Someone who understood that, once in a great while, it really is possible for a single individual to change the world—understood better than most, because he did it himself.

Before Rush, talk radio was different. Talk radio was about cotton-candy issues.  Larry King on the Mutual Broadcast Network hosted an overnight parade of callers talking about pets, childhood memories, landscaping, and just how they were doing. Scores of local talk show hosts – like Perry Marshall at KDKA in Pittsburgh – entertained with friendly chat, the sweet cotton candy that dissolves away quick into meaninglessness.

That was radio B.R. – Before Rush.

To exactly no one’s surprise, the Compassionate, Caring Left™ responded with their usual subhuman, barely-sentient cruelty.

After news broke that conservative talk show giant Rush Limbaugh had died at age 70 on Wednesday, many on the Left took to trashing Limbaugh and celebrating his death. Many on Twitter expressed ill-wishes, hoping Limbaugh would “rest in piss.” Many prominent celebrities shared fabricated quotes falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh or took his remarks out of context to condemn him.

Because of course they did; this is who they are, this is what they do, and I see no need to belabor that more than obvious point. There’s a different one to be made here, a far more worthwhile one, which I’ll preface with this ostensibly more “reasonable” response:

No, you lying, sniveling pussy, what Limbaugh actually attacked was Leftism. Which brings us to the bottom line:

THERE IS NO LONGER ANY REASON WHATSOEVER FOR NORMAL AMERICANS TO TREAT THESE VICIOUS ANIMALS KINDLY, FAIRLY, OR RESPECTFULLY, NOR TO ACT AS IF THEIR OPINIONS MATTER IN THE LEAST.

Sympathy? Restraint? For them? Not on your life. Their own unrestrained hatred and vileness must be returned tenfold. The war against them must be acknowledged and waged as war to the knife—real, existential, and morally just.

All fretting over “becoming more like them” or “taking the high road” from our side must now be abandoned. There is no longer any need for analyzing or genteely discussing such matters; there is no longer any question about them. Ugliness and evil must be reflected directly back, in fullest intensity, at the twisted goblins who weaponized them for political use—the tools of tyranny—lest the righteous find themselves overwhelmed. Those who fail to recognize this demonic Enemy for who and what he is, or are too fastidious to do everything necessary to ensure his destruction, will surely perish.

I decided long years ago—I think it was the frabjous day that the odious Ted Kennedy assumed room temperature, maybe—that I would no longer express anything but my truest feelings on the passing of such filthy scum. Never again will I feign grief or sadness when some cancerous Lefty boil on the ass of humanity is finally removed from this world. Their rightful place is in Hell, in the presence of the Master they were always so eager to serve. So when such a one shuffles off this mortal coil at long, long last to receive his eternal due, is there anybody who could seriously argue that his departure from our midst ought to be regarded as some kind of loss? When decent men contort themselves to heap empty, false praise upon the death of lesser sorts whose corruption, moral bankruptcy, and contempt for justice is well known, does not the dishonest act, although well-intentioned, put their own eternal souls at risk? Is prostitution really the price exacted by politesse at times like this?

Speaking strictly for myself: nope, don’t think so, sorry, not gonna do it. Call me uncivil, call me uncouth, call me whatever other names you wish. This is a game I just won’t play anymore. After so many years of enduring the sordid spectacle of soulless fiends gleefully ladling shit over the memory of our dear departed the way they always do I am quite happy to return the favor, with interest compounded. If I even bother to say anything at all, that is. If that leaves me open to a charge of “sinking to their level” or some such from my more effete colleagues…well, so be it then. Don’t like it? Don’t care. Henceforth, I desire only to inflict any and every injury I can on The Enemy, crippling or trivial, and pledge not to allow a single opportunity to do so pass me by. The more he suffers, the gladder I’ll be. To hell with them, one and all. That’s all there is to it.

Now let’s leave the Left to their abominable obsequies and get back to Rush, shall we? Doc Zero says it’s a funeral for a friend:

I never got to speak to Rush Limbaugh, but he always seemed like a friend I heard from every day. He quoted my work on the air a few times, and it was a surreal delight, a joyous thing that could not possibly be happening. He helped us all become friends.

