RUSH: Carlos in San Antonio, Texas, you’re up next on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush? I love the show, first-time caller.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Two-part question. Do you think that the Republican Party and the conservative movement is going through some type of market correction, and do you think that we’ll have to lose the general election, that way we can go back to our traditional beliefs the way Ron Paul is promoting?
RUSH: No.
CALLER: (click)
RUSH: He hung up. I don’t think there’s a correction going on. There’s a willful and purposeful attempt by some in the Republican Party to remake and marginalize conservatives, so that they’re not a power force in the Republican Party. That’s not accidental, and it’s not a correction — and, no, I don’t believe in losing the election. There is no way. I’ve seen enough, and I knew enough before I’d seen enough. Seeing it confirms it. There is literally, folks, no way that this nation’s security and safety can be entrusted to anybody in the Democrat Party today. There’s just no way. Too dangerous, too risky, too irresponsible. I have, previously on this program, told people, ‘Don’t go out there and not vote.’ Vote however you want, but focus on conservative leadership in the future — conservatives in the House of Representatives, conservatives in the Senate — getting as many there as possible to thwart whatever kind of leftist agenda might emanate from either McCain or Hillary or Obama, far more leftist than with either Hillary or Obama. But if the Democrats increase their majorities in the House and Senate, it isn’t going to matter who the president is. A leftward agenda is going to be obvious. It will be empowered. So find out who it is in your statehouses and other local places where great conservatives are effervescing and bubbling up, and when they decided at some point to run for the House or the Senate, support ’em. No, no. You never lose on purpose, for any reason.
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RUSH: Here’s John in Whiteville, North Carolina. Nice to have you with us, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Conservative Southern dittos, Rush. It is an honor.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I want to say the so-called crackup I think in my opinion is happening because we as conservatives are just completely exhausted. We’ve gone down every road to try to fight to become more conservative and it just gets worse. We’re not standing up in the numbers that we need to. And I mean just a basic example is, I mean, I don’t even hear many conservative senators or congressman standing up for the Marines in Haditha, or global warming, I mean, some of the liberals in my opinion are treasonous. They’re acting in an awful way. And I think we have to stop them now. If it comes to throwing some of the people like Durbin in jail, I mean it may sound extreme but to be honest with you if this happened in 1890 they would be in jail.
RUSH: Durbin thrown in jail for his comments about what?
CALLER: Marines and Haditha and just bashing them publicly before everything went through.
RUSH: Okay, you mean Murtha or Durbin?
CALLER: I’m sorry. Murtha. And Durbin said some things, too.
RUSH: Because Durbin had his turn talking about the interrogators being like Nazis in Soviet gulag and Pol Pot’s regime.
CALLER: It’s treasonous, sir, it’s treasonous, and I want to apologize to the senior citizens out there for you growing up in such a great country and there’s nothing I can do about it. I do everything I can, I vote, I don’t know what else to do. I’m so sorry that you have to see your country go down the tubes like this but I have people calling in they’re almost crying they’re so upset, from the fifties, it was a great time. I think it’s much worse now. I’m only 28.
RUSH: You’re 28 years old.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Ah, you’re too young for us to lose, pal, you gotta hang on.
CALLER: Oh, I will.
RUSH: People like you are who are going to be the ones to change all this.
CALLER: I’m in a area right now of North Carolina, sir, the sky is blue and it smells so clean out here, and I have to hear people bash this country. I mean, I want to go in and fight this war, but I want to fight it stronger. I’m not about PC. I want to see things go down even stronger and more than they are now, much more intense. I want people to fear us. People say that that’s the reason that we’re hated is because we’re, you know, doing things that are bad. I think that’s —
RUSH: Wait, wait. I need some clarification. When you say you want people to fear us, you talking about the country and the rest of the world, or conservatives, you want liberals to fear conservatives?
CALLER: I want our enemies to fear us. Because I want them to know that if they mess with us, they’re going down. Because if they don’t they’ll keep doing what they’re going to do, and I guarantee you China’s going to be number one. We’ve had our day in the sun and it’s going to be over with.
