Rush Limbaugh Is Madder Than Hell And He’s Not Gonna Take It Anymore
Rush Limbaugh is still really, really angry about subsidized birth control. And lots of other stuff.
Rush Limbaugh is still really, really angry about subsidized birth control. In a show excerpt titled “Every Day is an All-Out Assault,” he begins:
Snerdley walks in here, brings me his stack of show prep that he wanted me to see today, and he’s outraged. Have you not been listening to this program? “More than half of privately insured women are getting free birth control under President Barack Obama’s health law, a major coverage shift that’s likely to advance.” And it talks about how the average annual saving — ahem — for women is $269. And it just hit you that everybody’s demanding a benefit, $269 a year, and women can’t pay that on their own? The taxpayers have to provide the $269? Yes.
Well, here’s the thing. I know. Women have demanded independence and power and feminism and all this, and now demanding everybody pay. I don’t even know how many women really are demanding it. You know, it’s leftist women that are pushing this. But I learned something about this over the weekend that I hadn’t stopped to consider.
Mr. Snerdley and I, and I assume a lot of you folks, too, we’re from the old school where you provide for yourself. We were raised that whatever you want or need, you go out and get a job and earn enough to buy it. If you can’t afford it, then you put it off until you can. But the last thing you do is ask somebody else. You don’t go down the neighborhood and knock on the front door of people and ask ’em to buy whatever you want. That’s the way we were raised. But the thing I have learned is that men are totally supportive. Today’s young men are totally supportive of somebody else buying women their birth control pills. Make sure the women are taking them, ’cause sex is what it’s all about.
Pajama Boy types having sex, sex, sex. That’s what it’s all about. Everybody wants it and whatever it takes to make it safe. And if it takes the taxpayers buying women birth control, the men are for it, too. It’s cheap insurance, and if this is what women want before they’ll have sex, then fine.
Let’s leave aside the fact that there are non-reproductive reasons that women take birth control pill. Let’s leave aside the fact of rape, too, and the fact that Limbaugh would deny women who got pregnant through rape an abortion. The fact of the matter is that, yes, birth control is mostly used to allow people to have sex (including with their spouses) with a greatly diminished chance of getting pregnant. And let’s not degenerate into ad hominem attacks about Limbaugh’s own sex life.
I’m just not understanding this line of reasoning, much less the vitriol behind it.
First off, it was fairly common for health insurance plans to cover birth control before ObamaCare mandated it. Even during the previous, Republican administration. Indeed, 28 states already mandated coverage.
Second, “just $269” cuts both ways. Either it’s so little money that we should expect even poor people to easy afford it or it’s so much money that it’s going to break the bank; it can’t be both.
Third, we’re not talking about welfare here but what private insurance plans will cover. The whole point of medical insurance is to cover medical expenses. Nobody complains about chemotherapy or heart bypass surgery or cochlear implants as some sort of handout.
Fourth, I thought the whole point of the Pajama Boy meme was that he was a nancy boy. Now he’s having regular sex? With women? Good for him!
Fifth, what exactly is wrong with having sex? Or even sex, sex, sex?
Now, as you might have guessed, I’m not a religious man. And I get that some have religious—or even nonreligious moral—objections to sex outside of marriage. Some even deeply believe that all sex should be aimed at procreation. But Limbaugh doesn’t seem to be advancing those arguments here.
Further, I’m open to the argument that birth control pills as birth control pills are an ordinary expense that should fall outside the coverage of health insurance plans. Or at least that bare bones plans aimed at providing catastrophic coverage to those who can’t afford a Cadillac plan ought be allowed to not cover birth control. But Limbaugh doesn’t seem to be advancing that sort of argument here, either. And, in any case, that’s not a position that one should get so worked up about.
Reading the rest of the monologue, I gather Limbaugh sees the birth control debate as just one example of a larger trend of the values he grew up with coming under assault. He’s angry about the “feminist scholar” who claims a misplaced period in the Declaration of Independence changes its meaning. And that she’s allowed to teach our kids!
They’re attacking this notion and they’re doing it via young, impressionable minds who are already predisposed to government stepping in and solving every problem. (interruption) Do you think these people, do you think this woman’s even read the Federalist Papers? This is my point. Every day we’re playing defense. Every day we get up and we look at the latest assault, and we don’t have time to advance anything. We are just getting up, seeing whatever assault they are making on our great country and just standing up and trying to stop it.
Also: the founders of Google are suggesting that we transition away from the notion of everyone working full time and driving their own cars.
Every day it’s an all-out assault on essentially the founding of the country.
And, of course, there’s President Obama and the feminists.