That’s the real measure of Rush’s impact. He helped so many people realize they were not alone, even as the mainstream media labored to make them feel isolated and hopeless. He understood that totalitarians overwhelm and dominate ordinary people by making them *feel* surrounded.

How often good and decent people felt isolated before Rush! They wondered why nobody could see what was so perfectly obvious to them. The secret of totalitarian success is to make ordinary people fear everyone around them is an informer or enforcer. Rush shattered that illusion.

The illusion of manufactured consensus and forced conformity never worked on Rush, not for a minute. He KNEW we were all out here, long before his ratings proved it. He gave so many others the confidence to raise their voices, knowing they were not alone.

It takes incredible talent and discipline to realize a bold vision like that. I heard him on the air not long ago, and thought he sounded great, as if time had not touched the voice I first heard over 30 years ago. Someone had to do what he did, but not just anyone COULD have.

And now the Internet will be filled with ugly cries of triumph from the howling darkness Rush spent his life opposing… proving him right once again, one more time. They’re still dangerous, but they aren’t scary any more, not after Rush spent all those years mocking them.

We all lost a great friend in Rush Limbaugh today, but he showed us how many friends we really have, across this nation and many others. We are one less, but because of him, we will never again fear we are alone. One voice is stilled, but there will never again be silence.

We can only hope not. Even so, it’s hard to imagine who could possibly fill his shoes. Whatever comes next, the struggle will go on. Klavan recommends defiance as the proper way to honor Limbaugh’s memory:

How could I not be delighted at the fear and loathing he inspired in the great and good? During my long absence from America, the great and good had become such smug, small-minded, and provincial little people, it was a guilty pleasure to watch them writhe on the flame he lit beneath them. For decades, feminists had called men “pigs.” Now Rush called them “feminazis,” and they threw their aprons over their faces and sobbed about his lack of civility. For decades, race-mongers had blamed an innocent generation of whites for a history that they hadn’t made, and now Rush mocked the mongers with wicked impressions, and declared it was time for black Americans to get on board the freedom train with their white fellow citizens.

It was beautiful. Courageous. The kind of radio magic I’d grown up with. And it changed me, or at least helped me change. Rush gave a joyful voice to the new thoughts I didn’t even know I’d had.

I do not cry for dead celebrities. I have just enough tears for the people I know and love. But I choked up when I heard that Rush had left the studio. He was silenced just at the moment when the elite and powerful would silence us all. Our politicians seek to demonize half the nation—Rush’s half. Our news media calls for censorship. Tech billionaires sit on their mountains of gold and gesture like foppish princes to tell us who shall speak and who shall not.

Let us defy them, then. Let us all speak, and fearlessly. Let that be Rush’s monument. In a way, he built it himself.

Seconded, heartily. In his brief post, Michael Walsh offers similar advice:

A great man died today: Rush Limbaugh was 70. He was perceptive on many social and political issues, including the ludicrous claims on the Left that human beings are causing “global warming” or “climate change,” when in fact the “crisis” was and remains simply another “progressive” path to power and domination — “a political movement disguised as science.”

A notion that carbon-based life forms (us) are destroying the planet (ours) by means of carbon emissions is profoundly anti-human. Rush’s greatest legacy may well turn out to be how accurately he exposed them and their malignant misanthropy on this and many other subjects. Let us never forget his lessons and continue to face down the enemies within with humor, wit, intelligence and, above all, courage.

Above even that, let our perception of the Enemy be clear-eyed; let us neither shirk nor flinch from whatever our sacred duty to defend liberty may demand of us, no matter how daunting or distasteful. Let our resolve in the face of the Enemy be as steel, our hearts as ice. Let us be unstinting and implacable in the pursuit of victory—uncompromised victory, unambiguous victory, TOTAL victory. Let us be fully aware that anything short of it would be tantamount to defeat, therefore unacceptable.

Elsewhere, Steyn’s compelling tribute might be the perfect closer, so I’ll excerpt liberally from it even as I also insist that you read every word of it.

It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of Rush Limbaugh, a giant of American broadcasting, a uniquely talented performer, and a hugely generous man to whom I owe almost everything.

