{"id":34226,"date":"2009-12-22T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T01:35:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T01:35:16","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T01:35:16","slug":"enjoy_christmas_enrage_liberals11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/12\/22\/enjoy_christmas_enrage_liberals11\/","title":{"rendered":"Enjoy Christmas, Enrage Liberals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Now, let me make a departure from all of this health care stuff and describe for you a story that I think is perfect, a perfect story for today that illustrates one of the great challenges we face as a country. It is from The Nation. The Nation is the magazine edited by Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel. It\u2019s a far-left publication. It\u2019s way, way, way out there. ‘New Wars on Christmas Target Gifts, Santa, Lights,\u2019 and they\u2019re all happy about this. ‘Along with fruitcake and caroling, one of the many traditions to look forward to in December is the annual ‘War on Christmas,\u2019 in which religious and conservative activists and pundits accuse secularists and innocent fans of the phrase ‘Happy Holidays\u2019 of stripping Christianity from the occasion. But this year, seasonal skirmishes have broken out on new fronts. In these new fights, it\u2019s not that the holiday is sliding down a slippery slope away from the manger. Instead, it\u2019s that Christmas is bad for the economy, bad for your health and bad for the environment: <\/p>\n

‘While those reindeer sweaters and charming dress socks you put under the tree are good for the retail business, Joel Waldfogel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School, has been spending recent weeks railing against Christmas gift-giving, arguing that it\u2019s an inefficient way to spend money that costs the country $25 billion a year. In his book, ‘Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn\u2019t Buy Presents for the Holidays,\u2019 Waldfogel says gifts generate less satisfaction than things we buy ourselves. We don\u2019t really know what other people want, he says, but we do know what we want. Because of this, in his view, Christmas shopping is ‘an orgy of wealth destruction\u2019 as we spend on things people don\u2019t value as much as the money we pay for them. ‘I\u2019m not against spending, just sloppy spending,\u2019 Waldfogel said on NPR\u2019s Tell Me More. In one experiment, Waldfogel asked his students to rate the level of satisfaction they had with gifts they were given. <\/p>\n

‘From this survey, he determined that gifts generate an average of 20 percent less satisfaction than things we buy for ourselves,\u2019 which, my friends, is totally missing the point of giving a gift at Christmas. If you\u2019re a secularist, you\u2019ll never get it. If you\u2019re a pointy-headed academic elite, you\u2019ll never get it. Gift giving at Christmas is to remind us of the gift that God gave us with the birth of Jesus and the story surrounding that. ‘He says this is not true of gifts we buy for our closest family members and friends, who we know well enough to gift accurately.\u2019 I would also point out: Is it any of this guy\u2019s business who we give what to and how much we spend on it? The theory behind this should not be surprising to economists who know well that consumers are best equipped to make decisions about purchasing for themselves. <\/p>\n

”That\u2019s frankly the basis of many economists\u2019 disdain for government. Because after all, when government chooses for us, they get us the wrong health care program, the wrong color shirt, the bridge to nowhere. And so this notion that we\u2019re best situated to choose for ourselves is a pretty basic notion and fairly a commonsense one,\u2019 Waldfogel said.\u2019 Except the government\u2019s not giving us ‘gifts.\u2019 It\u2019s just the exact opposite: The government is trying to imprison us. ‘While the theory may bear up to microeconomic scrutiny, others say Waldfogel is missing the point altogether: Giving gifts is good for society.\u2019 Then they move on to something else they approve of at The Nation. That is ‘The War on Santa\u2019s Gut,\u2019 and that is new this year. That is that Santa Claus is too fat. There\u2019s no such thing as this jolly roly-poly guy. People don\u2019t dress like that anyway when we\u2019re big and fat because it emphasizes how big they are. <\/p>\n

