Limbaugh, Boycotts, Censorship and The Fraying of Our Social Fabric

Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has a great piece talking about another new “Stop Rush” website and bringing the larger issue of censorship through “Secondary Boycotts” into focus:

The website tracks advertisers, is supposed to show how efficient and effective the anti-Rush movement is, and is meant to keep the effort alive.  The website provides easy to click on links so that people can send tweets to and contact Rush advertisers easily.

You can’t read through the website, or any of the tweets at #StopRush, and come to any conclusion other than that they want to silence Limbaugh. Whey else would you target 1000 advertisers?  Is it really just educational? Of course not.

It it worth commenting on the psychology of progressives who name their website, “Stop Limbaugh dot org” and simultaneously claim they have no intention of censoring Limbaugh?

Jacobson quotes a WSJ article by Brad Smith where Smith suggests that:

Secondary boycotts may seem like an effective tool for progressive causes, but they also entail substantial risks.  The culture of secondary boycotts threatens to balkanize all of civil society along political lines, making it ever more difficult to espouse unpopular or minority views.

Long-time politicians like California Governor Jerry Brown decry the state of politics, the increasing divide between the sides and the increasing level of vitriol even as he charges that:

“Republicans have to move out of that reactionary cul-de-sac that some of the more extreme members are pushing them,” Brown told host Bob Schieffer. “There’s an enforcement of discipline that’s ideological and, as was mentioned today in The Washington Post, takes on the quality of a cult.”

Since 2004 I’ve been telling my progressive liberal golfing buddy that the future of politics is ugly and it’s going to get much, much uglier. And it has. And he agrees. And it’s going to continue to ramp up because while one side vilifies the other for their opinion, the former digs in and the latter ups the rhetoric. People who were relatively independent are pushed in one direction or the other by their belief in the progressive message or their revulsion. After all, when reasonable people ask, “When I say something they don’t like, what will happen to me?” The answer, inevitably, is join the progressives or shut up. See how simple that is?

This whole episode is chilling. Orwell’s bleak vision of the future in 1984 was based on the premise that the government was always watching and always controlling, and citizens had no escape. But today Political Correctness makes my neighbors and my coworkers the watchers and the media is the weapon. And as I witness the vandalism, the crime, and the violence from the Occupy Movement, the media excuses and encourages that behavior. Meanwhile, all conservatives can do is either play the liberal rhetorical game and keep ramping things up, or we shut up and let the liberals win by default. Is there a third option?

So what do YOU think? Are things going to get better or worse? Is there anything we can do about it?

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