Whatever it is, income level, age, race, sex, they have to get people focusing on all of the things wrong in America because of these inequities — income level, age, race, sex, discrimination, what have you. To be frank, President Obama needs you to be contemptuous of others so that he can appeal to you emotionally. His emotional appeal is based on creating tension, and the left has been doing this in this country for years.
Feminism is a way to get men and women arguing with one another about things and get them distracted. All of these isms, all of this grouping of people and then claiming they are all victims is simply about creating contempt. So they want to you hate doctors and insurance companies now. That’s the next target. They want you to hate doctors and insurance companies so that they can take over the entire industry at the federal government.
They want you to hate executives so that they can impose their will on big companies. They want you to hate people who make more money than you do so that they can seize their private property. Sponsoring hate, promoting hate, is an exclusive of the left. They own it. They thrive on the promotion of hate and angst and contempt and unrest and chaos. It is the only way to distract people sufficiently so that the left can accomplish its statist objectives. They want turmoil, and if it doesn’t exist, they create it.
Oh, and there are illegal aliens.
We don’t even know who’s here, we don’t even know the total number, and yet we’ve found family members of these 300,000? Now, back to the New York Times and their 300,000 illegal alien number who have arrived here since April. That 300,000’s comprised of the 52,000 unaccompanied alien children plus 240,000 adult illegal aliens. In other words, 240,000 illegal alien adults came over the border since April. This is in the New York Times.
That’s actually a real problem, although one not obviously linked to the others.
Now look at what he did there. “Privately insured women” gets followed up with “the taxpayers have to provide.” But THEY DON’T. The PRIVATE insurer provides the benefit. Sure, it’s mandated by law, but the PRIVATE insurer is paying it. The taxpayers aren’t.
But Limbaugh tosses that distinction out the window and rants about something that isn’t even happening.
@Mikey: In fairness, “and women can’t pay that on their own? The taxpayers have to provide the $269?” is presumably talking about those who aren’t covered by employer plans and can’t afford their own; they get covered under expanded Medicaid.
Congratulations James, you’ve* come to the inescapable conclusion that High Redundant Tree Branch** is an idiot.
* I know, you have known this for quite some time
** I just can’t bring myself to write his name.
@James Joyner: Even so, he didn’t differentiate–he’s clearly trying to create the impression the taxpayers are on the hook for all of it.
@James Joyner: So, you are saying that instead of paying $269 a year for a poor woman’s birth control that she can not afford, R finds it preferable to pay for the foodstamps, the housing, the healthcare, the schooling of, for the inevitable child that will result and the she most certainly can not afford?
Ooooppps, my bad, he is saying she should either refrain from sex and if she won’t than she and the impending litter should just die. Of, course, then we have to pay for the disposal of the bodies as a public health risk and that would certainly cost a lot of money as well. What to do, what to do…
James, thanks for this. Unfortunately, some of my Twitter stream will choose to continue with Rush.
For them, I propose, since they want to pay for everything they get, that we revoke their use of roads and access to other city, county, and national services, including police protection, until they pay up a lot more taxes. Unfortunately, we can’t revoke their protection by the US military because that applies to all of us.
Probably relevant:
Colorado offered free birth control — and teen births fell by 40 percent
The $269 number is the cost without insurance. My medication costs a little less than that, but since I have insurance it costs me $10. (And it’s not even very good insurance.) Limbaugh’s ignoring how prices for drugs are negotiated between manufacturers and insurers, and larger insurance pools…I don’t know why I’m nitpicking a Limbaugh argument.
He’s wrong, let’s just go with that.
Need to brush the log out of your eye, dude.
@OzarkHillbilly: Umh, yeah. I’m failing to see a news element in this. But perhaps it’s a sign of a dawning recognition by James that his party has become crazy. Along those lines, please see the new Texas Republican Platform.
because putting off birth control until you can afford it works soooo well…
The good thing about Rush Limbaugh is that he reveals the true id beneath the smooth surface of conservative arguments about “religious liberty” and “government overreach”. What conservatives really care about is those lusty young hussies having sex, sex, sex without consequences-with geeky pajama boys, even. The facts are that the best way of limiting unwanted pregnancies is to provide no copay contraceptive coverage to women of childbearing years. But what matters here is not the facts but the puritanical desire to punish sinners. That’s what is really behind the Hobby Lobby project. That and conservative desire to kick the poors-which is always there behind all conservative domestic policy making.
As long as Fat Rush can still get his prescription for his little blue pil…I’m sure he doesn’t really care…other than ginning up his audience…old white men.
FTFY
Why? It seems relevant and perfectly reasonable to point out his glaring hypocrisy. This is a man who took viagra and oxycontin fueled sex vacations to the Dominican Republic and is now denegrating others, some of whom are faithful men that just want to have sex with their wives without adding another mouth to feed.
