RUSH: I’m getting just a little impatient. How many days is it now, four or five days in a row, we had a story: “Is American Idol too mean? Are the judges on American Idol too mean to the contests?” The contests know what they’re getting into, and I would have to think most of these contestants know that they don’t have a prayer or a wing. I don’t want to sound cruel. What a nation of softies! Okay, you want to ask the question once, fine, but a five-day media examination of whether the judges on American Idol are too mean? Get used to it. Most people do not have the kind of talent that’s going to launch them to win a show like that, which is basically a national talent search. What are we supposed to do, let everybody win once one week just to find out what it’s like?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, in the recent days, recent weeks I have — in admitted frustration — referred to the country as a bunch of pacifists, obsessed with guilt, concerned about things that are irrelevant in the big scheme of things. Lo and behold, I run across a piece at the AmericanThinker.com (one of our favorite blogs, by the way). It’s been Selwyn Duke, and it’s called: “Soft People, Hard People.” He’s not the first to come up with the terminology of hard people versus soft people. It’s a really great, great piece. What reminded me of it, again, is what are we, in day five now here of: Is the American Idol being too mean to contestants? If the 1976 western The Last Hard Men has it right, we Occidentals metamorphosed into jellyfish sometime around the early twentieth century. Although this title is more movie marketing than historical statement, there may be something to it. After all, Robert Baden-Powell, a lieutenant general in the British Army, was motivated by the belief that western boys were becoming too soft when he originated the Boy Scouts in 1907.
“Regardless of the origin and rapidity of our transition from he-men to she-men, one thing is for certain: We have become a very soft people. When pondering this, I think about how it is now common to see men cry publicly.” He talks about George W. Bush or H. W. Bush crying when talk about his son Jeb, job he did as governor. “…Edmund Muskie saw his campaign scuttled by a few inopportune tears in 1972. And before you score me for not embracing the metrosexual model, remember the impression this gives the rest of the world. Feminization may be fashionable, but it doesn’t engender respect among the more patriarchal peoples. Then I think about our unwillingness to discipline our children, something to which our jungle-like schools bear witness. And should someone use punitive measures harsher than the euphemistically named ‘time-out’ – something that may actually work – he is often excoriated for damaging the little darlings’ ‘self-esteem.’ And a spanking? Perish the thought. We’re told this could scar a child irreparably (although we seldom ponder the ravages of pickling a young brain with Ritalin), and the idea [spanking] is so foreign to many parents they cannot even conceive of placing a hand on their cherubim’s sanctified little posteriors.
“In contrast, the people of the Third World – and especially the Muslim fanatics who have designs on the West – are hard as stone. We fret…” and was this laughable, too — not laughable, it was somewhat troubling to me. “We fret over the fact that Saddam Hussein endured some taunts [before he was hanged], while next door in Saudi Arabia they may still chop off the hand of a thief. We cater to the religious wants of incarcerated terrorists, providing everything from the Koran and prayer rugs to desired foods, and the soft set still laments the terrible privation these poor victims must endure. In contrast, the terrorists’ Muslim brethren often disallow the practice of other religions in the Abode of Islam. We let illegal aliens run roughshod over our nation, sometimes bestowing government benefits upon them, then still feel guilty about not exalting them sufficiently. In the Third World, however, foreigners are often treated like second-class citizens. Under the Mexican Constitution, one foreign-born will never enjoy the full rights of citizenship. In many Muslim societies, a certain kind of second-class status is reserved for ‘infidels’; it’s called dhimmitude.
“All this is not surprising. After all, luxury and living high soften the sinews and, regrettably, sometimes also the head. The hand that spends its entire existence inside a velvet glove will remain soft and delicate. The one wielding workmen’s tools dawn till dusk becomes calloused and hard, more able to inflict injury and more resistant to it. I know, I know what’s coming.
“The smallest bacteria can kill giants as easily as dwarves. And that is what ails us. Every time an action designed to preserve western civilization is taken or even proposed, a great internecine battle ensues. We capture combatants on the battlefield and then spend millions in legal fees debating whether to adjudicate their cases in civil or military courts. We rightly scrutinize Imams making a scene at an airport and then spend millions more arguing about so-called ‘racial profiling.’ And it’s incessant. Every act nowadays, from singling out illegals for deportation and the suspicious for scrutiny to getting swatted by ‘Tigger’ to a six-year-old boy giving a girl a peck on the cheek, is met with hand-wringing and a disproportionate reaction. And far too often litigation results, costing us valuable resources. And let’s be very clear: Every dollar in currency and passion we spend on litigation is one less we have to fight those who would see us in ashes. This means fewer resources .. to secure our borders, ensure domestic tranquility and root out terrorists within and without.
“A united people would confront threats as a monolithic front; we are expending ourselves fighting a cold civil war. And the end result is that the lawyers get richer, we get weaker, and the hard people, waiting and watching in the darkness, laugh louder. Lest I be misunderstood, I don’t suggest we become the Hunnish Empire. It’s noble to recognize that Saddam Hussein’s tormentors might have demonstrated more dignity. It’s a sign of civilization to expect our troops to behave as professional soldiers, not rampaging warriors. And it’s most divine to realize all God’s children are valuable in His eyes. But to the excesses of justice, correction or interrogation, we react not with measured admonition but with hysteria. Our civility should be the fruits of manly virtue, but it’s the putrescence of pusillanimity.” Look it up. “And here I think of Chesterton’s profound description of our condition:
“‘Nowadays, we have Christian values floating around detached from one another. Consequently, we see scientists who care only about truth but have no pity, and humanitarians who care only about pity but have no truth.’ … Will we find it within ourselves to” harden ourselves once again. Well, who knows? “But what is fairly certain is that we won’t much longer have the luxury of being a soft republic. With enemies on both sides of the gate, it’s only a matter of time before we see a 9/11 that is not a 9/11, but 9/11 squared. Thus, to use a play on Otto Von Bismarck’s metaphor, we can proceed with a velvet glove, but within must lie an iron fist. We have no other choice. Unless, that is, we fancy death a viable option.” Selwyn Duke, the hard people losing out to the soft people, a nation consumed with guilt and a number of other things. We’ll link to it at RushLimbaugh.com so you can read the whole thing. He just gave you highlights there.