Not-so-conservative talk radio

Published on Wednesday, 08 September 2010 13:55

Written by Philip Mulivor

Lately I've been amused by a radio commercial that tries to help us avoid the disppointment of running out of printer ink by evoking memories of other sudden letdowns. It asks: "Do you remember when you found out what your favorite DJ looks like?"

I just found out what my favorite conservative radio talk-show host looks like. Actually, I've still never seen his face, but I now know what his politics really look like — specifically, his views on the Second Amendment. And, yes, it was a jarring and bitter disappointment.

I've been listening to this character every weekday morning for three years during my 30-mile commute to work. Every day he'd expound on current events, invoking the high principles of political conservatism. And every morning I'd nod my head in agreement, happy to have the company of a sane and sensible pal on my long ride to the office.

Then came the shock.

Here's what the NRA's First Freedom magazine recently had to say about Bill Bennett, host of "Morning in America" on the Salem Radio Network:

"Before the dark days of the Clinton administration, few federal government officials had done more to damage Second Amendment rights than William Bennett, the so-called 'drug czar' under President George H.W. Bush. In March 1989, Bennett set off a national panic by pushing the first Bush administration to ban the import of so-called 'assault weapons.' Bennett claimed that 'assault weapons' were the firearms of choice for violent drug dealers. The claim, of course, was nonsense. Police gun seizure data showed that the guns were rarely used in any type of crime. Yet Bennett’s massive publicity stunt prohibited dozens of models of high-quality guns. And it set the stage for state-level bans on so-called 'assault weapons,' and, in the long run, for the 1994 Clinton gun ban." (Kopel, Dave. "The Pieces Fall Into Place." America's First Freedom May 2009.)

This might explain why I've never heard Bennett discuss guns — even during the peak of the Heller case in 2008, and, more recently, during the momentous McDonald v. Chicago decision last June.

The lesson here is simple, and I'm probably the last person in Ohio to get it: Not all pro-2A folks are politically conservative, and not all conservatives are pro-2A.

Still, I'm not sure how a gun-grabber of any stripe can be construed as politically conservative; the two concepts are, by their generally accepted definitions, mutually exclusive. But we live at a time when political labels mean less and less (I recently had to explain to someone that "undocumented worker" is liberal jargon for "illegal alien").

Bill Bennett's case, though, is especially annoying: He has had the impudence to use the term "American Patriot" in one of his recent book titles.

You can play with the word "conservative" all you want, Mr. Bennett, but "patriot" — a title reserved for those who defend the Constitution — you shall not award yourself.

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