RUSH: Well, see, this really illustrates the importance of George W. Bush. On the one issue that he was really passionate about, he didn’t waver or cave at all, and as of now, our enemies around the world know full well that they should fear George W. Bush. This is why this next election is crucial in this sense. They’re not going to fear Hillary, and they’re not going to fear Obama. The terrorists, the enemies have made it clear — I mean, they’ve campaigned for Democrats. They use Democrat talking points when criticizing the United States of America. We have chronicled this through much of last year. Now that Iraq is successful, the surge is working, it’s off the table as a major campaign issue, other than a little skirmish now and then in the Democrat primaries. But, look, I understand exactly where you’re coming from on this treason business and the anger and the outrage you feel over the anti-American comments made by high-ranking Democrats. It’s tough when you’re feeling this way, for me to tell you to hang in and don’t give up. I know you’re not going to. And you shouldn’t.
You’re 28 years old, and it’s people like you who are, by holding fast and being steadfast, you’re going to create change. Everything is cyclical, and liberalism exists for different reasons than conservatism does. In that sense it’s a tough war for conservatives to rage. One of the problems we’re facing on our own side is that half of our side doesn’t see the other guys as the enemy. They see them as people they want to impress or appease or even seek their approval, which is maddening. There are three big battles going on in the country right now. There’s a battle for the future of the country overall. There’s a battle of conservatism versus liberalism, and you might say liberalism versus the rest of the country. And then there is a battle within the Republican Party between the country club blue-bloods and the conservatives, and so that’s a distracting thing for some conservatives, but you have to play the cards that you’re dealt.
One reason for optimism is exactly people like you, and there are more of you out there than you know. And they are as livid and angry as you are. The point that I want to make to you is, the way you described every road we’ve taken is a dead end, no matter where we go, we get shut down. That just isn’t true. There has been so much progress over so many things. It’s just that it doesn’t appear, because our successes are not reported, our successes are not heralded, our successes are not chronicled. They are criticized and lamented, and those successes are being targeted for destruction. But, believe me, there are more people than you know who have the same desires for the future of the country, for a host of reasons, that you do. One thing that is almost always true, is that when the Democrats and liberals start feeling their oats and get all confident and cocky they will end up opening the door right into their own noses and bloody themselves up. But let me expand a little bit about the difference in what conservatism wants and what liberalism wants, how we’re fighting two different battles.
Liberalism is many, many things. There’s a report out this week from an actual clinical psychologist, that it’s a mental disorder. But it is totalitarian in nature. It is an effort to control everybody, or as many people as possible. It’s based on the assumption that most people are blithering idiots and haven’t the ability to lead responsible lives on their own. This is fostered by willing accomplices in the news media who are constantly beating the drum of doom and gloom and fatalism and pessimism, and they have a lot of power in creating these negative moods that people have, not so much about their own lives, but about everybody else’s. The overall effort here is to dispirit and to depress people and to make people give up in attempting to achieve. Listen to Michelle Obama in Zanesville, Ohio. She’s basically telling people to give up. She’s telling people who are poor to stay poor because there’s just too much trouble in attempt to go acquire wealth. You might have to go borrow money, go to college, student loan. She’s telling people to stay poor. She wants people to stay poor. Why? I don’t know if she has an inherent dislike for the country, she’s got some bitterness, but she’s also a liberal. She wants to be in charge of these people and their welfare.
This is how liberals get their votes. It really boils down to nothing more complicated than that, except it’s hideous what liberalism does to the human spirit, it attempts to destroy it, even to the point of making enemies out of people who have achieved something, out of people who have become successful. Even they are attacked, especially they are attacked. Conservatism, on the other hand, doesn’t seek to control anybody. Conservatism seeks to liberate. Conservatism believes that the human being, the United States of America citizen, is capable of anything he or she wants. Conservatism believes in the goodness and the greatness and the potential for such, in every human being and wants to get as much out of the way in terms of obstacles as possible. Conservatism wants to motivate those people. Conservatism wants to inspire those people. Conservatism wants happy, content people pursuing life and liberty. Conservatism believes that the greatest country we can have is where there is as much freedom as possible, as defined by the founding documents of this country when there is as little government as necessary, and when people are free to utilize their own desires and their ambitions, because conservatives believe in the basic goodness, the good-heartedness and the decency of every human. Liberals do not.
