Stand up for Rush – and All of Us

Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator has issued a challenge which all conservatives must heed. Whether one accepts the Battleground Poll numbers which consistently report that about 60% of America calls itself conservative or the Gallup numbers which “only” place conservatives as about 40% of the nation or the Survey USA which states 34% of Americans are conservative and 20% liberal, the fact remains the same: conservative America is much larger than leftist America.

Why, then, can the left engage in the most despicable behavior towards conservatives while Rush’s remark about Ms. Fluke produces a firestorm of leftist activity? The left grasps that ballots in elections are only one of the votes that ideologically motivated Americans cast.

Every time conservatives stop watching CNN or take children out of public schools or stop supporting an organization which was once benignly neutral on ideological issues, conservatives cast marketplace ballots that count. But every time the left convinces us that we should not boycott corporations that slavishly toady to leftist whims or gratuitously offend us, we lose a battle that we cannot afford to lose.

This is particularly true when businesses act as if the left is an eight hundred pound gorilla but that conservatism is a flea. So when Carbonite sanctimoniously drops Rush but continues to support Ed Schultz, it shows no interest in the customer will of conservatives, not because its executives doubt our numbers but because they doubt our resolve. The same goes for Legal Zoom, Quicken Loans and any of the other advertisers who clearly wish to please the left but are indifferent to the opinions of conservatives.

This has little to do with Rush – those of us who have listened to him for decades recall when goofy leftists “boycotted” Florida orange juice growers because they advertised on his program and the periodic calls from the left for jihad against Rush because he is so indifferent to their pismire machinations. The Rush Limbaugh Show is going to do just fine.

But what about the other conservative voices whose business, whose career, and even whose lives can be crushed by the left’s abuse? It is fine to have a Stonewall Jackson Limbaugh in battle with us, but conservatives need to insure for ourselves equal and fair treatment even if we are not giants like Rush.

It is imperative that the left begin to know that we are watching them, that when a business caves into the left’s complaints then it loses permanently a slew of conservative customers. The gnomes of leftist bureaucracy – news executives, college administrators, politically correct “charities,” associations which have been captured by the left, and leftism wherever we encountered it in the private, consensual institutions of American life – must come to understand that each incremental movement towards fairness towards us will be rewarded with more attention, more business, and more support.

But these craven souls should know as well that when we take offense, when we see the bullying of conservatives or the mockery of conservative ideals, that supplicating the ire of the left incites our deliberate opposition. As one example, this review by TopConsumerReviews of online computer backup systems rates the top eight (Carbonite, by the way, did not make the top eight.) Why could any conservative select Carbonite? More importantly, why in our social media and our emails to each other, should any of us fail to note the vile corporate hostility of Carbonite to our values?

Conservatives need to begin to see ourselves as blacks did during the 1960s or Jews did during the 1940s or Catholics in the 1920s. There are bigots who will hate us and try to shut us up. We need not march outside their offices or write hate mail to them, but we also need not “take it” – in fact, we betray each other when we do. Like Catholics, Jews, blacks and others in American history who have faced genuine bigotry, as conservatives do today, we must cast all our “ballots” in order to let the left see the true cost it its intolerance. We should stand up for Rush…and all of us.

That is the model which conservatives should adopt. Argue against our policies all day long. Take whatever position your heart desires or your mind believes. Cherish and celebrate freedom. But if you try to destroy personally a conservative simply for being a conservative, then know that we will heed closely and practice rigorously the caution of one of our nation’s greatest patriots, Ben Franklin, after he signed the Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”