When It Hurts to Stay True To Your Liberal Values

this article (link from calpundit) better articulates my position on limbaugh's drug addiction. i am against the drug war because of erosion of civil liberties that has accompanied it. i am against it because it doesn't work, and for a lot of other reasons. as sorely tempted as i am to call for punishing him to the full extent of the law, i just can't do it. as much as i loathe that man, i disagree with the fundamental basis for those laws.

if you are anti-drug war and if you who believe in treating addicts with compassion, but are willing to make an exception by calling for the harshest punishment under the law for limbaugh, then you are a hypocrite. not only that, you are missing out on the opportunity to confront his right wing fans with their own hypocrisy. this post (link from calpundit) from mark r. kleiman raises this very point:

Atrios provides a clip in which Limbaugh makes fun of the "disease" theory of addiction, which, I agree, makes his actual behavior a legitimate subject of comment. And I think it's fair to ask supporters of harsh punishments for drug users in general whether that ought to apply in Limbaugh's case, and, if not, why not.

UPDATE:

tristero has a very compelling proposal.

To those of us who have been among the most victimized by Limbaugh - liberals - I suggest a rather unusual tactic in dealing with Limbaugh's drug addiction. I suppose some of my fellow libs might misundertstand this as "going easy" on Limbaugh. It is not. I propose torturing him with kindness. The type of kindness that liberals, better than anyone, know how to practice. The kindness that results from truly understanding a problem, truly understanding the suffering of a real sufferer, and the understanding that solutions may be difficult and tragically less than perfect.

snip ...

(Conservatives, please note: To recognize and discuss the value of using compassion and kindness as a tactic on an enemy in order to ruin that enemy's effectiveness is not, as you may decide to charge, hypocrisy. It is simply one more application of non-violence, a civil rights tactic that you wrongly confuse with appeasement or liberal wuss-osity. Non-violence eschews physical violence for tactical reasons only: violence rarely provides desired results. However, non-violence is VERY aggressive, as it needs to be when dealing with social forces as ugly as the ones currently at play in the US.)

Despite Limbaugh and his army of dittoheads, with their vicious putdowns of our values, our self-perception is accurate. Our minds are indeed open to studying a difficult problem, understanding it, and coming up with effective ways to grapple with it. Unlike Limbaugh, liberals are usually quite reluctant to inveigh against someone's alleged "weak moral fibre". Rather, we tend to set our own personal moral judgements to one side so that we can examine an issue - say, oxycontin addiction - and suggest solutions based on their utility, not upon their conformity to an arbitrary, and usually irrelevant, code of behavior.

from another post:

I have no opinion as to whether Limbaugh should be arrested. Only in some alternate universe will such a thing ever happen so it's rather a moot point. I do have an opinion, however, about using the law to wreak vengeance on one's opponents. I think that is not what the law is designed to do, or it should not do so. The purpose of the law is to protect society, period. It is not to dole out revenge. The use of the law for such purposes may be common but that does not make it right. If UggaBugga can wish for a world where Limbaugh has the same chance of going to prison as a poor black kid, I can wish for a world where the law is applied dispassionately.

But "liberal principles" don't stop with the law. Limbaugh is an odious character, as I've said many times, and he's truly harmed this country. However, a Limbaugh without a microphone to rant into is just a pathetic (formerly) fat oaf. It is my goal to see him acquire such status as quickly, and as permanently, as possible.

This does not require wishing ill on him physically. Indeed, to do so merely plays into the cynical hands of the Hannity types who can use it to point out inconsistencies in our position. It is more consistent to hope that Limbaugh manages his addiction somehow (he is likely to relapse for the rest of his life, however) and, without skipping a beat, point to his hypocrisy as a terrible moral failing. (Atrios has been quite excellent on linking to examples of Limbaugh's hypocrisy.)

the links were provided by tristero in a comment thread at calpundit's blog.