One man doing what he wanted to do saved an entire medium – AM radio – and turned all its old rules upside down: Traditionally, morning drive is your big audience, and everything tapers off from there. Rush figured that everyone needs a local guy at that time, with traffic and weather updates, and that the opportunity to build a national show lay in the hitherto somnolent slot of noon-to-three Eastern/nine-to-twelve Pacific. And within a couple of years hundreds of stations were building the entire schedule around the midday guy. In the scheme of things, I am not sure how many of those stations will be able to keep that going without him.

Powerful politicians and longtime fans were often surprised, upon meeting him, to find a man who was quite private and indeed shy – because, like many radio guys, he had no desire to have a public persona other than at the microphone. Unlike so many others in this business, Rush was hugely generous and totally secure. Unlike other shows of left and right, where the staff come and go every six weeks, everyone at the EIB Network has been there fifteen, twenty, thirty years. That includes, in a very peripheral way, yours truly. When I first started guest-hosting, I found it odd that, on the rare occasions Rush mentioned the subs, it would be to put them down. Because, I mean, who would do that? But Rush is the least insecure star on the planet, and I came to see that he was actually teaching the neophytes a very important lesson: You guys need to be completely secure too – because it’s the only way to survive in this wretched media. I came to appreciate that being put down by Rush was actually a far greater compliment than him doing some boilerplate hey-he’s-a-great-guy shtick. And one of the saddest days of my fifteen years with EIB was when I heard Rush a few months back expressing genuine, sincere gratitude for something I’d said about him a few days earlier. As I pleaded on air, I just wanted the old Rush back scoffing at his guest-hosts – so we’d know all was well in the world.

I have come to admire him even more this last year. When he announced his diagnosis, we all knew this story only has one ending, and it’s just a question of how many chapters there are leading up to it. Rush loved what he did more than anything in life except his family. He had no interest in going to Tahiti to watch the sunset. He wanted to be behind the Golden EIB Microphone every day that he could. So initially he took a couple of days off every three weeks for treatment, and then the two days became four, and the treatment weeks took their toll and spilled into the following week. But, through it all, he remained determined to do every single show he could – because, aside from anything else, he wanted to make sure he, his listeners, his brand, his stations did everything they could to put President Trump across the finish line on November 3rd.

Events didn’t quite turn out the way he wanted – although they might have if more people had worked as hard as a man ravaged by Stage IV cancer did, in defiance of his doctors’ prognostications. The last three months, when he and Kathryn had surely earned those Tahitian sunsets, took a terrible toll. But he stayed on the air until just a fortnight ago – because above all he wanted to keep faith with tens of millions of listeners, many of whom had been listening to him their entire lives and could not imagine a world without him.

We are about to find out.

We are at that, and it promises to be neither pleasant nor pretty.

In a sense, it’s fitting that Rush leaves us even as the light of America That Was has been dimmed, if not extinguished outright. One can easily imagine how deeply the unprecedented events over the last year must have troubled him, how painfully they wounded him as he witnessed his beloved country wantonly savaged by audacious but wholly witless fanatics. The Shadow, expanding as it descends, is a drain on the spirit of the strong and weak alike, until it finally devours all.

In his post title, Steyn calls Rush The Indispensable Man, and that he indubitably was. Although I haven’t listened to him much over recent years, there’s no gainsaying his impact, and we can all expect the impact of his loss to be no less momentous. Conservatism as we know it today would simply not exist without Rush Limbaugh. As he singlehandedly revived the dying medium of AM radio, so it was with conservatism itself. Love him or hate him, he was and will ever remain not merely “The Big Voice on the Right,” as he dubbed himself with the bombastic yet slyly facetious overstatement so characteristic of the man. In reality, his voice was The Biggest.

If that ain’t indispensable, I don’t know what is. Be at peace, Rush. You will be sorely, sorely missed.

Update! Several good reminiscences from reformed liberals on their conversion from darkness to light, starting with the valiant, much-lamented warrior Andrew Breitbart.

One day I asked [my future father-in-law Orson Bean] why he had Rush Limbaugh’s book The Way Things Ought to Be on his shelf. I asked him, “Why would you have a book by this guy?”

And Orson said, “Have you ever listened to him?”

I said yes, of course, even though I never had. I was convinced to the core of my being that Rush Limbaugh was a Nazi, anti-black, anti-Jewish, and anti-all things decent. Without berating me for disagreeing with him, Orson simply suggested that I listen to him again.

