{"id":28298,"date":"2008-02-05T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:20:06","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T04:20:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:20:06","slug":"hope_is_an_excuse_for_not_trying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/02\/05\/hope_is_an_excuse_for_not_trying\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope Is an Excuse for Not Trying"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: You\u2019ve heard me say it: ‘The most expensive thing we pay for in this country is ignorance.\u2019 (sigh) Because of ignorance, Hillary Clinton\u2019s viable. Hillary Clinton\u2019s the least qualified. She has no business being anywhere near the Democrat Party nomination — nowhere near it, for any of the right reasons. Zilch, zero, nada. For that matter, neither is Obama. But Obama\u2019s got this soaring, JFK-like, totally vapid, vapid rhetoric. ‘It makes me feel so good, Rush!\u2019 Fine. You want to feel good? Enjoy it while it lasts, \u2019til he gets elected. (interruption) What? What now, Snerdley? (interruption) Snerdley says, ‘You keep underestimating the value of hope.\u2019 I guess this is going to perhaps rub people the wrong way, and I don\u2019t like rubbing people the wrong way. I really don\u2019t. <\/p>\n

I like to rub you the right way. I don\u2019t like being rubbed the wrong way. There\u2019s a specific way to do it that I like. I wouldn\u2019t want it done wrongly, incorrectly. I\u2019m underestimating the value of hope, did you say? What are you hoping for right now, Mr. Snerdley? What are you hoping for? If you\u2019re going to talk to me about hope, how much time a day do you spend hoping, and for what do you hope? By the way, any of you on the phones want to try to answer this question, tell me what you\u2019re hoping for. What do you hope for? You\u2019re hoping for a better country. Okay, you are hoping for a better country. You think I\u2019m not? Well, I\u2019m not ‘hoping\u2019 for it! I\u2019m trying to create it! I\u2019m trying to make it happen. What do you mean, ‘hoping for\u2019? I want it. Hope… You go look up the definition of ‘hope.\u2019 Hope is valid. It\u2019s a valid emotion. You can\u2019t avoid it. We all have, ‘Gee, I — I hope the plane\u2019s on time.\u2019 ‘I hope my — my refund check arrives next week to pay off my subprime sub-loan so I can go out and get my new refrigerator.\u2019 Hope is the stepchild of sympathy. It\u2019s like sympathy. You can have sympathy for somebody. <\/p>\n

Like, I\u2019m looking at Bob Beckel right now. I feel terribly sorry for him, that he\u2019s where he is. He\u2019s irrelevant in the Democrat Party. But what good is that going to do him, my feeling sorry for him? Or what good is anybody feeling sorry for me going to do? After you get that out of the way, then where are you? I know that the liberals rely on hope; they rely totally on emotion. They\u2019re hoping for a better country. They live in the best damn country in the history of the human race; they don\u2019t have the ability to find it, see it, maximize it, participate in it, grow it. They\u2019re hoping for something else. They just want to get noticed. Hope is the logical extension of people who think they don\u2019t matter to anything, and a lot of people don\u2019t like not mattering. Everybody wants to have meaning in their lives. So if you hope for good things, if you hope for a better country, ‘I matter, because I care, because I hope for a better country.\u2019 What are you doing to create it? You think we\u2019re going to be a better country by electing Hillary or Obama? Ha-ha. Your hope will lead you to a disastrous outcome.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Brian says to me, ‘I hope a lot of conservatives show up and vote.\u2019 Okay. What good is your hope to that outcome? What does hope mean? Let me tell you, folks. I\u2019ll develop this in mere moments, but hope is simply an excuse for not trying.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, I\u2019m not trying to irritate people with this hope business. By the way, I printed out a lot of e-mails today. I thought what I would do, because we had that caller from Mississippi yesterday who was great. It went on and on, he was just totally against McCain, explained why, said he loved me and loved the program, he was going to stick here no matter what happens and so forth. I got a lot of e-mails from people, ‘I like hearing people like that, Rush, because I feel like I\u2019m not alone.\u2019 So I went through this morning, between when I left the computer at home, which I guess was about 11:30 p.m., when I cashed it in last night, because I was tired after the Super Bowl party on Sunday night. So I cashed it in around 11:30 p.m., and I got in here this morning, about 3,000 e-mails had collected in the ElRushbo@eibnet.com e-mail address. <\/p>\n

