by Brooks A. Mick, M.D.

As along time listener to Rush Limbaugh and as an admirer of his insight into the motivations of the left wing and his remarkable accuracy in the facts he puts forth, I am now so disappointed.

I have written elsewhere on the early signs of his deterioration (see citation below), but things are now much worse. He is claiming those who disagree with his position on Terri Schiavo are left wing, pro-euthanasia, and members of a cult of death who take delight in Terri Schiavo’s death. That certainly doesn’t fit me, and I know many people who agree with me and which that description does not fit either:

Caring doctors, nurses, and others who work very hard to prevent death and who are saddened by Terri Schiavo’s death, yet do not think it incorrect to withdraw the life support after a long 19 year vigil without improvement in her state.

When people call in with what are logical Constitutional arguments which do not fit his opinions, he has deteriorated into insulting them. and misstating their positions. For example, a young man did not agree that the Constitution allows Congress to ignore judicial decisions and then act however it wishes. Limbaugh claims that Article 3 of the Constitution does authorize this legislative tyranny. In the piece I previously cited, I point out that Article 1 of the Constitution expressly prohibits ex post facto laws, those passed after an event or after a court decision and designed, it is clear, to change that decision. If the Congress had the power to imperially abrogate judicial decisions it did not like, we would have an imperial legislature. The polite young man calls in to make this point and Rush calls him a fool.

I note also that Judge Roy Moore, former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, has recently claimed that the President has no obligation to obey either the courts OR the legislature, and he may simply act in whatever manner he sees fit. This, obviously, would create a dictatorship.

I cannot fathom how supposedly conservative people such as Rush Limbaugh could hold either of these positions simply because he is unhappy with a particular decision.

Now, today, Rush is using Dr. Kevorkian as an example and equating his opinions and his inflammatory statements, which few people hold, with the decision to withhold life support for Terri Schiavo, with which very many citizens, by latest polls, agree.

Another irrational Rush statement is that the legislatures, "the people, through the legislatures," hold power over the courts and can thereby abrogate any court decisions that the people don’t like. Unfortunately, this would result in the mob rule which our Founding Fathers feared and which they tried to avoid, quite successfully. And another fallacy, which Rush ignores, is that the people, by all current polling, AGREE WITH THE COURT’s DECISION, AGREE THAT CONGRESS SHOULD NOT GET INVOLVED, AND THEREFORE DISAGREE WITH RUSH!

Rush makes the point, using Dr. Kevorkian’s statement about "the sanctity of life," to point out that the left wing is hypocritical when they exhibit unctuous concern for the life of criminals and terrorists and then do not fight to preserve the life of Terri Schiavo. I think Rush is right. It is hypocritical. However, Rush doesn’t realize it is equally hypocritical to become so fanatically emotional over preserving Terri Schiavo’s body alive and then holding that, somehow, life isn’t really sacred anymore and it’s OK to electrocute criminals. I do not see how Rush can have it both ways.

Which reminds me of how hypocritical I thought Albert Schweitzer was with his "reverence for life" philosophy. Jack Paar, whom most of you don’t remember, had movies of Albert Schweitzer walking around an ant, claiming that the ant’s life was sacred just like a human life. Well, OK, but he also showed him injecting antibiotics in a patient, thereby killing billions of live organisms. Gee, where was the sacredness of the microbes’ lives? The point being that humans have to make choices. Schweitzer had to decide, and so do sick patients and the relatives of sick patients, and when the case is dragged again and again and again into courts, the courts then have to make the decisions.

And to prevent chaos and totalitarianism and to avoid the rule of men, we can’t give total supreme power to any one branch of government. OK, reign in the judicial branch a little by appointing some strict constructionists. Otherwise, don’t disregard the rule of law and the Constitution just because you disagree with a specific decision.

It’s almost enough to make a Rush fan and conservative like me think it’s over for the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Those whom God would destroy, he first makes mad. And the so-called conservatives are going insane over the Schiavo case.

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4157