In the wake of the prolonged clapping and applause at the Big Apple's Lincoln Center following a composer's gratuitous insult of Rush Limbaugh (John Adams compared the radio host to the Taliban and/or to the Muslim Brotherhood),
Ed Driscoll (thanks to
Instapundit) quotes a caller to the Rush Limbaugh show describing those
two minutes of hate of
“the official bogey man of the left”:
CALLER: Rush ... You can be anything in New York City. You can be a murderer, a thief, a liar, but dont you dare be a conservative.
As I wrote five years ago, this is nothing new:
How could anybody better illustrate my contention (a mere observation, really) — discernible in my upcoming graphic novel with
Dan Greenberg,
The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln — that not much has changed from a century and a half ago, specifically when
Honest Abe spoke at the Cooper Union in February 1860, addressing the Republicans' castigators:
…when
you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as
reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a
hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans].
In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an
unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be
attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an
indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be
admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be
prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to
us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and
specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or
justify.
