Warrior Nation

While on Rush Limbaugh’s website trying to figure out what about McCain’s apology makes the right wing so mad, I came across the most familiar chickenhawk line the neocons and a great deal of Republicans believe to be true. In their fantasy world this is their reality:

“How is it that in less than 250 years a population of less than 300 million has come to be so dominant the world? Never before in human history has there been an America, not even close, and we're no different than anybody else in terms of DNA and humanity. We're no different. How has this happened? What's the reason? There are substantive reasons. I got an e-mail from a guy responding to this.”

Rush’s quote isn’t exactly where I’m getting at; it’s just the prelude, so just stay with me here. Seriously, there’s never been an America before? What does that mean? Yes, Rush, in terms of DNA and humanity, we are all humans. No doubt about that. But it’s not the humanity he stresses, it’s the fact he believes America to be exceptional to every other country created and inhabited by humans. Superior could be another word to replace exceptional but I think my point is made.

Here’s the answer a listener wrote in to Rush about why America is so much better than all other human nations.

Dear Rush: I agree that freedom is first and foremost the reason America is exceptional. But there's another thing which is born of freedom that makes America exceptional. America is the greatest collection of ass-whooping warriors the earth has ever seen, from a ragtag bunch of drunks, old men, and youth, the Continental army defeated the greatest empire in the world, at the time to earn independence. We repelled the nation a second time in 1812. The story goes on over and over the same way until the 1960s and the rule of liberalism. World War I, World War II, you name it, we are a nation of warriors.

And now it all makes much more sense. The reason why we are so successful in this experiment of democracy we call America is because we can kick ass and because we are warriors. Full of warriors like Limbaugh who have multiple deferments from actual combat, but warriors all the same. Warrior tough men like big Dick Cheney with five deferments from combat. Warriors like super tough guy Bill O’Reilly who, despite being of fighting age during all of Vietnam, never once put on a uniform or saw an ounce of warrior combat, but warriors we are. They are so deranged from their chickenhawk world that a warrior to them is anyone who is not a liberal. But it’s the second to last sentence of Rush’s fan email that really sums up their disturbed world.

“The story goes on over and over the same way until the 1960s and the rule of liberalism.”

The rule of liberalism is what they fight. Because liberalism is the enemy and Obama is the most liberal person to ever walk the face of the earth, and because liberals hate America, it’s the rule of liberalism that warrior tough guy patriots like Limbaugh and his dweebs try to save us from. What they fail to grasp, even with the slightest bit of reason, is that the most liberal notion ever, the most liberal notion ever discovered by “humans” is the independence those bunch of “drunks, old men, and youth” fought for was that humans should govern themselves. They fought for a liberal government free of a tyrannical monarch. They fought for the rule of liberalism! It’s amazing that these modern day warriors haven’t figured that out.

It wasn’t just in the 1960s liberalism took over America. America has always been a liberal democracy. That same notion of liberalism, that man can govern himself, was carried into the Civil War and still used this very day to define our country. That same liberalism has been borrowed the world over for every individual seeking freedom and a better life. It’s that same liberalism we forced onto Iraq where Bush’s grand strategy to make the world safe for democracy is so important the chickenhawks are tripping over the keyboards to go fight in it. It’s a good thing the warriors haven’t caught on to the fact that Rush Limbaugh has been lying to them for so long. Movement conservatism is actually what’s taken hold of America since the 60s not liberalism. For liberalism has been the main ingredient to what makes us the exception to other “humans.” In their make-believe world where liberalism is a new enemy insurgent taking over America and warriors like Limbaugh and his chickenhawks fight it head on, they have no clue the speciousness of their make-believe argument.