Dakota Beacon

Yesterday the voice of one of our great conservative thinkers and pundits went silent.  Rush Limbaugh died after a long and valiant struggle against advanced-stage lung cancer.  He was truly a pioneer in communication in our age.  Of course there are those smaller people on the left who don’t understand that they, too, have lost an important voice for freedom and in their small-minded way have been obscenely celebrating.  They would do this because silencing him is the only chance they would have of prevailing in a debate with him.  It would be out of character for Rush to want the other side silenced.

After a few years in sports broadcasting and a local talk radio show in Sacramento, he went national via WABC in New York in 1988.  It was the eve of the presidential election, the end of the Reagan presidency.  

Rush had his own take on American politics.  Not everyone agreed with him, but in 1988, our airwaves were reasonably free.  Rush engaged America in a spirited conversation about politics.  He was staunchly conservative - he believed in our Constitution, he believed in the value of hard work and entrepreneurship and he did not bow to the left-leaning Ivy League views, he understood that religion has an important place in the social structure and history of America.  Often his uncompromising views spurred important conversation in the public square.

Above all, Rush was never one to censor.  He was willing to engage all comers and actually preferred to engage leftists.  Full of confidence in his views, armed with facts and history, willing to go to battle to defend his considered point of view, he was the enemy of censorship.  His attitude in this regard clearly distinguishes him from those we see in our current climate - those who want to silence all opinions that do not conform to their own.  You were always free to disagree with Rush on his show.  You might have to do so at your own peril because he could use the facts and the truth to run circles around you.  He was always armed with and ready to use his God-given talent for honing in on the facts which generally exploded leftist ideas and their spokesmen on the air.  As he would have put it with tongue in cheek, “talent on loan from God”.  He was never lacking in confidence and that confidence was firmly based on facts and research, history and truth.  He was never afraid to stand out and disdained the idea of following the herd.

Not everyone agreed with him, of course.  If they had he would probably not have kept working - he thrived in the atmosphere of vigorous debate, something we don’t see much of in our era of heavy-handed censorship.  He enjoyed the frontlines of political discussion, he never feared it.  His purpose was only strengthened because not everyone agreed.  He was fearless in speaking his mind.

He was at last year’s State of the Union speech (the one where the childish Nancy Pelosi tore up her courtesy copy of President Trump’s speech) and had just disclosed that he was battling late stage cancer.  He was honored by President Trump with the Medal of Freedom that night.   

Rush could be abrasive, he could be outrageous at times, but no one was forced to listen.  Those who did found that he listened respectfully to other opinions and then just dismantled them with razor-sharp logic.  The important thing  is that he never desired to silence those who disagreed - he wanted that conversation.  More than one left-leaning college student or businessman or activist came to different conclusions after their views were challenged.  Some became strong conservatives after their own encounters with Limbaugh or those they heard on the air.  

In later years he struggled with prescription pain medication dependency and with severe hearing loss - a terrible affliction for someone in his line of work.  He didn’t give up but solved his problems.  He was a generous benefactor for various causes, among them the fight to find a cure for leukemia.  His personal life, which he dealt with in a matter-of-fact way, involved his four marriages.  Through the tumultuous late 20th and early 21st Centuries Rush provided a sounding board for all points of view and powerfully defended the right.  Many conservatives occasionally found his acerbic wit grating, but if they were honest would concede that he generally got it right.  

We will all be the poorer for the silence of the “golden EIB microphone”, whether everyone admits it or not.  All those who value a lively public conversation and the search for the truth will sorely miss Rush Limbaugh.  

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