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The Whining Right
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com

Distribute and attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

I've told the story before, of one of Hollywood's most celebrated producer-directors, a character who leans as far to the left as anyone can without falling out of his limousine, a Great Man who distorts and omits truth in his big-budget movies in order to advance the socialist agenda.

Despite all of this (and much, much more), the Great Man is said to possess an enormous collection of weapons—notably "black" or "ugly" guns of the kind he and his ilk call "assault rifles" (and I've been urging gun folks to call "sport-utility rifles")—that he enjoys showing off from time to time in a setting to rival Charleton Heston's fabled gun room. The person this story comes from asked the famous man, "Aren't these the very guns you say you want to pass laws against?"

"Those laws," the Great Man replied, "are for them." Meaning you and me, the lowly peasantry—and, incidentally, his customers. The Great Man gets to keep his weapons, whereas for us, let the genocide commence.

Conservatives simply adore stories like this—Rosie O'Donnell's machinegun-toting bodyguard, the snubby .357 magnum revolver in Dianne Feinstein's purse, Jane Fonda and Ted Turner's cutesy little nightstand pistols—stories that illustrate the seemingly boundless hypocrisy and arrogance of so-called "liberal" Democrats. Propelled by equal portions of stupidity, evil, and insanity, the marching morons of the left can be counted on to generate a new example nearly every day.

I thought of this when Rush Limbaugh began his radio show today by whimpering about new regulations that are about to be imposed by that flying axis of evil, the pointy end of the spear of state terrorism, the triumvirate composed of the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Transportation Safety Administration. Public comment has been duly solicited—and then vehemently rejected in the all-justifying interests of "national security".

It seems that, once the regulations go into effect, people like Limbaugh, Tiger Woods, and others who get around in private aircraft will have to endure the same treatment you and I do. They will be searched and their belongings stolen from them. Their backgrounds will be investigated, and they may find themselves on the "No-Fly" list.

Shocking as it may be, Tiger will be forced to mail his golf clubs ahead, because the cargo compartments on the types of planes he prefers are accessible to the passengers (gasp!), and after all, who knows when an inexplicably despondent champion may succumb to a sudden urge to hijack his own airplane, employing his clubs as a weapon?

Mind you, I bear Tiger Woods no ill will. To the extent that I give a Norway rat's Scandinavian posterior about golf at all (I have asked my darling wife, should I ever express an interest in playing golf, to shoot me), I think highly of him and wish him and his family only the best.

I would have been a great deal more sympathetic to Limbaugh's pleadings, however, if he hadn't repeatedly proclaimed, in the middle of them, that he understands the airport regulations all the rest of us are subject to, that they're a good thing, done for good reasons. Apparently those laws are for them. Meaning you and me, the lowly peasantry—and, incidentally, his customers. The Great Man gets to keep his dignity and sovereignty—until the new regulations go into effect.

A little later on, the rotund radio host began complaining about the utter disregard Barack Obama and his orcish hordes display toward the Constitution. Mind you, nobody detests the current administration more than yours truly, but I haven't forgotten—nor will I ever let anybody else within the reach of my voice forget—that in terms of inroads against the Constitution, it was the corpulent commentator and company who surveyed and cleared the path and paved the highway for Obama.

I could choose any one of a great number of examples, but let's take it straight to the heart of the current mess. The violent events of September 11, 2001 did not occur in any vacuum. Decades of messing around with other people's lives in their own countries, culminating in a million deaths, mostly of children—echoing the government's crimes at Waco, but on a vastly larger scale—by our illegal blockade of Iraq, made it all too easy for a group of resistors to gather all the resources necessary to inflict the ugly wound that day brought to America.

Lying about the historic motives behind the attack, the Republican government began inflicting ugly wounds—on America—of their own. They began with erasing two centuries of due process, absurdly naming their opposition "illegal combatants" (let me get this straight: in order to fight an intruder you have to register with him, first?) and asserting that certain age-old laws and decent customs would not be applicable.

To begin with, there would be no presumption of innocence. The government could kidnap anyone it wanted to, for any reason or no reason at all, from anywhere in the world, and without any form of legality, hide them away from friends and family in secret prisons without giving them any idea of how long they would have to remain there.

To make matters worse (at first it seemed impossible to do that, but trust the Stupid Party to find news ways—or revive old ones—of generating misery) the Republicans began to torture their kidnap victims in ways that sicken any individual of conscience, quibbling along the way about definitions in a manner that made their disgust with Bill Clinton, when he did the same kind of thing, appear utterly hypocritical.

The absurd, self-serving Republican assertion at the time was (and remains) that the United States Constitution—specifically, the guarantees contained in the first ten amendments, commonly known as the Bill of Rights—doesn't apply outside the borders of the United States themselves, nor does it apply to those who aren't United States citizens.

The trouble, of course, is that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not written to convey political rights—that would make them a gift of the government—but to acknowledge pre-existing human rights and offer them moral respect and political protection. Most conservatives know this, given a context that's favorable to their agenda, and often base their arguments, especially for gun rights, on it.

Rush Limbaugh shouldn't talk to me, to you, to the American people, or anybody else about the Constitution, which the Bush family stomped to pieces and set afire while he stood on the sidelines cheering.

Having laid one of the biggest eggs in American political history, embroiling the country in two useless, stupidly irrational wars and destroying the economy, Republicans now claim that they want to know what they can do to regain our respect, revive their party, and bring it back to power. They can begin by helping to restore the Rule of Law to America, no matter whose ox it gores, no matter whose boat it floats.

That's called honesty.

That's called integrity.

That's called principle.

Newt Gingrich will call it Perfect and say it's the enemy of the Good

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