RUSH: Charles in South Bend, Indiana, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. It’s nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Good, sir.
CALLER: Okay, I’m a former Nation of Islam follower to a loyal Rush Limbaugh listener.
RUSH: Wow! That’s quite a transition that you’ve made.
CALLER: Very, very — and you have been the catalyst behind it, believe me. You just don’t know how much you have influenced my life. I was a former high school dropout, I was homeless, and all of a sudden I was angry, and I started listening to you around, I think it was ’89. I think you had a call on named Rita X.
RUSH: Oh, yes. Rita X.
RUSH: You know what? We all dig holes for ourselves, and sometimes we fall into them, but there’s nothing greater than getting out of the hole.
CALLER: That’s right! That’s right.
RUSH: It’s a great sense of achievement, and you did it yourself, it sounds like. That’s great. That’s terrific news.
CALLER: Yes. I also wanted to let you know, years ago you had a commercial, and I wanted to save up money to buy this program, this thing you had called Verbal Advantage.
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: I remember I started listening to you, and I started writing down the words that you would say and going through the dictionary and actually expanding it, trying to expand my vocabulary, and voila! Sooner than I thought, I found out that I really didn’t need the Verbal Advantage, and you were the Verbal Advantage!
RUSH: (laughs) Well, you’re overwhelming me here. I don’t know what to say. Thank you.
CALLER: I just want to tell you that you just don’t know how much you’ve been an influence in my life. I mean, me being a black American and me telling people that I listen to Rush Limbaugh, I get all kind of crazy looks and, you know, ‘What’s wrong with this man?’ but, Rush, I listen to what you say. I don’t hear you. Most black Americans just hear you, and they don’t listen. You know, that’s the difference. People hear you, but they don’t really listen.
RUSH: That’s actually a good observation, but that’s true about a lot of people. You know, I’m amazed when I meet some people and sit down and talk to them and so forth, I find a lot of people are amazed to find out what I hear, how I listen to them, because most people don’t. Most people are too busy thinking about themselves, most people worrying, ‘Is what I’m saying is stupid?’ or when they’re listening to somebody, ‘How do I look? They’re looking at me real closely. How do I look?’ They’re not even listening, and I make it a point to listen. I’m always stunned at how people remark on it. I think it’s true of a lot of people, that they don’t listen. They bring so much prejudice and bias to things, plus the fact that most people are self-focused and it’s tough to stop thinking about themselves when other people are even talking. So that’s a prescient observation you’ve made.
CALLER: Yes. And I really wanted to make the point also as to why I think black America don’t look what Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton say as being derogatory. Because, Rush, most black Americans look at themselves as victims, and Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton, they’ve learned to appeal to the weakness of black America. When you appeal to the weakness in black America, a lot of black Americans have been conditioned to respond to people who appeal to our weaknesses, the things that our weak within us, instead of appealing to our strength as a society to overcome those weaknesses.
RUSH: Well, it’s true. If your life is not what you wish it was, it’s much easier to blame somebody else for it or to be told that somebody else is responsible for it, i.e., that you are a victim. ‘You’d be okay if it weren’t for X,’ this group or that president or what have you. Really, this is the thing that has always sort of puzzled me, and it actually offends me: the way they pander and look down to all of their constituent groups, not just blacks. They’re trying to create as many victims out of people as they can, because they basically look at people and see victims anyway, whether they are or not. They see people that are incompetent. They see people that are not capable of doing things. So they ride into the rescue and say, ‘We’ll take care of you.’ The thing that always amazed me about this, Charles, is that for however many number of years the black community has been voting 90% for the Democrat presidential candidate, and yet every four years, whoever the Democrat presidential candidate is keeps talking about how rotten life is for the American black community, and citing all the statistics. Yet after all these years the Democrats have been promising to fix all that, and to help these people find salvation. Yet the same complaints keep being uttered; the same victims status keeps being cemented. You wonder, at what point are some people going to wake up and say, ‘These people have been telling me that things are going to get better for 30, 40, 50 years, and they’re not. Maybe it’s time to look at the other guys.’
