereotypical life with as little emotion as possible (introducing ideas slowly, but with eventual huge impact hardens the human character; they know we can naturally take much, much more through our history, but emotions are their enemy because they tell us when something is wrong) is the right way to be; like many of them!
I guess all you have to do is put ‘Dr’ in front of your name and people are supposed to believe your garbage. You don’t understand squat about conservatism. If you’ve ‘studied’ conservatism for as many years as you say….well, you’ve wasted a lot of time. But, a lot of Phuds…Dr’s…are pretty damned thick. You want to understand conservatives? Spend a day at a shooting range and listen to the discourse. Spend a day on a warehouse floor and listen to the workers. Or sit at home or in your car and listen to Limbaugh because he sure as hell IS the heart and sould of conservatives. Dr. Kennedy my ass. What a pompous jerk.
Oh boy, you sound like Rush Limbaugh on steroids! That sort of ugly, insulting style is exactly one of the reasons that “conservatives” of that particular ilk are on the losing end of the intellectual war, so to speak. Conservatives will not be able to gain any sort of credibility as long as they appear to be intersted in little more than wielding power over others (especially over “liberals”). If you want to know what true conservatism is (and what it used to represent), I might suggest you listen to Ron Paul instead.
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