INCONSISTENCY: THE AMERICAN WAY

More than 300,000 Americans, conservatively estimated, are behind bars for
nonviolent drug offenses related to personal use.

Rush Limbaugh isn't likely to become one of them.

Even if Limbaugh is found to have broken the law by purchasing thousands of
prescription painkillers, he has about as much chance of going to prison as
I have of going to the moon.

It's a blatant example of injustice -- not because Limbaugh should go to
prison, but because hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders who
did go, shouldn't have.

Yet one wonders if Limbaugh's personal crisis will translate into a new
sense of compassion for those who weren't fortunate to be rich, white
celebrities who can afford to enroll in private drug treatment clinics
accompanied by the prayers and support of millions of fans.

Will Limbaugh's 20 million ''dittoheads'' -- the loyal followers of his
syndicated radio show -- begin to see the value of public funding for drug
treatment and rehabilitation programs, which studies indicate is a more
effective strategy than incarceration for straightening out lives, at a
third of the cost?

Will they gain new insight that even good conservatives known for deriding
liberals for coddling criminals and discouraging personal responsibility,
may find themselves in need of a break and a little understanding themselves?

Not likely. The ethical and moral standards we Americans love to tout are
anything but consistent -- in fact, they can be wildly arbitrary, often
changing 180 degrees depending on the circumstances and the individuals
involved.

Limbaugh's fans won't angrily demand that people like him do the time for
doing the crime, no excuses. More likely, they'll point out a million
reasons why he should be considered a good man who needs help -- which
would be fine, if only they would offer the same sympathy to the unheralded
thousands of others who are so easily stereotyped and forgotten.

America's ethical inconsistencies go beyond drug policy.

How about sexual morality? Just five years ago, millions of Americans
piously argued that the president was a terrible example to youth and
should be impeached for fibbing about his extramarital fling with a
consenting adult partner.

Now, Californians have elected as governor a married man who admits to
having ''playfully'' groped and pawed women -- which legally qualifies as
sexual battery -- for the better part of 30 years.

What changed? For one thing, the Clinton sex scandals of the 1990s occurred
during a time of plenty. The economy was booming. Consumers were buying;
workers were working. Even average folks were day-trading for profits in
the stock market. We could afford to nitpick about morality.

Today, with 3.3 million Americans having lost their jobs since 2001 and
state budgets gasping for solvency, we have more pressing matters than
Arnold Schwarzenegger's definition of playfulness. We also have displayed
shifting morality regarding war.

Many Americans in 1992 and 1994 reacted with outrage at the thought of
risking a single American soldier's life in Somalia and Haiti, even if it
meant alleviating ongoing human rights atrocities in those countries.

Many of those same Americans had no trouble with sending a quarter million
troops to war against people who weren't doing anything to us, based on a
vague threat posed by their resident despot. The relentless drip of
American blood is considered a reasonable price for a venture that has yet
to be objectively justified.

Again, changing circumstances -- in this case, the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks -- dramatically transmogrified our principles. What once was
unacceptable is now advocated. America, once the great and wise king of the
global jungle for whom restraint was a noble attribute, has become a
snarling hyena poised to attack any nation at the first sign of obstinacy
- -- and a considerable portion of the American people don't seem to mind.

But a principle isn't really a principle if it shifts every time
circumstances change, or when it applies to some people but not others.

One wonders if that thought will cross Rush Limbaugh's mind as he recovers
from his unfortunate addiction in nurturing surroundings of a clinic rather
than a locked concrete cell.