But I get it, he’s an entertainer and he’s playing to his audience. He is the master of faux outrage.
An interesting article on why some people get so angry if women are having sex without “consequences”:
“Overall, the more likely a given respondent believed women were economically dependent on men, the more likely they were to view female promiscuity as immoral. These were modest to medium effects, but they were statistically significant, even controlling for factors like religiosity and political conservatism.”
I’m confused at to the $269 figure. Is it so little that poor women should be easily able to scrape the paltry sum together, or is it so much as to cause a crushing burden for the employer that is really the difference between being profitability and bankruptcy? I seem to hear both being asserted.
@Rick DeMent: Makes perfect sense to me. For the same reason that raising those same women’s wages by $269 per year would cause McDonalds to go bankrupt.
I am on call tonight on the labor floor. Sex definitely leads to real medical issues. It seems pretty clear to me that women, and families, benefit from the ability to time when they want to have their children for both the medical and the financial consequences that ensue. I have never seen why this should be different than other classes of medications such as blood pressure meds or pain medications. Heck, you don’t “need” those meds, you could just suffer the consequences if you cannot afford them. Fortunately, we don’t really think that way. Unfortunately, social conservatives (the real audience here) do think that way about birth control.
Steve
@Mikey:
Taking a long term view — and looking at actual facts — means nothing in the face of moral outrage!
OK class, time for review.
It is also good to remember that it is always the other side that uses dishonest tactics while your side never stoops so low.
I don’t know why we bother responding. These cries of outrage will get worse because Rush is becoming old and irrelevant and will die alone. And he can’t stand that. It is best to just ignore him.
@steve:
Exactly. And from the point of view of an insurance company, contraception is cheaper than paying for birth and the healthcare of a new member of the family.
@ernieyeball: True. It isn’t really about making a principled argument. It about selling stuff.
This is akin to being politically correct….in that it is total nonsense.
Limbaugh’s own life provides context with which to judge his claims about the lives of others.
The pattern of outright dishonesty and rank hypocrisy impeaches his credibility…and examining that pattern is perfectly reasonable.
Ad hominems are not always fallacious. Especially on topics such as this where it’s not really about “facts” per se…the character of the person is extremely relevant in judging the veracity of their claims.
Ah yes, Rush Limbaugh. Master of the fauxtrage. He’s found a nice warm niche of ginning up the hate against anyone who isn’t white, male, heterosexual, and “conservative.”
The Chinese must be slapping each others’ backs watching him. He’s dividing the U.S. against itself and they don’t even have to pay him!
Rush is serving an audience. The audience is shrinking and aging. Once upon a time fairly rational people listened to Rush as a form of entertainment, like a freak show. But there are bigger freaks out there, funnier clowns, his act is old. So now it’s no longer Rush as a sort of wink-wink self-parody, now it’s Rush reduced to sincerely servicing his core constituency of panicky white rustics.
He’s desperate to remain relevant. He’s trapped in a room with disappointed 80 year-olds whose lives have left them bitter and angry. I’d almost feel sorry for him, if not for the fact that he’s scum.
Rush: “Get off my lawn, damned sluts.”
Someday (I hope) America is going to look back on these days when conservative media was ruling the waves, and be profoundly embarrassed.
Stuff.
Couldn’t say what Brush Lintoff is hawking these days as I have not listened to his broadcast in years. However I must note that I see advertising on the OTB site (my preferred source of political and social commentary) regularly. In fact the Super 8 Motel ad promotes a brand I patronize frequently. Next time I check in I will mention I saw Super 8 on OTB.
Outside The Beltway is evidence that principled arguments and selling stuff do not have to be mutally exclusive.
@C. Clavin: Quite right. Per WIKI, an ad hominem argument is, “…a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author…” The fact that Limbaugh is a lying asshat is not irrelevant. An argument that Limbaugh is probably lying because he has a history of lying is not an ad hominem fallacy. Nor, to revisit last week, is it an ad hominem fallacy to say that Dick Cheney is a self serving lying sociopath who should not be given a respectful hearing in any venue.
Dream on…
Comment deleted for violating commenting policies.
@C. Clavin:
Especially when the claim pertains to the character of others.
@al-Ameda:
“This lawn is only big enough for one slut, and I’M IT!!!”
Thought that needed finishing, hope you don’t mind.
No, let’s not.
This phrase, ad hominem, I do not think it means what you think it means. If the junkie Rush Limbaugh is a frequent abuser of sex-enhancing pharmaceuticals such as Viagra, that’s an extremely relevant fact when judging the sincerity or lack thereof of his attacks on women for seeking to regulate their fertility. That’s like saying “let’s not degenerate into attacks on OJ Simpson’s own marriage when considering his advice on how to build a happy marriage.”
