Category Archives: Politics & Religion

Veliko Târnovo: Where religions have finally learned to get along

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Politics & Religion

 

We spent the night on our boat at Ruse, Bulgaria the city often called “Bulgaria’s Little Vienna.”  The city was founded by the Romans and became under the Ottoman Domination the largest and most important Ottoman town along the Danube.

 

From there I went on an excursion and the first place we stopped was Veliko Târnovo, the former Bulgarian capital—with its ancient stone houses clinging to the cliffs above the Yantra River.

 

Unfortunately, Christiane stayed behind on the boat as she was told by the Cruise director that it would be too steep. We were moored at the city of Russe

 

I will give you just a little bit of the history of Bulgaria. It was founded by the Romans in the 1st century A.D. Ancient Bulgarians rule until the Turks conquered it in the 14th century and then dominated Bulgaria for nearly 500 years until it was liberated in the late 19th century and then became independent in the early 20th century. “Liberated” of course just means captured by other powers, in this case the Austro-Hungarian empire.

 

During the reign of the Turks, they reorganized the Bulgarian territories and basically parcelled them out to the Sultan’s close followers but they could sell the land or pass it on to their children. Instead, when the owner died it reverted to the Sultan. He did however share it with other nobles to gain their loyalty.

 

During this time Christians had to pay disproportionately higher taxes than Muslims. These taxes were an important source of revenue for the Ottomans.  By the early 1600s a system had been established whereby land was divided into estates granted to senior Ottoman officials- as a form of tax farming. I don’t know what tax farming is, but it sounds unsavoury. Sort of like eating maggots seems unsavoury.   This created conditions for the severe exploitation of taxpayers by unscrupulous land holders. As happened everywhere, the rich exploited the poor by divine right.

 

The domination however was pretty absolute. For example, there was the infamous blood tax (кръвен данък), also known as devsirme where, where young Christian Bulgarian boys were taken from their families, enslaved and forced to convert to Islam and later employed either in the military corps or the Ottoman administrative system. The boys had to be unmarried and, once taken, were ordered to cut all ties with their family, similar to what Canada did to its indigenous children and for the same reason—assumed superiority.

 

Christians faced other forms of oppression. They were not allowed to testify in court against Muslims in inter-faith disputes, but they were allowed to perform their own religious ceremonies provided they did in such a way that it was not conspicuous to the Muslims. Loud prayers and bell-ringing were barred.  They were weirdly barred from riding horses, from wearing certain colours or from carrying weapons.

 

Christian houses of worship of Christians had to be smaller and lower and more modest than Mosques as a mark of subservience.  Christians however managed to build some of their churches partially underground to get around such regulation. They looked squatter than they really were.

 

What can I say, when it comes to religious domination, things get weird.

 

The Ottoman’s also started mass population transfers in the late 1300s and the practice continued for nearly 200 years well into the 1500s. The goal was not only to convert Christians to Islam but also to assimilate the Bulgarians so that they would be less likely to revolt. They wanted to “mix people” to quell unrest.

 

Though to some disagree, the Ottomans rarely practiced forced Islamisation of the Bulgarians, but rather voluntary, by offering them economic and religious benefits. Of course, using the state to convert the barbarians makes the voluntariness to some extent a sham. For example, in some cases, conversion to Islam can be said to have been the result of tax coercion, due to the much lower tax burden on Muslims.  Many converted to pay less taxes or gain status. Obviously, their faith was not vital to them. Not as vital as money at least.

 

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 led to the diminishment of the Turkish state to a small Ottoman vassal state.

 

During the Communist occupation of the country starting in 1945, religion was unofficially banned.  One of the interesting things about the country was that during Communism it had the highest levels of private property in the Soviet empire.  People were used to owning their apartments.

 

Veliko Tarnovo is a province in the middle of the northern Part of Bulgaria close to the Danube River. It is famous for its ancient stone houses clinging to the cliffs above the Yantra River. The city was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire.

 

86% of the people in Bulgaria purport to be Orthodox Christians, but as we found out from nearly every one of our guides on this trip through the Balkans, they called themselves Orthodox Christians but rarely went to church and rarely were affected by their religion. Religion here is mainly nominal. Sort of like Quebec, and unlike the southern United States.

