by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
Frontpage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n Rush Limbaugh has got the progressives pitching a fit over some remarks on his radio show about a Georgetown University law student named Sandra Fluke. Fluke had made the preposterous claim, while addressing House Democrats over President Obama\u2019s rule forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception, that the cost of birth control was prohibitive for Georgetown law students. Limbaugh responded by calling Fluke a \u201cslut\u201d and a \u201cprostitute\u201d who is \u201chaving so much sex, she can\u2019t afford the contraception; she wants you and me \u2013 the taxpayers \u2013 to pay her.\u201d<\/p>\n Progressive dudgeon hit the stratosphere. Democrat Representative Louise Slaughter wrote a letter that decried Limbaugh\u2019s \u201csexually charged, patently offensive, and obscene language\u201d and \u201catrocious and hurtful words.\u201d MSNB\u2019s Jonathan Capehart called the comments \u201chateful\u201d and \u201crude,\u201d and said they were \u201clow\u201d even for Limbaugh. Democrat \u201cstrategist\u201d Krystal Ball (sic) called Limbaugh \u201cdespicable,\u201d \u201cdisgusting,\u201d and a \u201cloathsome individual.\u201d\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Jamila Bey called the remarks \u201chate speech\u201d and claimed they \u201ccrossed into the realm of sexual harassment.\u201d The president of Georgetown said the remarks were \u201cmisogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of our student.\u201d<\/p>\n And in the midst of crisis in the Middle East and the ticking entitlement time bomb, President Obama found time personally to call Fluke and deplore Limbaugh\u2019s \u201cinappropriate personal attacks.\u201d Following the loss of some advertisers, Limbaugh apologized for what he called his \u201cattempt to be humorous.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not interested in Limbaugh\u2019s comments or whether or not they are \u201cappropriate.\u201d When you enter the political kitchen, as Fluke did, you should be ready to get scorched. As always, more interesting is the reaction to the comments. And that reaction once again reveals the monstrous hypocrisy of progressives. The folks who proclaim their sensitivity, nuanced thinking, therapeutic concern for the tender sensibilities of others, and open-mindedness have always been the most vicious, bigoted, narrow-minded, crude, dogmatic, conformist people on the planet. Take everybody\u2019s exhibit number one, the HBO blowhard Bill Maher, who\u2019s on record calling Sarah Palin a \u201cc\u2014t\u201d and inviting Jon Huntsman to \u201csuck my d\u2014k.\u201d I don\u2019t remember the President calling Palin or Hunstman to regret \u201cthat our political discourse has become debased,\u201d as his flack Jay Carney put it. Nor is anyone demanding that Obama-supporting superpac Priorities USA Action should return the million bucks Maher gave it. Why should they? Remember when Obama called the Tea Party folks \u201ctea-baggers,\u201d a vulgar sexual term? \u201cAppropriate\u201d and \u201cdebased\u201d are in the eye of the progressive beholder, and depend on the ideology of whoever is being attacked.<\/p>\n Of course, in the progressive hysteria we are also subjected to the \u201cchilling free speech\u201d charge, as when Fluke on the\u00a0Today Show<\/em>\u00a0Friday said that Limbaugh\u2019s comments were an \u201cattempt to silence me.\u201d She apparently doesn\u2019t think that her threat to sue Limbaugh \u2014 the left\u2019s favorite WMD when it comes to destroying free speech \u2014 might be an attempt to silence\u00a0him<\/em>. In fact, rather than \u201csilencing\u201d her, Limbaugh\u2019s comments have given an obscure law student the biggest platform on the planet, at the same time Limbaugh\u2019s apology suggests that it is\u00a0his<\/em>\u00a0free speech that\u2019s been \u201cchilled.\u201d And are the media so dumb that they don\u2019t see the absurdity of a guest on the\u00a0Today Show<\/em>claiming to its 5.6 million viewers that someone tried to \u201csilence\u201d her?<\/p>\n More important than occasioning a display of progressive hypocrisy is Fluke\u2019s claim that law students at a prestigious private school can\u2019t afford birth control. If Fluke could produce one of her colleagues who doesn\u2019t have an iPhone, an iPad, an iPod, a high-speed internet connection, or cable television; who doesn\u2019t spend $20 a week at Starbucks, or has to eat ramen every night, or never takes a vacation, never eats out, never goes to bars or concerts; or who has parents on welfare who can\u2019t contribute to her education, or works part-time at a burger joint, or has any other characteristics of someone so poor she can\u2019t budget for birth control pills, then maybe she\u2019d have a point. But even then, condoms are available for free at numerous clinics and even at some retail stores. And God forbid we should suggest that the young lady just say no.<\/p>\n The cost of birth control, though, is just a smokescreen. More pernicious is the assumption that, as Fluke puts it, \u201cThis is about women\u2019s health.\u201d In other words, unplanned pregnancy is a disease, something that like breast cancer just sort of happens to a woman, and for which she bears no responsibility. That\u2019s how House minority leader Nancy Pelosi sees it. Speaking of the failed Senate amendment to allow religious organizations not to fund contraception, Pelosi said that the measure was \u201cpart of the Republican agenda of disrespecting women\u2019s health issues [by] allowing employers to cut \u2026 basic health services for women, like contraception, mammograms, prenatal and cervical-cancer screenings.\u201d<\/p>\n Since pregnancy is a disease, then, someone else should pay the premium for insuring against the consequences of a woman\u2019s risky, careless behavior. She shouldn\u2019t even be responsible for grabbing some free condoms at the clinic and taking care of the risk herself.<\/p>\n Look even closer, and we see the real progressive agenda at work: increasing the power and reach of the federal government and its bureaucratic minions by discrediting and marginalizing any other source of authority over our behavior, especially institutions of moral authority such as churches. That way the government can aggrandize its power by relieving people of the responsibility for their choices through palliating their damaging consequences while making others pay for them. Tocqueville noticed 150 years ago this tendency of centralized power to expand by infantilizing the citizenry. Centralized governments, Tocqueville remarked, act as \u201cif they thought themselves responsible for the actions and private conditions of their subjects, as if they had undertaken to guide and to instruct each of them in the various incidents of life and to secure their happiness quite independently of their own consent.