It’s not ad hominem.
This phrase, ad hominem, I do not think it means what you think it means. If the junkie Rush Limbaugh is a frequent abuser of sex-enhancing pharmaceuticals, that’s an extremely relevant fact when judging the sincerity or lack thereof of his attacks on women for seeking to regulate their fertility. That’s like saying “let’s not degenerate into attacks on OJ Simpson’s own marriage when considering his advice on how to build a happy marriage.”
If poor woman can’t afford birth control they’ll either refrain from sex until they’re past their childbearing years or they’ll have more babies. I bet on more babies, and I’ll also bet that a disproportionate percentage of these women come from the ethnic groups superdestroyer’s been warning us against. Connect the dots. Rush actually works for a secret society — the Bavarian Illuminati, the Elders of Zion, the Masons, you name it — that aims at overthrowing the US through demographic changes. It’s going to happen anyway, but Rush is trying to speed it up. You heard it here first.
That, right thar, is the tell. This isn’t so much about paying for contraceptives, women having “consequence free” sex, abortion or any of the other disturbing panty-sniffing the right-wing carries on about now-a-days. It seems to me that this is much more about a certain segment of society – mostly male, white and Christian – realizing that their cultural hegemony is being diminished, not assaulted, as women, minorities and other “out groups” gain more influence and access to power in society.
Rushbo’s idea of a great country is one where women, minorities and gay people are OK (I think he’s being honest when he says he doesn’t hate any one group or another) as long as they know their place and don’t interfere with the long standing social and economic structure that puts men, particularly white Christian men, at the top of the food chain. People like Rush and his like minded travelers see this shift happening, albeit slowly, and they are losing their collective minds. My only hope is they can’t do too much damage to society writ large; though they sure are trying.
Comment deleted for violating commenting policies.
Who say, “Let Him make speed, let Him hasten His work, that we may see it; And let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near And come to pass, that we may know it!” 20Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes And clever in their own sight!…
Hmmm, is this what’s going on? Or was all the dumb nonsense you just said Buffalo Rude ?
I’ll lay my bets on what Isaiah said.
Here is some food for thought:Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary
5:8-23 Here is a woe to those who set their hearts on the wealth of the world. Not that it is sinful for those who have a house and a field to purchase another; but the fault is, that they never know when they have enough. Covetousness is idolatry; and while many envy the prosperous, wretched man, the Lord denounces awful woes upon him. How applicable to many among us! God has many ways to empty the most populous cities. Those who set their hearts upon the world, will justly be disappointed. Here is woe to those who dote upon the pleasures and the delights of sense. The use of music is lawful; but when it draws away the heart from God, then it becomes a sin to us. God’s judgments have seized them, but they will not disturb themselves in their pleasures. The judgments are declared. Let a man be ever so high, death will bring him low; ever so mean, death will bring him lower. The fruit of these judgments shall be, that God will be glorified as a God of power. Also, as a God that is holy; he shall be owned and declared to be so, in the righteous punishment of proud men. Those are in a woeful condition who set up sin, and who exert themselves to gratify their base lusts. They are daring in sin, and walk after their own lusts; it is in scorn that they call God the Holy One of Israel. They confound and overthrow distinctions between good and evil. They prefer their own reasoning’s to Divine revelations; their own devices to the counsels and commands of God. They deem it prudent and politic to continue profitable sins, and to neglect self-denying duties. Also, how light so ever men make of drunkenness, it is a sin which lays open to the wrath and curse of God. Their judges perverted justice. Every sin needs some other to conceal it.
Comment deleted for violating commenting policies.
@G.A.Phillips:
A not so new way to say, “I have no idea what I am talking about.”
“women for seeking to regulate their fertility” means birth control, and that is not murder. No matter what the arch
criminalsbishops say.@Rafer Janders:
No, that’s precisely what ad hominem means.
Don’t know why you balk at being labelled as fallacious. It’s not like it’s hard to discredit Limbaugh without using fallacies.
@G.A.Phillips: So, generalizations? That’s it?
Perhaps you’d care to point out my own hypocrisy on this matter?
Comment deleted for violating commenting policies.
@Scott:
He is plenty rich, so he won’t die alone, just lonely (if there is any justice).
@ernieyeball: Sure. I am not, obviously, opposed to selling stuff. However, my point would be that it seems that Rush is not spouting core beliefs as much as he is saying what he thinks certain people want to hear.
@J-Dub: @Rafer Janders: No, I’m well aware of what ad hominem is. Limbaugh’s alleged proclivity for using hookers actually hasn’t a blessed thing to do with anything under discussion here. Presumably, he can afford to pay for his own birth control. My point is exactly what @Tillman said: The arguments fail on their own merit; neither Limbaugh’s personal life nor his physical conditioning are useful in examining them.
