Now playing the role of George Washington… Neal Boortz?

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Neal Boortz will be calling it quits this week after 42 years in the radio business. He timed his exit to ensure that if Barack Obama was reelected he (Obama) would not have another dollar of his (Boortz’s) income tax dollars to spend.

As he rides off into the sunset to play golf, drive around in the Boortzmobile, and most importantly, visit Disney World, we are all left to wonder what the future might hold.

If you’ve ever listened to him, you know that Neal can be acerbic, pointed, and frankly, sometimes downright mean. But at the same time he can be funny, compassionate and extraordinarily generous. In other words, he’s a puny human like the rest of us. There are a few gifts he has that most of us don’t however. He is phenomenally entertaining. He has an uncanny ability to distill most issues down to their core elements and clearly articulate what is at stake. And he is a skilled pitchman, particularly for the ideas he holds.

To the untrained ear his pronouncements often sound outrageous at first blush, but when you listen to the rationale behind them he’s usually spot on. The best example I can think of is when he states, as he often does, “The teachers’ unions pose a bigger threat to the security of the United States than does Al Qaeda.” Someone who’s not heard that before might think that he’s nuts, asking “How many planes have the teachers’ unions flown into buildings?” or “How many bombs have the teachers’ unions planted?” However, when you follow his logic about how the teachers’ unions are systematically undermining education in the United States and producing a population made up of “dumb masses”, and how that uneducated public is the road upon which tyranny rides into and then takes over the public square, you recognize he’s 100% right. His cheering when an intruder is killed by a homeowner can also seem callus, but only until you realize what he is really cheering is the fact that some criminal will not be around any longer to pose a threat to the life of other, innocent, less empowered citizens.

At the end of the day, Boortz, like Limbaugh, Levin, Hannity and others, makes his living entertaining people while informing them. One has to wonder however, is that really enough? Why do I ask that? Because a quick look at the last quarter century will reveal that the country has continued to march left. If not in name certainly in action, particularly as it relates to the representatives we send to Washington.

For four decades Boortz has railed against big, incompetent, unconstitutional government, yet over that time we’ve gotten nothing but more of exactly that, other than a small respite during the Reagan administration. In a nutshell, it appears that Boortz, like the others, has been a failure in achieving his overarching goal. Now, he’s obviously been a phenomenal success in his primary goal, which is to entertain fans and generate advertising revenue for his stations. By that measure Neal, Rush, Sean and a number of other conservative radio hosts have been spectacularly successful, something liberals never seem to be able to accomplish.

On the larger goal of saving the country from the stultifying leviathan of progressivism however, Neal et. al. have failed, and failed miserably. This does not suggest that Neal and friends are somehow responsible for this shift. On the contrary, it’s happened despite their efforts… and that is the key. Neal is retiring. Rush is doing the same show he’s been doing for years. Mark Levin is pretty angry, but the truth is, he’s been angry for a while.

The question I have is, do these hosts actually believe what they say or is shtick to sell advertising? If it’s shtick that’s fine. It’s like watching Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock; you know the guy is a schmuck in real life but it’s fun to watch him as Jack. If however this message is more than that, if he and they really believe what they say, are they prepared to do something about it?

Neal has been saying for months that he thinks the country is almost lost, and that defeating Barack Obama was the best opportunity to save it. Today he says that he thinks we are probably doomed and that the 2014 elections are likely our last chance. I think he’s probably right. In 2008 it was only speculation that Obama would rule as an anti-capitalist big government statist. Today we know he was worse than any of us had expected. Yet somehow the country knew that and still reelected him.

We face a different future today than the one we did in January 2009, or even in October 2012 for that matter. We have an economic fascist in the White House with no fear of having to ever win election again. We have a more progressive Senate than we did after the 2010 election and we have a house that is nominally Republican but can’t seem to bring itself to deny President Obama anything. President Obama seeks to destroy the private sector and the motivation any person might have to work hard and seek their fortune. Four more years of unbridled Obama may indeed end the Constitutional republic that is the United States.

