Rush Limbaugh: An Economic Interpretation

Back in the 1990s, I wrote a book about Rush Limbaugh. It was never entirely finished, and, of course, never published. In later years, a lot of it was lost via a computer horror story too ridiculous to describe with a straight face. I still have large portions of it, though, mostly just rough drafts of some chapters or portions of chapters, sometimes just the notes for them. A great deal of research went into it.

Saturday, I dusted off and made available a portion of that project, because it dovetailed rather well with some things I'd written on a little blog I run about how the right uses wedge issues to keep the public fighting among itself as a means of precluding its combining into a force that could threaten the prerogatives of the U.S. money elite that dominates and controls government in the U.S. at the expense of that public.

Nearly every "issue" that has made conservatism a mass movement in the U.S. is of this nature. Some enemy is identified, usually something or someone of no real consequence, and the full venom of the right is unleashed against it. We're told the real problem with America is illegal immigrants with brown skin and a different language, baby-killing abortionists, pointy-headed intellectuals at colleges, hedonistic homosexuals, welfare recipients, godless heathens who remove prayer from schools, socialist would-be dictators,  environmentalist "extremists," liberals, and the Hollywood "elite." At this rhetoric's most extreme, we're told there is, being waged against the U.S., a "culture war."

The effectiveness of those who respond to this sort of rhetoric--lots of "true believers"--is usually minimal, insofar as the phony "issues" they've adopted are concerned. Abortion remains legal, government continues to stay out of the business of endorsing religion, homosexuals are not officially condemned by the State, etc.

Organization around these issues is, however, remarkably effective at implementing policies that are to the benefit of the, broadly speaking, money elite in the U.S.. Which is, of course, the point of the exercise. Vote for a candidate who promises to ban abortion, all you get is an elected official who votes for trade policies that deindustrialize the country to the benefit of that elite. Vote for someone who promises to keep the homos in line, all you get is an elected official who votes for tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. Vote for the candidate who promises to ban flag burning, all you get is an elected official who votes to take away your right to sue your doctor when he goes into surgery drunk and leaves you a quadriplegic. And so on. Often the populations affected the worst by these policies are the very ones that react most strongly to the wedge issues, and empower these policies' implementation.

The Limbaugh work sort of dovetails with this, and, while it doesn't really "fit" most of what usually goes on in this little corner of the internet, I thought I'd throw it out to the conservatives here for reaction:

RUSH LIMBAUGH: AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

[A note: "TWTOTB", below, refers to Limbaugh's ghost-writer's first book, "The Way Things Ought To Be", and "SITYS" to his second, "See, I Told You So."]

Limbaugh's views most closely approximate those of an old-school 19th century social Darwinist, with a strong authoritarian streak. His politics can, for the most part, effectively be boiled down to a few simple axioms (with a little shading here and there). The most basic are:

The rich = good

The less-than-rich = bad (or, at least, less than good)

He holds that a public needs a strong government to herd it around, keep it in line, be its "moral teacher." When he employs "anti-government" rhetoric[1], it's almost always aimed at government "interference," by progressive reform efforts, with the prerogatives of the wealthy and the powerful (who apparently don’t need that strong authoritarian hand).

This brand of naked elitism isn't the sort of thing that generally draws a great deal of admiration from most people, much less a mass audience for a media personality, so Limbaugh adopts a populist pose to woo listeners, which has become a standard technique of those on the right. Being a mere pose, though, it has no substance. It doesn't represent his real point of view. Because of this, and because he's just making it up as he goes, his comments become very inconsistent, often hilariously so. Monitoring his program for any extended period reveals a commentator who is forever becoming entangled in positions he's taken that are a complete contradiction to those he'd taken earlier. Usually, he just plows right ahead anyway, and if many of his listeners seem to notice, they certainly aren't allowed to point it out on his tightly controlled show.

That isn't to say he's entirely lacking in consistency. He gets snagged by contradiction when he's trying to play the populist. He is, however, rigorously consistent in the social Darwinist-like views outlined above. They are, in fact, the only things on which he shows that degree of consistency.[2]

Limbaugh continually sings the praises of the wealthy and the powerful, referring to them as the "successful," the "achievers," the "producers," those who work harder than anyone. He will have no part of any suggestion that these individuals are anything less than the most virtuous citizens in the country, representing the best in society, those who should be studied, emulated, all-but-worshiped. At the same time, there is, in his commentary, an ugly undercurrent of the inverse--that the poor, the unemployed, the minority, the powerless are lazy, shiftless, amoral parasites on the successful, the personification of all that is bad.

In TWTOTB, he can write that he would be "just as opposed to rich people getting subsidies from the government as poor people." It was an easy, populist-appealing thing to write at the time; no one was making much noise in opposition to government subsidies for the wealthy. But in Nov. 1994, when Clinton's Labor Secretary Robert Reich suggested cutting back on corporate welfare, Limbaugh, who has been quite enthusiastic about any opportunity to cut off aid to the needy, became absolutely enraged--ranted about it for three days. On his tv show he said "Secretary Reich, how dare you, sir" equate giveaways to corporations "to having welfare moms having to now play by the rules" and compare corporate welfare to "a free lunch." On his radio program, he was positively indignant that Reich would dare "equate giveaway payments to people who are not productive," which he called "real welfare payments" (emphasis his) with corporate welfare. "To call that welfare is, I think, real arrogance and condescension and ought to show you exactly what these people think."