 

One of the things we saw a lot of evidence of, was religious takeovers throughout history. Whenever a new religion took over a church or mosque or synagogue the old religious facility became building materials. Basically, each successor religious group did this to the one being taken over.

 

 

This seemed like a pretty spectacular place, until I realized it was really just a gift shop and a large washroom. Old people on tours need washrooms frequently and why not build one with a gift shop and extract some of their cash? And why can’t old people have spectacular wash rooms?

 

I learned in Romania that it was very difficult to use your credit card because the Romanian money is considered a joke, and carrying too much cash there would be a mistake because it would be orphaned with me. So why not avoid buying anything? It felt a little unkind, but it was a great way to go. Who needs more junk?

 

I ended up doing this through most of my time in Balkans.  Unless for some reason I was using a credit card I had no money to tip someone. Even though some think I am a cheap Mennonite, I did not do this to avoid tipping. But it had a side benefit. For me. I spent almost nothing on this trip once I paid for the cruise and the flights. Believe me, that was expense enough.

84% of the people in the country are ethnic Bulgarians and 9 & ½% are Turks and 4% Roma or gypsy. After centuries of fighting now they finally  get along well. We can do better!

Bulgaria has been in the EU since 2007 and NATO since 2004. It has been part of the Schengen zone on a trial basis since 2003 if flying by air.  Recently, it is also included for trips by land. The Schengen Area is a zone of 29 European countries that have abolished internal border controls, allowing for free movement between member states as if it were a single country. It includes most EU member states as well as some non-EU countries like Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. The area operates with a common visa policy and heightened security at its external borders. I really wish the entire world could operate like that. It would go a long way toward making travel civilized again.  Bulgaria is scheduled to switch to the Euro in 2026. That would be the second leg of the civilization process.

 

Yet Bulgaria is still one of the poorest countries of Europe. Before 1944 Bulgaria benefited and gained prosperity from farming.  After the Communists took over farming by expropriation and nationalisation co-operative farming became popular and is still popular. Most families moved to the cities and started working in factories. The 1950s and 1960s were periods of great industrialisation.

 

After the Bulgarian Revolution of 1997 when the Communists were evicted, many people got their farms back but often the family no longer knew how to farm nor had the equipment to farm. Some families no longer wanted to farm but did so collectively. Now 98% of farm land is farmed collectively. Machinery is owned in common and crops are marketed in common. Sort of like our old Canadian Wheat Board. That is one of the reasons we saw so few fences in Bulgaria.

 

 

Conclave: Unholy Ambition

Catholic Church, Movies, Politics & Religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Ambition is complicated. I remember when I was young in school if you were nominated for a position, on student council or something like that. you were expected not to vote for yourself. It was not conisered seemly

The candidates for the papacy in the film Conclave, as in real life come from rough timber.  There is not perfection there. Everyone of them is flawed, just as we all are.

Early on in the film Brother Aldo says, “no sane man would want to be Pope.” There is some obvious truth to this statement. He says he has no interest in being Pope. He also says, “the men who are dangerous are the ones who want it.” Yet later he makes clear he wants it too. But later he says every Cardinal has a desire to be Pope. In fact each has already chosen the name he wants to be called.  Was he lying?

Is this the moth of holiness? Or unholiness?

Brother Aldo Bellini and Brother Thomas Lawrence argue about who should be Pope.  Aldo believes Thomas should vote for him. If the Liberals don’t unite, Tedesco (the arch conservative) will win and undo 60 years of progress. He is vehement about it so Thomas reminds Lawrence this is not a war.  To this Aldo replies, “It is a war. And you have to commit to a side… Save your precious doubts for your prayers.”

Father Lawrence throughout the film says he does not want to be Pope. In fact, he assures everyone, that just before the Pope died he asked him to release him from his role as a Cardinal, for he wanted to return to the role of an ordinary Priest. He does not want power or glory or status. He tries to convince others not to vote for him.

Yet, later, we see, he votes for himself, at least once.

 

 

 

 

A Crusade of lies against the Clintons

Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Politics & Religion, Right-wing Extremism

Rush Limbaugh was very popular among the American right, particularly in rural America. But Limbaugh was not a sterling example of a man with good character.

