I drove Mr. Bookworm’s car today.  That means that, when I turned on the radio, I got NPR.  I don’t listen to NPR anymore.  I find very dull the carefully packaged stories, all of which advance, with greater or lesser subtlety, a Progressive political agenda.  I prefer freewheeling talk radio, where hosts do live interviews of people with whom they agree and, even more interestingly, with people with whom they disagree.

Today, though, I listened to NPR long enough to hear a promo for an upcoming show, the name of which I forget, which looks at the fact that more and more people are free-lancers rather than employees.  It was clear that NPR disapproves of this trend, because the show was sold as a look at people who are pathetically hustling for work without the security of full-time employment.

I used to be one of those people, although I never thought of myself as pathetic.  I did my best lawyering when I stopped being a wage slave and started working for myself.  Instead of resenting every hour worked, because it simply put more money into the boss’s pockets, I threw myself into my work because it benefited me.  When I hustled, there was a direct return on effort.

The economics of what I was doing meant I never made as much money working as a free-lance attorney, hiring my services out to other law firms, as I did when I worked for the big firms.  I also actually worked harder for that lesser amount of money.  But I was so much happier.  The direct connection between labor and profit was incredibly satisfying.  Yes, I was out there hustling, but I was free.  And while it’s true that I’d lost my “safety net,” the fact is that my employers could have fired me at any time.  So that safety net was an illusion.  Working for myself, I knew what I had to offer and I knew I could survive.

Charles Krauthammer identifies the enormous damage the Obami risk doing as they attack and try to destroy national entities associated with conservatives (the Chamber of Commerce, talk radio, Fox news):

There’s nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.

Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand “the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties.” They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other — and an otherwise imperious government.

Factions should compete, but also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize, and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian.

But didn’t Teddy Roosevelt try to destroy the trusts? Of course, but what he took down was monopoly power that was extinguishing smaller independent competing interests. Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical — and that doesn’t even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.

I long for the Bush days. If nothing else, Bush was ever the gentleman, and he presided over a remarkably civil administration.

Thought to be extinct, Marinicus Republicanus is emerging from its long dormancy and beginning to make itself known.  Tonight, I attended an enthusiastic rally of at least 100 people crammed shoulder to shoulder in a beautiful home in Marin. People were informed, excited, and refused to be intimidated by the polls.

Melanie Morgan, former conservative talk show host and founder and chairman of MoveAmericaForward.org, was the big draw.  As you might guess given her career, she’s a great public speaker — clear, vivacious, intelligent and amusing.  She has one other quality that completely endeared her to me:  she’s petite.  Indeed, she’s what used to be called a Pocket Venus — a lovely woman from head to toe, only on a someone smaller scale (although at about 5’2″, she’s still taller than I am).

Melanie’s speech touched upon a few main themes, familiar to all conservatives:  Obama’s “spread the wealth” socialism, his frightening unpreparedness for attacks against the US (both because of his inexperience and his temperament), the huge risk of a complete Democratic takeover of the government (a government that will be far to the Left of anything Roosevelt, Truman, Carter or even Clinton envisioned), and the death of the conservative media.

As to the last, Melanie warned those assembled to make no mistake:  The very first thing an entirely Democratic government will do is pass a bill with the Orwellian title of “Fairness Doctrine.”  This will mandate that any radio or TV show that has political content must give equal time to both Democrats and Republicans.

While I can guarantee you that this “fairness” won’t be imposed against MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN, the Democratic controlled FCC will come down like gangbusters against Fox News, Dennis Prager, Rush LImbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, and any other national and local conservative shows you can think of.  The FCC will warn any station carrying these shows that, unless they start airing Air America too (or like shows), they will lose their licenses.  And the radio stations, unable to afford the financial black holes of liberal talk radio, will go with the obvious response:  they’ll take conservative radio shows off the air.  Progressives will still have MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN (since Democrats profess to believe that these networks are “objective”), but conservatives will have . . . nothing.

But that’s not entirely true.  Conservatives will still have the internet, whether written or podcasts.  And I think conservatives should start having guerilla radio.  During World War II, resistance fighters and local partisans all over Europe set up underground radio stations that beamed real news — not Nazi propaganda — to those who still wanted the truth.  Heck, even in the last Harry Potter book, the good guys set up secret radio broadcasts aimed at keeping community alive and thwarting the Death Eaters.

Don’t you love the idea of a secret Rush Limbaugh radio show?  Because it will be illegal, it will immediately gain the same cachet as other illegal activities, such as marijuana use or underage drinking.  College students will start having parties in darkened dorm rooms, behind locked doors, as they chase the elusive Rush across the radio dial.

Before long, these same college students, their minds finally stimulated by an alternative to the Marxist doctrine taught in their classrooms, will be taking to the streets, demanding that the government “Free Rush Limbaugh.”  It will be exciting.  There will be riots.  Nancy Pelosi will barricade herself in her San Francisco mansion as deeply committed college students mount 24 hour a day protests on her street.

As the streets become maelstroms of free speech protests, the MSM will be forced to report on the story, complete with dire warnings about the dangers to youth from illegal conservative radio.  Concerned parents, anxious to know what kind of ideology is sparking their childrens’ behavior, will “try” rush (although few will admit to this kind of mental inhaling).

To their horror, most of them will find themselves agreeing with him.  Some will have to go into therapy.  Many will go into deep denial.  But some, those who have a youthful rebellious streak, will begin covert listening operations as well, and find themselves hanging out at skate parks trying to have the boarders give them info about the next place and time for a Rush broadcast.

After that, heck, anything can happen.  Stick around long enough, and by 2012 or 2016, we may have a successful Palin-Steele, or Palin-Cantor, or Palin-Jindal ticket, that can start the long, painful work of undoing all the damage done to America by several consecutive years of unbridled socialist . . . um, Democratic rule.

UPDATE:  BTW, Melanie Morgan’s own blog is here.

Because Zev Chafets wrote it, I was reasonably sure the profile of Rush in the NYT Magazine would not be a hit piece, and I was right.  Read it and enjoy getting a little closer to the great El Rushbo.  By the way, I particularly liked this little bit from the article, which puts in their place those who sneer at Rush’s Dittoheads:

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identity themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners. The study found that “readers of newsmagazines, political magazines and business magazines, listeners of Rush Limbaugh and NPR and viewers of the Daily Show and C-SPAN are also much more likely than the average person to have a college degree.”

It’s no wonder that the Democrats are desperate to destroy talk radio.

If you haven’t already heard it, please listen to Dennis Prager’s June 26th interview with Dick Morris about Morris’ new book Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies … Are Scamming Us … and What to Do About It.  You can find the podcast here.