Yes. I agree.
That is why OTB is a source of information I trust. Unlike EIB.
@G.A.Phillips:
Two questions:
(1) Birth control is a subject of the Divine Revelations?
(2) Are male “fertility” drugs a subject of the Divine Revelations?
@al-Ameda: Well, if you go by the Old Testament, I guess the more approved method is to dash the skulls of babies out against stones.
Also, considering what people have done proclaiming they’re carrying out the Will of God, I’m extremely skeptical of appeals to that sort of authority. G.A. Phillips, whether he wants to admit it or not, has put himself in the same boat as those who carried out 9-11.
@al-Ameda:
You’d think anything that gets a dude hard would be considered lustful and thus a sin outside of certain contexts. But nooo, ED is a medical condition!
(Still remains one of the more depressing excuses I’ve heard.)
@ernieyeball: Mark Twain, an American treasure.
@OzarkHillbilly: You are my favorite carpenter beyond Joseph, my father. Not kidding. Joseph Lee. He was born in Lone Oak, Texas.
He went by Lee. He was not pretentious.
In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, Madison stood on the floor of the House of Representatives to object, saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
There may be nitwits out there who’d assert, “That James Madison guy forgot about the Constitution’s general welfare clause.” Madison had that covered, explaining in a letter, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.” Thomas Jefferson agreed, writing: Members of Congress “are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare. … It would reduce the (Constitution) to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.”
Extract from Walter E. Williams
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/07/walter-e-williams/do-the-feds-have-a-spending-problem/
Censorship? Am I forgetting to use stars? Tell someone they are more then likely going to end up in hell? Sticking up for murdered babies and babies about to be murdered?
I am just speaking in libish to get my point across mostly. And if you don’t believe in hell don’t worry about it till you get there.
Forgive me James, I will try to do better.
@G.A.Phillips: I find hell and damnation arguments rather pointless, in that they’re only persuasive to those who already agree, but so long as they’re not off topic or repetitive, they’re acceptable. Name calling and the like simply derail the conversation and aren’t acceptable.
Just in case you missed this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/08/mark-twain-looking-pretty-cool-in-a-silent-film-from-1909/260691/
Rush Limbaugh claims that “Obama’s emotional appeal is based on creating tension.” Words fail me.
Sometimes the thing that baffles me the most about the extreme right these days is the incredible, mind-boggling, lack of self-awareness. It’s popular in this forum to point out that grifters gotta grift, but I honestly doubt many of them are even aware of the hypocrisy.
I will ignore most of the other illogical nonsense and straw men.
Have you ever heard of context? Stories of history? Examples? Do you have any idea why God had certain peoples wiped out? Do you know that he once drowned the whole planet? Ever hear anything about angels mating with humans? How they corrupted all flesh?
You want to equate abortion and the billion babies it has destroyed to what God does or did.
A God most of you don’t even believe in but truly seem to hate. go figure…
Are you God? Are they your creations?
Ok now hate me, Vote down hate me, call me names, call me stupid, and censor me. But by all means continue to be smug and ignorant and don’t think or look up any of this on your own, just go to nearest lib/ atheist hack site to get your information.
James, you guys let me do stuff and then you censor me, just tell what it was, I know for fact that I could bust most of your regulars a hundred times over for violating commenting policies. it would be easy, they do it all the time. and you have an archive.
Oh well what ever, I care but it has never done any good here. At all. Peace and love and forgiveness 🙂
Oh and Tillman, stop using the Dude’s picture you’re are nothing like him. He was a cool stoner that just wanted to chill not a tool of the new age Nazi.
Fine and thank you. I was trying to be funny in the one. Forgive me. And the comments in this post are mostly all ridicule and names calling. Just saying.
@G.A.Phillips: There’s no doubt moderation here is uneven. It’s a giant pain in the ass, frankly, and we all have other demands on our time. But you had a whole string of over-the-top, low-value-added comments on this thread.
Adding in an out-of-nowhere reference to another commenter as a Nazi, as you have here, is a classic example. It not only doesn’t add to the conversation, it doesn’t even make sense.
@Jack:
Good to know that it’s all settled – no need for a Supreme Court, or any stray “nitwit” interpretations of the Constitution. Just consult Walter E. Williams (or any other so-called “originalist” for all relevant and germane comment by the Founding Fathers that happen to support a conservative interpretation of the Constitution in all circumstances.