On the David Lettermen television show Rush Limbaugh attacked the Clintons as he always did but he even attacked their daughter Chelsea who was only 12 years old. He made a joke by comparing her unfavorably to the family dog. Nothing was too low for Limbaugh, particularly when attacking liberals. No tactics are off the table in a religious war.

He attacked them bitterly over the death of Vince Foster.  He said on his show that a Washington consulting firm was about to publish a story that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton! Foster was a childhood friend of Bill Clinton and joined the White House administration as counsel and was involved in scandals that in hindsight were pretty minor.  Nothing compared to the later Trump administration scandals. Foster was depressed, anxious and over worked. His death was investigated by 2 police agencies, a coroner, 2 independent counsels, and 2 Congressional Committees. All said his death was a suicide. But all this was nothing beside the fax that was sent to Rush Limbaugh.  The implication of the fax was clear—Clintons were murderers!  This brought polarization into American politics at a whole new level of extremism.  And Limbaugh was proud of his efforts.

Of course, there were many right-wing conspiracies about Foster. One of those was that Foster was assassinated to keep him from testifying against the Clintons. Or that he had been blackmailed by Israel over a secret Swiss bank account. Or that his death was the consequence of a secret tryst with—you got it—Hillary Clinton. Who else? Once more there was no evidence to support this. It was all lies manufactured somewhere on the right where these things are spawned. (and I am not denying that there have been lies on the left as well) But they have really found a congenial home on the right.

Rush Limbaugh helped embed conspiracy theories permanently inside the Republican party. Conspiracies were there to stay. They are still there in abundance. He had gone a long way toward convincing American conservatives that their president and a future presidential candidate were murderers who would stop at nothing to get their political way.  This was a religious crusade. And religious crusades always end badly and don’t allow truth to get in their way.

The crusade against the Clintons has been a remarkable phenomenon in American politics for about 2 decades.  And it is not ending any time soon.  Crusades can do that. American right-wing talk radio has been a big part of that.  Now I do not claim the Clinton’s were entirely innocent political actors.  I am saying though that they have been the object of an unprecedented massive campaign of lies that has been building for decades. Such a mountain of lies would be difficult for a saint to overcome, and for the Clintons it was impossible.

Many of us did not appreciate this when Hillary ran for the presidency in 2016. No matter how absurd, the lies accumulated and had tremendous effect.  After all, how could she combat a campaign that painted her as the leader of a cabal of pedophiles operating out of the non-existent  basement of a pizza restaurant basement in Washington D.C.?  No possible evidence could refute such a massive lie.

Rush Limbaugh played an important role in manufacturing, spreading, and solidifying this campaign of lies.

As Justin Ling said in his podcast series on CBC “The Flamethrowers”,

“The conspiracy theory was here to stay, thanks in large part to Rush Limbaugh. No longer were the Clintons conventional political villains. They were murderers! But whether or not the Vince Foster story really took hold in the minds of Limbaugh, he was leading a political crusade—and he was winning.”

 

 

The result was what one political commentator called “a seismic shift to the right tonight in American political thinking. It is measuring 10.0 on the political Richter scale.” It was massive; it was powerful; and it was created by Rush Limbaugh and his revolutionary cabal of right-wing radio commentators around the country.

It was intensely visible in 1998 in the American mid-term elections. The Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1954. They picked up 54 seats in the House and enough seats to claim the Senate as well. It was the worst loss suffered by a sitting President in 50 years.

There was one clear lesson from all of this: Conspiracy theories work.

And the Republicans did not forget that lesson then, and have not forgotten it since.

Hooray for Our Side

Extremism, Fear, Hate, Polarization, Political Violence, Politics & Religion, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

Stephen Stills wrote and sang  a wonderful song when he was with the band Buffalo Springfield. It is a classic embodying a lot of the good from the 1960s which I still think of as my time.  The song is very appropriate for the current times.  Here are the lyrics:

 

For What It’s Worth

There’s something happening here

But what it is ain’t exactly lear

There’s a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop

Children, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

 

There’s battle lines being drawn

Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

Young people speaking’ their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind

 

It’s time we stop

Hey, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

 

What a field day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and carrying signs

Mostly saying, “hooray for our side”

 

It’s time we stop

Hey, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

 

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you’re always afraid

Step out of line, the men come and take you away

 

We better stop

Hey, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

I think this song written in the 1960s sums up a lot of what’s happening in the Middle East now.

