Talk Radio Politics
by Spencer Warren
Issue 121 - December 3, 2008

Where would conservatives be without talk radio? Without Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham and the many others? No question, they have played a crucial role for the conservative movement since Limbaugh revolutionized talk and AM radio in the wake of the Reagan Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the so-called fairness doctrine in 1987.

During the Clinton years, Limbaugh and others who were on the air at the time served as conservatives’ loudest opposition voice; they helped to stop Hillary’s health care government takeover and surely contributed to the amazing Republican victory in the 1994 Congressional elections. This, and the immediate years following, constituted the high tide of conservatism since the advent of talk radio. It was the period of spending restraint, budget surpluses, welfare reform and the glorious, justified impeachment and trial of President Clinton (which may have won the 2000 election for George W. Bush).

Today, standing amidst the rubble of a defeat that has reduced Republican representation in Congress back to lowly pre-Reagan levels, it is hard to see how any conservative can call the George W. Bush years a conservative high point. Quite the contrary. “W” proved to be a conservative manqué and in many respects a liberal in conservative clothing, i.e. a neocon.

Why did conservative talk radio coincide with more success for conservatism in the nineties opposing the Clintons, than since 2001 arguing for President Bush and the Republican Congress of 2001-06? Can it be that during the Bush years, much of talk radio, led by Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham and others, confused conservative with Republican? In their endless promotion of the war between Republicans vs. Democrats – because it makes for the best ratings? – they usually overlooked the Bush administration’s subversion of conservatism. From time to time Limbaugh would say, as an aside only, he “just can’t understand” why Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court; or why Bush was blocking immigration enforcement and promoting open borders and amnesty – which will doom conservatism, Republicans and the U.S. as we know it -- even while he was sending Americans to die in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting the “War Against Terrorism.”

Then Limbaugh would go right back to the party political battles (or, as the highly popular, half-cocked but honest Michael Savage says, “the Republicrats vs. the Republicrats”). Hannity, Ingraham, Mark Levin and others joined in the Bush and Republican cheerleading, complaining from time to time about the Republican Congress’s unprecedented earmarking corruption as well as immigration, though shying away from its demographic threat to the Republicans.Ingraham at least did take an outspoken and active stand against the Bush-McCain-Kennedy immigration bills in 1986 and 1987.

But, to the best of this listener’s knowledge, none of them made a comprehensive and determined critique of how Republicans, led by Bush, were betraying conservatism and digging their own grave. Indeed, after the 2006 defeat Limbaugh said he wouldn’t “carry water” for the Republican Party any longer (thus admitting he was doing exactly that before); then he resumed lifting the same old bucket. And after McCain’s defeat Limbaugh denounced the Republicans for abandoning conservatism under Bush, something he virtually never complained about when it would have made a difference.

As a result, these and other conservative talk radio hosts bear a measure of responsibility – not the main responsibility, but a measure -- for the disaster of the Bush years and the Republican Congress of 2001-06. It also is noteworthy that after strongly opposing the McCain nomination, most (especially Hannity) fell eagerly in line behind him, grateful for the meaningless crumbs he tossed to them as a token of his self-proclaimed Reaganite conservative bona fides. Hannity, who showed great integrity for pushing Obama’s radical ties into public view and several years ago leading the cause for poor Terri Schiavo, nonetheless seems to be so lacking in introspection that he always greets Fox’s new analyst, Karl Rove, without any irony, as “The Architect.”

A second point of criticism is that if only these hosts talked sometimes about underlying philosophic issues, they would do more to further public understanding of the Culture War which the left is winning. Limbaugh and especially Hannity may lack the deep education or reading to move beyond generalizations and clichés, but Ingraham reached a pinnacle of the legal profession as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And Levin served as Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration and is the author of learned books about the judiciary’s tyrannical usurpation of legislative authority and abuse of the Constitution.

For example, in my listening, the hosts are ineffective, or not as effective as they should be, whenever they are confronted with issues such as banning religious expression in public places (even including a public school bus driver wearing a Santa Claus suit at Christmas time); the exhibition in public museums of vile, obscene anti-Christian works of “art” like “Piss Christ”; the sale and broadcast of obscene, pornographic “rap” “music”; homosexual “marriage”; homosexual adoption or such couples bearing children via artificial insemination; replacement of “Merry Christmas” by the term “Happy Holidays”; or complaints against reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public school, to name a few. Their response often denounces “Political Correctness” or falls back on utilitarian arguments such as the best interests of the children, or makes a general reference to the wishes of the majority. But I have never heard from them a vigorous, conceptual defense of transcendent truths in society. (If I missed it, I would be eager to apologize.) This is particularly the case with Bill O’Reilly, to take another host, both on radio and his Fox television program. The unstoppable O’Reilly becomes almost tongue-tied when confronting opposing guests on such subjects.