So I just went through a couple of them and I got a stack here of anti-McCain e-mails from people, and in the stack I also printed out a couple, ‘I wish you\u2019d shut up. Why don\u2019t you get on board. Don\u2019t you realize you\u2019re hurting the party?\u2019 I\u2019ve got a mixture of these things in here. And I have to remind myself, yes, we are into our 20th year of broadcast service to America here on the EIB Network. And over those 20 years, we\u2019ve had a core audience, but some come and go, and there are new arrivals each and every day. You know what I always say, it takes awhile, steady listening, to understand the context of this program. But one of the things that I\u2019ve always said to you folks in the audience is that we have like a familial kind of bond, a connection, and all of these media attacks on me have not been able to break that bond because the media did not create that bond. You and I did that together. I mean, you\u2019re not here listening to the program because the media has sung my praises over the years and created your curiosity. You are here because you listen to the program and you like it, and you get whatever you get from it. So consequently the media tries to drive a wedge between us, they can\u2019t because they didn\u2019t create the bond that exists. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I feel it incumbent upon me to forever engage, constantly engage in having you understand who I am as a person, as a man, so that you will have some contextual understanding for the opinions and positions that I take. Mr. Snerdley has been on me for the last couple weeks on the whole concept of hope, and every time he brings hope up I ridicule it, and he just bows his head in there. I bring it up in the context of talking about the Obama campaign, which is filled with nothing but hope. Obama, just like McCain, is getting away with hiding the substance of what he believes, all this flowery talk of hope and the Camelot and JFK and so forth, and I realize, it\u2019s empty. The discussion of hope from a political leader is pure poppycock. It\u2019s empty; it\u2019s transparent; there\u2019s nothing there. It is totally devoid of substance. And every time I say this, Snerdley cringes and says, ‘I wish you wouldn\u2019t say that. People have to have hope.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Let me try this — feel free to disagree, as always. I say this so that you will understand. I\u2019m not putting people down with this. I love people. I want the best for people. I want people to understand the potential that is theirs. I want people to understand the opportunity this country provides. I don\u2019t want people sitting around wishing for things. I want people motivated and desirous to do things, because that\u2019s how you realize success. That\u2019s how you realize your potential. That\u2019s how you learn you\u2019ve got more potential than you even knew — in trying something. If you sit around hoping for it all day, it might sustain you for a while, but — see, none of us can predict the outcomes in our lives, and so many of us use hope as a bridge to the eventual outcome we hope for from event to event or circumstance to circumstance. In my understanding, and in my experience, I should say, my hoping for something never made it happen. My desire for something did. I think hope — let\u2019s look at liberals, and all these people that are fooling themselves with all this flowery, hopeful talk of a brilliant utopian future from Mr. Obama. <\/p>\n

That hope, as exhibited by liberal Democrats, is nothing more than an excuse for not trying. You sit around and hope something happens, whatever it is. You can apply this to anything. See, folks, what I know from my own experiences is that I cannot predict the future, and I don\u2019t sit around hoping for outcomes, because what most people do in that circumstance is tell themselves negative stories. It\u2019s just the way we\u2019re made. That leads to all kinds of suffering, self-inflicted suffering. ‘Gosh, I hope I don\u2019t get fired next week.\u2019 Start thinking I\u2019m going to get fired or whatever it is, you generally end up thinking the negative. Now, people mistakenly place hope as the sentiment or the emotional state that will lead to the outcome of things, ‘Oh, gosh I really so hope this happens.\u2019 But that\u2019s basically an excuse for not doing anything, for not trying, and so what you\u2019re doing is you\u2019re setting yourself up to have to deal with whatever happens, probably negatively, because you\u2019re not allowing yourself to be part of the equation to get the result that you want. <\/p>\n

