Limbaugh: Obama's base "has anti-American opinion," "doesn't like this country"

Well, personally, I have deep questions about whether those on the right who are talking about armed insurrection, now that their party is out of power, have any idea what this country is about.

Since I believe that to be "anti-American" is to reject the values this country is based on, which I judge to be pluralism, the rule of law, justice-for-all and "a more perfect union," (always to be striven for, probably never to be fully achieved), I do think context counts. I would never personally use the term, however, except as a riposte against authoritarians, turning their own rhetoric against them.

Some times you live up to your handle and this is close to being one. So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and explain. Many will say I'm wrong, illogical, lying, etc. etc. but this is it, ignore it if you want.

"Conservative" implies the conservation of something. The something being conserved and hopefully restored is what we believe was the original intention of the Formers of the Constitution. We believe that they accepted the need for a central government with the power to unite and defend the nation but that they, the Federalists, like Madison, and their opposition, the Anti-Federalists, like Jefferson, both distrusted government seeing it as too much temptation to place in anyone's hands. so they "turned" the idea of government, "on its head," (paraphrasing Marx). They posited that only the individual is real. And that "the Creator" gave individuals, individual will, the ability to act independently. Therefore, the best government is one which best enables individuals to govern their own lives and determine their own values. Therefore, the individual needed to be protected from the tendency of those in government to tryu to use the power and authority that office-holding gives them to impose their own values on the lives of others. To prevent this they established a chain of authority beginning with God, who is above the authority of men or their institutions. From God that authority extends to each and every individual. So the most powerful unit of authority in our system was and should be the individual. They knew that without a uniting order, individualism would devolve into anarchy and freedom would be lost in mob rule. So they said we must compromise, but we will establish a government the authority and power of which is strictly limited, divided and counter-balanced by other forces. The Constitution consists of two parts. The Articles, which delineate the offices of government, how the office-holders are selected and the extent of each office's power and authority. This is usually referred to as "the division of powers." They designed this so that no branch of federal government could take action without the agreement of at least one other branch. And so that any branch could interfere with the actions of the other two. they also designed it so that the branches would be in conflict with each other, unable to allow one branch to become predominant without surrendering their own claim to power and authority. (this is not a complete list) The second part is the "Bill of Rights" and subsequent amendments. The Bill of Rights is designed to further limit the power of the federal government. Most people are familiar with the first 8. Conservatives are particularly concerned with what we perceive as a neglect of the last two, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. We believe these two limit the power of federal government to those duties "enumerated" in the Articles. And we believe that limitation has been erroded over the last century to a dangerous degree.

Conservatives want to preserve what remains of the limitations on governmental power and authority and restore those limits as much as possible. We want the government to be so weak that it cannot take away our freedoms because it doesn't have that much power and isn't allowed to involve itself in any but a small portion of our lives.

We believe that it is this revolutionary view of government that is most praiseworthy about America, that it is what has made America an unusual success among nations, and made our lives more free. We are free, not because our government allows us great freedom, but because it does not have the power to determine how much freedom we will have. In the Progressive / Liberal efforts to turn our government into an instrument through which the deficiencies in our society can be corrected we see that this requires giving the government an expanded range of authority and power. To us it appears that those who advocate such change do not love America as it has been and as it was designed to be. They love a vision of the "better" America they believe they can create by granting the government the power to correct and control whatever aspects of our lives they think are important, education, transportation, business practices, communications, healthcare, our charitable responsibilities, etc. etc. Based on their statements and actions we believe that these people hate the America that was and still is. We don't think they hate the realestate or the population or even the democratic tradition. We believe they hate the Federalist system of restricted government, the Anti-federalist alternative of an absolute dominance of regional and local government and between them everything we believe made this nation exceptional. We believe that the change Obama envisions is a final overthrow of the restraints on government authority and that this will lead to an overthrow of the restraints on government power.

Conservatives, believing these things about America and about the intentions of the Progressive / Liberals do not believe that a better nation will result. We look at this and we believe this will result in an Americanized version of a socialism similar to some of the forms that are currently in power in Europe. This is why we refer to European-style Socialism. We look at the history of socialism and believe that some of its products have been extremely destructive: Naziism, Fascism, Stalinism and Maoism. We hope that American democratic tradition will prevent such aberations here. But we look at sites like this one and see how casually dissenting opinion is dismissed, we see how opponents are demonized, (like Rush Limbaugh) or slandered, (like Sara Palin or Joe-the plumber), and our confidence is shaken. This is why we compare you to Nazis and Fascists. It is because we see you going down a similar path. Instead of the Jewish bankers, this time it's the "dumb Right-wing lying Christian Conservatives and their Capitalist manipulators."

Of course you think we're wrong. I hope you're right. I hope it's just that we don't understand you well enough. But until we do, you look really creepy to us. I've been a socialist. I've studied that alternative and argued its superiority. So I don't see you as quite so creepy as many do. But I do see you as people making a foolish choice based on an inadequate understanding of American history and government. I don't think any of you could have given the explanation of Conservative thinking that I've just provided. And I don't think any of you have ever understood the view of the American Constition I've just outlined. There might be some of you that have studied Philosophy sufficiently to be able to address the issues of human intellectual capacity and social organization that form the basis for why your concept of government might well be more realistic than the one outlined above, but so far I haven't seen any sign of it. Assume I am a child if you will and explain how I, or this theory of government or this theory of American history are wrong.