@Jack: @al-Ameda: I’m not sure anyone is arguing that Congress can simply do whatever it pleases under the Necessary and Proper Clause. But it’s, to coin a phrase, sufficiently “elastic” that it’s precise limits are not settled. That’s especially because, in addition to simply the issue of where legislative power ends vis-a-vis the executive’s or the people’s—or the federal government’s vis-a-vis the several states—is often situational but that there are plenty of other conflicts as well. And, goodness knows, it’s not as if the Supreme Court has a ready rulebook, either.
We have about 10,000 years of “history” though as Dave Schuler often points out, we don’t know a whole lot about the first 8,000 years of that, and only really start to get anything like a reliable account during the Roman Empire.
But through pretty much 100% of the history we know, women were considered property,and rape was a normal part of warfare, with warfare itself being a relatively common thing. For 99% of known history, women’s wishes were not even consulted. They were effectively slaves.
Along comes birth control. And along comes liberal civilization, which grants legal equality to all human adults. And thus we have the backlash: anti-abortion, anti birth control, contemptuous of feminism, hating anything that deviates from the pattern of male domination.
It’s all of a piece, really. The right loves guns, armies, patriarchy, race-based identity, superstition, belligerent ignorance, macho display, all holdovers of earlier times when the white Christian male had a position of undisputed privilege based on brutal oppression.
Most of us have managed to make peace with civilization, but the Tea Party right despises European and American civilization. The people most upset are those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder because white-Christian-male privilege was all they had. They don’t have money or power or brains, all they had was being white and male. They had their position (however low) within the tribe. In modern liberal civilization the lower depths of the white-Christian-male tribe are seen as no better than their counterparts in black-Christian-female, or Asian-atheist-male elements.
The rich still have their privilege, so they focus on maintaining what they have. The poor, working class, uneducated conservative – the Tea Party types, the Base – are losing everything they thought they had in the way of specialness. Of course they’ve lost nothing real, in fact, thanks to Mr. Obama, they can now get medical coverage – at least in Democratic states. But they’ve lost their sense of being better than. And it’s killing them.
@michael reynolds: I don’t doubt that explains some of it but it’s a wider phenomenon than that. For one thing, the “pill” is a byproduct of Western civilization, not its antecedent. It’s only been around since, what, 1960? And, of course, religiousity and many of these attitudes are not only prevalent among women but, oftentimes, mostly enforced by women. (There’d be a lot less churchgoing and less chastity if men were really running things at the household and relationship level.)
I do think there’s a broader thing that both you and Limbaugh hit on, which is that there’s a rapid change to a culture that’s been around a long time. It’s not at all surprising that people fear it and think it’s the coming of something worse than we had before. But the venom with which Limbaugh describes it is offputting, to say the least.
Yes I did. Kind of how I roll when dealing with some of my friends here. But like I said I got the point and will curb that.
But you guys are so smart you should be able to get simple uneducated little me 🙂 Oh I truly believe that the leftist in this country are the new age Nazi, and it has much to do with mandating that employers provide abortion for this agument. i.e. The Nazi targeted certain “races” for extermination just like the democrats do to the “blacks” and then propagandize about how it is for the greater good by way of atheistic evolution science. I think it is easy to see. But I get your point and was more joking in response to the desecration of the Dude’s likeness.
@James Joyner:
That is an understatement. Congress makes the general welfare clause what congress wants to make it, taxpayer be damned.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a finer case of projection.
@Jack:
Which most of the Framers expected! But, remember, “Congress” does a lot of work there. For “Congress” to do anything requires a majority in the House and, for all practical purposes, 3/5 of the Senate to go along. And then the president has to sign it into law unless there’s 2/3 support in both Houses to override the veto. And, of course, said taxpayer gets to vote for his Representative every other November and his two Senators every six years.
Oh, and there’s the Supreme Court, which can overrule the law as unconstitutional after all that.
@James Joyner: And that takes me back around to Madison’s statement, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
@G.A.Phillips:
Do you really believe any of that?
@James Joyner:
I’m not talking western civilization but the much more recent phenomenon of small ‘l’ liberal civilization.
Western civilization was still mostly tribal through most of its history, right up to WW2, when the Nazis sort of took that notion to its extreme and invalidated it. Remember that Winston Churchill was still a strong advocate for imperialism and the white man’s burden. American women didn’t even get the vote until 1920, and African-Americans not until the 1960’s in much of the country. I would suggest universal suffrage as the start (being very loose with dates) of our current iteration of western civilization – universal suffrage, self-determination and the end of colonialism, multi-ethnic and multi-religious states where power was at least nominally shared outside of the pre-existing white male power structure.
I linked elsewhere to this poll, but look at the question of which party you’d like to see control the House. Over 65, the GOP Has an 8 point edge. 50-64 they have a ten point edge. 30-49 it shifts dramatically, with the Dems having a 9 point edge, and in the 18-29 there’s a 13 point Democrat advantage – the biggest gap in any demo.
