He talked to each of us individually because he knew us – he lived just like us. He was us.
[Dear friends, like many of you I suspect, I tried to steel myself that Rush Limbaugh, my dear, dear friend whom I never met in person, would not be with us much longer. Yet he fought his battle head on, and allowed us to be part of it.
Today, I find myself unable to stop a tear and the catch in my throat as I write. He has passed. He now sees face to face the God from whom and to whom he gave all credit.
It is like he lived in my home, car, and even work for these many years. I wrote the following in February 2020, when Rush announced to us that he was battling stage four lung cancer. Today as I read it I can’t say more, except to thank Rush for his incredible contribution to our lives and to the nation, and to thank humbly my God who gave him to us for a little while. MG].
There is no other person who has shaped and explained modern conservatism, traditional values and the American story with more insight, sagacity, and profoundness than Rush Limbaugh. No voice in this country, or frankly the western world, better captures and articulates the story of human freedom, liberty, and dignity.
Rush’s opinion speaks for tens of millions of average citizens who have no voice, addresses politicians who have no honor or spine, and shines the searchlight of common sense across the dark corners of the culture.
For over thirty years he has lived a public life that has reminded us that we’re all broken pottery in this world. He has lost his hearing and battled addiction. But his audience and popularity have grown just the same – because he spoke what so many of us knew and were unable to say to those who would be our kings. He fumes for us and with us at the tiny, soulless and petty minds of bureaucracies who attack the lives and spirit of average citizens, demanding that they live this way or that way as they direct. He talks to each of us individually because he knows us – he’s lived just like us. He is us.
There is no one between Rush’s “golden EIB microphone” and us.
Today Rush told us that he had been diagnosed with “advanced lung cancer.” It was just Rush talking to his friends. I heard a trace of sadness in the announcement, but it was hard to hear over the noise of profound thankfulness to us, and his love for us, and this country.
I know the haters will hate. I’ve often had people tell me how terrible Rush has been for the country, for the dialogue of the nation. When I quizzed them, invariably they’d never even heard him, they were merely parroting the line of the culture. Others, conservatives, have scoffed at him, and I only heard jealousy, not reason.
Rush, to my mind, is one of those unique persons God gifted from birth to do one thing. Rush knows that.
I pray for a miraculous recovery from this dreadful disease for Rush. I know that he has a deep and abiding faith in God, and I believe that if this wretched curse is not thrown from its course, Rush will meet it with the grace and good heart with which he has always met difficulties.
But, if I’m honest, I’d admit that I fear the vacuum his leaving us would create. I’m sad for us. God speed Rush. God speed.