5 Feet of Fury

Orson Scott Card on Rush Limbaugh, “phoniness” and “the Left’s disposable patriotism”

Many [soldiers], in good conscience, came to oppose the war, and when they came home, they spoke out as American citizens, opposing the war.

“But they are a minority — a small minority — of soldiers. They do not remotely speak for the whole.

“That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. But it does mean that, by the standard the Left uses for black intellectuals like Thomas, Sowell, and McWhorter, they are certainly ‘inauthentic.  That is, they do not echo the views of the vast majority of the group they purportedly represent.

“So the Left, following their own moral logic, would have no qualms about calling them ‘inauthentic’ and ‘nonrepresentative of their culture’ — except that instead they find them useful. For propaganda purposes. So these soldiers get exploited, trotted out at every opportunity, so that Stupid People will get the impression that ‘soldiers oppose the war.’

“When you use American soldiers that way — even sincere soldiers who now oppose the war — you make them phony by using them to deliver a false message.

“So even if Limbaugh had meant to speak of all veterans who oppose the war as ‘phony,’ by the logic of the Left he would have been right; and in the context of how the Left uses them to try to break American morale, he would have been right yet again.”