It sends the wrong message to kids. Kids were counseled this year that when they went to see Santa Claus wherever he was, they should tell Santa to lose weight. ‘Last week, Australian public health expert Dr. Nathan Grills of Monash University…\u2019 All this stuff comes from these pointy-headed elites in academia, which is one of the Four Corners of Deceit in our country today. Government, Media, Acedemia, and Science are the Four Corners of Deceit. ‘Last week, Australian public health expert Dr. Nathan Grills of Monash University was called a ‘killjoy\u2019 and a ‘scrooge\u2019 in the media for an article he wrote suggesting Santa Claus was promoting bad health habits. The article, called ‘Santa Claus: A public health pariah?\u2019 was published at bmj.com, a British medical journal, and suggested that Santa was sending the wrong message with his obesity, drunk sleigh-driving, speeding and generally bad lifestyle choices.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Oh, I guess then we could take the kids to an average holiday movie, or let \u2019em watch an average television show for a while and let \u2019em being exposed to really good role models instead of this dreaded Santa Claus! The other thing The Nation approved of was the war on your neighbors\u2019 light display. ‘As Christmas trees went up and light displays started flashing around the world, some people cringed at the thought of the electricity required to light the season. One environmental group, the Energy Justice Network, is providing tickets on their Web site for people to hand out to egregious offenders of Christmas light waste.\u2019 Remember when I was telling you earlier in the show that once this health care stuff happens, that we\u2019re going to be pitting ourselves against each other for government services, and we\u2019re going to be ratting each other out and telling the government on each other in order to perhaps put ourselves in better shape of getting government service like health care? <\/p>\n

I really mean it. You are going to see your neighbor with a bunch of flat-screen TVs maybe more than you ‘should have\u2019 or too big, and you\u2019re going to call the pollution control police, and they\u2019ll come to your house. This stuff is not without the realm of possibility. ‘Many of these light detractors suggest swapping out traditional Christmas lights with LED (light-emitting diodes) strings, which can be 90 percent more efficient. LED lights are used in the five miles of lights on Rockefeller Center\u2019s Christmas tree and in the 32,256 lights in the New Year\u2019s Eve ball in Times Square.\u2019 Now, this story is datelined today from The Nation, a liberal journal of publication, and I think it\u2019s perfect. It\u2019s about the war on Christmas and how excited they are about it. Because, my friends, I am not going to participate in this killing of Christmas. They can try but they can\u2019t take it away from us. It\u2019s beyond what they know.<\/p>\n

These secularists have no clue what it is. They are threatened by it. They can\u2019t leave well-enough alone, because it is other people\u2019s faith in God that scares them to death. I, for one — and I hope you\u2019re one, too — refuse to let these people succeed year after year, wearing away the joy and the wonder and the true meaning of this time of year and this marvelous holiday. We have to hold fast on many fronts, and this is one. So as we go into this weekend of celebration of the gift God gave us all, I will set aside the socialist scrooges who refuse to let the rest of us live the lives so many fought to give us. We\u2019ll get back to battle next week, but as of today and the rest of this week I\u2019m going to enjoy life and my family and my faith, and I\u2019m going to try and relax. But when you are a powerful, influential member of the media like me in constant demand, relaxation is a true luxury. But I\u2019m still going to pursue it. And I bought a ton of presents. Well, I sent somebody out to buy a ton of presents. We bought a ton of presents. I can\u2019t tell you how many.<\/p>\n

I bought presents for the mice that live in my brother\u2019s basement. I bought presents… I can\u2019t tell you! I\u2019ve had more fun this year sending people out to do it. I don\u2019t have time to do it. I did some on my own on the Internet, but I have loaded up on the presents. The people at The Nation would despise me be the stupid professor, Mr. Waldfogel, would highly disapprove of my behavior. And we\u2019re going to wrap a lot of them tonight. We\u2019ve got more wrapping to do tonight than I can tell you — and I\u2019m going to throw away all that wrapping on Christmas Day! We\u2019re going to throw it in the trash and we\u2019re going to start a fire, we\u2019re going to create an ecological disaster with it just like we do every Christmas. We\u2019re going to go out and bake food. We\u2019re going to get all kinds of the worst food you can eat. Santa Claus is gonna look like a marathon runner compared to our family by the time we finish on Friday, and then I am getting in the airplane, and I\u2019m going to Hawaii, and I\u2019m going to get there before Obama does, \u2019cause he\u2019s gotta sit around and wait for Harry Reid to vote on the health care bill. I am going to enjoy myself — and damn it, folks, I want you to, too. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Now, let me make a departure from all of this health care stuff and describe for you a story that I think is perfect, a perfect story for today that illustrates one of the great challenges we face as a country. It is from The Nation. 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