This is where my rendezvous with destiny begins.

I turned on KFI 640 AM to listen to evil personified from 9 a.m. to noon. Indeed, my goal was to derive pleasure from the degree of evil I found in Rush Limbaugh. I was looking forward to a jovial discussion with Orson to confirm how right I was. One hour turned into three. One listening session into a week’s worth. And next thing I knew, I was starting to doubt my preprogrammed self. I was still a Democrat. I was still a liberal.

But after listening for months while putting thousands of miles on my car, I couldn’t believe that I once thought this man was a Nazi or anything else. While I couldn’t yet accept the premise that he was speaking my language, I marveled at how he could take a breaking news story and offer an entertaining and clear analysis that was like nothing I had ever seen on television, especially the Sunday morning shows, which had been my previous one-stop shop for political opinions.

Most important, though, Limbaugh, like the professor I always wanted but never had the privilege to study under, created a vivid mental picture of the architecture of a world that I resided in but couldn’t see completely: the Democrat-Media Complex. Embedded in Limbaugh’s analysis of politics was always a tandem discussion on the media. Each segment relentlessly pointed to collusion between the media and the Democratic Party. If the Clarence Thomas hearings showed me that something was wrong, the ensuing years of listening to Limbaugh and Dennis Prager — who at the time was also undergoing a political transformation from the Democratic to the Republican Party — explained to me with eerie precision what exactly was wrong. I swallowed hard and conceded to Orson that he was right.

It takes great courage, strength, and humility to swallow one’s pride, admit error, and redirect oneself towards the path of wisdom. Not everybody possesses those gifts; hardly any Leftists do, which helps to explain the extraordinary vehemence and frenzy fueling the ritualistic denunciation of former comrades who reject their previous Progtard beliefs for conservatism. Another:

It was 1992, and I was on vacation in Dallas, Texas. I had literally escaped Los Angeles after riots had broken out, but that’s a story for another time. My friend, who is an airline pilot, told me about this great new radio program called The Rush Limbaugh Show, and since I was a passenger in his car I got a chance to listen in. This Rush Limbaugh guy was kind of funny, but a little too bombastic for my then-moderate tastes. So, once I returned to California, I dismissed the show from my mind.

In 1995, I had a roommate who I couldn’t stand, and she was a Dittohead. Rush Limbaugh was in the last year of his television show, so she watched it religiously. I thought it was a bit cultish and, coupled with my disdain for this particular roommate, I decided that if she liked it, then it wasn’t for me. So, I once again dismissed the show.

Fast forward to 2007. I had a hella long commute to work, and since my very new husband at the time listened to talk radio, I decided to give that a try to get me through the miles, and give us another point of commonality to share. Guess who happened to be on during the time I was on the road? the one and only Rush Limbaugh.

Maybe it was the ability to listen to the entire show, but this time, I was drawn in. Rush’s distribution company Clear Channel Communications had just received a censure letter from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, lambasting Rush for criticizing U.S. troops who were against the war in Iraq, calling them “phony soldiers.” What ensued, with Rush auctioning off the letter to charity for $2.1 million dollars, was the ultimate troll, and extremely savage. Rush gave zero f**ks about it and flipped the script by doing some good for a worthy cause while handing the evil Harry Reid his ass.

From that moment on I was hooked, and listened regularly.

Rush was indeed unique in his ability to persuade, as well as his near-uncanny insight into the effectiveness of humor to get his ideas across. But there’s another essential ingredient in the Limbaugh formula for success, maybe the most important of them all. And somehow, despite their self-proclaimed intellectual superiority, it’s always been beyond the comprehension of Lefty Limbaugh-haters.

Rush’s critics always… always misunderstood him. Maybe it was purposeful. Rush’s critics always depicted him as an angry flame-thrower ranting into his microphone and giving marching orders to his army of ignorant, brainwashed minions.

They couldn’t be more wrong about all of that.

Rush was always smiling… and he was always funny. And he wasn’t giving us marching orders by telling us what to think. It was, in fact, the very opposite.