Religion has declined in much of the world. In fact, I would argue it has declined most strongly in those areas where it appears to be most vociferously present. My wife Christiane used to have a pin that said something like this “When religion turns to hate, it is no longer religion.” When religion declined it transformed into politics and became hate it turns into the most ugly form of politics imaginable.  A long way from the holy. When that happens the “other side” is transformed from the other side to the devil. This is what demonization does. By definition it dehumanizes the other.

Sometimes this is done by ignoring the other. For example, when Israel ignores Hamas or treats them with disdain as it has done for more than 15 years, it dehumanizes them. Hamas of course, treated Israel with vicious hate when it attacked them on October 7th of this year.   Dehumanization again.

The first step in the process of dehumanization, as happened in Rwanda in the 1990s is to call the other side non-humans. Like pests as happened there. It happened again in Israel when their defense Minister called Hamas “human animals.” That gives them the license to kill.

This is what leads to the conflagration in the Middle East. Now we all have to live with it.

The Demon on the other Side

Extremism, Hate, Politics & Religion, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

 

Both sides in the Hamas/Israeli war are governed by religious extremists. And both are doing a very bad job. When such leaders are in charge it is a near certainty that the “other side” will be demonized. That is what extreme religions are all about. After all, the other side is by definition “of the devil.”

 The other side becomes non-human when extremist leaders are in command, as they are on both sides in the Israeli/Hamas fight.

As Fintan O’Toole said in his article in the New York Review of Books,

 

“The Hamas incursion, in which more people died violently in Israel in a single day than ever before in the turbulent history of the state, is frightful. Even in the present state of the world, the murder, wounding, and kidnapping of so many defenseless civilians is shocking in its depravity. Hamas’s knowing provocation of Israel’s wrath against a Gazan population it cannot then defend, shows that it cares as little for its own civilians as it does for the enemy’s. The dehumanization of the whole population of Gaza by Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who said that “we are fighting against human animals,” and his explicit threat to deprive civilians of food and electricity are also profoundly disturbing. Retaliation against noncombatants has been established as Israel’s equal and opposite reaction to Hamas’s crimes and it foreshadows horrors even greater than the many hundreds of Gazans already killed by Israeli air strikes. Yet none of this is truly surprising. Nothing justifies these assaults, but when violence has become the only means of communication, everyone knows that its language will be spoken—and not in whispers but in screams.”

 When you are on the side of God fighting,  the others are on the side of the Devil it is impossible to see anything other than black and white. There are no longer any colours, let alone grays.  All other vision is dimmed by blood and hate and certainty. All truth and right is on “our” side and all falsehood and evil on the this of “them.”

Both sides in this awful fight in the Middle East are making the same mistake because they are both led by the same type of people—religious extremists. As Bob Dylan said, and as I keep quoting, “You don’t count the dead with God on your side.” Both Hamas and Israel are convinced—absolutely convinced—that God is on their side.

Religion has declined in much of the world. In fact, I would argue it has declined most strongly in those areas where it appears to be vociferously present. My wife Christiane used to have a pin that said something like this “When religion turns to hate, it is no longer religion.” When religion declined it transformed into politics.  The most ugly form of politics imaginable. When that happens the “other side” is transformed from the other side to the devil. This is what demonization does. By definition it dehumanizes the other.

 

Sometimes this is done by ignoring the other. For example, when Israel ignores Hamas or treats them with disdain as it has done for more than 15 years, it dehumanizes them. Hamas of course, treated Israel with vicious hate when it attacked them on October 7th of this year.   Dehumanization again.

 

The first step in the process of dehumanization, as happened in Rwanda in the 1990s is to call the other side non-humans. Like pests as happened there. It happened again in Israel when their defense Minister called Hamas “human animals. That gives Israel the license to kill.  We should not be surprised when the license is used.

