Limbaugh: On the matter of misquoting

Rush Limbaugh says that conservatives believe in the 3 principles of Life, Liberty, Freedom, and Pursuit of Happiness contained in the Preamble to the Constitution. He's wrong about this - he's misquoting. I am willing to forgive him for being uncertain about the wording, and even about the fact that this construction is not in the Constitution at all, but rather in the Declaration of Independence. Anyone can get these things mixed up sometimes, especially when one is advancing in years as both he and I are doing. And he isn't that much of a student, anyhow. He is a doctrinaire type who makes up truth as he goes along. He fancies that he has answers to complex questions just because that's what he thinks answers ought to be. So, for him, to confuse the words or meaning of Constitutions or Declarations is nothing at all. For him, the Constitution is whatever he wants it to be, screw the wording.

What bothers me more is that Limbaugh does not mean the same things when he talks about life, or freedom, or pursuing happiness that most of the rest of us mean when we talk about it. When he uses these terms, he means that Life is what the conservative far-right says is Life, like a sperm floating free in a poor woman's womb. To him it doesn't mean ready access to health care that might save one from dying. But, I bet when you think about the Right to Life, you think about being able to buy antibiotics freely, getting medical attention when you've got a staph infection, or being able to hold onto your existence against someone's right to own an Uzi. I bet you even think that if a doctor kills your spouse in a medical screw-up, you should be able to sue the malefactor.

This is the sort of thing that drives Limbaugh crazy. You can tell, because he's ranting and shouting.

That's because he thinks of Life, Liberty and Happiness as policy questions to be settled by those in a certain social class, not as true "Rights."