LOVE Rush Limbaugh.
Seriously, as the conservative movement has run aground, Limbaugh has become the unofficial (or official, if ideologues like Ann Coulter are to be believed) voice of "conservative America."
And apparently the voice of conservative America is riddled with truthiness instead of truth.
Current example. Yesterday, Limbaugh spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Among the statements he made is the following:
"We believe that the preamble of the Constitution contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, freedom -- and the pursuit of happiness."
Like I said, LOVE Limbaugh.
First of all, the Constitution doesn't HAVE any such language, preamble or otherwise. Second, this language appears exclusively in the Declaration of Independence (the document justifying the right to breach one social contract to form another). Third, he mangled even the quote. Jefferson's three inalienable rights (and they were certainly arguable, then and now, which is not the same as inalienable) were the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (derived from John Locke's inviolable three rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of property). Freedom does not appear among the assumed rights of either Jefferson nor Locke, and it certainly doesn't appear in the Declaration of Independence (much less the Constitution).
Because "freedom" would be a sub-set of the "liberty" Jefferson argued for, though I doubt Jefferson would recognize the use of the word "freedom" Limbaugh seems to be implying.
I wonder if his audience even noticed? Somehow, I doubt it.
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3 comments:
But what's really your point?
If the spirit of what he said matches the spirit of our founding, does it really matter if he makes a clerical error?
And do you think there was an intent to deceive, as in parsing words over the definition of "sexual relations" or "is"?
Let's be honest now...
When someone claims that his opponent doesn't believe in or understand core values and then can't accurately quote from the documents enshrining the core values, at best it's "Pot.Kettle.Black." at worst, it's all a show of false bravado.
Read the Constitution. As usual, Rush is on the wrong side and trying to shift the argument to make his view the "right view."
And, of course, there's always the arrogance of challenging someone on a topic you display ignorance concerning.
Just sayin.'
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