I miss Rush Limbaugh...

I miss Rush Limbaugh.  During the Biden years I couldn’t help imagining him up in Heaven begging God to put him back in the game. Today I imagine him sitting in a bar smoking a cigar with Ronald Reagan and buying a round for the house every time a new EO drops. When he was here however there were a few things that he used to say that I loved because of their clarity.  He always pointed out that illegal immigration was all about votes and that Democrats were hypocrites on the issue.  He’d suggest that if it was really compassion that drove the issue, the solution was simple: immediately legalize them with the caveat that they could never vote.  Democrats, of course, never went for it.

He also used to use reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate the absurdity of Democrat policies.  My favorite had to do with minimum wages. When Democrats were first calling for a minimum wage of $15, then $20, Limbaugh would argue “why stop there” and suggest $50 or $200 an hour.  He’d of course demonstrate how that lunacy would impact the rest of the economy and things would simply go awry. 

I don’t know if he ever used the reductio argument on illegal immigration per se, but if so it would make perfect sense. As we know Democrats feel like anyone who makes it across the American border should be supported and become citizens.  Imagine how that would work out if the 42 million people in Latin America who want to move to the US did, or the 162 million who want to do so worldwide. That would be an absolute disaster. We couldn’t afford the schooling, housing, healthcare or food necessary to support them.  America can absorb immigrants, but not unfettered millions of them, most of whom need to be supported by the government (AKA taxpayers) and have little interest in assimilating.  America spent a reported $150 billion supporting illegals in 2023 (likely much more) and as a result towns and cities across the country had to cut basic services for citizens in order to do so. Now double or triple that, with its attendant cuts in services for Americans and the reductio quickly becomes absurd indeed.

The notion that the United States should or could support millions of people who cross our border illegally is simply insane. Well, technically it’s not exactly insane in that the people proposing it see it as a rational way to increase and sustain their wealth and power.  Democrats need ever more people dependent on them to overcome the rationality of actual Americans who increasingly see them for the grifters they are. 

What’s worse than the millions of people streaming across our borders is the fact that it’s been facilitated by, indeed driven by American taxpayers, through USAID and other government programs. Americans are literally spending billions of dollars a year in order to facilitate the invasion of their country by millions of illegals who then need to be taken care of by those same taxpayers!

Gad Saad, the author of The Parasitic Mind is writing a book called Suicidal Empathy where he is expected to talk about the west committing cultural suicide by importing tens of millions of non-westerners then essentially abandoning the fundamental concepts that underly western civilization in order to show empathy and avoid being called racists.

In one of Saad’s retweets is a chart showing crime statistics in Denmark.  It showcases the fact that immigrants from third world countries in Asia and Africa are committing violent crimes at an exponentially higher rate than Danes or citizens from other western nations, yet Denmark continues to import these high crime immigrants by the tens of thousands. Of course this same outcome is replicated throughout the west.  In the US, we’re told that illegals commit fewer crimes than Americans, but the truth is – if you disregard the fact that 100% of illegals are in fact criminals by definition – the only group against whom that claim is actually true is black Americans, who commit crimes such as murder at literally 10 times the rate of the majority whites.    

But we’re told allowing this migration from their broken countries is the “compassionate” thing to do…

Except it’s not. If one were to apply reductio ad absurdum to this situation the west will simply collapse and Europe will end up part of the Caliphate and America will become just another Latin American banana republic. How will that work for prosperity?  For freedom? For continued advances of civilization?  From the looks of Iraq, Turkey, Mexico or Venezuela, not particularly well. 

The truth is, if liberals really were interested in helping the disadvantaged from 3^rd world countries, they’d force those fleeing to remain and clean up their own countries.  Allowing those with the motivation and intestinal fortitude to make the trip across the Mexican desert in order to swim across the Rio Grande saps the spirit of their home countries. If they were forced to stay they would likely be the ones pushing hardest for change and improving their countries.

But they are not, because of western liberals.

These western liberals see themselves as the helping hand of God, rescuing the downtrodden, when in reality they are Satan helping to destroy the nations from which said downtrodden emigrated (and simultaneously the ones they immigrate to). 

In her outstanding 2010 book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, economist Dambisa Moyo argues that western aid (at least the little that actually makes it to its destination) undermines much of Africa because it kills domestic farming and industry, often leaving the nations dependent on further handouts. 

Just as parks post signs saying “Please don’t feed the wildlife” because they don’t want the bears to become dependent on food from humans, so too the west should get out of the aid business. 

