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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 661, March 11, 2012 A great artificial hysterical fuss.
Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise Unless you've spent the week down at the bottom of an abandoned missile silo, you know that a young female law student gained some notoriety by testifying before a Congressional hearing in favor of forcibly compelling a religious institution that she chose to educate her to shell out—through some kind of student insurance program, I gather—for contraceptives of which that institution morally disapproves. Her name is Sandra Fluke. I didn't hear her, but apparently she announced to the world that she is extremely sexually active, and that her sexual activity needs subsidizing by government, or somebody government can force into doing it. The young woman gained more notoriety when radio's Rush Limbaugh predictably mocked and criticized her, calling her a "slut" and a prostitute, i.e., someone who gets paid for having sex. I did hear those remarks; given the context he's long established, half political commentator, half stand-up comic, they didn't seem that outrageous. Certainly they weren't anything remotely like the names political enemies have thought it was acceptable to call Sarah Palin or Mary Ruwart. Please understand that I am not a conservative of any kind. As a more or less lifelong libertarian, and a proud, battle-scarred (and, I like to think, highly decorated) veteran of America's 1960s Sexual Revolution (which actually began in the 1920s), I'm very much in favor of individuals finding joy, and generally doing whatever they desire with their own lives. Love (or whatever floats your boat) is such a rare commodity that they ought to revel in it whenever they can. What I am vehemently opposed to, however, is making other people pay for it. But then, despite the basic truth behind what he'd said about her, Limbaugh decided—far more likely it was decided for him—to apologize. John Wayne became famous, among other things, for declaring, in several of his movies, "Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness." Mark Harmon has said it, too, in the role of Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS. And there's a basic, Darwinistic truth in what they've both said, as illustrated by what happened next to the Formerly Fat Flumpus. When his ideological enemies began screaming about what Limbaugh had said, if he'd told them to stick it where the sun don't shine and break it off, their screaming would have subsided and finished with a whimper. But the minute he apologized, the minute he rolled over on his back, sticking his paws in the air and exposing his belly, they fell on him like wolves. With the ladies and gentlemen of the evening who constitute our news media cheering them along, public figures called for removing him from the air the way they had Don Imus—and Imus, true to the sad, broken figure of Winston Smith he had become, joined in. "Do it to Limbaugh!" Meanwhile animals and barbarians of all kinds showered Limbaugh with death threats and other worst-wishes, and the Internet writhed like a pit of snakes with vile, anonymous accusations of every kind against him. Clearly free speech in this country is supposed to be reserved to the creatures who call themselves "progressives" because they've dirtied the word "liberal" to the point it can't be used any more. From some unnamed orifice of a body nobody wants to think about, Gloria Allred, Piranha-at-Law, declared that Limbaugh should be criminally prosecuted for exercising that reserved-for-progressives right without her permission. But more about this walking hagfish later. It's true, what Limbaugh said wasn't chivalrous, but Fluke comes from a "new class" who insist that they don't want chivalry any more, that it's demeaning. They claim they want to stand up and fight with the big boys—until somebody hurts their feelings and makes them cry. But even that is really not what happened. And it really wouldn't have mattered what Limbaugh called Fluke, because this was no less than a preplanned raid against the socialist left's most formidable enemy, as they see it. With the help of the round-heeled media, they would have raised up a great hysterical fuss if he'd called her Mary Poppins. A great artificial hysterical fuss. It turns out, of course, that Fluke is not some dewy-eyed college coed as she was first advertised to be by her press agents—the press themselves—but a hard-faced, grim-jawed 31-year old Marxoid operative, a socialist parasite, a Nancy Pelosi in training, for whom "slut" represents only the mildest of calumnies. She seeks to be a lawyer, which says it all: a career of gnawing at the bones of human misery. She is the Hillary Clinton of tomorrow. As for Allred—what is she now, front-woman for the fascistic Southern Poverty Law Center?—it is she who should be prosecuted, under Title 18 of the U.S, Code, Sections 241 and 242, for soliciting conspirators in an attempt to violate Limbaugh's right to free speech under color of law. As an officer of the court, she should know better. Or she should be taught better.
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