Beyond conservatism – beyond Reagan

By Joseph Farah

My friend and colleague Rush Limbaugh is under siege right now from Barack Obama’s minions who have placed a target on his back and declared him public enemy No. 1.

I can understand why.

Rush’s program is, in many ways, a beacon of truth and common sense in an age of lies and disinformation. He also commands the largest audience of any dissenter from the path of socialism chosen by Obama’s Democrats and cheerleaders in the Big Media.

While the Obama crowd is hoping the nation and the world will put behind them Ronald Reagan conservatism, now personified by Rush, they eagerly embrace the failures of the past with a new brand of supercharged Franklin D. Roosevelt-style Big Government.

But are those really the only choices facing this nation?

Is the choice really between Reagan and Roosevelt?

Is the choice between conservatism and liberalism?

Or are there other choices we should consider?

For a long time, I have tried to get my conservative friends to consider a more ambitious agenda – especially as our nation has drifted further and further from its roots in constitutionally limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility.

While I love Rush and love Reagan, I have to tell you that liberalism is not the only enemy of freedom. We’re losing too much ground too fast. We need an offensive agenda to keep America free and prosperous. It’s time to realize that even electing another Reagan, if one were on the scene, is not enough to reverse the destruction wrought upon this country’s most cherished institutions since he left office in 1989.

Get Farah’s prescription for what ails the nation – “Taking America Back: A Radical Plan to Revive Freedom” – autographed!

We can learn from Reagan, but, indeed, America needs to think beyond Reagan if we are to recover what we have lost.

The Reagan years were good for America in many ways. Reagan was the best leader of my lifetime – and probably the best American president of the 20th century.

But he still left us with bigger government. He didn’t eliminate the Department of Education. He didn’t eliminate the Internal Revenue Service. He didn’t eliminate the Federal Reserve. He didn’t eliminate many of the most destructive, immoral and lawless institutions that knocked America from its pedestal as a shining city on a hill.

His eight years were a respite from a raging storm of relentless attacks on liberty and Americanism. But they didn’t reverse those attacks. They didn’t defeat the evil forces conducting them. All they did was hold them at bay.

And that’s the fundamental trouble I have with conservatism. It is defensive in nature. It seeks to hold the line against attacks, but seldom succeeds in taking back ground for freedom.

I don’t see the fundamental conflict in America between “conservatives” and “liberals.” I see the conflict as between good and evil. And the political conflict is, in effect, rigged between a political movement that pushes for more government control and less individual freedom and an alternative movement that seeks only to hold back the other.

Where is the movement to teach freedom? Where is the movement to revive truth and justice? Where is the cultural movement to change hearts and minds and expose the insidious forces of evil for what they are?

“Liberals” are not the enemy. Liberals are mostly people who have been deceived – people who have been programmed to hand over control of their lives to elites. They were programmed to do that from the day they entered school. They got advanced degrees in handing over their liberty when they attended colleges and universities. In most cases, they are nice people who have simply been conditioned to accept control over their lives in exchange for what they perceive to be some measure of security.

Rush’s great service to humanity is in promoting self-government, exposing the seduction of Big Government and doing so, like Reagan, with an entertaining sense of humor and a smile on his face.

That’s why he is a target.

He is a target, though, not just of liberals. He is a target of truly evil people who are making their grand move for total power. They see Rush as one of the last remaining obstacles to their goal of perpetual and unchallenged control over the lives of Americans.

That’s what we have to understand. That’s what we are up against. The stakes have never been higher.

We don’t have much time left to save America. And America won’t be saved just by electing Republicans in 2010 or 2012 – not by a long shot. We need bigger goals, a more radical agenda, as opposed to a more “conservative” one, and plans to change and redeem America’s culture, not just its political institutions.

Never again can a demagogue be permitted to come to power and steal away so much of America’s freedom in 30 to 90 days.

 


Joseph Farah

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Gospel in Every Book of the Old Testament." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union. Read more of Joseph Farah's articles here.