Today the United States faces the biggest threat to liberty since World War II… Which brings us back to the question above: Do Neal and his brethren actually believe what they say or is a defense of the Constitution merely shtick to sell advertising? If it’s something more than shtick, then now is the time to do something more than merely chat on the radio for three hours a day.

What exactly should they do? I’m not sure, but there is a vacuum in the country and who better to fill it than someone who is experienced in making cogent points compellingly? Maybe create a cable network dedicated to capitalism, entrepreneurship and free markets. Maybe begin a lecture circuit about achieving the American Dream. Maybe start a barnstorming tour to invigorate the Tea Party movement. The conservative movement in the United States is lacking a leader, lacking a voice of someone who can inspire its adherents and convert its opponents; someone who can rally Americans to get off of their couches and do something to fix a broken country. For two presidential election cycles the GOP has fielded milquetoast candidates who wouldn’t know conservatism if it walked up and hit them in the head. Now are now paying for those decisions.

A quarter century of conservative talk has been entertaining, but it’s not been enough. Today we need something more. We need engaged citizens who are willing to put aside American Idol, shopping, football, and Facebook and learn what made our country a success and evangelize the message of free markets and limited government. But who will lead them?

Everyone deserves a retirement, and Neal has certainly earned his. But sometimes there’s something bigger than retirement. Sometimes there is something worth putting off retirement for. A reluctant George Washington recognized that: A month before his inauguration in 1789 he wrote in a letter to his friend John Knox: “In confidence I can assure you — with the world, it would obtain little credit — that my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” Neal’s future certainly doesn’t lay in politics, but it’s possible to change the world from outside the sphere of government. Just look at the impact of men like William Randolph Hearst, Martin Luther King, Ralph Nader, and even Mark Zuckerberg. Retirement can wait… the country needs to be saved, now.

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Until we control half of the MSM, we have no chance to reverse the course of America.
We also need to take back the schools and legal system.
Until Conservatives understand this and act upon it, we are just wasting our time.

The first step is refusing to use the terminology of Marxism which is a mistake this blog post just made.

You will never win the argument by using Marxist terms. Conservatives are not capitalist in a Marxist sense. They believe in Free Markets.

Marx did not understand economics. He did not understand religion. He did not understand human nature. He did not even understand what money or wealth is. In fact almost every aspect of what Marx said can be demonstratively shown to be wrong. He did know how to invent words and use Sophistry to defend the validity of the definitions of his new words. I believe that Marx invented the word capitalism but if he didn’t he did give it a new definition. If you look at the way he defined the word he was thinking of some sort of mercantilism system where money was gold and silver coins and wealth was concentrated and limited. It is the few controlling the many through force. It does not matter that this is not the way an economy works and never has been at least no prosperous economy. It also does not matter that it is a very distopic view of history. It is the way the left believe the economy works. Marxism is the Leviathan Hobbs described and is wrong for the same reason Hobbs was wrong

To use the term “Capitalism” allows the ignorant and malicious to control the argument because because the left have controlled the definition of the word. You have to spend too much time saying what you mean by “capitalist” and have no time left for anything else. Instead say you are a rabid anti-capitalist. Let them have their word and its definition.

A Free Market and Capitalism as envisioned by Marx are incompatible because a Free Market believes that wealth is created through competition, industry (personal and corporate) investment and development. It depends not upon the power of the few to control wealth but upon the freedom of the many to create wealth. Agree with the left that “capitalism” as defined by their Patron Saint Karl Marx is bad. By simply denying that you are a capitalist you’ve shifted the argument off their home turf. When they say that that capitalism is evil agree with them. Don’t let them define you on their terms

Make them defend controlled markets. Make them defend restricting liberty. Make them defend the death of 100’s of MILLIONS at the hands of socialist regimes in the last 100 years. Ask them to defend those deaths if need be use the moral equivalency argument leftist love so much when defining the crimes of the US against them.

Remember this is a fight of decades.

Vince,
You’ll get a broad range of opinions as to, “What exactly should they do?” including as you suggest fixing education which means enforcing fixes which the unions with Obama’s help have further made almost impossible, however, the single biggest impact on ‘mindset’ will come from the energy which can be applied to inspiring ENTREPRENEURSHIP.

