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Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh in 2020 and last week the WH posted a video of Trump, reflecting on the "the five years since the lost [sic] of Rush Limbaugh."
Limbaugh often complained that conservatives had lost control of America's major cultural institutions. Liberalism, he wrote in 1993, "long ago captured the arts, the press, the entertainment industries, the universities, the schools, the libraries, the foundations, etc."
When Trump said to his supporters in 2023 that he would be their retribution, he was talking about settling political scores from his first term, but he was also talking about Limbaugh's war on "cultural Marxism."
Conservatives like Limbaugh argued that multiculturalism was divisive and that the Left's embrace of relativism would upend the "traditional values" of the West, leading to its political and economic downfall.
So the "war on woke" started more than 30 years ago.
@xankarn As a conservative, there's a lot in that critique of relativism that resonates with me--which is why I was a Republican ACTIVIST for many of those years.
What I fault Trump--and my former party--for (aside from the blatant hypocrisy you lay bare in the rest of your thread) is their willingness to throw the Constitution and democracy ITSELF under the bus (and get in bed with a hostile foreign power during time of war--you know, #TRE45ON) to "win," rather than doing the hard work of MAKING A BETTER CASE AGAINST relativism and learning HOW TO EFFECTIVELY EDUCATE the American people about its dangers--but then respecting their right (given BY GOD HIMSELF, in addition to as citizens of a democracy) to choose in this world TO FOLLOW IT ANYHOW, and leave accountability for that to the Almighty.
I appreciate this perspective and want to respond to a few points, but won’t have time until later today.
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Alexander Karn
Dr. Jim Ellsworth