Old folks still attached to their diluted privilege support the GOP, but in people born after 1965, the Democrats dominate. The break point is the 60’s. That’s when the liberals won, and it’s their ideas of equality, tolerance and inclusiveness that dominate the modern era. The groups that benefited from Democratic ideals of tolerance – women, blacks, recent immigrants, gays, the secular – all lean Democratic. Sorry Republicans, sorry Libertarians, the future is liberal.
@Jack: Which was, it seems useful to note, Madison acting as a politician. So that he had had preferences in terms of what he would, and would not, vote for in the House is hardly a shock.
@G.A.Phillips: “Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, dude. At least it’s an ethos.”
Let’s do this again, GA. Abortion is not mandated. But it could be a choice.
Women who are raped and become pregnant are typically poor, young and ignorant of birth control, not using birth control because they do want to become pregnant by their partner. I used an IUD young because I flatly didn’t want to pass on a predictable congenital condition called Nail-Patella Syndrome. I gave up the IUD when I married my husband because he had a vasectomy. So I was vulnerable there for some years, and neither one of us wanted no more babies.
@Stonetools: To be fair, there are different types of conservatives. There are reasonable, caring people who are resistant to deviating from tried and tested methods (that, by the way, is the true definition of conservatism). We can engage with them and usually come to some agreeable arrangement because they want the same ends that a radical like myself wants, we just disagree on the methods or whether the goal is actually achievable. There are those who are sometimes labelled “business” conservatives, but they aren’t really pro-business or conservative for that matter; their only goal is to transfer as much income to the top .1% as they possibly can.
The ones who get all the attention are elderly reactionaries and the media personalities who enrich themselves by these people whip themselves into a permanent state of fury. They and our porcine friend pictured at the top of the post feed off each other endlessly and so each day they’re, remarkably, more angry and venomous. They are not conservatives and I’ve gotten tired of how everyone (particularly actual real conservatives) pretend these people are just a different degree of conservative.
The only ones with the power to clean house on this are the good guys on Team Red. I hope they don’t let themselves become an endangered species.
@Jack: I suggest completing your first truncated quotation from Jefferson:
And you randy buggers could think of getting a vasectomy. I bet that’s even covered under your insurance.
@Janis Gore: They are covered. And I’ve never heard a man make a case for insurance not covering childbirth expenses which are about as elective as you can get. Why should we pay for you deciding to have a baby? If you can’t afford to pay for the birth, don’t get pregnant. You don’t even really need a doctor or hospital; plenty of women have/had babies at home by themselves. It fits all the criteria for why they don’t want to pay for birth control yet it’s never mentioned. I wonder why? Is it because it affects them personally?
@beth: Obstetricians overwhelmingly recommend mothers give birth in a hospital setting, to reduce infant and maternal mortality. The only other option is to have government step between doctors and patients, telling both parties what they can and cannot do, what they can and cannot recommend.
Do you support government control of childbirth?
@Ben Wolf: You forgot to turn your snark detector on.
@Ben Wolf: And gynecologists overwhelmingly recommend birth control be covered under insurance as it is a vital part of women’s health care. Yet men like Limbaugh continue to think they know better and insist that since a woman can choose to whether or not to have sex, or use a non-medical method like rythmn she should have to pay for her birth control. I’m merely wondering why Rush doesn’t see the same reasons for not paying for childbirth. Having a baby is a choice you completely elect to make; it’s not like cancer or high blood pressure where you have may have little to no control over whether you get it.
I’m not saying the government should control childbirth – you can still have a baby, you just have to pay for it. Isn’t that how the argument goes?
@beth: Sorry, I totally misinterpreted your comment.
Anyway, Rush is the right’s favorite blowhard. Keep the red meat coming, forget the A-1.
When he has his next wedding, can I come? He throws some fine dos.
@Tillman:
“Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, dude. At least it’s an ethos.”
Win.
Honestly, that’s mostly due to the fact that your idea of “Nazi” seems to come from 1960s cable TV series and your idea of evolution from religious leaflets passed out at the subway station.
@Janis Gore: Forgot to add women who do abstain from sex by choice and nice girls using rhythm or other natural methods.
@Janis Gore: This randy bugger had a vasectomy 30 years ago when I was in my 30’s. No insurance at the time. Paid cash.
You’re welcome.
@ernieyeball: We appreciate ya.
@ernieyeball: I had to wait until I turned 25 as my doctor wouldn’t recommend a specialist and thought I would grow to regret it. I tried the first time to get one at 20 and was denied, I guess until I could rent a car?