What is going on in Cuba provides a useful example = Socialism destroyed the human spirit of a whole country. Now, on the verge of collapse, the dictators are loosening a very few laws, allowing very limited, very small amount of entrepreneurship. That slightly opened window is lifting spirits.

Half the voters seem to not understand this, or just refuse to acknowledge the reality they have re-elected into the W.H., but a few lessons on human motivation and entrepreneurship might be fruitful.

. . . In fact, every liberal should be sent to Cuba for a stay NOT in one of the tourist hotels, but with actual Cubans and their life in the hell of socialism. Here’s a country which has been so suppressed by the weight of government and its dictators, it doesn’t even grow its own food. Most of it is imported.

Vince is correct to quote Boortz with “The teachers’ unions pose a bigger threat to the security of the United States than does Al Qaeda.”

Until this nation can wrest control of the tax dollars which fund these violent warehouses run by union monopolies called ‘government schools,’ this nation will continue down the path of bolshevism. This past election proved the teachers union’s agenda is working.

‘Garbage in; garbage out. And when they are old, they will not depart from it.’

The answer we’re looking for, I think, is in destruction.

The Left didn’t get anywhere by building anything. Sure, Obama’s campaign has its GOTV operation and all those Soros-funded NGO’s make for a substantial amount of activity, but those institutions they’ve created aren’t where they are because the Left BUILT anything.

They’re there because the Left successfully tore down the cultural institutions that the rest of us loved and depended on.

They’ve destroyed the finest system of higher education the world has ever known, and replaced it with a fascist idiocracy in which students earn grades even in the hard sciences by regurgitating ideological dreck from cadres of leftist professors. They’ve done the same to K-12. And they did those things while Republicans at the state and local levels enthusiastically threw more and more money at education.

They’ve turned Hollywood, which was the single most pervasive weapon American culture had to offer the world, into such a poisonous anti-American institution that even a leftist director like Kathryn Bigelow, who had the Obama White House’s full cooperation to make a movie about one of the only real American successes of the past 20 years doesn’t even get a Best Picture nomination despite almost unanimously positive reviews for Zero Dark Thirty.

I could go on and on – the news media, the fashion industry, law, psychiatry, to some extent religion, art, literature. In virtually every facet of American culture except for possibly sports (and there is some penetration even there), the Left has made a major mark on, if not having completely taken over, the controlling institutions. And in virtually every case they did it through Alinskyite methods of demonizing, harrassing and defenestrating the leadership and dominant beliefs of once-great institutions.

But the good news is that if the Left could destroy our institutions, we can certainly destroy theirs – and in a much shorter time than they did it to us.

What we need, outside of the obvious political resurgence that I have less sanguine predictions for, are strategies and tactics designed to collapse the institutions the Left controls. That’s a longer-range project but it has to be done if we’re to beat these people. We have got to learn how to start fires in the enemy’s camp and fan them until they consume everything he holds dear and render him incapable of fighting.

Another member of the conservative-entertainment-newsless-media-complex—who has profited from their base just as much as David Greggory—bites the dust.

I think someone like Boortz, or Beck or even Limbaugh should put together a 30 minute daily news program to compete directly with the network’s nightly show. And I mean compete *directly* by offering it to local stations as a replacement for the network show. These days, with digital TV, the local stations have all those extra subchannels… let’s see the MSM relegated to those and actual news on the .1 channel. 😉

@Liberal1 (Objectivity): Uh….. to “bite the dust” means to be taken out or to fail…. not heading out of your own free will.

I think after a 42 year long career anyone deserves to retire.
I am happy for Neal that he could.
He is ”going Galt.”
As in Ayn Rand’s question: “who is John Galt?”
When you refuse to contribute to the government’s coffers because you disagree with how the government spends its money, you are going Galt.
Neal could have gone on with his show til he dropped and still been popular.
He chose not to support Obama any more than he has to.

We are doing the exact same thing.
Lots of folks with more than two nickles to rub together are trying to figure out how to do their part in starving Obama’s beast.