This is what leads to the conflagration in the Middle East.

The Blood-dimmed Tide

Extremism, Ireland, Political Violence, Politics & Religion, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

The problem in the Israeli/Hamas conflict that is not present in all conflicts, is that  where religious extremists are in positions of influence or power, is that matters are exponentially worse when both sides are led by religious zealots. Neither side wants to compromise with the devil. That is crucial to making the conflict there a wicked problem.

 

Fintan O’Toole in his article in the New York Review of Books, described the situation this way in his article:

 

“In the Book of Judges, where we find the Samson story, God has delivered the children of Israel into subjugation by their enemies as punishment because they “did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.” As it happens, Hamas’s forebearers, the Muslim Brotherhood, held the same belief. The Harvard scholar of the Middle East Sara Roy tells us that, after Israel’s victory in the war of 1967, “the Brethren in Gaza especially remained convinced that the loss of Palestine was God’s punishment for neglecting Islam.” It seems that God has a peculiar way of chastising his various chosen peoples in Israel and Palestine: by inflicting them on each other. With millenarian religious believers in power on both sides of the Gaza wall, it seems that this blood-dimmed vision is again being played out as reality.”

 

This reference to “blood dimmed vision” may be an allusion to the words of an Irish Poet, William Butler Yeats in his famous poem “The Second Coming.”

 No one understands the toxic blend of religious extremism and politics better than the Irish. Sadly, they have a wealth of experience that informs the opinions of people like Fintan O’Toole and William Butler Yeats and others.  Yeats put it this way in that poem which he wrote nearly almost exactly 100 years ago:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

That is precisely the point. When the religious zealots are left loose the innocents will indeed be drowned. Vision on both sides will be blinded by blood.

There was a powerful example of that today. Israel bombed a refugee camp—the largest in Gaza—when it was “aiming” at a place where a Hamas leader or two was believed to be. They missed. I don’t yet know how many civilians were killed.as a result. How many civilian deaths  would it take before such an attack would be a war crime?

 

Religious Extremism in Israel and Gaza

Extremism, Political Violence, Politics & Religion, violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

When religion morphs into politics, or politics into religion, there is likely nothing that produces uglier results. As, perhaps no one understands this better than the Irish.

Something that is too often ignored in the incendiary Middle East is the enormous and shattering effect of religious extremism. The problem is that both sides ignore it in their own tribe, while lambasting it in the other.

Fintan O’Toole, an Irishman writing regularly in the New York Review of Books, knows this better than most and he  asked a crucially important question: “What lessons do people actually learn from the cruelties they applaud and the ones they suffer in return?” We should remember the wise counsel in Matthew 7:3-5: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”  And no one ignores this advice more and also needs it more. than religious zealots.

O’Toole’s article centred around a story in what we call the Old Testament and others call the Hebrew Bible.  That article referred to what he called a

 “a Jewish legend” in which “the great warrior Samson ends up, as John Milton famously puts it, “eyeless in Gaza.” He is blinded by the Philistines and harnessed to a huge millstone, forced to drag himself around and around in circles, always moving but unable to go anywhere. Eventually, in the most spectacular of suicides, he gets his revenge by pulling down their temple on top of the Philistines, killing both them and himself. The story is apparently supposed to be heroic, but it feels more like a fable of vicious futility. Cruelty begets cruelty until there is nothing left but mutual destruction.”

 

The current horrid war between Israel and Hamas is exactly that—”a fable of  vicious futility.” The story is a cautionary tale to those of us who are too quick to say revenge is justified, or retaliation a duty. If we can understand that nothing is gained by a thirst for revenge perhaps we can learn a better way. Israelis were attacked by cruel and vicious butchers who targeted women, children and old people and Israel sought revenge. The Israeli’s say that unlike the Palestinians they do not target civilians or children or women or old people, but they know that by attacking the Palestinians in Gaza where 2 million people live in one of the most densely packed places in the world, they will hurt, injure and kill women, children, old people and innocent bystanders. That is unavoidable.