Following is one conceptual conservative approach to these issues. It certainly is not the only one, but when do we ever hear a conservative talk-radio host respond with such comprehensiveness, or in such conceptual terms?He or she could say that our country is beset by a radical movement that can be called “Minority Rule.” That is, the principle of ordered liberty under the Constitution has been corrupted to mean that any minority, such as militant atheists or radical homosexuals or anti-Christian bigots, for example, are given a veto over the majority whenever they feel “offended” by a display of the traditions and beliefs of the overwhelming majority. And tolerance has been turned upside down to mean that minority “rights” trump the majority’s; indeed, the majority should be required even to give up its historical identity to avoid offending a tiny minority, such as radical Muslims who want to wear the hijab in public schools, refuse to allow their faces to be photographed for a driver’s license, claim to need foot-baths in public restrooms, or make the daily prayer to Allah spread out in public parks or in rest-stops along the New Jersey Turnpike.

There is no longer any such thing as democratic majority rule or majority rights, in this widespread view; it – and our venerated national traditions -- are being replaced by “diversity” and “multiculturalism” and enforced by judicial usurpation of the majority’s rights in the name of protecting “individual liberty.” Such thinking or unspoken assumptions underlie the state court decisions recognizing homosexual “marriages” and the attacks, led by the most radical, subversive organization in America today, the ACLU, on religious displays in public places or in schools (except Muslim displays, which are OK to promote “diversity”).

Conservatives in particular should understand that society – the vast majority – has rights too: Society -- its religious, cultural, political and other institutions and beliefs -- represents the received wisdom of the ages. It is the fertile soil in which good, moral souls grow and thrive and allowed America to succeed. It also is needed as a check on the unfettered will of fallen individuals who, in the exercise of their “freedom,” confuse liberty with license and think they can live as they please, “wandering,” as Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “over a boundless field.” This, of course, means anarchy, not ordered liberty as understood by the framers of the Constitution and every other responsible authority before the 1960s. Tocqueville and the framers further believed religion was vital to the foundation of our republic, because it supplied the morality that put a check on individual appetite, in the absence of which limited government could not survive.

Conservatism is much harder to explain than liberalism because it is based on rational thought and knowledge of the past, rather than merely personal feelings and “compassion” divorced from any historical, social or religious or transcendent context. To succeed, leading conservatives must recognize this. How interesting that Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder (two men right out of Democracy in America, the kind of real Americans admired so greatly by Tocqueville in the 1830s) were better able to articulate the meaning of America than the Republican presidential candidate. He should have listened to his brilliantly articulate running-mate, Sarah Palin, who was even better than Joe and Tito.

In order to continue the invaluable service they have rendered to conservatives, the conservative broadcasters who sit behind their truly golden microphones would do well to take to heart the two constructive criticisms made here. Everything is at stake in the battle against the cultural left: our country’s future and the future of Western civilization.

Spencer Warren is ConservativeBattleline’s media critic

Update: A year ago I wrote about Turner Classic Movies’ repeated one-sided presentations about the Hollywood blacklist and host Robert Osborne’s glorification of Stalinists and his falsification of the history of attempted communist subversion in 1940s Hollywood, which led to labor strikes and threats on the life of their most determined enemy, Ronald Reagan. One would know nothing of the latter listening to Osborne. In linking to this article, Power Line used the title, “Turner Classic Communists.” The latest episode was the November 6th prime-time honoring of the blacklisted Communist party member, screenwriter and director Abraham Polonsky. Any intelligent viewer could see the communist and/or anti-American propaganda promoted by Body and Soul (1947), Force of Evil (1948) and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969, starring Robert Redford), the three films that were shown. This is at least the second time Osborne has held an evening honoring Polonsky in recent years. Both the vice president in direct charge of Turner and the president of the parent company, Time Warner, failed to respond last year to the factual, detailed criticisms which were presented to them, documented with historical sources, demonstrating that they join host Osborne as organizations that hold their audience in contempt.