I don't want Rush off the air. He's an asshole and I disagree with 99.9999 per cent of what he says, a stable figure that over the years has allowed me to be free to ignore his show and just use my imagination of what someone that mad and dumb and ignorant might say if he had the opportunity. Every now and then a comment penetrates my sphere of media consciousness and I'm never terribly surprised.
The "space" of first amendment freedom of discussion has got to be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open. I want this sort of culture to prevail for all of the ideas now considered absurd and misconceived with which I find merit and one way of assuring this can be case is if people with strange and transparently moronic ideas are afforded the same opportunity to rant and rave. If Nazis can hold a parade and march in Skokie, Illinois, then any group presently scorned by the general society that has a nugget of an idea I believe has a future cannot be denied their chance promulgate their creed.
Do I want Rush's program to suffer so that while he's free to speak he ain't getting so rich off it as he has being doing - sure. No one has a right to be agreed with or respected for what they say, they just have a right to say it. Ted Baxter the character who was the anchor of WJM on the Mary Tyler Moore show would tell his story of getting his start at some 1000-watt puny and insignificant radio station - would I be happy if Rush were reduced to a similar paltry audience - sure. But we shouldn't want him silenced, we need him in the mix - if nothing else he helps us identify magical-thinking neo-reactionary wingnuts in our population and Greenpeace and Oxfam, and the DNC don't have to waste their time and money sending them mailings appealing for contributions. Think of it as a kind of progressive "containment policy"
This contraception episode sprung on us by Santorum and now Limbaugh, has been enormously helpful. It's reminded a broad swath of women voters that the other half of the population has anxiety about them being full adults and citizens wholly in charge of the most precious item of private property any of us possess - our bodies
The enlightenment thesis of self-ownership was radical in the 17th & 18th centuries, and it's still radical today. We held the idea unconsciously as a foundational aspect of our moderate-liberal, liberal, progressive, socialist, social-libertarian (and even anarchist) world-views, and like all worthy parts of the human-individualist concept of liberty we cannot complain that its defense requires our vigilance
