"Ladies and gentlemen..., you seem to accept as okay that the government, intelligence agencies, would be collecting all of this data on Americans."

"And what makes you mad is that this little twerp has come along and exposed how it's done. Do any of you care why this is being done? It matters to me who is doing it. I've accepted that it's being done just like a lot of you have. But... who is doing it... why are they doing it?  Are any of you interested in that aspect of this?  Well, of course they say national security, and then when they say national security, 'Oh, oh, okay, okay, fine, fine.'  And then you forget about it. Well, you don't forget about it, you just assume. I think everybody's walking around at some level of consciousness, thinking that if somebody wants to find out about them, they can.  In addition to that, everybody, if you go to these social networks, Facebook, Twitter, everybody, or a lot of people are volunteering every bit of information about themselves without having to be spied on.  Putting a lot of trust in everybody, putting a lot of trust in their fellow citizens, in their friends, in government...."

That's Rush Limbaugh, thinking out loud — which the previous post about the WaPo-Pew poll and the interplay of partisanship and ideology made me think of. It's a fascinating monologue, with Rush saying he's "in a holding pattern just to wait and see, because, as you know, I do everything I can to avoid the conventional wisdom of the day, to follow the crowd." I'm sure his antagonists have no idea he's so measured and thoughtful. It's practically Obamaesque. Or do you think Obama merely poses as thoughtful? The extent to which Obama and Rush pretend to be working through the issues is a mystery we're never going to solve.

Anyway, I recommend the Rush monologue, which has him interacting with "Mr. Snerdley," whom we never hear, so we never know what input he's actually getting from his producer/engineer James Golden. Rush tells us "Snerdley's livid at" Edward Snowden, that Snerdley's talking about trying Snowden for "treason" for "giving away... secrets." The implied participation of Snerdley, whose thinking, we're told "may represent the thinking of a lot of you," enhances the dialogic quality of the monologue.

ADDED: I say "enhances the dialogic quality" because Rush's thinking out loud from his "holding pattern" already involves him going back and forth taking different viewpoints. I notice and appreciate this because it feels similar to what I do as a law professor to show students what's going on in a case. But as a law professor, I'm not trying to get to my own answer. Developing the issue and the various arguments and opinions is the end in itself. Sometimes a student will ask me what I think, and I like to say that's irrelevant, but if I have an opinion — if — I'll admit it just to give them more power to try to extract any bias I might have injected into the discussion.