CALLER: Yeah, but, Rush, but, Rush. The problem with that, the problem that black America has is that if they look at the others guys they don’t have to look at themselves, because if they started to turn away from what they believed in, then that would ultimately mean that they would have to look at themselves, and a lot of people — not only black Americans, but black Americans in this instance — do not want to look at themselves to actually question what’s been going on, because their whole foundation, their whole way of thinking, has been tied to this.
RUSH: Well, that’s a good point.
CALLER: So for them to do what I’ve done myself — you know, I had to go through that process myself — where I had to question everything in my life. Everything in my life has been a lie concerning politics and history and the way I’ve been taught, and I had to really reprogram myself, and for black America to do that, that would have to take place in order for black America to actually start to entertain the thought of actually supporting other people.
RUSH: You know, that’s actually great advice for anybody. Whenever there’s a problem in your life, the first place to look is if you have any role. You gotta look at yourself. I mean, if you’re going to be honest about the source of the problem, and you really want to solve it, you cannot exempt yourself from it and continue to blame everybody else. It’s not ’til you do that — I don’t care whether you’re black, white, Haitian, Hispanic, until you’re able to do that — that you’re not really going to be able to confront whatever it is that’s standing in your way. What you’re saying is music to my ears. It really is.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I just want you to know I’m a business owner now. I have a couple of inventions I’m trying to patent and through conservatism, conservatism has pretty much opened up those dark crevices of my mind where I’ve been able to explore and do things that me being a high school dropout and being a former homeless man, I thought I’d never do. I’m doing things now I thought I would never do. So you have been a catalyst in that, and starting with you, everything else just started to come together for me as far as information and reading about people and just opening up my mind, and I just really want to thank you because it all started with you.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. How old are you, Charles?
CALLER: Right now I’m 44.
RUSH: When did you start this path? Did you say 1989?
CALLER: Yeah, 1989., but it really didn’t take hold ’til about the nineties, because I was still going through some rough times, and right now, like I say, right now I have a cleaning business, and I’m an entrepreneur, and I’m doing things, and life is just really good. I look forward to life and I look forward to waking up each day, putting heavy things in my mind, taking things that’s in my mind to actually conceive and to achieve in. So that’s it.
RUSH: Let me ask you, Charles. Let me ask you one more question before we have to go here — and I’m going to have to go here pretty quick because of time. I appreciate your thanking me and saying that this program was the catalyst, but you do understand, don’t you, that you did this?
CALLER: That’s right! Yeah. I know.
RUSH: Okay. So don’t be afraid to credit yourself is the point.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, I do.
RUSH: It’s not bragging and it’s not being selfish. It’s none of those things. It’s not ill-mannered — and I’m not talking about walking around and, you know, carrying a placard around the street, ‘I did this!’ But to yourself, when you talk to yourself, be honest with yourself. You did what you did.
CALLER: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I remind myself of that every day. I remind myself of that every day, and a lot of people look at what I do as being conceited and being self-assured.
RUSH: You’re not just conceited. You’re just confident, and people that are not confident, not sure of themselves are really put off by people who are. They don’t think anybody should be that sure of themselves. It makes them nervous. They lash out and blame you for having a bad attitude or an arrogant attitude, when it’s their own insecurities here that are causing it. Don’t let that change who you are. I gotta run. It’s great talking to you. Thank you so much. In fact, keep him on hold. Ask him if he’s got a computer, and subscribe him to The Limbaugh Letter and the website as well, because if he doesn’t have that, that can only help.
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OBEY: The right-wing radio today looks at those airwaves as being their own private preserve, and they’re not going to give ’em up at all. But don’t worry. I would not for a second want to see Rush Limbaugh moderate. I want to see the real, raw Rush. I want him and folks like him to be thoroughly and fully exposed to the American listening audience, in all of their bloviating glory. I want to let Rush be Rush, and that isn’t going to bother me if he goes on for hours and hours with his one-sided diatribes. Everybody knows he’s plugged directly into Republican national headquarters, and so in my view, he’s virtually discredited, and I’d like to keep it that way.
RUSH: That speaks for itself. David Obey (Democrat-Wisconsin) doesn’t get it.
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.
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