Helen Keller and Brian McGough

At the time Keller became a socialist, she was one of the most famous women on the planet. She soon became the most notorious. Her conversion to socialism caused a new storm of publicity - this time outraged. Newspapers that had extolled her courage and intelligence now emphasized her handicap. Columnists charged that she had no independent sensory input and was in thrall to those who fed her information. Typical was the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, wrote that Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development."

Keller recalls having met this editor: "At the time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him." She went on, "Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which was are trying to prevent.

- James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, p22. Thanks to Brice Lord for recommending it.

Rush Limbaugh:

VoteVets.org has -- they describe themselves as an organization comprised of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns who oppose current policy in Iraq. They've put together a TV ad that takes aim at me. This ad's going to run on Fox News, on CNN, it's going to run on WMAL radio in Washington, $60,000 ad buy that's going to run, I think, on our local West Palm Beach station down here. And there's a man identified as Brian McCoff -- McGough -- it's M-C-G-O-U-G-H, I'm not sure how he pronounces it, McGo, McGuff -- I haven't watched the ad.

He discusses his service in Iraq, the wounds he suffered there, and he says to me in this ad, "Until you have the guts to call me a 'phony soldier' to my face, stop telling lies about my service." You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into.

This man will always be a hero to this country with everyone. Whoever pumped him full of these lies about what I said and embarrassed him with this ad has betrayed him. They're not hurting me, they're betraying this soldier. Now, unless he actually believes what he's saying, in which case it's just so unfortunate and sad when the truth of what I said is right out there to be learned.