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03/15/2005: "Rush’s Modest Proposal"

One of Rush’s favorite rants concerns how Liberals are negative, whining, and obstructive on Bush Administration policy (in that they are not wildly cheering Bush’s every pronouncement in the fashion so familiar to anyone who has ever watched a Bush political rally). It doesn’t seem to occur to Rush that the basis for opposition could be any kind of principle. It can only be knee-jerk reaction based on personal hatred. To have some fun with this, let’s imagine a Bush proposal just a tad more outrageous than any already on the table (for example, more outrageous than optional war or intergenerational theft). Let’s model it after “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift’s classic satire on solving England’s orphan problem by “baking them in pies.” I only had to snip out the text specific to the original Bush policy and tweak a word or two to give it a new policy target – the rest is pure Rush. Here it is: “I, as a citizen -- not as a conservative, not as a highly acclaimed political commentator: I as a citizen am growing weary of, ‘We can't do it.’ I'm growing weary of, "No, we shouldn't do it." I'm growing weary of, ‘Oh, it won't work.’ It's not the American experience. I hate this immediate reaction. I don't like it, and then I really don't like it when it is coupled with it will hurt some group. ‘We can't do this because it's going to hit poor children the hardest.’ We don't have the money for orphanages. That's why some of this money needs to be given back. It's these people's money in the first place. It's their money that's being taken from them. The government's use of money is as inefficient as it can be. It's these people's money, whether they make 10 bucks an hour or whether they make 20. I'm sorry, I'm losing patience with this. I'm losing patience with everything that we want to do is going to hurt somebody so we can't do it for anybody. Screw that! That is abjectly un-provable, inaccurate liberal thinking. It's nothing more than obstructionist thinking. It's nothing more than we can't do it. It's nothing more than we can't-itis. It's nothing more than the collective pessimism and doom and gloomism of a bunch of people who ought not be in charge of running anything because if they are, nothing would ever get done. We are Americans. If there is one thing that ought to stand out above all other things in this country, it is this: We can do whatever we set our minds to, individually, collectively, as cities, towns, neighborhoods or as a country. We've done it time and time again. Frankly, I'm fed up with it and I'm not going to put up with that. I'm not even going to entertain it anymore. People that say we can't do it, don't get on this program. Well, you'll get on the program because everyone, in the final analysis, likes pie. But it's just really frustrating.”