If the goal was to actually help citizens of 3^rd world countries, these liberals would embark on the long term journey of teaching them the precepts that underly functioning and prosperous nations:  Rule of law, free markets and private property, combined with limited government – things which many western nations have forgotten. 

And it is possible to do.  The Jews built a breadbasket and then a nation out of what was largely a desolate desert in the late 19^th century.  Hong Kong was a small city 60 years ago but today it’s a bustling world class (albeit Communist) metropolis.  The same holds true for Dubai – only faster! And indeed, changes can happen on a national scale, sometimes quite quickly.  Look at what’s been done in El Salvador in five years and Argentina in one.  It’s amazing what a people can do if motivated to do so. 

But sadly, most of the motivated people in the 3^rd world aren’t using that spirit to build their nations; they’re abandoning their homes for Europe and America… only in most cases to try and replicate the dysfunctional society they escaped in cushier environs.  And as the rapidly unfolding USAID scandal showcases, much of the money for that invasion is being driven by leftists and paid for by American taxpayers. No doubt Rush is watching from above saying “See, I told you so…”

"Conservative Media" Bootlickers for a President Trump?

As we head into the end of the most heartbreaking presidential cycle in American history my guess is that we will be talking about “President Elect Trump” at the end of the week. Of course I say that having thought Mitt Romney was going to beat Barack Obama 4 years ago…

A President Trump will present the nation with a raft of challenges… The first is the hope that his thin skin and short temper or his mancrush on Vladimir Putin don’t get us into a war. Beyond that, there are countless other things we hope he gets right, such as the Supreme Court, actually building a wall and streamlining the tax code. I say hope because if Donald Trump has shown us one thing, it’s been that he’ll say whatever he thinks will get him what he wants, and that his words and his deeds are often different by galactic proportions.

But this piece isn’t about Donald Trump… This piece is about the so called “conservative media” such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Drudge, etc. For decades we’ve listened to these people or outlets tell us that the mainstream media is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democrat party. They’ve shown us, time and time again the hypocrisy of the New York Times, CNBC, the AP, CBS and the rest. And they’ve largely been right. If it’s Scooter Libby being falsely accused of leaking secrets he’s enemy number 1, but if it’s Hillary Clinton leaving classified information on a deliberately unsecure server open to hacking, it’s nothing more than the Republicans trying to destroy a strong woman for a minor oversight.

The question is, will the “conservative” media be half or even a quarter as objective when it comes to a President Trump? Frankly, I doubt it. Thus far, through the election cycle, Breitbart, Drudge, Rush and most of all Sean Hannity have been nothing more than bootlickers for Donald Trump. Can you imagine their response if Harry Reid had been caught on tape talking about grabbing women the way Donald Trump was? Can you imagine what their response would have been had Nancy Pelosi said that he could stand in the middle of the street and shoot someone and get away with it? What would their response be if Barack Obama had refused to release his tax returns or if the claims of charitable giving and the reality had been as different as it appears to be with Donald Trump? My guess is that the conservative media would have had a field day with all of that. But Donald Trump gets a pass on that and much more.

We already know that the mainstream media will vilify a President Trump at every turn. But that, frankly, is unimportant. Why? Because we already know that the mainstream media is indeed a Democrat tool, and, more importantly, their decades of hyperbole as it relates to Republicans have caused a significant segment of the population to simply tune them out. When the Democrat media painted Mitt Romney as a horrible human being who abused dogs and let family members of employees die, you knew they were utterly worthless. There were many things with which one could disagree with Romney on, but he is fundamentally a good man and most Americans recognize that. As such, when a mere four years later the media started to try and flail Donald Trump, who is much closer to actually being a vile human being, many people brushed it off as just more of the same.

With much of the public the mainstream media has zero credibility as a source of actual, factual news. Although a President Trump may give them much fodder to work with that is demonstrably true, like the boy who cried wolf, a significant portion of the population will dismiss it simply because of their long history of past cries. And so we are left with a conservative media to keep a President Trump and his ego in check. Two years ago I would have bet that it was possible to depend on Rush, Matt and Breitbart to keep an errant GOP president in check, but today I have grave doubts… and that’s a problem, particularly for a GOP president who has such a big ego, so few morals and almost no concept of limited government or understanding of the Constitution.