Liberals are filled with rage. They are filled with anger. They are filled with contempt for the very people that we love, for the very people that we hope and invest great things in. Liberals don’t want to risk that. You understand the more prosperous, the happier, the more content people are, the less there is need for liberalism. The more people accruing wealth, the more people acquiring assets, the more people succeeding in free market capitalism, the greater the threat to liberalism. So of course they are going to trash the very foundations of this country, and as Michelle Obama did, try to make as many people as possible think it’s not theirs, it’s not for them, it’s not intended for them. Only elites like Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have what it takes to overcome these rigors and so forth. Well, that’s a hell of a battle to try to fight. The problem that we’ve been having lately, John, is that rather than fight it, we’re trying to limit their growth. We’re trying not to stop liberalism; we’re trying to limit it a little bit. So when national crisis — of course, everything, according to the left is a crisis — so when we have a crisis, like the best health care system in the world is a crisis, we have to fix it.
So liberals come up with a fix that’s based on inherent liberalism, that it’s unfair, that some people aren’t insured, some people can’t get as good a coverage as somebody else. So we have to nationalize it, we have to put liberals in charge of it, we have to put people who have never run a business, wouldn’t know the first thing about it, in charge of it. Then we’re going to put in jail as many people who are in that business for screwing it up. Then what do we have? We have Republicans saying, ‘Well, I don’t think we should go that far,’ but they accept the premise. Republicans are accepting too many premises advanced by the left and trying to tweak them and make ’em look less liberal and more conservative rather than rejecting the whole concept of liberalism out of hand, and that’s what has you frosted. You don’t see any warriors on your side of the aisle. You see appeasers; you see people who want acceptance; you see people who are afraid to stand up for the country when it’s trashed by people like Murtha and Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy and so forth.
Believe me, you are not alone. But the solution is not to opt out. The solution is to stay engaged, live your life the way you do, and influence as many people with whom you come in contact; you will have more impact than you will know. It’s a presidential year. A lot of what I’ve said is going to be exposed. We don’t know where we’re going with this. We have no idea. Barack Obama says he’s a blank slate, he’s a canvas, you can write whatever you want him to be. This whole campaign is that, to tell you the truth. So hang in there, John. I’m glad you called. I appreciate it.
I gotta run.
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RUSH: All right, folks, time to buck up out there. (That’s ‘buck’ with a B.) What if those before us had given up? You think this is the first time people on our side of the aisle have taken every road possible, and seen a dead end in front of them? Of course they weren’t dead-ends. They just look like they are. What if those before us had given up? We’re always going to have to battle the forces that would deny us our God-given liberty. Take a look at the world! I know for deeply and devoutly religious people, it’s difficult to imagine. ‘Why would God create such evil people that want to take away basic freedoms from individuals?’ Free will, it’s called. Bad, good, evil, what have you. Take a look at the world. Do you realize how preciously fortunate we are in this country, and to have survived as long as we have, as powerful as we are? It’s because we’ve beaten back these kind of forces all of these years, externally. Now, we’re having to fight them internally. It’s not the first time we’re having to fight these forces internally.
