{"id":232638,"date":"2017-05-09T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=232638"},"modified":"2017-05-10T15:54:52","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T19:54:52","slug":"why-im-fascinated-by-the-millennial-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/05\/09\/why-im-fascinated-by-the-millennial-generation\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I\u2019m Fascinated with the Millennial Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: The Millennial generation — how they think, how they vote, their ideological persuasions. It all fascinates me, because they are generationally the future of the country. A lot things depend on them. And so we hope that… You go back to World War II as an example of what I\u2019m referring to here. In World War II, prior to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, the last thing that we wanted to do was get in the war. The war was raging in the Pacific. It was raging in Europe. Hitler was on the march. The prevailing opinion of the day in the United States was, “Not our war, none of our business.<\/p>\n

\"\"“There\u2019s nothing for us there. Our interests are not threatened by any of this.” That was the prevailing opinion. But FDR felt differently and wanted us in the war but needed a reason, needed a pretext. The Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor gave the pretext. And then, of course, there was a moral component to stopping Hitler and what was going on. So on almost practically a moment\u2019s notice, the United States was able to field a uniformed military that defeated the most evil powers on the planet at the time, via the draft.<\/p>\n

Eighteen, 19, 20-year-old people. It was men at the time, but everybody pitched in. As you know, the women went to work in factories. The amount of production this country engaged in producing weapons and armament, airplanes, ammunition? It was phenomenal what it did. And that was what ended, by the way, the Great Depression. Not the New Deal. It was the military buildup necessary — the economic activity resulting from it — that actually ended the Great Depression that had started in the thirties. It took eight to 10 years.<\/p>\n

It was phenomenal what had happened. But more than that, we did not have a supply of battle-ready, highly trained, ready to go at a moment\u2019s notice military. They were drafted. It was a testament. This is why this generation is called the Greatest Generation, because of what they did and what they had lived through prior to this. They had lived through the Great Depression. They had lived through abject poverty. Their parents had experienced World War I.<\/p>\n

The postwar boom was yet to happen. That didn\u2019t happen \u2019til after World War II in the fifties. Yet a draft of the average, ordinary American citizen was able to produce the most professional, the most skilled, the best trained fighting force the world had known. They were not sitting in barracks waiting to be called up. These were not people who had entered the military as a career. Leadership was, but I\u2019m talking the rank-and-file, the people that went to Ranger School and ended up rappelling up Pointe du Hoc.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The people of the Battle of Bulge. The people that went to the Pacific Theater. You stop and think. It was average, ordinary Americans who were plucked from relative obscurity from their daily lives and daily jobs who were then put together and tasked with defeating the evil empires at the time of Japan and Nazi Germany — and they did. I wonder. We don\u2019t fight wars like that anymore. For example, Pointe du Hoc <\/a>where it took the Rangers physically rappelling up a 200-foot cliff in the north of France?<\/p>\n

We wouldn\u2019t fight the Germans that way today. If something like that had happened, we\u2019d drone them out, take them out with laser-guided bombs. So that kind of warfare such as depicted in the movie Patton or any of the World War II movies, we\u2019re more advanced than that now, and we have circumstances where we have less reason to put as many human beings in the line of fire. But there are still those moments, such as at Benghazi.<\/p>\n

But the point is, the generation back then — our values, our customs, the fabric of our society — was such that drafting thousands and thousands of average, ordinary Americans… And you can see them buried in the cemeteries of Europe; you can see them buried at Arlington. Just a random selection of people from all over the country created the absolute best, most skilled fighting force ever. Could we do it today if we had to? There are people that legitimately ask the question. It\u2019s not meant to insult anybody. It\u2019s not meant to cast aspersions on any other generation.<\/p>\n