If the United States emerges from Donald Trump’s first – and likely only – term as a functioning republic, it will only be because somehow some conservative voice or voices decided that the Constitution was more important than being part of Team Trump and willingly stood up to the populist mob. The reality is, Donald Trump’s acceptance of the Constitution’s separation of powers, his fundamental understanding of the 10th Amendment and his dedication to individual liberty are no greater than Barack Obama’s are. But Barack Obama had conservatives who challenged his usurping of power, even if Congress and the Courts didn’t. Donald Trump will not have that thorn.

 While it’s certain that the mainstream media will hold his feet to the fire, their credibility is gone. It will only be conservatives who point to the Constitution as the fount of – and yoke on – government power who will have the credibility to objectively challenge his actions. The behavior of the “conservative” media over the last year one does have inspire great confidence that they will challenge President Trump as he seeks to turn Washington into his personal fiefdom. But I'm open to being pleasantly surprised.  Let’s hope that somewhere there emerges a voice who will not fall under the spell of the next Narcissist in Chief when he succeeds our current one.  Maybe then the discussion can get back to limiting government to only those things it's actually empowered to do rather than the things that the strongman in the White House wants it to do.

America's Game of Russian Roulette: Clinton vs. Trump or Revolution vs. War

I remember in 2008 I told my wife that that presidential election was the most important in a generation. I told her in 2012 that that election was the most important in my lifetime. Both of those statements were completely true. In putting Barack Obama in the White House, for the first time Americans elected a race bating closet Muslim socialist / fascist as the leader of the free world. That is of course unfortunate in many ways for many people around the world. Not only has the American economy been stuck in the worst recession in 65 years, race relations are the worst they’ve been in 50 years, our borders are practically nonexistent, freedom and the Constitution are under constant attack and the image of the United States as a leader on the world stages is in tatters.

Now it’s possible that the election of 2016 is even more important, but sadly there is no relative superhero like John McCain or Mittens Romney on the ticket. I was against both of those squishy centrist candidates from the start and would have much preferred to have an actual conservative on the ticket… but alas it was not to happen.

It was with great expectations that I looked forward to the 2016 campaign as finally an opportunity for a true conservative to emerge from the mosh pit and lead the nation to a victory over the cancer of today’s Democrat party. Unfortunately however that did not happen. Between the GOP establishment’s incompetence and fear of a real conservative, as well as the media’s love of ratings – and that includes the so called “conservative” media – today we have Donald Trump as the standard bearer for the party of Ronald Reagan.

And so it is that Americans, with a population of over 320 million people have put themselves in a situation where the only two people with a realistic chance of becoming the leader of the free world are a lying big government socialist and an uninformed narcissistic thin skinned crony capitalist with no love for freedom. This is essentially the opposite of winning the lottery. Americans have somehow managed to put themselves in a game of Russian Roulette where all of the chambers have rounds in them!

While the elections of 2008 and 2012 set the nation on the road to ruin in terms of economic stagnation, stultifying regulation, the undermining of the Constitution and eviscerating America’s position as leader of the free world, the election of 2016 will have even more devastating effects.

The election of Hillary Clinton will result in the continuation of the policies of Barack Obama, only on steroids. We will get a Supreme Court that will look to the UN charter rather than the US Constitution. We will get continued and increasing regulation which suffocates prosperity and entrepreneurship but which helps big business. We will get increases in taxes, skyrocketing government spending and more race bating. And perhaps most of all, we will surrender our borders and will transform our nation into a refuge from which immigrants can escape the third world only to then work to turn our country into a mirror reflection of said third world.

The election of Donald Trump will give us a crapshoot of broken promises, protectionism, and isolation. At the same time the 1st Amendment may go by way of the dodo bird while regulation will likely grow for the benefit of big businesses and at the expense of entrepreneurs. More ominously, a Donald Trump presidency will create great divisions between the United States and our NATO allies and others who have helped maintain a relative peace for much of the last half century. As the increasingly bellicose Chinese and Russians seek to expand their spheres of influence, the world will watch a President Trump seek to pull back the American footprint. Osama Bin Laden once said “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse”. In this case the strong horses will be China and Russia, and that does not bode well for freedom or peace for anyone.

So at the end of the day, Americans have a choice to make, and neither is a good one.