If you think there aren’t people in this country who want to take your freedom away, wake up! Open your eyes. The global warming hoax. What do you think it’s about? You see it inching away, and it doesn’t register, because you don’t think changing lightbulbs is a big deal because it’s all for ‘the good of the planet,’ but you don’t see what’s really happening. Well, we do, and a lot of others do. Basic human liberty is always at stake. It’s the nature of humanity. Sadly, it’s the nature of some people to want to be controlled. It’s tough out there to assume responsibility for yourself. Do you realize how seductive it is when somebody tells you they’re going to take care of you? Look at these Obama rallies. You can say whatever you want about, ‘It’s about time we’re hearing this kind of thing’ but Obama is essentially giving a sermon to a political audience on how to raise kids and he’s getting a standing ovation! People would much rather be told how to do something or have somebody else do it for them — including the major basic responsibilities of life — than to take them on themselves, because it’s hard.
Why do you think we so honor and revere pioneers, the people that struggle against the odds, the people that secure freedom for others who are oppressed? Why do we revere them? Because it’s hard, and because those people are great who do it — and where would we be if those who thought as we do gave up before we came up as adults ourselves? Bill Buckley never gave up. Ronald Reagan, in his life never gave up. His whole life. Barry Goldwater’s life. If it helps, remember that each generation of conservatives and Americans generally faces these forces and has to battle them. You’re not unique in thinking it’s over. You’re not unique in thinking it’s hopeless. You’re not unique in thinking your own team is letting you down. We have to defend liberty and freedom from foreign enemies, but from domestic agendas and ideologies that would destroy freedom as well. Imagine how conservatives felt during FDR. They could see what was happening around them, and they could not stop it. But we did, didn’t we? Don’t give up hope.
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RUSH: Yes, yes, yes. I know. I screwed up. I said, ‘Don’t give up hope.’ Don’t give up, period! Hope has nothing to do with this. Action, born of desire and commitment, that’s what you don’t give up. I apologize. See how easy it seeps into you, folks? Even me, with the steel boundaries.
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RUSH: Here’s Brad in South Carolina, as we go back to the phones and Open Line Friday. Hello.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. It is an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Your show has been a part of my week since 1988, and I don’t really think you realize the impact that you had on people. Not people who are just down and out, but everybody.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. I appreciate that.
CALLER: I have a question about media and patriotism. You know, my dad was a newspaperman. He retired as a university journalism dean, and he used to have a sign in his office that said, ‘No one can print as a journalist that which he could not say as a gentleman,’ and I really think you don’t see that philosophy or ethical approach today. And you mentioned Nancy Pelosi in your last segment. She, I believe, is third in line in succession to the presidency.
RUSH: This is true.
CALLER: There’s a young man named Prince Harry who is third in succession to the monarchy in Great Britain, who has been serving apparently now in Afghanistan on the front lines for about the past three months; and you’ve got a country with probably the most aggressive media in printing scandalous material, et cetera, that’s managed to put their own financial interests, their own personal interest in breaking a story, subordinate that to their national interests for their country. And I know you recall back in the Gulf War when CNN had a team in the hotel in downtown Baghdad.
RUSH: That would be the Al-Rashid Hotel, and that would be Bernard Shaw.
CALLER: Yes, sir, and I believe there were a couple other, folks, obviously his team with him. But they were in a unique position to get some actionable military intelligence that could have helped their country, and could have saved some lives — potentially could have saved some lives — and they wouldn’t talk to their own government about things, under some misguided belief about journalistic principles.
RUSH: That’s right. Because they couldn’t take sides; it would be compromising their principles.
CALLER: I just wondered if you kind of saw the same thing that I did. I was just really struck by the unanimity and discipline with which the British press was able to control itself.
RUSH: Well, there’s more involved there than you know. It looks admirable, but I think there were criminal penalties for violating the rule. I think I saw that when I was skimming the story. There’s something other than honor that keeps the British press silent on something like this. The queen and everybody issues the edict: It’s not to be reported that Prince Harry is there. By the way, he served ten weeks. He’s been there ten weeks. I think he participated in battles where 30 Taliban were killed. Now they’ve pulled him out of there, for obvious reasons. But he got most of his three months in. (sigh) I’m going to have to double-check. I can’t assert with ontological certitude that there are criminal penalties for the press violating that promise, that trust not to report that Prince Harry was there, but if not, your point is still valid. There’s no question.
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