Christopher Ruddy
Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2001

Rush promises to carry on – and plans on innovative ways to stay on air and on patrol.

For many years Rush was like the lone Marine on sentry duty, ready 24/7.

How quickly we forget those days before the advent of Fox News and websites like ours.

As new media proliferate, Rush remains a powerful and important figure – one the country cannot afford to lose.

Rush demonstrated his importance to this country during the last decade.

He rose to significant national prominence and influence in the early '90s. Soon after coming onto the national scene, Rush had to deal with the Clintons' arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Clintons, we recall, had very ambitious plans for us, including a socialized health care system that would have nationalized 15 percent of the U.S economy.

The Clintonistas were thwarted in doing that, and in many other things, largely because of Rush. It is not easy to take on a sitting president, even more so one who is ruthless with his enemies. Rush did it anyway, often alone.

To say the rest of the media favored the Clintons was an understatement. They loved the Clintons. As the Roper study showed, 89 percent of the Washington press corps voted for the Clintons.

For several years, Rush stood as the only significant opposition figure.

He did what the press, a free press, is suppose to do: Hold our officials accountable.

But, as we discovered during the eight years of Clinton-Gore, there was going to be practically no accountability.

The American way of life and our freedoms depend on this idea of accountability.

The founding fathers developed an elaborate system to foster the idea of accountability. Still, the mechanisms of government were not enough to insure accountabilty.

In their wisdom, the founding fathers added another layer of accountability outside government by enshrining the concept of a free press in the First Amendment.

This scheme worked for most of our country’s history.

But in recent decades it began to falter because the press became more monopolistic (most major cities now have just one daily newspaper) and more ideological. The major media are almost completely dominated by the left wing.

Who, then, was to hold the press accountable? Who was to hold the governing administration accountable when it was run by the left wing?

To fill this need, talk radio soon found its platform. Hosts like Bob Grant in New York made a huge difference acting as a counterbalance to the dominant left.

And by the '90s, Rush was the first host to create a successful nationwide talk program.

During the past eight years, Rush has been unrelenting in his criticism of the Clintons.

Had the liberal media joined with him in holding the Clintons accountable, I don’t believe we would have ever witnessed the events of Sept. 11.

To this day, the press barely talks about the Clintons and their role in undermining America’s national security.

Most Americans still don’t know that Bill Clinton authorized the transfer of America’s most guarded national secrets, including nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology, to China – as Chinese cash filled his 1996 campaign coffers.

These facts barely rated media time. Only Rush in the major media consistently held Clinton accountable.

But Rush was that lone Marine. The rest of the media should have been doing their job.

Since Sept. 11, the press has little interest in holding the CIA, the FBI, Congress and the previous administration accountable.

If there is no accountability, how will our system of self-government survive?

In the wake of Sept. 11, we have discovered how the CIA was blinded by Clinton policies (a story, I might note, broken on NewsMax). We have much more to discover about the Clintons in the months and years ahead.

Rush may be going deaf, but he still has much to contribute to this great country.

He can still speak. As the biased media coverage since Sept. 11 proves, we still need to hear his voice.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
China/Taiwan
Clinton Scandals
Media Bias

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