The first option will put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and that will lead to a fracturing of the nation, along lines of race, along lines of income, along geographic lines and fundamentally about an understanding of the Constitution and freedom. And that fracturing could very well lead to revolution. And not a theoretical revolution played out in newsrooms and college campuses and on the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. No, this may indeed turn out to be a real revolution where people revolt against the tyranny of an economically and culturally oppressive government and a dearth of opportunity of any kind. It won’t show itself by a fife and drum corps marching down Main Street. No, it will be in the shadows as more police are targeted, more citizens take matters into their own hands and order starts to come apart while an increasingly militarized police force seeks to keep things in check. This revolution will look a lot more like the one that started in France in 1789 than the one that started in the colonies in 1776.

The second option will put Donald Trump in the White House and that will lead to a calcifying of the American economy, estrangement between the US and erstwhile allies, and at some point, war. And this war will not be a guerilla war fought against jihadis seeking to bring about the caliphate. No, this war will be against Russia or China. As Trump and his little hands pull back from the world stage, the Russians and Chinese will seek to expand their empires, taking Ukraine and Taiwan respectively. In both cases Trump will likely acquiesce, which will only lead to further expansion such as with the Baltics in the case of Russia and any one of half a dozen other countries or islands in the case of China. At some point the threat will become sufficiently ominous and American allies so vocal that the United States will have to engage. And unlike Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan in the 1980s, this will not be a proxy war limited to some theater most Americans couldn’t find on a map if their lives depended on it. No, this will be a real, hot war with sophisticated enemies throwing billions of dollars of weapons at one another. One can only hope that such a conflict stays conventional…

So as we stumble towards the 2016 election Americans should be aware… they have left themselves with not only no good options, but only terrible options, both of which will likely lead to much bloodshed, chaos and possibly the end of the Republic. Good job Rush, Matt Drudge and the GOP establishment. When your country needed you, you decided to whore yourselves out to a populist megalomaniac. The citizens of dystopia in America’s future will no doubt be quite grateful to you.

What will Rush Limbaugh’s legacy be: Footnote or Patriot? Now is his time to decide...

I’ve been listening to Rush Limbaugh since about 1992. Although he claims to be right 99.8% of the time or something like that, I find that I only agree with him about 97% of the time.

I’ve listened with great interest as he has eloquently exposed the left’s perniciousness in situations where I saw nothing sinister at all. More times than I can count I listened to the news or read a paper and simply took what they said at face value. Then I would listen to Rush talk about the exact same event and discuss the media’s coverage of it and like Russell Crowe’s John Nash in A Beautiful Mind he would lay out in great specificity what was really going on. He is as skilled at revealing the underlying machinations of the left and the media (the same thing, really) as Nash was at solving codes.

At the same time, he has been equally successful in highlighting the hypocrisy of the GOP establishment’s embrace of big government and open borders.

For more than a quarter century I’ve listened to Rush trumpet the virtues of conservatism. For more than a quarter century I’ve listened to Rush proclaim that if Americans only had an articulate conservative champion to vote for they would and the nation would be saved. Now that the country has one in Ted Cruz – for the first time in a generation, where's Limbaugh?

I’ll tell you where he is… he’s sitting in his south Florida studio explaining why Donald Trump is so successful in outsmarting the pundits. Sure, he offers the requisite “Ted Cruz is a rock solid conservative” a couple of times a week, but he spends most of his time explaining why Trump seems to defy the odds that no one else would have a shot at.

It’s his show and he has every right to do exactly what he wants and say anything he wants. My question is however, does Rush Limbaugh want to be remembered as a political gadfly who uses his microphone to poke fun at liberals and illuminate the folly of the ruling class, or does he actually want to be a hero? He can be one or he can be the other, but he can’t be both.

If he truly believes what he has been saying over the last 28 years then now is the time for him to put his microphone where his mouth is. I’ll take Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump doesn’t solve the problems that are undermining the country as we speak. Donald Trump will not end big government. Donald Trump is not a champion for individual freedom. Donald Trump is not an enemy of crony capitalism. Donald Trump is not a fan of separation of powers or limited government. Ted Cruz is all of those things and more.

At the end of the day, Donald Trump embodies many – but not all – of the things Rush Limbaugh has been railing against for the past quarter century. So the question is, does Rush really believe what he says or is he simply trying to sell advertising? Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with the latter. I love watching the Big Bang Theory, but not for one second do I think the actors on that show are going to give Stephen Hawking a run for his money on a physics quiz. And they don’t expect me to believe it, they’re actors, I know they’re acting and it makes for great entertainment for me and they make lots of money. Great setup.

But the Rush Limbaugh Show is not a Hollywood sitcom. People don’t listen to Rush to listen to fiction. They listen to see the left exposed and listen to the heartfelt commentary from someone who cares about the United States, who champions freedom and explains (with examples) how liberty and free markets make the world a much better place than socialism, communism and most of what came before the United States was born.

