Rush Limbaugh Has a Brother?
Posted on March 19th, 2005 in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Just like the National Organization for Menâwho knew?
In any event, he too is on Larry Summers’ side. His defense of Summers is subtly titled “Lawrence Summers and the Left’s Thought Gulag.”
It’s worth considering the argument Limbaugh makes, not so much because it’s serious, but because conservative pundits make this case so often that the sheer repetition of it may convince many.
First, Limbaugh dismisses the idea that Summers’ leadership style is the source of faculty discontent. Instead, he says, it’s all about Summers’ remarks on women in science.
Key quote: “The FAS just could not abide the suggestion that women might have different intellectual strengths from men. It not only wouldn’t accept Summers’ apology, it virtually demanded his head and permanently tarnished his reputation.”
(It virtually demanded his head? Well, did it or didn’t it?)
The faculty reacted this way because it is politically correct, closed-minded, intolerant and liberalâwhich, according to Limbaugh, is thrice redundant.
Limbaugh then extrapolates from the Summers situation to attack not just Harvard, but “the Left” in general.
As he concludes, “The Left is increasingly intellectually bankrupt and delusional. But worse,
I like thatâ”the code.” As if liberals all sign their names in blood in a secret book.
In high school, I took a class in logic which taught me to look out for such debate techniques as the straw man, the reductio ad absurdum, the false conclusion. Limbaugh uses all of these and more; the argument is so intellectually dishonest that anyone trying to take it on can get bogged down by all the little lies.
More important, I think, is the big lie: That there is such a thing as The Leftâin a country with a Republican president, a Republican Congress, and Republican-dominated governorships and statehousesâand that it is powerful, intolerant, and politically correct.
Limbaugh’s argument really doesn’t have anything to do with Harvard. But it says a lot about how conservatives debase political discussion in order to gin up hysteria and rally their supporters.
Oh, and by the way, David Limbaugh is also an author. His book: PersecutionâHow Liberals Are Waging Political War Against Christianity. I’m sure it’s equally convincing.