|
While the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world became enormously
wealthy by kissing the boots of the neocon businessmen who have monopolized the
talk radio industry in America there was one "old Right" voice of
freedom that did not waver: Ron Smith of WBAL
Radio in Baltimore. When the neocons lied the nation into the senseless
and unconstitutional war in Iraq in 2003, cheered on by conservative
chickenhawks like Limbaugh and Hannity, Ron Smith remained "the voice of
reason," as he is known in Baltimore, by opposing the war. (Unlike these
chickenhawks, Ron Smith joined the Marines as a teenager).
For opposing the war Ron quickly lost 40 percent of his audience, but
stuck to his guns and continued to oppose the war over the airwaves. The
heroic management of WBAL Radio stood by Ron, and it paid off: nearly all of
the audience returned once it became glaringly obvious that Ron was right
about the war all along, and that the entire nation had been neo-conned (and
continues to be).
I first met Ron Smith in the early 90s when I moved to Baltimore and he
invited me to join him on his radio program to talk about the free market,
Austrian School of economics. He called me the "Minister of Economic
Truth," which I thought was hilarious in light of the fact that the
totalitarian nightmare of the Soviet Union was still a fresh memory in the
minds of many Americans. Every year since then, Ron has invited me on the
show on occasion to talk about markets, capitalism, interventionism, the
evils of Maryland politics and politicians, my books, my LewRockwell.com
articles, and more.
I run a lecture series at Loyola University Maryland and have arranged for
many of my speakers to appear on Ron show. These have included Congressman
Ron Paul, Tom Woods, Yuri Maltsev, John Lott, Gene Epstein of Barrons,
and many other voices of freedom. The very first guest who I recommended and
who Ron interviewed was the late Murray Rothbard. Murray appeared on Rons
show in the early 90s to make the case against the Fed. I recall Ron saying
to me that Murray was brilliant, but really did not have much of a radio
voice! Anyone who knew Murray would agree.
In addition to educating his audiences about markets and the evils of
intervention for some thirty years, Ron Smith has been a powerful voice in
defense of constitutionalism, especially the Second Amendments right to bear
arms. I have never heard a more articulate and educated defender of the
Second Amendment on any other radio or television program.
He has also been fearless in his critiques of the totalitarian-minded
censors who have turned much of higher education into an Orwellian farce of
political correctness. When the "multicultural" Marxist president
of Loyola College maliciously libeled Professor Walter Block for daring to
present a public lecture in which he challenged some of the superstitions of
academic feminism (the university presidents academic
"specialty"), Ron invited Professor Block and me to spend a total
of three hours on his show to respond to such bullying.
The academic Left has so monopolized the university world that such people
routinely assume that they can libel and smear any and all dissenters to
their Official Leftist Dogma by simply calling them vile-sounding names. Ron
Smith enabled Walter Block and me to force these intellectual and moral
frauds to pay a very heavy price for their bullying, for once. (I had university
alumni writing me to say such things as, "after hearing this, Im giving
that $50,000 donation to my church instead of giving it to Loyola
College").
When a despicable, serpentine political hack named Congressman Lacy Clay
(D-Banksters) libeled me as a supposed member of a "hate group" for
my writing and speaking in favor of the traditional, Jeffersonian ideas of
decentralized government, nullification, and secession, Ron immediately
invited me on his show to respond to the sleaze. ("Youve been favorably
quoted by a Web site called Dump D.C.!" the congress critter
hysterically and indignantly ranted at a hearing of the House Financial
Services Committee in Washington).
Thanks to such people as Ron Smith, Mike Church of Sirius Radio, Lew
Rockwell, RealClearPolitics, and other elements of "the new
media," Clay was also forced to pay a price in terms of negative
publicity for his boorish, bullying behavior. He and his Democratic
colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee (including the odious
Barney Frank) responded to the bad publicity by boycotting the next hearing
of the committee held by Congressman Ron Paul, behaving like so many
five-year-olds.
Readers of LewRockwell.com learned on the blog last week that Ron Smith is
now battling inoperable stage-four pancreatic cancer. Ron is once again
behaving heroically by carrying on with his show, which I pray he will do for
many years to come.
|