And so, people like me look at Rush today and wonder if his heart is really in it or is he like a union leader who plays to the base while enriching himself at their expense? Although our expense in this case is time rather than money. We wonder if wrapping himself in the American flag and American values is simply a ploy to generate advertising dollars.

Right here, right now is where the tire hits the road. Donald Trump is well down the path to winning the GOP nomination. That might lead to a Trump or Clinton presidency. Neither would be good for the country nor for freedom… although a Clinton presidency would surely be worse. But we’re not there yet, and now is when the voice of Rush Limbaugh could actually make a difference. It won’t matter in the general because coming out of the conventions most minds are already made up, and the ones that aren’t are likely not listening to Rush.

This is not a call for Rush to savage Donald Trump. That’s not necessary. What is necessary however is to stop the with wall to wall “exposing” of the hypocrisy of the GOP establishment – which we all see – and the media’s duplicity as they prop up Trump only to knife him once the general campaign begins. What is necessary is for Rush to simply talk about how Trump doesn’t comport with most of the things he has championed for the last quarter century. To explain that Trump is an enemy of free markets, limited government and no fan of individual freedom. And explain why those things are important and why his posture on those ideas puts him closer to Barack Obama than they do to Ronald Reagan.

There are times in our lives when we are faced with real, consequential choices, and it’s up to us to us to decide what we want to leave behind when we’re gone. For 28 years Rush Limbaugh has eloquently stated the case that the United States is the greatest nation in the history of the world, our Constitution is possibly next to the Bible in importance in helping to improve the condition of man and that our free markets have driven more prosperity than the world has ever seen. He’s right… but the cancer of liberalism has put all of that at risk. The question is, a century from now, when people look back on Rush Limbaugh’s life, will they read about a political gadfly who entertained people between long commercial breaks or will they read about a patriot who helped the country survive the scourge of progressivism and helped bring about a conservative revolution that not only turned back the tide of big government, but unleashed the forces of freedom (both individual and markets) that ushered in a period of growth and prosperity unprecedented in all of human history?

That’s a choice Rush will have to make. Does he want to go down as a footnote in history or does he want to join the pantheon of giants who used their influence to make a difference as have Ben Franklin, J.P. Morgan, William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman?

Why Palin and Limbaugh Are Supporting Trump: Fame and Legacy

It was with great disappointment that I listened a few days ago to Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump. I was similarly disappointed the next day when I heard Rush Limbaugh proffer simply that “Nationalism and populism have overtaken conservatism in terms of appeal.” It’s tough when you find that your heroes are less than they had led you to believe, or, perhaps, what you chose to believe…

I’ve been a big supporter of Sarah Palin since the moment I saw her walk out on the GOP stage in 2008. I penned a piece titled “Why I love Sarah Palin” discussing exactly why I found her so compelling. I liked the fact that she was not part of the establishment. That she had not spent her life in Washington. That she had lived a normal, imperfect life that many Americans could relate to… and, most of all, she was conservative and traveled around the country touting the virtues of a limited government.

I’ve been a big fan of Rush Limbaugh since I first heard him on the radio in 1990 while in college in Florida. Throughout that quarter century I’ve listened to Rush talk about conservative values, government overreach, media spin and endlessly skewer epic government failures both big and small. Although I don’t agree with him 100% of the time, it’s pretty damn close.

This week it became clear that both Palin and Limbaugh are paper conservative tigers. Both have shown that they are conservatives when it’s easy, when it’s convenient, but when the chips are down, they are consummate politicians. As I myself have written, I will vote for Trump over anyone that the donkey party produces, but until that becomes the choice, I’m not a Trump guy. He’s simply not a conservative in any sense of the word. From limited government to abortion to gun control to taxes, Donald Trump has no idea what a conservative is. And he doesn’t care.

There are however two different things going on here. The first is Palin, who with her ringing endorsement of Trump betrays the very principles she has spent eight years publicly espousing. The conclusion I’ve drawn is that she has become a Kim Kardashian wannabe. She became enamored with the fame, with the media spotlight, with the money, and she decided that a better avenue back to that spotlight was to jump on the Trump train, principles be damned. Donald is a rock star and Sarah is a groupie seeking to reignite her career in his shadow.

