The True Believer - Rush Is Still An Idiot

Coming back from a trip I decided to see what entertaining stuff Rush Limbaugh had to say. In our area you can get Rush on two stations, one a few seconds behind the other in case you missed something.

He was going on about a great guy who described today's mindless liberals well. He didn't know much about him but apparently he had received some notes.

And then he started quoting from The True Believer.

I started laughing out loud.

The writer of The True Believer, Eric Hoffer, was a great man. He was a longshoreman philosopher who wrote about the mindset of fascists and extreme conservatives. He was not describing liberals. As a good union man he would wrongly be called a bleeding-heart liberal by Rush.

He was against Stalinists but he was also against Catholics. He was against mass movements based on hatred and fear and irrational appeals to join in some great crusade. In The True Believer he described the appeal of prejudicial beliefs constantly reinforced in making weak people feel strong.

Here are some Eric quotes from Positive Atheism's site.

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

Among other things Eric Hoffer also said it is in the best interest of governments to have citizens that are less well educated. The less well informed are citizens, the less likely they are to hold government accountable for serious mistakes because they aren't aware of what's happening.

Ask the next Rush Limbaugh ditto-head you see if he is a true believer. "Damn straight," he'll reply.

Then tell him that Rush, in his interpretation of Hoffer, said true believers were compensating for a lack of manhood.

You might want to duck.

True Believer - Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements on Amazon. I agree with Rush it is still relevant today, just almost totally opposite of why he thinks it.

(EL- minor edits.)