The Right to Not Listen

During the final weeks of the 2008 presidential campaign, conservatives rallied around an inadvertent folk hero named "Joe the Plumber." Never mind that his name isn't Joe. Nor, for that matter, is he a plumber. But he represented the Republican Party's chief concern about the opposition: that big government liberals don't care about average Americans—average Joes.

Fast forward almost four years, and the Democrats have apparently discovered their “Joe the Plumber” in Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Vilifying attacks from the right—notably from Rush Limbaugh, who referred to her as a “slut” and a “prostitute”—have typified long-standing beliefs among Democrats and progressives: that Republicans like our government just large enough to intervene in our private lives.

While conservatives used Joe the Plumber as rationale for defeating then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, progressives have launched a concerted effort to have Rush Limbaugh tossed from the airwaves. Joe the Plumber didn’t work—and rightly shouldn’t have worked—for the GOP in 2008.

But neither should this newest movement to oust Limbaugh on behalf of Sandra Fluke.

Comparisons between Limbaugh’s insensitivities toward Ms. Fluke and Don Imus’s unprovoked assault on the Rutgers women’s basketball team have been making the rounds online since the beginning of this controversy, and Limbaugh deserves the backlash he’s received from listeners, sponsors, and entertainers whose music has been featured on his program. 

As a writer, however, I believe in the unyielding strength of free speech. How Limbaugh spends his time at the microphone is his decision. I don’t subscribe to his brand of politics, and thus don’t listen to him. Progressives have waited a long time for this opportunity, and sensing that this controversy might loom large enough to unseat him from his padded leather chair, have pounced. I don’t blame them. But I can’t join them.

I support the cause that brought Ms. Fluke to Capitol Hill—one so well-known at this point that I haven’t needed to mention it in detail here—and support her in rebuking Limbaugh for his remarks. But the right to free speech granted to Limbaugh is also granted to me. And you. In the end, it’s our decision to use it responsibly, lest our audience turn away. And that’s the genius of free speech. While Mr. Limbaugh may have the right to speak freely, we have the right to not listen.

And when enough of us tune him out, the silence will be deafening.