With Limbaugh it’s something different, although it’s kind of the same. He’s not overtly supporting Trump, and in fact he constantly says that if you want a rock solid conservative, Cruz is your man. Limbaugh of course doesn’t need Trump to shine. As a matter of fact, if Hillary or Bernie won his audience and fortune would probably increase. No, when he spends three hours simply “explaining” what’s going on with Trump is he’s feigning objectiveness while tacitly pushing him to the front of the stage. Which he has every right to do, as it’s his show… but then don’t waste our time whining about the GOP establishment never giving Americans a conservative to vote for.

Make no mistake, this is a choice. Limbaugh claims that he’s just “explaining” what’s going on, that he’s just reacting to the news cycle, but in reality he decides what goes on on his show. Guaranteed if he wanted to he could spend three hours talking about Iowa governor Terry Branstad’s attempt to crucify Cruz for opposing ethanol, and given it’s Rush it would be entertaining. But rather than do so, he spends days on end explaining why Americans find themselves entertained by a strangely coiffed professional entertainer. And why might he do this? Fear. Trump is the easy play. Trump is the fun play. And there’s no risk with him. If he loses, then he was just a clown that entertained people for a while. If he wins, well, great, a guy who’s not part of the establishment who will leave plenty of terrible government programs to skewer. But Cruz… he’s a real conservative. He’s the guy Limbaugh has been telling America we’ve needed for almost three decades. What happens if he gets the nomination and he loses? Then suddenly Limbaugh is shown to be wrong… he’s shown to have been a fool all these years when he was telling his audiences what Americans really want and need and weren’t getting from the GOP... a conservative nominee.

So there we have it, two giants of modern conservatism who, when the chips are down, decided to betray their principles. One for fame and the other for fear of losing his legacy. Unfortunately, after being a fan of both for years the only thing that comes to mind is a quote from P.T. Barnum: “There’s a sucker born every day.” My guess is more than a few other conservatives feel the same way.

The Profound Rush Limbaugh: ”Have you ever noticed how under capitalism the rich become powerful, and under socialism the powerful become rich?

Love him or hate him, there is no debate about the fact that Rush Limbaugh is a genius. Last week he said the following:

”Have you ever noticed how under capitalism the rich become powerful, and under socialism the powerful become rich? It's amazing when you look at it that way. Under capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under socialism, the powerful get rich. They exploit others. They get rich by taking from others, by using their power. In capitalism, the rich become powerful. It's a minor little distinction. It's one of those little pithy bullet points that is just shy of a profundity.”

I have to disagree with Rush slightly… that statement is indeed profound. Although he characterizes it as a minor little distinction for rhetorical purposes, his context demonstrates exactly how significant it really is.

When you think about it, on the most basic level, it makes perfect sense. In socialist, communist and fascist countries, despite the egalitarian rhetoric, invariably it is the people who control the infrastructure of the state who end up with the biggest bank accounts and grandest (relative) lifesyles. They decide who can do what jobs, who can get what permits, who can open up what businesses. Given that the state controls the avenues through which so much of life runs, is it any wonder that corruption is often rampant? Is it any wonder that while Muscovites were looking for food on barren supermarket shelves Brezhnev gorged himself at his Jurmala dacha? Or is it much of a surprise that while Mugabe has turned Zimbabwe into one of the poorest countries in the world he has accumulated billions of dollars in personal wealth? It comes as no shock that to get anything done in Mexico takes the greasing of palms of government officials all along the way. The reality is, when government controls most aspects of life, from the major to minutiae, they get to decide who is successful and who is not, and often they choose themselves their friends and their families.

Of course everyone wants success, but the difference between state control and free markets is who gets to decide what constitutes success and who gets to enjoy its fruits. With state control it’s the bureaucrats who get to decide while in free markets it is the citizens. One can quickly guess which produced "green" cars no one wants, a healthcare system that doesn’t work or a tax code so complex even its authors can't understand it. 

You may hate Wal-Mart, but no one ever forced you to shop there. Wal-Mart became a half a trillion dollar behemoth not by forcing customers to come into their stores, but rather by advertising what they were willing to sell and for how much. People willingly walk into their stores and voluntarily exchange their hard earned dollars for Wal-Mart’s goods. You may have heard that JD Rockefeller was a “son of a bitch” businessman, and you’d be right. But he earned his money by standardizing the industry and lowering prices on kerosene, gasoline, and a wide variety of other petroleum products as well. Although competitors were sometimes mad, consumers and the economy benefited dramatically. The success of Standard Oil was based on selling products to willing consumers, not on government redistribution. The same holds true today for Intel, Apple and Frito Lay, just as it did for others like Sears and Roebuck, Gillette and Howard Johnson a century ago.