I think this might be the single dumbest thing I’ve ever read outside a creationism/evolution discussion. I don’t even know how to begin addressing this in a way that won’t get me scolded by TPTB
@michael reynolds:
Your facts are sound there, Michael, but beware of an unjustified conclusion. The old saw about “A man who is not Liberal in his youth has no heart; who is not Conservative in his maturity has no brain” has a grain of truth in it, empirically if nothing else. Most people trend conservative with age.
Now, it might be true that trending _conservative_ has at last been disconnected from trending _Republican_, now that the Republican party has abandoned its principles in favor of fear-mongering and negativity. That requires a separate argument, though.
@Dave D: Way back in the 70’s when I was in my late 20s I spent some quality time with a gal a few years younger than me who had already had her “tubes tied” as she put it. I remember her saying it was not easy to find someone to do it as physicians would give her the same “you will regret it” guilt trip. She was determined however. Although we were not an item for very long we did keep in touch and several years later she noted that she never regretted that decision.
I think you addressed it properly right there. No need to try and reason with a dogmatist.
Rush Limbaugh probably isn’t particularly angry about any of that stuff. He makes millions by telling rubes what they want to hear, so he rants on the radio.
I suppose it’s possible he’s become a true believer (silly rabbit, smart dealers know not to start using their product!), but as I recall early on he admitted he was just doing a schtick.
@ernieyeball: And how. I really wish someone would come up with a more “temporary” form of tube tying (I have an idea but it requires high magnetic fields) just so we females wouldn’t get the constant litany of “you’ll be SOOORRY!”
If a man can get a vasectomy at age 25 without any hassle, why can’t a woman get her tubes tied at the same age?
@grumpy realist: What we really need is a male birth control pill – of course it would have to turn the man’s private parts blue with polka dots as proof – and it would solve all these problems.
@grumpy realist: I got hassle at age 39 after having fathered two kids. “Are you really sure? You don’t want to make any more?” Yes, Doc, I’m sure, I don’t want any more and I don’t want to put my wife through a high-risk pregnancy. She’s entirely on board with this. Yeesh.
Honestly always thought the shying-away from tube-tying was because it was a more invasive procedure than the simple snip that is a vasectomy.
@Tillman: There’s also a tendency on the part of at least some gynecologists to have an idee fixee that All Women Will Want To Be Mothers At Some Point and it’s very hard to convince them otherwise.
Mine has a bit of that, but since his speciality is dealing with fertility problems I forgive him for sometimes forgetting that I’m not in the Female == Want Kids class. 99.9% of his patients do.
When I went to get fixed my girlfriend at the time joined me and the doc in the brief pre slice and dice interview. He basically described the operation and made sure I knew it was not something I could reverse. As we all stood up to get me into the kitchen my girlfriend asked him “Can I observe the procedure?” The doc almost fell over backwards. “If you really want to you can.” I almost fell over when he agreed to let her. She stood right next to the nurse. Snip Snip.
This was 1986 or so.
Yes. From the beginning he always said his broadcast was entertainment and specifically stated it was not a news report. Of course this relieves him from any obligation to be accurate or truthful in what he says.
@Mikey: I still got those questions what stopped was needing clearance from shrinks and having to undergo a series of psych exams my insurance didn’t cover and were prohibitively expensive for a college kid. I still got the multiple “Are you sures?” and “You know that only a quarter of reversals take so there’s a good chance that even if you change your mind you it may be too late!” It was considerably more work since I have no kids. Doom and gloom to try and get me to reconsider, but it seemed the easiest and cheapest way to prevent pregnancies I want no part of. Actually explaining that abortions were expensive and I’d rather not pay for another one is what got him to shut up and do the damn thing.
As to Male BC I listened to a BBC radio documentary about an Indian company working on one that was soon to go into human trials. The guy being interviewed on why it was important for men to have an option used one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard. He said am I am paraphrasing but in regards to sperm “It is easier to lock the door before unwanted guest arrive than to try and kick everyone out at the end of the party.”
@Dave D:
That is a very different response than I got from Kaiser earlier this year. I was given straight forward information by the urologist. The nurses were uniformly very positive and supportive.
@Grewgills: I think it had more to do with my age than anything else. I have some genetic diseases running through our family line and I have known for a while that I didn’t want to have kids, but after my fifth or sixth genetics class in college I was sure. But I guess they figured I wasn’t “adult” enough to make an informed decision I had been looking into for a long time before first trying to obtain one. I’m guessing that an unmarried 20 yo with no kids are not their prime candidates, by 25 it was just a lot of are you sure.
@Dave D:
That and they knew it was a choice between me being cut and wife getting a tubal.
@Dave D: I guess it’s a small step–equal opportunity nosiness by the medical establishment. And they’re getting better. But it used to be that they wouldn’t allow a woman to get a tubal unless she was in her 30s and already had kids.