In fact, Limbaugh has actually insisted that the wealthy should receive more government services than those less well-off. On his radio program (April 4, 1995), Limbaugh said "the people paying a greater percentage of what they earn, if they earn a lot, then they ought to have more access to services… Now, I know that's going to aggravate a lot of you people, but deal with it because it's true." On his radio program (April 3, 1995), he decided the ideal tax "would be where each citizen pays the same amount. Pick a number, everybody pays the same number is the fairest of all. The fairest of all is the same dollar amount." Such a scheme would find a significant number of Americans at the lower end of the scale owing their entire annual income to the government. How this would be "fair," he never explained. Three years earlier, in April 1992, he'd offered a long monologue with this as its theme:

"It's time to get serious about raising taxes on the poor…Tax them. Let's balance the budget on the backs of the poor."

He wasn't serious, of course, but he wasn't entirely kidding, either. Referring to that particular show in TWTOTB, Limbaugh said this was merely an example of his "demonstrating absurdity by being absurd," but that "I meant everything I said, save for the bit about actually taxing the poor. Other than that, I was dead serious and honest." With this in mind, some of the other things he said in that monologue are illuminating. A few examples:

"The poor and the lower classes of this country have gotten a free ride since the Great Depression when it became noble to be poor."

"The poor in this country are the biggest piglets at the mother pig and her nipples. They're the ones who get all the benefits in this country."

"…do the poor pay anything back? Do they pay any taxes? No. They don't pay a thing. They contribute nothing to this country. They do nothing but take from it."

Quite a contrast with his adoring comments about the wealthy.

Limbaugh hates the guarantee of a basic wage for those at the bottom of the income scale. The minimum wage is one of his long-running targets, and he has argued forcefully and at length for getting rid of it entirely ("I think it ought to be abolished." radio 1/24/96). When, however, a congressional initiative appeared that would have limited to $1 million/year the amount corporations can write off as compensation for their executives, Limbaugh exploded: "They [the government] have no right to determine what's enough. It's none of their business what a company… pays an individual. They shouldn't set limits on it of any kind. It's none of their damn business what people earn, and we're headed down a dangerous road if we're going to let a bunch of people in Washington define 'enough'… That is unacceptable to me, totally unacceptable."[3]

Limbaugh despises the graduated income tax, and forcefully rejects the notion of taxing proportionately more from those who are able to more easily absorb the burden in order to tax less from those who can't afford it. "Why punish achievement? Why punish people who work hard?" (Limbaugh on Donahue) On his radio program (April 1992), he decided "we can't continue to rob the rich. We have been punitive against the rich in this country."[4] From whence is government revenue to come, then? When various regressive tax "reform" schemes (the "flat tax," the national sales tax, etc.) became all the rage among Republicans, Limbaugh became an enthusiast of them. The common element of these schemes is that they sought to shift the tax burden further away--and in a radical way--from those who can afford it and on to those who can't. Limbaugh became enamored of them all. When it was pointed out to him that this would mean a big tax cut for the wealthy and a big tax hike for everyone else, he argued that such considerations are inappropriate, because it's no one's business what anyone else earns!

The punchline to all of this is that Limbaugh, while offering this running commentary dictated, root-and-branch, by elite class interests, poses as the staunchest opponent of "class warfare." On his radio program (1995), he offered up a typical rant against liberals, who, he said, are "encouraging class hatred. They are encouraging class resentment. They are dividing a wedge between income groups in this country… It does not promote a nation of unity in spirit, togetherness--however you want to call it. It promotes a nation of resentment and class hatred. On purpose!" (emphasis his) This is probably the single subject about which he speaks more than any other, how lefties divide up the nation by class, how they attempt to turn everyone against the rich, how this is such a damnable practice. "Liberals need to stop preaching class hatred," he tells us in SITYS. Nothing--and that "nothing" should be heavily stressed--NOTHING elicits more vituperative invective from Limbaugh than "redistributionists", "socialists," those who "engage in class warfare." While he does it every day.

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[1] It isn't true "anti-government" rhetoric, as would come from an anarchist; it's rhetoric aimed at government by liberal democrats, and liberal Democrats.

[2] His close attachment to the Republican party is an extension of this, and he's remarkably consistent in pimping for what he sees as the interests of it and of his pet candidates, those whom he feels will more closely approximate the policies he favors.

[3] Under the policy he was discussing, companies can still pay their executives whatever they wanted--they just wouldn't have been able to write off over $1 million a year.

[4] Comments which suggest ignorance that dwarfs mountains, mendacity that rivals planets, or outright psychosis. The "punishment" meted out to the wealthy in the U.S. has resulted in income inequality and a concentration of wealth that are both approaching record levels.

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