In the United States numerous rich businessmen have converted their success into power. The Koch brothers come to mind. So too does George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. But the difference is, what those guys are selling, we don’t have to buy.

While the US may still ostensibly be a capitalist system, how long that will last is open for debate. Today we are rapidly becoming a command and control socialist country with Washington as the vortex. Government tells you what kinds of bulbs you can buy, who you have to rent your house to and how you can use your property among other things. It takes the money you worked for and uses it to give phones, EBT cards and birth control pills to those who didn’t. Basically Washington has the power, and now it has the money too. The Washington DC area now has 6 of the 10 richest counties in the country. Out of 3,100 counties in the US, 6 of the 10 richest in the Washington DC Metro area! To put that in perspective, Occupy Wall Street was worried about the country being run by the richest 1%. Those 1% guys are pikers, in reality the country is run by .0019% richest, and they live in Washington.

And why does money flow to Washington?  Simple.  That’s where the power is. Because that's where the laws and regulations that restrict your freedom come from. Washington’s bureaucrats don’t solicit explicit bribes like they do in third world countries… but then they don’t have to. They earn twice what private sector workers do, have virtual lifetime employment, and have the "respect" that comes from having the power to destroy a business or an industry with a stoke of a pen. As a result, while some companies spend money in Washington seeking to suckle at the public teat, (defense, agribusiness and green energy industries come to mind) most firms today spend their money on lobbyists not to get dollars from government, but rather to influence legislation and regulations so that they can simply survive.

Capitalism is not yet completely dead in America. Thankfully guys like Mark Zuckerberg, Simon Cowell, Sean Combs and lots of other people whose names we’ll never know are able to create businesses that earn them millions or billions of dollars without stealing a single dollar from any one of us or eviscerating one iota of our freedom. But one has to wonder how long that will last. Today there are 92 million adults in the United States who are not working. From unemployment benefits that last for years to welfare programs that create lifelong wards of the state to regulations and taxes that disincentivize work, one has to wonder what the real agenda of Washington is. Is it to see a resurgent private sector where more Americans can support themselves and their families without government help, thereby inducing a reduction in the size of the army of bureaucrats and lobbyists? Or is it to slowly strangle capitalism so that more and more jobs and lives look to Washington for their preservation, which in turn means bigger government, more lobbyists and of course more money for Washington.

With Mark Zuckerberg getting rich off of us and our data, it’s an even exchange in that we have a free choice in deciding how much of that data we’re willing to exchange. If we don’t like it we can simply delete our Facebook accounts. However, when the Washington establishment uses the police power of government to get rich off of us, we have no options, we can’t simply choose to not pay taxes or simply start another business without Washington’s interference. It’s not possible. What we can do however is work fewer hours, shut down our businesses or take the path that more and more Americans are taking every day; to simply give up working altogether and look to Washington for our every need. My guess is that Rush would probably say that is exactly what the left's agenda is. And as usual he would be right.

Now playing the role of George Washington... Neal Boortz?

Neal Boortz will be calling it quits this week after 42 years in the radio business. He timed his exit to ensure that if Barack Obama was reelected he (Obama) would not have another dollar of his (Boortz’s) income tax dollars to spend.

As he rides off into the sunset to play golf, drive around in the Boortzmobile, and most importantly, visit Disney World, we are all left to wonder what the future might hold.

If you’ve ever listened to him, you know that Neal can be acerbic, pointed, and frankly, sometimes downright mean. But at the same time he can be funny, compassionate and extraordinarily generous. In other words, he’s a puny human like the rest of us. There are a few gifts he has that most of us don’t however. He is phenomenally entertaining. He has an uncanny ability to distill most issues down to their core elements and clearly articulate what is at stake. And he is a skilled pitchman, particularly for the ideas he holds.

To the untrained ear his pronouncements often sound outrageous at first blush, but when you listen to the rationale behind them he’s usually spot on. The best example I can think of is when he states, as he often does, “The teachers’ unions pose a bigger threat to the security of the United States than does Al Qaeda.” Someone who’s not heard that before might think that he’s nuts, asking “How many planes have the teachers’ unions flown into buildings?” or “How many bombs have the teachers’ unions planted?” However, when you follow his logic about how the teachers’ unions are systematically undermining education in the United States and producing a population made up of “dumb masses”, and how that uneducated public is the road upon which tyranny rides into and then takes over the public square, you recognize he’s 100% right. His cheering when an intruder is killed by a homeowner can also seem callus, but only until you realize what he is really cheering is the fact that some criminal will not be around any longer to pose a threat to the life of other, innocent, less empowered citizens.