Rush wasn’t telling us what to think; he was articulating what we already believed. He was just the first to come along and respect us for our views, told us he shared them, and then he used his talents (on loan from God) to crystalize those ideas and articulate them in a clever, succinct, and entertaining way. And…never forget this…he was communicating those ideas on our behalf.

He was there for us. Not to tell us what to think but to help us articulate what we believed and remind us that we are not alone. And he did that in a very personal way.

Precisely. It’s so simple and obvious only a liberal could be unable to grasp it. It’s hopeless, I know, but what the hell. I’ll explain it one more time.

See, some might wave away Rush’s astounding and prolonged success as a matter of sheer dumb luck or, slightly more charitably, fortuitous timing. I think that’s dubious at best. Rush had a huge audience already in place just waiting for someone like him to come along. Millions of put-upon Americans, traditionally revered as the very heart, soul, and backbone of their nation, suddenly scorned as disgusting, bigoted ignoramuses—undeserving beneficiaries of a commodious lifestyle made possible only by the systematic exploitation and abuse of blameless foreigners. From salt of the earth to scum of the earth, in what must have felt like no more than the blink of an eye.

So here’s Normie Joe Sixpack, having had a bellyful of being defamed, denounced, and socially disenfranchised for crimes he never committed at the (soft) hands of mollycoddled ingrates who parasitically enjoyed the fruits produced by Joe’s hard work and ever-stiffening taxes. Then he happens upon a fella on the radio one fine day who not only professes the same beliefs as him, but is doing so with pride, passion, and eloquence. Can you even imagine what that unlooked-for discovery must have felt like to bewildered, frustrated, increasingly pissed off ol’ Joe? It was an affirmation long overdue, and well-earned. How could poor Joe reasonably be expected not to respond with jubilation, rewarding this newfound champion with undying loyalty and affection for their against-all-odds liberation?

Note: If this doesn’t remind you of the response bestowed on a certain outsider President (himself criminally harried from office by the same Lefty hellhounds persecuting poor Normie Joe) for a like affirmation, you should see a doctor to have yourself tested for latent Libtard Syndrome without delay, before your affliction can metastasize and reach its final, incurable stage. The good news is that a significant percentage of the population enjoys a powerful natural resistance to infection; for reasons not yet understood, those with higher levels of intelligence and self-respect have nothing to fear from this mysterious and deadly disease. For the unfortunate percentage who do contract it, LS is known to be one hundred percent fatal to reason, happiness, and mental stability in the briefest of intervals following the onset of frank symptoms. It is nothing to be messing around with.

Anyways. Evidence abounds supporting the contention that Rush was well aware of his potential audience, and of what that might mean for his own prospects, and his country’s. Not to imply that he cynically exploited that knowledge solely for his own enrichment; far from it. Limbaugh still faced years of toil, skepticism, and overt opposition from within his own industry, which I’m sure he also knew. It’s to his eternal credit that he didn’t let the obstacles daunt or dissuade him, readily accepting the challenge to eventually win through via dogged determination; an unshakable faith in his talent, his audience, and his message; and a lifelong ambition to carve out a career for himself in the broadcast-radio industry he so passionately loved.

It sounds like a horrible thing to say, but it’s kind of a shame Rush’s death had to come during the chaotic, floundering rein of an Enemy regime composed entirely of traitors mindlessly hostile to absolutely every principle he stood for. Trump would have seen to it that this profoundly consequential patriot’s legacy was honored as it ought to be, the grief of his admirers respected instead of ignored. But regardless of the indifference that is the very best we can hope for from the illegitimate BaiDing-Harris junta, I’d bet Rush Limbaugh’s funeral is going to be as unforgettable as the man himself was.

So fuck all the haters anyhow. Who cares? There’s not a damned thing they can do to prevent Real Americans from paying their last respects to a truly extraordinary man who was truly one of their own, and proud to be. Maybe the incandescent rage sparked by their own impotence will cause a few of them to keel over dead from a stroke or something. Let them fume, let them shriek, let them hate; the hatred of a scoundrel is an honorable man’s reward. The MahaRushi will be fondly remembered long after the pathetic Stumblebum In Thief and all his works have been forgotten. Rush Limbaugh’s inspiring legacy of achievement and uplift will forever eclipse the usurper Biden’s disgraceful record of corruption, self-regard, and insignificance.