RUSH: I got a note from a friend this morning and it says, ‘I was thinking last night after your discussion of the ozone hole yesterday and that story–‘ and we did our Morning Update on this yesterday on the inciting of thinness in France. I had this in the Stack yesterday. I didn’t have a chance to get to it, but the French have decided that thinness is very bad for you because it can kill you, and they’re going to go after any magazine or television show that incites thinness. If anybody dies from thinness, you can get fined the equivalent of $70,000 and face some jail time for this if it can be established that somebody died because they looked at your magazine or your TV show and went bulimic or anorexic in order to get thin. So the French are taking out after the thin, everybody is going out after the fat. I mean, everybody is going after the fat forever, coconut oil, trans fats, all this sort of stuff. Now the thin are being pursued in France. Who’s left but the ugly? At some point they’re going to go after the ugly. The governments’s going to go after the ugly and will have to make that voluntary at first because the ugly know who they are when they look in the mirror.
So this friend sends me a note and says, ‘I got to thinking all of the things that liberals have guilted us into giving up, guilted us into using or banning. So, Rush, I started making a list. Most of these things have proven to be not the threat they made us think, or they’ve proven to be worse than what we originally were doing — unintended consequences. However, the one consequence that I know, Rush, was intended was the left taking freedom and liberty so that they can control us.’ Now, here’s just a partial list of some things that the left has guilted us into either giving up, guilted us into using, or banning. It’s just a partial list: prayer, lead paint, low-flow toilets. Freon in air-conditioning, had to get rid of that. Aerosol cans, had to say good-bye to those. Paper bags, we had to go to biodegradable plastic bags, and now we found out those are destructive to the environment, we’re going to go back to paper. How about oat bran? We had to get rid of that. We had to stop drinking coffee until we found out, no problem. We had to get rid of aerosol hair spray. They’re forcing ethanol on us. We have to get rid of incandescent lightbulbs and replace them by 2012 with compact fluorescents.
Balloons, you may have forgotten this, but there was an effort to ban balloons in certain parts of the country because they ended up in lakes, they ended up in oceans, ended up killing fish. Outdoor lighting at the beach during turtle season, turn ’em off. Cutting trees on your own property, you can’t do it. Nuclear power plants, no. Coal mining, targeted. Trans fats in New York and other places, stop eating them, you can’t. Restaurants that serve them will be fined. Had to get rid of coconut oil for popcorn because the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that it added to clogged arteries, later found that it doesn’t, but you still can’t get popcorn popped in coconut oil. Smoking, of course. We had to get rid of DDT, which has led to untold cases of deadly disease in Africa. Rachel Carson, big heroine here, actually her ban ended up killing millions. Helmets for bikers and skaters and motorcyclists, you have to wear them. We got rid of monkey bars on playgrounds. We got rid of high slides on playgrounds. Too dangerous for the little kiddies. We had to get rid of toy guns, because it taught and trained little kids to use real guns. Seat belts, have to use ’em. If you get caught without using them, you get fined. Car seats for the kids, got to have ’em.
Garbage disposals, they tried to ban garbage disposals in North Carolina just a month ago. Can’t eat your hamburgers rare, too many carcinogens, gotta cook your meat beyond rare. Firecrackers, of course, bad news. Gotta get rid of diving boards at public swimming pools, too dangerous. Can’t play tag in the public schools because it’s embarrassing either way you go. Whoever is ‘it’ is it, and that’s bad, but nobody, or very few get to be it, and that’s bad, too — so it’s discriminatory. Dodgeball. Can’t play dodgeball, it’s too dangerous! Kids might get hurt. Can’t play touch football, either. It’s too rough. Can’t eat fois gras because of the way they produce it, and, of course, guns are under constant attack. Citizen involvement in elections has been reduced, thanks to McCain-Feingold. This is just a partial list, and I spend time on this because of the theme started yesterday on this program that the real threat we face in this country is liberalism and the slow-but-certain encroachment on life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. People sit around and then just casually let all of these freedoms go, while not realizing what’s happening because they’re all done either demanding that we use certain things or not allowing us to use certain things. All of this is done within the framework of guilt.
We are said to be improving ourselves, and our country, and our world if we do or don’t do these various things. These examples happen frequently. This is a story from the UK Daily Telegraph. ‘Teachers are being urged to stop using terms such as husband and wife when addressing students or families under a major anti-homophobia push in schools. The terms boyfriend, girlfriend and spouse are also on the banned list — to be replaced by the generic ‘partner’ — in changes sought by the gay lobby aimed at reducing discrimination in classrooms.
‘Schools are coming under pressure to provide lessons for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and stack their libraries with books and videos covering their issues. Among the demands are the outlawing of homophobic comments by teachers or students in the playground and a requirement for teachers to receive ‘diversity training.” Now, we’ve been through that here in various sundry stages, but add this to the list of things that the left has guilted us into giving up, guilted us into using, or had banned for us.
Now, we are banning the terms mother and father, boyfriend and girlfriend, and spouse. We’re not, they are in the UK, and they’re replacing all of this with the generic ‘partner.’ This is a result of pressure from the gay lobby. Of course, just like everything else in society, when events like this happen there’s guilt involved, and it might lead to violence, and it might lead to people being stigmatized and hurt feelings and so forth because not everybody has a mommy, not everybody has a father, not everybody has a boyfriend, not everybody has a girlfriend. So when we talk about mommies and daddies and boyfriends and girlfriends, we are traumatizing those young students who don’t have a mommy or daddy or both, or don’t have boyfriend or girlfriend. But everybody can be said in one way or another to have a partner. That doesn’t offend anybody, and it’s all done, ladies and gentlemen, under the concept that we can be perfected. One of the definitions the left uses for perfection is that nothing that happens in life will ever offend a liberal.