RUSH: All right, Perry, in Salisbury, North Carolina. I’m glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, I’ve been waiting quite a while. Listen, I totally support Kerry. I’m a retired military pilot with 30 months in Vietnam. And knowing how much you like the pilots, I have a Distinguished Flying Cross, and I totally support senator John Kerry. Hello?
RUSH: Yeah, you’re on a cell phone and you’re cutting in and out. But I think I got the gist of it.
CALLER: I also would like to say that you didn’t call Bush on his flip-flop on jobs. You didn’t call him on his flip-flop about not being in the situation room. And I would take some of Exxon’s $61 billion in profits and I’d pay that tax Kerry is asking for. Like Jay Leno said last night, if you can’t live on $200,000 a year, somebody’s got a problem somewhere.
RUSH: Yeah, Jay Leno who just made a new contract deal of 27 million. You are an embarrassment to me, Perry. I thought I was going to have an actually enlightened conversation with a Kerry supporter. But you’re just a walking talking-point clich? that doesn’t understand the first thing about how business in the country works. Exxon’s profits, obscene or not, go take those to do what? It’s not the government’s money! What you earn is not the government’s money. It’s not government’s business to determine what you can or can’t live on or who has enough or not.
If that’s the case, then John Kerry ought to be consistent and institute a wealth tax on rich women whose husbands have died and take 90% of what they inherit, leaving him with about 50 million. How about that? If he’s really consistent, if nobody needs more than 200 grand, then let Kerry tell Teresa, “get rid of it,” give it to Exxon, give it to the government, give it to somebody where we can make jobs, give it to the military, give it to the homeless or whatever, why go after Exxon’s money? Let John Kerry put his mouth first and put his wife’s back pocket or pocketbook first, let him be a leader and let him demonstrate how this is done. I can’t believe you’re falling for this, Perry, you’re a valued, heroic member of the military. I cannot understand this. This is depressing me. This is blowing my mind. Oh ho-ho, no, I thought we were through with these kinds of arguments that people actually thought you could make, Exxon’s profits. Everybody could be able to live on 200 grand. So could John Kerry. I don’t see him trying to. You know, if it’s so easy, let the guys that tell us how easy it is show us instead of exempting themselves.
Come on Perry, put on the thinking cap out there. Try again next week. It may not be as good out there as I thought, folks, but it just means we’ve got to keep doubling down and working hard. And Clinton is a millionaire, hell, Clinton is out there talking about how rich he is. Let him give it back. Let Clinton live on 200 grand a year as he did when he was president. He’s complaining about this then [doing impression] I never had any money when I was in the White House, I was always happy to go out and do things other people had to pay for; but now I’m one of the most popular people in this country because I’m richer than you are. I love all these liberal Democrats. They sit there and tell us how we don’t need any more than whatever it is they say we’re going to be taxed at. But somehow they always manage to exempt themselves from it.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
RUSH: Here’s Phil in Yuma, Arizona. Hi. Nice to have you on the program, sir.
CALLER: Yeah, Rush, I’m real glad to be on the show. Listen, Rush, I want to talk about what that guy, Perry, said, that insane comment he made about Exxon giving their money back?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: That’s ridiculous. I was born and raised in New York City, I lived in Manhattan, I mean we went from the slums to the projects and I thought we got money as a kid because now we had a building with a elevator in it, and finally I joined the Marine Corps because I said, “I’ve got to get away from this mess.” And I was raised with that whole liberal thing, I was spoon fed that, “you know, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Which to be honest, if that’s true, I thought why not turn to a life of crime if I’m never going to make it on my own. But I joined the Marine Corps, got away from New York, I got away from that whole liberal mind-set, and I learned something: All over America, people do make it. People who work hard and people who try hard make it.
The thing that really ticks me about this guy, Perry, he was talking about, well, Exxon should give their money back. You know, isn’t that the fruit of hard work? Isn’t that what we all want? In other words, it ain’t about whether I’m rich right now; it’s about I have an opportunity to be rich. And for this guy, his whole attitude is totally counterproductive to anybody who’s in a situation where they really want to make something of their lives, where they really want to step up past what they grew up in. You know, this guy probably grew up middle class, you know, felt guilty that his mom and dad had money, and now he’s going to start springing all this stuff about giving the money back. And I’d like to know, what is he giving? What out of his pocket has he given back? It’s easy to say, but it’s not easy to do. I mean dreams is what we’ve got in America.
CALLER: Rush, I’m going to tell you something, a lot of people don’t think that way. You grew up in this country and you see the opportunity. If you’ve got eyes to see it, you know, you look past what you’re hearing and what people are telling you. The whole thing about, “well, this person is trying to keep us down and that person is trying to keep us down.” You know what? Ideas are trying to keep us down. No people trying to keep us down. Ideas keep us down. Ideas like, “I can’t get ahead because the rich people won’t let me.” Instead of thinking, you know what, in this country anybody can make it. And the whole thing is not even about, you know, this country, that country, it’s all about what’s in you, because people from other countries come here. I mean, if you had the will to make it, if you had the will — Look the idea of, “well, give it back,” well, the whole thing is I want to make it, and after I make it, let me give it back? Give what back? How about giving this back: Everybody’s who’s rich should say, this is how I made it, here’s a little pamphlet, we’re going to send it from Pueblo, Colorado, to all the people who dialed a 1-800 number, and this is how I made it. You know what I mean? We don’t need kickbacks.
RUSH: You know, you’re so right on point. The first thing you said, well, a lot of what you said could be summed up with a simple phrase, and that is the limitations that we face are self-imposed. We listen to what other people think, what other people expect of us, what other people demand of us, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, you can’t do that and it ends up being I can’t do this because that person says I can’t, I can’t do this or I can’t go there because I won’t move, all self-imposed limitations yet all around us there are people succeeding and we get mad. How can that be, I can’t. Why can’t you? I just can’t. It’s because you’ve told yourself you can’t because you believed all this rhetoric out there, this is not for you. But somebody else is doing it so you have to conclude that, “well, they’re cheating or they’re stealing or their daddies are rich or whatever it is that got them there. Nobody really gets anywhere with hard work.” That’s what you end up telling yourself because you get bitter. And so the bottom line is that the Democrats — I’ve always thought that it would make far more sense exactly what you said. Instead of commiserating and holding hands and wringing hands with the poor and telling them how sorry for them we feel and then as we wave and walk away, and go back to our homes while they’re still poor what we ought to do is say, “you know, you don’t have to be this way. Let us teach you what you haven’t learned so far so that you can find a way out.” And that’s what I call compassion.
Compassion as defined by conservatives is counting the number of people who no longer need some kind of assistance. Democrats and liberals count compassion by adding up the number of people on the welfare rolls, and, furthermore, if there aren’t as many people getting food stamps this year as last, they don’t see success, they see panic and they start running ads you may be missing out on your chance for food stamps, you may be missing out on your chance for AFDC. Instead of seeing progress, they see panic. Now, the reason they see panic is not because of compassion, they see panic because they see voters leaving them. It really is a crime, liberalism is a humanity crime, folks, in so many ways. Look, well said out there, Phil. That’s almost as good as I could have said it, which is why I didn’t interrupt you. Thanks for the phone call Phil, let me ask you something. Are you a subscriber to my website, do you have a computer?
CALLER: Yes, I do.
RUSH: Are you a subscriber?
CALLER: I’m on a month to month.
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you, what I’m going to make you a complimentary annual subscriber, I’ll give you a full year on top of whatever your month is at current, and send you a newsletter prescription as well. I said that on purpose. It’s medicine. And just hang on, we’ll get all the information for you and get it all started immediately.