The Voice

It comes on at noon EST, and for the next three hours it spreads like a balm over listeners desperate to hear a little reason and a good dose of common sense in this hour of national need.

It’s a baritone voice, with that easy Midwestern accent that has made fortunes for performers like Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and David Letterman. An American voice, from the middle of the country where politics plays very little role in everyday life, which is how most of the folks who live in flyover country like it. But for those listeners who feel that something creepy and awful may be overtaking our beloved land of the free and home of the brave, those three hours spent with The Voice on a weekday afternoon offer a bracing reaffirmation of what it is that has made America such a swell place to live.

Regular listeners know what they’re in for: three hours of brilliant commentary on the state of the nation and the world, delivered with confidence, humor, and perhaps most important, love. The host behind the voice takes very few callers a day, but those that do make it through are treated with unfailing politeness, even when the caller is taking issue, sometimes heatedly, with the host. (I’m convinced that part of the reason for his success is that in this polarized age where vitriol seems to be the tonic of the times, The Voice always comes across as measured, curious, and tolerant. On a broadcast last year, The Voice referred to transgendered persons as “trannies.” A transgendered caller quickly informed The Voice that the term “tranny” was offensive, and explained why. There followed five minutes of very civil and interesting dialogue between the two, at the end of which The Voice said he wouldn’t be using the word tranny anymore; and because he’s a man of his word, he hasn’t in any of the subsequent broadcasts I’ve listened to.)

But the main attraction is this: his intelligence. Even people who would vociferously disagree with the opinions being expressed by The Voice would have to agree, after listening to an hour or so of commentary, that this is one smart dude. He is widely and deeply read on almost any subject you’d care to name, from the role of the Hanseatic League in building a mercantile economy to the latest Apple product. But for the most part, The Voice talks about politics, and he expresses his ideas with such clarity and honesty that listening to him can become an addiction – just ask his millions of devoted followers.

You’ve probably guessed his name by now – a name synonymous on the left with bile, hatred, intolerance, phobias of every description, bullying, arrogance, grotesque awfulness, blind partisanship, and just about every bad and terrible adjective you can dream up. But here’s the problem: the left is 180 degrees wrong about The Voice, as they are 180 degrees wrong about almost everything. Why? Because they have never listened to The Voice, just as they’ve never actually listened to anyone who disagrees with them. In reality, you’d have to look long and hard before finding a national political commenter who exhibits more empathy or more compassion for the downtrodden and forgotten Americans in our age of globalization than the man who is routinely described as a hater; but because the left doesn’t require actual facts before holding grimly onto a baseless opinion, they can say whatever they want about their adversaries without raising an eyebrow among their fellow delusionals.  

Don’t believe me? Then try this experiment: if you know any conservatives, ask them to list ten things progressives believe, and within thirty seconds you’ll have a list that any progressive will agree reflects his/her/zir beliefs. On the other hand, ask a progressive what conservatives believe, and after a minute or two of panicked inactivity, the progressive will make a list of opinions that absolutely no conservative subscribes to.

Why the disparity? Because conservatives LIVE in a progressive environment. We see, hear, feel, and touch it every day – in our schools, our news, our movies, our TV shows, our social media. And the result of this one-sidedness is that we know you guys inside out, while you know next to nothing about us. You don’t know what we think or what we believe, and you have no clue at all WHY we believe or think the way we do. And you don’t really care to know. It’s much easier to believe that conservatives are just too mean-spirited and stupid to see the error of their ways.

And this blindness (and deafness) to the merits of the other side is why you lost the last presidential election and will certainly lose the next one. You lost because you live in a bubble. And not just any bubble. You inhabit a 24/7 echo chamber, where all you hear are your own prejudices and sophomoric platitudes (“Democracy Dies in Darkness” “The Audacity of Hope”) bouncing back at you.

Meanwhile, for three hours a day, those of us who live in the real world can listen to The Voice – calming, soothing, elucidating, encouraging – reminding those of us trapped among the coastal elites that reason and good-humored thoughtfulness are still very much alive out there in flyover country.

Megadittos, Rush. And thank you.