Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: In Limbaugh logic, Christians harbor liberal ideas

Friday, May 29, 1998 | 10:31 a.m.

WHEN I LEFT YOU on Wednesday, I promised to tell you the revelation I had after listening to Rush Limbaugh on my way to work Tuesday.

If you will recall, I admitted to a certain degree of frustration that set in after listening to Rush on the way to the golf course on Memorial Day. That I suffered through his attack on Gov. Zell Miller's plan to provide classical music to every one of Georgia's newborns was part of the penance I figured I had to pay in return for sneaking off to the links.

Well, on Tuesday it was work I was pursuing, which probably explains why what I heard from Rush's mouth not only pleased me but cleared up, once and for all, any confusion I might have had these many years over who and what is a "liberal." Clearly, there was a connection. If you play, Rush is penance. If you are going to work, he can be your salvation!

The callers Rush was dealing with were concerned about the nature of our prison systems and the way our government coddles wrongdoers. First it protects their rights at trial and then, once they are convicted, sends them away for prison sentences, the maximum of which few inmates rarely complete. Some callers opined that if we got off this insane idea that convicted felons can be rehabilitated, then all would be right with the world and the streets would be safe once again.

That's when the mouth roared his delight and set about to pander propitiously to his gleeful listeners. Rush claimed, as if the knowledge had been handed down to him from On High, that if we would just stop trying to rehabilitate bad people, then life would be good again. Prisons are for punishment, he chortled. Lock 'em up, throw away the key, and all will be right with the world, I thought I heard him say.

As is often the case, Rush was mouthing what many Americans think. And rightly so. From a very simplistic point of view, if we lock up every malfeasor, never to let him out into polite society, the recidivism rate would diminish substantially, which means the number of crimes committed by the felon -- at least outside the prison walls -- would drop to near zero.

Of course, he, like everyone else pushing this idea, forgets to put the price tag on such a plan. The cost of the prisons alone would re-introduce us to a spending deficit rivaling that which we have balanced away during the Clinton administration. Not to mention the societal cost when Mom or Dad fails to ever return to the home and the potential of being a good citizen. What route does junior take when his role model never gets out of prison?

I was getting ready to turn the channel, looking for some sanity on the airwaves, when Rush did the unlikely. He explained -- although I think it was not meant to be an explanation -- the solution to a long-asked but never answered question. And that is, "Who is a liberal?"

It has been standard fare for the past few years for Rush and others to blame the state of the world on liberals. In America, so he says, there are basically two groups of people, liberals and conservatives. And since the conservatives have all the right answers to life's little and big problems, it is the liberals who, by definition, must have the wrong ones.

That kind of logic, as simple and simply flawed as it is, makes for a nice radio show or a compelling 30-second commercial. But what it has always failed to do is answer the question of just who formed the liberal and conservative ranks. For instance, I always thought I was a conservative because I believed the government should be limited in its role and never, ever work its way into our bedrooms. I have since learned that I am a liberal because of that view. It is the conservatives, I am told, who have staked out the proper role for government -- that which gives Big Brother the right to tell us how to run our family lives, how to deal with our reproductive processes and who our sexual partners should be and under what circumstances should we have them.

While I learned quickly about what part of the liberal-conservative continuum my ideas placed me, I must admit a great number of my friends and theirs have remained confused. Until now, thanks to Rush.

For it was in his explanation of the prison system and the placing of the blame for its sorry state that I -- we -- have learned just who is and who isn't a liberal.

Rush Limbaugh said -- I heard him in my own car on my own radio -- that this whole idea of rehabilitating criminals -- that is, making it possible for people who have made a mistake to one day, if they proved themselves worthy, be released from prison to become productive members of society -- was a liberal idea.

He told his listeners that his idea was to lock those felons up forever, never giving any of them a chance to commit crimes again, and that his plan meshed well with the conservative agenda. Rehabilitation was out and punishment was back in on the Rush Limbaugh show.

Forget that! Who cared, because now I knew who the conservatives were and who the liberals were and now I was going to share all this with Sun readers. I could hardly wait -- especially for the mail!

One of my favorite classes at Georgetown was taught by a Jesuit named Father Schweder. So, before you attack me, remember that one of the best grades I ever got in college was in this class. It was logic.

Rush made it abundantly clear that the idea of rehabilitation was a liberal one. That threw me right away because I always thought that rehabilitation was a Christian idea. Remember that stuff in the Bible about turning the other cheek, helping thy neighbor, not casting the first stone, etc.? That's all about the ability of people to make mistakes. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was a design flaw in human beings that basically required us to make bad judgments from time to time. It was also an admonition from the highest level that the rest of us figure out how to forgive those who have erred.

Anyway, simple logic compels us to the following conclusion: rehabilitation in our prisons is a liberal idea. People who believe as a matter of faith in the idea of forgiveness and rehabilitation are Christians. Therefore, Christians have liberal ideas.

The logic is unassailable, but I suspect that millions of people who think they are Christians are going to be mad at Rush. After all, how dare he say they are for rehabilitation. Christians are for punishment only. Right?

I don't think so. But how can you argue with Rush Limbaugh? Now, what are we going to do with the Christian Right in this country, which thinks it may be a mortal sin not to be a conservative, or a Republican, or whatever? Who's going to tell those conservatives that they are really liberals -- besides Rush the savior, I mean?

Not me. I'd rather turn the other cheek and watch them sweat this one out for a while.

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