Explaining Limbaugh better than Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh at CPAC:

"[W]hat is so strange about being honest to say that I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed?"


In other words:

Americans ought not exchange capitalism and liberty for additional comfort.



Consider: Why were Americans recently concerned about wiretapping?

Answer: Americans are always concerned, and properly so, that government will scare our population into ceding some of our basic rights.

Similarly: Americans ought not allow government to scare us into ceding our capitalism and individual liberty. These are God given rights. Exchanging them for economic comfort is a bad deal.  We are better off wealthy and free than wealthier and less free.*

The current demagoguing is occurring because Limbaugh's point: Hold onto liberty(!), is being skewed into a straw man argument about Limbaugh desiring economic failure.  Limbaugh is trying to convey this:

Barack Obama is grabbing for our liberty. I, Rush Limbaugh, hope he fails.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Off the point (i.e. liberty), yet notable: we're exchanging our rights merely for the hope of an economic comfort which, in reality, Barack-socialism will not provide. Barack's policies will inevitably make us both less wealthy and less free.  The real world choice:  

Are we better off as we are: wealthy and free, or as Barack would make us: less wealthy and less free?

 

A teacher gives out 10 poker chips to each student in my son's class. The teacher instructs students to win poker chips from each other via playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

After some minutes, some students have piles of chips, some students have a couple or a few chips. The teacher says: "This is capitalism".

The teacher now allows a vote on whether all students should have the same amount of chips. The measure passes. The teacher gathers all chips and redistributes: two chips to each person. The teacher says: "This is communism."

A Barack-socialism exercise would be more complicated, yet related.

*if you don't think you are wealthy: look again