Dear Colin...

Let me offer a few thoughts for you to consider before you take to another podium to attack Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and others who you identify with something called the ‘far right’. I’d like also to suggest that far from being in a state of collapse or growing smaller, a newer, more conservative Republican Party is growing by leaps and bounds, right under your nose, but you can't see it because you are living in a Beltway trance that has led you to actually believe the BS that comes out of the Pravda media.

Here’s suggestion No.1: before you accuse Limbaugh of ‘nastiness’, specify how many consecutive minutes you have actually listened to Limbaugh; specify exactly what you heard Limbaugh say that constitutes what you consider nastiness; specify how long you listened to him before and after what you’ve identified as nastiness.

Let me fill in the blanks for you: you’ve never actually heard Limbaugh say anything that amounts to nastiness—all you’ve ever accepted as Limbaugh’s nastiness is what someone else has said or written about what Limbaugh said. Anyone who is an actual listener to Limbaugh’s show knows this. Limbaugh is a passionate believer in freedom; he is a passionate defender of the smallest and only real minority on earth: the individual; and he loves the America of the founding. He is a Reagan conservative—the kind of conservative whose views won landslide victories for Reagan and would win landslide victories today if articulated by even one Republican half as well as Limbaugh articulates them.

Limbaugh has used humor, satire, and incredible, penetrating insight to attract and sustain an audience in excess of 20 million people for over 20 years. (It’s probably increased by a third since you and other Democrats have been attacking him). I’m stunned that you apparently have not lived long enough to understand that no one could do what Limbaugh has done if nastiness were even a tiny part of his show. Good grief—don’t you know that every word he says is transcribed and available on his website 24/7, 365 days a year? He is not embarrassed or ashamed of what he says because he has no reason to be. Your attacks on him are ignorant, arrogant, elitist insults to every member of his audience—which typically includes large numbers of the US armed forces. You are disgracefully bowing to stereotypes created by the Pravda media, and it is embarrassing to watch you make a fool of yourself like this. Step back and make it a point to actually know what you’re talking about before your next attack.

Here’s another suggestion: please take one of your next occasions of public speaking to address specifically and thoroughly why--at the outset of the Valerie Plame/Robert Novak 'affair'--you did not volunteer immediately and publicly the information that it was your subordinate, Richard Armitage, and not Scooter Libby, who ‘leaked’ the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak. Had you done so, months and months and months of unfounded speculation and diatribe and vitriol and unwarranted prosecution and hostility toward the Bush administration, Karl Rove and, ultimately, against the entire Iraq War, would have been avoided. You knew the truth, but you let the attacks go on and on and on, deeply undermining public support for the war by allowing an utterly false portrayal of the Bush administrations motives and actions.

Now, we’ll admit what you don’t admit when you attack Limbaugh: maybe there are facts we haven’t heard that create a context that would allow your decision to remain silent to meet the standards of common decency and integrity. We’d like to hear you speak of them; but spare us the elite-speak about ‘advice of counsel’ or having to remain quiet out of respect for the ongoing investigation. Truth is actually more important than advice of counsel, and the truth made it clear the whole investigation was not worthy of respect because there was nothing to investigate. It was nothing but a vehicle to harass the Bush administration over decisions you opposed. You apparently let it go out of your belief that your judgment about the war was more important than that of the elected President of the United States.

And in that regard, just as you are willing to let loose on Limbaugh without knowing what you’re talking about, we’ll just say based on the facts we do know what we think of your conduct in the Armitage affair: it was treasonous. President Bush should have stripped you of every medal you’ve ever received once he learned of your dishonest, disloyal and cowardly behavior. Please explain why you don't owe President Bush and the American people an apology.

Here’s another suggestion for you: consider the possibility that the founding fathers of America just might have been smarter than you are, and their wisdom regarding human nature and political theory just might still transcend yours. If you concede this possibility, then you might start to realize that what Limbaugh and Hannity and Sarah Palin represent are today’s spokespersons for the founding fathers. They are shouting from the rooftops—and thank God they are—that the core American ideal of individual freedom and responsibility under God is wildly under attack by the administration you endorsed. The orchestrated, deliberate attack on American ideals is unconscionable, and the harm it is doing and will do to every American is incalculable.

Statism, collectivism, socialism, communism—under whatever disguise—violates the human spirit; it violates the freedom and individuality we’ve all been given by God. It substitutes human government for God, and human power for law, and the end is human enslavement to a godless, elitist state. This is catastrophic to human progress and to all human beings, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. Yet your grasp of what is going on apparently reduces down to a conclusion that the founding fathers just failed to realize that people would evolve to where they desire to pay more wonderful taxes for more wonderful government services, and that’s really all that is at issue. In so doing, you have showed yourself a charter member of a Political Class that is more out of touch with the American people than ever before in our nation’s history. Read up on our series of essays and comments on “American Revolution 2.0”, and maybe you’ll snap out of the trance you’re in.

You know very well that your endorsement of Obama was important to his eventual victory, and you ought to know that the government Obama is now delivering is not remotely close to what he portrayed as a candidate. Read “Not the Obama We Knew; Not the Government We Chose”. You’re hoping the popularity polls are real, but in your gut you know you were defrauded along with the rest of the American people. The American people smell the fraud--that's what the tea parties were and are ultimately about--and the efforts of you and the rest of the Political Class to deodorize it are not going to work.

You, of all people, decided skin color matters more than qualifications or character. Skin color doesn’t matter, but ideas and honesty do. If and when you step up and admit all of this publicly, you might actually become a real American hero.

There’s still time to do the right thing.

Sincerely yours,

Paul Gable

Posted May 6, 2009