At the end of the day, Boortz, like Limbaugh, Levin, Hannity and others, makes his living entertaining people while informing them. One has to wonder however, is that really enough? Why do I ask that? Because a quick look at the last quarter century will reveal that the country has continued to march left. If not in name certainly in action, particularly as it relates to the representatives we send to Washington.

For four decades Boortz has railed against big, incompetent, unconstitutional government, yet over that time we’ve gotten nothing but more of exactly that, other than a small respite during the Reagan administration. In a nutshell, it appears that Boortz, like the others, has been a failure in achieving his overarching goal. Now, he’s obviously been a phenomenal success in his primary goal, which is to entertain fans and generate advertising revenue for his stations. By that measure Neal, Rush, Sean and a number of other conservative radio hosts have been spectacularly successful, something liberals never seem to be able to accomplish.

On the larger goal of saving the country from the stultifying leviathan of progressivism however, Neal et. al. have failed, and failed miserably. This does not suggest that Neal and friends are somehow responsible for this shift. On the contrary, it’s happened despite their efforts… and that is the key. Neal is retiring. Rush is doing the same show he’s been doing for years. Mark Levin is pretty angry, but the truth is, he’s been angry for a while.

The question I have is, do these hosts actually believe what they say or is shtick to sell advertising? If it’s shtick that’s fine. It’s like watching Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock; you know the guy is a schmuck in real life but it’s fun to watch him as Jack. If however this message is more than that, if he and they really believe what they say, are they prepared to do something about it?

Neal has been saying for months that he thinks the country is almost lost, and that defeating Barack Obama was the best opportunity to save it. Today he says that he thinks we are probably doomed and that the 2014 elections are likely our last chance. I think he’s probably right. In 2008 it was only speculation that Obama would rule as an anti-capitalist big government statist. Today we know he was worse than any of us had expected. Yet somehow the country knew that and still reelected him.

We face a different future today than the one we did in January 2009, or even in October 2012 for that matter. We have an economic fascist in the White House with no fear of having to ever win election again. We have a more progressive Senate than we did after the 2010 election and we have a house that is nominally Republican but can’t seem to bring itself to deny President Obama anything. President Obama seeks to destroy the private sector and the motivation any person might have to work hard and seek their fortune. Four more years of unbridled Obama may indeed end the Constitutional republic that is the United States.

Today the United States faces the biggest threat to liberty since World War II… Which brings us back to the question above: Do Neal and his brethren actually believe what they say or is a defense of the Constitution merely shtick to sell advertising? If it’s something more than shtick, then now is the time to do something more than merely chat on the radio for three hours a day.

What exactly should they do? I’m not sure, but there is a vacuum in the country and who better to fill it than someone who is experienced in making cogent points compellingly? Maybe create a cable network dedicated to capitalism, entrepreneurship and free markets. Maybe begin a lecture circuit about achieving the American Dream. Maybe start a barnstorming tour to invigorate the Tea Party movement. The conservative movement in the United States is lacking a leader, lacking a voice of someone who can inspire its adherents and convert its opponents; someone who can rally Americans to get off of their couches and do something to fix a broken country. For two presidential election cycles the GOP has fielded milquetoast candidates who wouldn’t know conservatism if it walked up and hit them in the head. Now are now paying for those decisions.

A quarter century of conservative talk has been entertaining, but it’s not been enough. Today we need something more. We need engaged citizens who are willing to put aside American Idol, shopping, football, and Facebook and learn what made our country a success and evangelize the message of free markets and limited government. But who will lead them?

Everyone deserves a retirement, and Neal has certainly earned his. But sometimes there’s something bigger than retirement. Sometimes there is something worth putting off retirement for. A reluctant George Washington recognized that: A month before his inauguration in 1789 he wrote in a letter to his friend John Knox: “In confidence I can assure you -- with the world, it would obtain little credit -- that my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.'' Neal’s future certainly doesn’t lay in politics, but it’s possible to change the world from outside the sphere of government. Just look at the impact of men like William Randolph Hearst, Martin Luther King, Ralph Nader, and even Mark Zuckerberg. Retirement can wait… the country needs to be saved, now.