{"id":30395,"date":"2008-09-12T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:20:26","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T03:20:26","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:20:26","slug":"mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain and Obama Discuss the Idea of American Exceptionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<section>\n<p>RUSH: I thought about apologizing at the beginning of this hour for the first hour in this program, because we\u2019re trucking along really good, we\u2019re just having a grand old time and then I sucked all the oxygen out of the show by playing Obama and McCain sound bites. Both these guys at this forum last night sounded like they were asleep. I\u2019m not being critical of them. I mean, they were at a very staid, respected institution. But it sort of sucked. You wouldn\u2019t believe the people on the other side of the glass here at my EIB studio are still stunned over this Eva Longoria thing. What do you mean, you can\u2019t believe these people? This is who they are! We all think that they can\u2019t go any lower than they went yesterday. They do it, they do every day. What was this treachery, four years of sex and treachery in Desperate Housewives, I thought I was the perfect pick for vice president. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/01125113.Par.89380.ImageFile.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"241\" class=\"alignright\"\/>Anyway, I\u2019m going to run the risk of going back to the Columbia forum for two more sound bites here. The question here from Judy Woodruff is fascinating. She says, &#8216;What is it that\u2019s different about being in America? Are Americans better than people in some of these other countries? We hear the term exceptionalism about the United States.\u2019 Now, I don\u2019t want to analyze this question too much, but I think the whole concept of American exceptionalism probably offends a lot of leftists and a lot of people in the media. I don\u2019t know if Judy Woodruff is just asking a question here or if it represents how she really thinks. But no, we in America do not think that we are better people. We are no different than people around the world. In fact, DNA is the same, humanity is humanity wherever you find it. What separates us from the rest of the world is a miracle that took place in Philadelphia. We have founding documents that enshrine the source of our freedom. We\u2019re all endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the purest of happiness. We happen to be the freest people in the history of the world and we see what free people can do with unlimited potential, ambition, desire, drive, whatever attribute I want to assign. We have run rings around the rest of the world in less than 250 years. We are a superpower like has never existed. We have outrun cultures, countries, societies that have been around thousands of years longer than we have, and we\u2019re no different than anybody else, in terms of our makeup. I want you to hear these two answers. Here is McCain\u2019s answer to the whole notion of American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n<p>MCCAIN: I do believe in American exceptionalism. We are the only nation I know in the world that really is deeply concerned about adhering to the principle that all of us are created equal and endowed by our creators with certain rights, and those we have tried to bring to the world. And we have not so much militarily, but through example, through leadership, through economic assistance.<\/p>\n<p>RUSH: Well, you can\u2019t throw the military out. We\u2019ve liberated how many millions of people? How many hundreds of millions of people have we liberated? We do not conquer. As the caller from Italy said yesterday, &#8216;We\u2019re not Rome. We\u2019re not Greece. We don\u2019t enslave people. We don\u2019t conquer them. We liberate them.\u2019 Here\u2019s Obama\u2019s answer. The question, this Stengel guy, he\u2019s either at TIME Magazine or was. It\u2019s tough to keep track of these guys. They go back and forth from magazines to TV networks to think tanks. He says to Obama, &#8216;Is volunteerism, is national service part of American exceptionalism? Is it part of what makes America special?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>OBAMA: We have always balanced the tradition of individual responsibility and self-reliance with notions of community and love for country, in part because of voluntary associations. What it\u2019s done is allowed people to &#8212; to exercise the freedom to determine the direction of their communities, but still recognizing that we are part of a common project of creating a better life for the next generation. And that\u2019s something that\u2019s been lost. But what we\u2019re seeing in this campaign is that something that people want to restore.<\/p>\n<p>RUSH: Oh, okay, so we\u2019re not exceptional anymore, we\u2019ve lost the ability to organize our communities. We have lost the ability to exercise the freedom to determine direction of our communities. We have lost American exceptionalism, but, but, we can regain it via the Obama Messiah campaign. Quick time-out here, folks. We will be back. There\u2019s a great illusion of the difference between the way a conservative and a liberal looks &#8212; that whole answer of his, by the way, just, again, is there anything presidential in this answer? It\u2019s liberal gobbledygook. It is the kind of garbage that you hear in classrooms at the Ivy League and when they go to clubs and so forth, this is liberal network speak, and it\u2019s not inspiring. Given a chance to talk about American exceptionalism, do you realize what he could have done with that answer if he had the slightest notion that there is something special about America? And he just punts, he just blows it. He thinks America wants to hear how rotten we are, what we\u2019ve lost, how we have been better. He can\u2019t specify when it\u2019s been better. He can only tell us that we want to get better through him and his idiotic campaign. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RUSH: I thought about apologizing at the beginning of this hour for the first hour in this program, because we\u2019re trucking along really good, we\u2019re just having a grand old time and then I sucked all the oxygen out of the show by playing Obama and McCain sound bites. Both these guys at this forum [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v17.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>McCain and Obama Discuss the Idea of American Exceptionalism - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"McCain and Obama Discuss the Idea of American Exceptionalism - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: I thought about apologizing at the beginning of this hour for the first hour in this program, because we\u2019re trucking along really good, we\u2019re just having a grand old time and then I sucked all the oxygen out of the show by playing Obama and McCain sound bites. Both these guys at this forum [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/01125113.Par.89380.ImageFile.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/\",\"name\":\"The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"description\":\"Excellence In Broadcasting\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/01125113.Par.89380.ImageFile.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/01125113.Par.89380.ImageFile.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/\",\"name\":\"McCain and Obama Discuss the Idea of American Exceptionalism - The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-05-19T03:20:26+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-05-19T03:20:26+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#\/schema\/person\/911066e449df26406b107ca78cbbde0b\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"McCain and Obama Discuss the Idea of American Exceptionalism\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#\/schema\/person\/911066e449df26406b107ca78cbbde0b\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f18195e0073013fa0e16b040686c2924?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f18195e0073013fa0e16b040686c2924?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/author\/admin\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"McCain and Obama Discuss the Idea of American Exceptionalism - The Rush Limbaugh Show","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/09\/12\/mccain_and_obama_discuss_the_idea_of_american_exceptionalism\/","twitter_card":"summary","twitter_title":"McCain and Obama Discuss the Idea of American Exceptionalism - The Rush Limbaugh Show","twitter_description":"RUSH: I thought about apologizing at the beginning of this hour for the first hour in this program, because we\u2019re trucking along really good, we\u2019re just having a grand old time and then I sucked all the oxygen out of the show by playing Obama and McCain sound bites. 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