"An Attack On Me Is An Attack On Conservatism"

Mini-RushFirst of all, can I just say how hilarious it is when a rich white heterosexual guy asserts that discrimination does not exist in this country?  I love it when Rush starts talking about how racism doesn't exist, except in the sense that black people discriminate against white people all the time, and put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, crazy liberals!

The problem is that one anecdote does not a worldview make.  And one Rush Limbaugh does not a movement make.  Although he would like you to believe that the uproar about his potential purchase of an NFL team is in fact an attack on conservatism in general.  He lays it all out, but I have to admit that I've read through it several times and I can't make heads or tails of how he thinks this works.

This seems to be some kind of double reverse ad hominem attack.  In the simplest terms, an "ad hominem attack" is where you attack the speaker, not the idea.  For example if Rush Limbaugh were to say "I believe that puppies should not be vaccinated," and I responded with, "Sure, but you're ugly, and you hate dogs."  It doesn't deal with the merits of the discussion, but seeks to discredit the person having it.

Rush himself is of course the master of the ad hominem attack.  If you watch closely, he very rarely uses anything else.  Instead of talking about the possible financial repercussions from a particular ballot measure, he'll just brush it off with a PMS joke.  He is the king of taking one small thing and conflating it with the entire debate, c.f. "Barack Obama's America," where we voted in favor of promoting racism against white people.

No really, that's what he believes.  Poor Rush, part of the beleaguered white male minority!  I shed tears for his plight.  

Just to add a little frosting to the ugliness, Rush rambles on at length about the Duke Lacrosse Players incident, which only bolsters his frequent assertion that women lie about rape all the time in order to take power from men.  

This is how Rush's mind works: one in four women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.  But whenever possible, Rush brings up cases where women falsely accused men of rape.  Thus he throws skepticism on any claims of sexual assault.

The real bonus (for Rush) is when the woman is black, and she accuses one or more white men of rape, as happened with the Duke Lacrosse scandal.  This is a two-fer, because he can trot it out to demonstrate A) the pernicious curse of racism against privileged white men, and B) women lie about rape.

This article is a wonderful example of everything that's wrong with Rush Limbaugh and with his ability to reason, in one tidy package.  An attack against Rush is an attack against conservatism.  The entire country (of liberals) is attacking Rush.  The people attacking him are not themselves beyond reproach, and therefore their attacks are discredited.  All of these things are patently untrue, but that doesn't keep Rush from asserting them!