Hunting The Muse

Rush And ACLU

This article (scroll down) makes the point of Rush, historically anti-privacy and anti-ACLU, agreeing with the ACLU when it comes to fighting his own drug conviction case.

There's a lot of clucking in the blogosphere about this issue and how Rush is a hypocrite, etc. I think the problem is that people stop there and believe that proves more of a point than it does.

I have been reading George Lakoff's Moral Politics recently and he makes a good point about morals and power that can be applied here. Rush is probably very much aware that the two attitudes are contradictory. It's not the same thing as cognitive dissonance or him being insane. He just feels no need to reconcile the two. To folks like him, and frankly to many of those on the left, it's simply all about power, not fairness. I think a lot of politically naive people see these inconsistencies and think, "My god! Does he even realize he's doing that?" They imagine some huge blind spot, that Rush can be saved or turned, or that the experience will soften Rush up and make him more tolerant to the viewpoint in the future, etc. It's naive, because of course he realizes. He just doesn't care. After he uses the right to privacy and the ACLU to defend himself, he's going to come right back to the radio show and continue to trash the right to privacy. He's not interested in consistency. Hypocrisy is irrelevant to him. He's got an agenda to promote. Posted by Curt at January 13, 2004 04:00 PM