 Saying “we are not aiming to kill them” is not enough. Rather it shows that Israel really doesn’t care if civilians are hurt.  Some Israelis have said as much publicly. Such indifference to suffering can be summed up in the words of that great American philosopher Bob Dylan: “you don’t count the dead with God on your side.” In other words, it shows—clearly shows—that the problem with handing over war policy to religious zealots is that unnecessary harms will follow as certainly as night follows day.

Religious zealots are truly, inevitably, indifferent to the suffering of those in the “other” religious camp. That is because there is no reason for them to count the dead.

 Israel has democratically elected the religious extremists that now wield the vital votes Netanyahu needs to hold onto power in order to deflect attention from the corruption charges he is facing, or perhaps, better yet, the votes he needs to dissolve the charges against him. For the better part of 2 decades now Israel has reliably elected extremist political leaders knowing, but ignoring, the fact that this would certainly lead to a bonfire of violence. So the Israel population is deeply complicit.

The Palestinians on the other have had religious extremists baked into Hamas DNA right from the outset of that organization in 2006.  It has never been without controlling religious extremists. They elected the religious extremists more than a decade ago, and even though they have not had a second chance to vote them out in a democratic election, their acquiescence in the continued leadership of religious extremists makes them complicit as well.

Neither nation can claim innocence. The people on both sides have chosen extremism and the people are now paying a huge price for this mistake. Both sides should eject their extremists at the helm. There is no other way except mutual destruction.

 

A Safe Place to Hate.

Conservative, Evangelical Christianity, Fear, Hate, Moral Humility, Politics & Religion, Right-wing Extremism, Trumpism, Woke

 

There had been a lot of social change just before Rush Limbaugh arrived on the scene. There was gay liberation, women’s rights, and liberalism. Many felt they could no longer say what they wanted to say. Political correctness was seen as a stifling chain. They also thought no one was speaking like them or to them. They were ignored and invisible. As Justin Ling said in his CBC. Radio series , “In the universe of right-wing media compared to the Wall Street Journal and like the later Fox News Limbaugh’s listeners were older, whiter, more conservative, and more religious. For this slice of America Limbaugh created a safe space.” He created a safe place to hate.

Surprisingly, because there was a Republican in the White House, as Ling said, “he convinced these old, white, conservative, and religious Americans that they were disenfranchised!” Even though they were in the majority! It was pure alchemy. He told them they were looked down on. He milked them for their resentment—the elixir of devils. As Ling said, “He formed a kind of counterculture; a resistance against the liberals, and the progressives, and the feminists.”

In the mid-80s he syndicated to about 50 stations across the country but by 1990 he got 450 affiliates. He was the rock star of talk radio and the conservative movement. He led a Rush to Excellence Tour to various stadiums around the country with as many as 10,000 people.  As Justin Ling said, “Limbaugh declared a culture war”. Limbaugh put it this way:

“We are in the midst of a culture war. What are rights? This culture war illustrates precisely what is going on. We in America are in the midst—it’s an exciting time to be alive—we are in the midst of a redefinition of who is going to define right and wrong, what the punishment is going to be for those who violate the limits that we place on our behavior. We are arguing about who has the right to tell us what is right and what is wrong. We’re arguing over what censorship is And to me its pretty scary.”

 

And there it is again—fear—the secret sauce of paranoia and right-wing hysteria.

Like Trump later, Limbaugh went from being a spoiled rich kid to a champion of the working class. People all over America were starting to take notice of Limbaugh. I remember at the time hearing about him from a friend of mine, a trucker. Truckers loved Limbaugh, just like they later loved Trump and basically for the same reasons. They liked to have a wrecking ball in their corner as did my friend the trucker, and much later the truckers convoy in Ottawa in 2022. They got a rush from Rush Limbaugh.

As Justin Ling said, “On his radio show he was the voice of God on a one way street. And he loved nothing better than to run over liberal women. On his radio show he said, “this is a show devoted to what I think.” On the Dave Lettermen show he said people were bugged by him because “I have almost a monopoly on the truth.” No one could ever accuse Limbaugh of humility. Humility was a liberal vice. And his fans loved it.  He also said “This is a benevolent dictatorship. I am the dictator. There is no first amendment here except for me.”

Now he was entitled to be the dictator of his own show. If we don’t like it, we don’t have to listen to it.