More on Limbaugh and dependence

Michael P. are you also relishing the fact that probably for the first time in MOJ’s four year history another blogger can use our names interchangeably without the need for an identifying P or S?

Rick, your point is well taken, in context Limbaugh might be talking about a Dave Ramsey-type life strategy.  And, you are also right that “[i]t is not at all obvious that Limbaugh was trying to make anything like Glendon's sophisticated, anthropological point.”  Can the argument be made, however, that Limbaugh’s overall body of work contains elements of an implicit anthropology at odds with an authentic understanding of the human person? 

Over the years I have listened to Limbaugh’s show occasionally when driving in the car. My impression is that the line between healthy skepticism about government and a rugged individualistic rhetoric (a strain of radical autonomy) is often blurred.  I don’t know whether he is merely waging a political fight against the forces of big government unaware of the ambiguity in the rhetoric or if he implicitly or explicitly holds to an individualistic anthropology. 

What I do know (from personal conversations over the years) is that some of his listeners who describe themselves as “conservative” or members of the “religious right” confuse these concepts.  It is one thing to say “I earned this money, and I don’t want the government taking it from me through higher taxes because I think that I (along with my peers) am a better steward of my resources than the government.”  It is quite another to say, “it is my money, I earned it through my own hard work, and it is nobody else’s business what I do with it.”  The latter denies the web of relationships that brought the person to and sustains the person in a place of financial peace.  It denies God’s radical gift of all that we are, including our intelligence and ingenuity.  It also fails to see that using my wealth for the common good and the good of others is not solely an act of charity but also can be an act of justice.  As Mike Schutt says, there is an awful lot of this sort of modernist autonomy thinking going on even in conservative Christian circles, which is one of the reasons I eschew the label conservative for myself.

To the extent that Limbaugh’s rhetoric is fanning these flames of confusion, it ought to be criticized.