Faith, to me, is a far better thing to have than hope. Let me illustrate it in the political sense. A lot of people are hoping that Senator McCain will beat Senator Clinton, and that\u2019s the sole reason that they are supporting Senator McCain, because for whatever reason, they so dislike or are so afraid of Mrs. Clinton, and they think, they hope McCain can beat her. I have very little faith that he can. I\u2019m not hoping he loses. I\u2019m not hoping she loses. I\u2019m looking at the circumstances. I don\u2019t have much faith that he can beat her, for the reasons that we\u2019ve been into. Desire, on the other hand, is the equivalent of action in all of this. Hope equals no action. Faith is preferable to hope because faith at least has an optimistic aspect to it. Your religious faith is optimistic. It\u2019s an eternal life. It is all of the things that you think your devotion and your worship will bring you. That\u2019s optimism. Hope is simply sitting around, taking yourself out of the equation, subjecting yourself to circumstances that you can\u2019t control, admitting that you can\u2019t or don\u2019t want to have any influence on. You\u2019re basically excusing yourself for not trying. You\u2019re hoping. <\/p>\n

You ever heard the phrase ‘hope against hope\u2019? I\u2019m sorry, hope against hope, it means it\u2019s not going to get you anywhere. Desire, however, is what leads to action. So if you want Mrs. Clinton to be beat, if you want her defeated, then that\u2019s going to lead you to a different thought process and action process and perhaps voting process than simply sitting around hoping so, because by hoping, you\u2019re placing the responsibility in somebody else\u2019s back pocket, in this case Senator McCain\u2019s. Now, that\u2019s where I have no faith that what you hope for is going to happen. Another illustration, and you\u2019ve heard me say this. In this country, you look at our population, you could say that maybe 10%, 15% of the people are pulling the cart, and 85%, 80% are riding in the cart. The 15% to 20% pulling the cart haven\u2019t got time for hope. They know where they\u2019re going. They have a specific objective. They have specific goals. They have specific purposes and places they want to end up. The people being pulled in the cart are hoping they end up in a good place, but they\u2019re not leading anybody there. Now, don\u2019t misunderstand. Hope is not invalid. It\u2019s something we all experience. It\u2019s an emotion that we all feel, and a lot of us invest in it. <\/p>\n

I try not to hope too much, because to me it equals inaction. I\u2019m an action guy. I believe things get done when I apply myself to them, not when I sit around and hope that they get done. Sometimes I\u2019ll say to Mr. Snerdley when he\u2019s getting on my case about my destroying hope, I will say to him, ‘What\u2019s hope ever accomplished? Did Bill Gates hope when he was in school that he\u2019d find the secrecy to the MS-DOS system getting on every freaking computer, or did he go do it?\u2019 Well, regardless whether you like Windows — take your pick. The Wright brothers, did they hope the damn thing would work? They probably did. (laughing) But nevertheless, they had faith in their — (laughing) I admit it\u2019s a fine point, but it\u2019s rooted in the fact that hope to me equals inaction and it\u2019s an admission that you don\u2019t know what future outcomes are because you can\u2019t possibly know what they are and that getting involved in the circumstances and activities that lead to the conclusion make far more sense to getting a conclusion that you want than just sitting around hoping that you get what you want. I hope this enables you to understand me a little better. (laughing)<\/p>\n

END TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

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RUSH: You\u2019ve heard me say it: ‘The most expensive thing we pay for in this country is ignorance.\u2019 (sigh) Because of ignorance, Hillary Clinton\u2019s viable. Hillary Clinton\u2019s the least qualified. She has no business being anywhere near the Democrat Party nomination — nowhere near it, for any of the right reasons. Zilch, zero, nada. 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