Their Story
by digby
RUSH: We either are what we are or not. The dirty little secret is, the vast majority of the people in this country live their lives as conservatives; and given conservative leadership, they respond to it in droves. Landslide droves.
CALLER: One reason that that difference is there is because Democrats and liberals specifically have a lot easier time in public of espousing their views regardless of what other people think.
RUSH: Right, because they don’t have to worry about dignity…They don’t have to worry about it. That’s what J.R. Ewing said, “Once you get rid of the ethics and dignity, the rest is easy…You know, they’ve gotten away so long as being the caring party; they’re the party that cares about the downtrodden. They have destroyed… They have created the downtrodden. Liberalism has created the downtrodden and the unhappy and the miserable, and then the liberals set themselves up as their champions, say, “Only we can fix them because only we care.” They don’t care. They loathe them! There is contempt, by the way, for these little people. Real compassion…
By the way, we have to do a far better job of PR. I’m not denying this. Real compassion is conservatism. Real compassion cares for the individual. Real conservatism wants every individual to be the best he or she can be, with nobody standing in the way.
Let a person use what their God-given talents are, combined with their ambition and their energy and their desire and their dreams, and get out of their way. We want people to amount to the most they want to be and can be. But for those who have a legitimate problem, they have some sort of problem that prevents them from succeeding; we are all for taking care of those people. But we do not want to take normal, healthy Americans and turn them into wards of the state, turn them into dependents. We do not want to look at them with arrogant condescension. We don’t look at them and say, “You’re worthless. You’re stupid. You’re not part of the smart group. You can’t get anywhere without us.” We don’t look at people that way. We look at people with respect, hope. You talk about hope? We hope for this country to be the best damn country it can be and you need the best damn individuals for that to happen. Conservatism is about the individual. Liberalism doesn’t care about the individual. This is simple. We just have to tell the story about it.
Rush is the epitome of a conservative sweetheart — hopeful, dignified and ethical:
The problem is just that conservatives haven’t been allowed to tell their story — they have bad PR. Maybe someday, one of them will have a radio show with over 20 million listeners for over two decades to tell it. Until that day, we can only dream of a time in the future when conservatism will have its day in the sun.
Meanwhile, be sure to take the compassionate, ethical, dignified Rush’s advice or you could be brainwashed:
“I do remember reading that the highly educated are the most susceptible to being hypnotized, so that would put me in the risk group, ladies and gentlemen. And yet, I’m going to watch Obama tonight.”
“If you do watch Obama tonight, here’s the sign that I want you to make for your TV: ‘Do not be hypnotized. You are listening to a socialist.'”
In case you’re wondering, the highly educated Rush isn’t using “hypnotized” as a metaphor. He means it literally.
Update: Here’s some more of that compassionate conservatism from another one of the silenced majority who can’t get their story out:
“[t]he reason people are poor in America is not because they lack money, it’s because poor people in America lack values, character, and the ability to work hard.”
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