Did Rush Pass His Torch?

I have not wanted to water down Grow Lewiston’s local focus by using the page to discuss national stories, however, I am making an exception to share my personal feelings about Rush Limbaugh life, his impact on me and speculate about who he passed his torch.

Like many of us I was raised in a non-political single parent household, but emerged from college with very liberal views. Even though I graduated from college in 1986 long before woke indoctrination took over college campuses, I was still strongly influenced by many of my liberal professors without even being aware of it. I joined the Navy and held onto my liberal views even though I was living and working in that very conservative military community.

 

Rush Limbaugh came onto the radio airwaves in the late 80’s and I listened to him off and on, but frankly thought he was an arrogant ass. In 1995, after I got off active duty, I started investing my own money and became an information junky as part of that endeavor. At the time the main stream media was very savvy about concealing their bias, but I started to notice how images and adjectives they reported were negative for republicans and positive for democrats. I also began to be aware of how they magnified negative stories for republicans and omitted negative stories for democrats. I was in the Seattle area at the time and began to listen to a radio show call “Flush Rush”. I gave myself a personal challenge to listen to Rush and then compare what I heard to how “Flush Rush” reported on the shows I had listened to. Listening to Rush and then hearing the flat out dishonest “Flush Rush” portrayals of what he said was the catalyst of my conservative epiphany.

 

Over the years Rush Limbaugh extended my understanding of the media bias I had already begun to be aware of.  He also shaped my conservatives views with his commentary, as well as introduced me to other conservative thinkers and authors like Walter E. Williams, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, etc. Rush literally gave me the political and life mentoring I should have gotten from the father I didn’t have growing up. I know millions feel the same way about this amazing man they never met. Rush was not just an entertainer on the radio… he was family.

 

In the day following his death I have heard many commentators speculating about what it was about Rush that caused him to have such a following; what was the secret sauce? I think his millions of followers would agree that he was popular and loved because he was 100% genuine. Rush was unfiltered, unafraid, and unabashedly confident about his views. His genuineness and absolute dedication to the truth might have been a point of personal pride, but I believe the pressure he put on himself to get the facts right and convey his message accurately was mainly due to his love and respect for his listeners who he did not want to misinform or lead astray. Frankly, I have listened to no other commentator who comes close to how 100% genuine Rush was.

 

To my liberal friends who could never get past Rush’s satirical arrogance, I will explain why those of us who faithfully listened to Rush loved hearing it. So many conservatives are timid about sharing their conservative views and I personally am driven crazy listening to conservative politicians intentionally watering down their conservative views and loading up their comments with qualifiers, equivocation, etc. Rush fans knew his satirical arrogance was a finger in the eye of all these emasculated conservatives who are too afraid of the media and elite beltway class to promote conservatism effectively enough that they might become a target these powerful leftist. His satirical arrogance also held a mirror up to the elite media and beltway types by mocking their own arrogance.

 

I am grateful for the 30 years I had the privilege to listen to Rush. I feel sorry for the millions of listeners who only recently started listening to him and are now having his cancer prematurely rob them of what would have been many more years of listening to Rush Limbaugh’s wisdom and humor. There will be no one who can take his place.

 

There is no one person Rush can pass his torch to because his torch is simply too bright. I used to think listening to and supporting Rush would eventually expose the Left, change hearts and minds and then winning at the ballot box would lead to a rise of a constitutionally conservative nation. I also thought that President Trump could change the country from top down. Now given the elite class has corrupted our elections, I am now convinced that we need to fight the corrupt Left from the bottom up and thank God for Rush who taught us how to be unafraid, confident conservatives. I believe Rush has passed his torch to all of us, and we need to take that torch and fight the Left by first taking back our local communities, then our states, and then our entire nation. As I have heard Rush say many times “You don’t compromise with the Left, you defeat them.” It is not in our conservative nature to get involved in government. We just want to be left alone to raise our families, attend our churches, run our businesses, advance in our careers, etc. However, we must now put some of those things aside and get involved in politics by running for the local school board, running for the city council, running for state legislature, etc.; and we must support the campaigns of constitutionally conservative fighters. The time for learning at Rush’s “Center for Advanced Conservative Studies” is over. The time to defeat the Left and the beltway elite has begun.

 

Authored by Joseph Gish

 

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