\u201d Moreover, this insidious paternalism corrupts the people, who \u201cinvoke its assistance in all their necessities,\u201d and who \u201cfix their eyes upon the administration as their mentor and their guide.\u201d But all for a price: the diminishment of our freedom and autonomy, both of which require accepting the burdensome and sometimes painful responsibility for the consequences of our actions.<\/p>\n Our modern progressives, however, have added a new twist to this process. Removing sexual behavior from the strictures of traditional authority, and then taking responsibility for the consequences of careless sex like pregnancy, make state-subsidized sexual pleasure a seemingly cost-free distraction from the erosion of freedom and autonomy, as Aldous Huxley foresaw in\u00a0Brave New World<\/em>. Sexual freedom now trumps political freedom, and sexual pleasure is the honey that sweetens the bitter poison of diminished freedom. Hence the progressive\u2019s elevation of contraception and abortion into \u201crights,\u201d which puts the necessary discussion of the obvious destructive consequences of sexual promiscuity out of bounds. But these \u201crights\u201d have nothing to do with \u201cwomen\u2019s health\u201d and everything to do with the progressive government\u2019s aim of consolidating and increasing its power at the expense of other authorities, like churches, that might have something to say about the personally and socially destructive price of those \u201crights.\u201d That\u2019s the real significance of the uproar Rush Limbaugh caused: not his crudity or insensitivity, but calling attention to the centrality of sexual libertinism to the progressive agenda of increasing government power at the expense of individual freedom.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton Frontpage Magazine Rush Limbaugh has got the progressives pitching a fit over some remarks on his radio show about a Georgetown University law student named Sandra Fluke. Fluke had made the preposterous claim, while addressing House Democrats over President Obama\u2019s rule forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception, that the cost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[33,22,187],"tags":[190,191,165,1064,1044,425,80,1018],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-eY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12889,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/remembering-rush-limbaugh-with-comments-from-dr-victor-davis-hanson-heard-exclusively-on-the-trevor-carey-show\/","url_meta":{"origin":928,"position":0},"title":"Remembering Rush Limbaugh With Comments From Dr. Victor Davis Hanson Heard Exclusively on The Trevor Carey Show","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Listen to \"Remembering Rush Limbaugh With Comments From Dr. Victor Davis Hanson Heard Exclusively on The Trevor Carey Show\" on Spreaker.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":496,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/three-democrat-women-for-dependency\/","url_meta":{"origin":928,"position":1},"title":"Three Democrat Women for Dependency","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The Democrats have announced that Massachusetts Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren and Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke will be on hand at the Democratic National Convention to hype the alleged Republican \u201cWar on Women\u201d and promote \u201cJulia,\u201d the cartoon character that touts the numerous boons Democrats\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Women"","block_context":{"text":"Women","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/women\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2906,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-vs-limbaugh\/","url_meta":{"origin":928,"position":2},"title":"From vs. Limbaugh","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the end, the controversy boils down to an argument of the moment versus one of the ages. Frum believes that conservatives have to change their message to appeal to new constituencies without which the Republican party will lose future elections. Limbaugh argues\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2009"","block_context":{"text":"March 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/march-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12189,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/limbaugh-a-genius-at-radio\/","url_meta":{"origin":928,"position":3},"title":"Limbaugh: A Genius at Radio","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Genius\u00a0is often defined in myriad ways. One trusted criterion is the ability to do something extraordinary in a field where others could not \u2014 and doing something that perhaps will never be done again by anyone else. By that measure, Rush Limbaugh certainly is\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2923,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/more-on-rush\/","url_meta":{"origin":928,"position":4},"title":"More on Rush","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner All these highbrow conservative attacks on Limbaugh keep missing the point. 1) There is a certain sort of genius there that can do 15 hours of talk per week, ad hoc, and hold an audience of 20 million plus for over 20 years. There\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2009"","block_context":{"text":"March 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/march-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6190,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/supposed-crimes-of-the-mind\/","url_meta":{"origin":928,"position":5},"title":"Supposed Crimes of the Mind","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"With hate speech, it's the perceived ideology of the perpetrator that matters most. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online When do insensitive words destroy reputations? It all depends. Celebrity chef Paula Deen was dropped by her TV network, her publisher, and many of her corporate partners after she\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Race in America"","block_context":{"text":"Race in America","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/race-in-america\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Paula_Deen_Civitan.jpg?fit=600%2C408&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Paula_Deen_Civitan.jpg?fit=600%2C408&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Paula_Deen_Civitan.jpg?fit=600%2C408&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":929,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}