RUSH: To Big Stone City, South Dakota, this is Dana. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Yes, thank you, Rush. I think there’s one thing that everybody is leaving out of the situation on the economic problem, and — and if it wasn’t for 9/11, where…? Would we be in this problem today? Would we have this economic problem? And then they demonize —
RUSH: Yes. We would.
CALLER: (snorts) Well, they’ve demonized the war on terror.
RUSH: Do you think giving loans to people who can’t afford to pay ’em back has anything to do with 9/11? Do you think the subprime mortgage scandal, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac…? Do you think all of these financial institutions who had no money because they’re leveraged 30-to-1 on debt would have done anything differently if it would not have been for 9/11?
CALLER: Well, you’re right. But I’m just saying there’s resources out there. They’ve demonized the war on terror. We can’t even take advantage of the fruit of our victories. I mean, there’s oil out there. We wouldn’t have had four-dollar-a-gallon oil if we were to use oil from Iraq from the war. We wouldn’t be in that mess, but they’ve demonized the whole war on terror. We can’t…? I mean, they — they didn’t demonize — they don’t demonize our — our space program, and that came from carpet bombing Germany. I mean, we got technology from Germany. I don’t look at the space shuttle and say, ‘Oh, man, you know why that’s up there? It’s because we carpet bombed Germany,’ but, you know, we can’t take the oil from Iraq. That’s wrong, and that doesn’t make sense to me and I think economically we’d be in a lot better shape if we could.
RUSH: Well, in that sense, I mean I understand what you’re saying, if we hadn’t had to spend so much on energy to conduct the war. But, you know, really… (sigh) To a certain extent, but you’re talking about a drop in the ocean here. The military uses X-amount of jet fuel, kerosene, whatever. They get first dibs on a lot of things to be ready to do things like Iraq every year. Even if they don’t use it, they still take it. It’s in reserve. Where 9/11 is not viewed in the proper perspective is it was an economic disaster and we came back from it. That’s the thing that everybody misses when talk about George Bush and the never-ending criticism. We were just coming out of a minor little blip of a recession, an economic downturn and Clinton left office, then 9/11 hit and we had a robust rebound. But this crisis that we’re talking about is due to — you can trace it to — the subprime business, which gave us the housing bubble, which has now caused all kinds of loss in the value and the price of homes. It would have happened whether there was 9/11 or not.
RUSH: This is Dan in Sonoma, California. Great to have you here. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hello, Rush, thanks so much. Dittos from beautiful Sonoma.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Obama in his speech mentioned that the trillion dollar deficits will be with us for many years.
RUSH: That’s right.
CALLER: What he fails to mention is that he helped vote for the near-billion-dollar bailout, so in essence he is trying to correct a problem he helped create.
RUSH: Yes. See, here’s the way I look at that. Okay, so we’re going to have a trillion-dollar deficit, and that deficit, this is deficit spending. By the way, when Republicans are deficit spending it’s a ‘monster.’ It’s gotta be slain. It’s gotta be killed. The deficit’s gonna be the end of us. Now deficit spending is fine. Deficit spending is good! In fact, folks, let me show you how out of whack things have become. Just this week, just yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, the New York Times had a story on it. It’s now mainstream thought. More and more government spending as economic stimulus as a normal, day-to-day procedure, is mainstream. Oh, yeah? When did this happen? It happened overnight. It happened overnight! That’s what happens when you’ve got Democrats in Congress, Democrats soon to be in the White House, and a Democrat-run media. In fact, just go back a year or so and listen to the Bush deficits being ripped to shreds during the campaign. Now all of a sudden (snaps fingers), it’s mainstream to spend this kind of money. It’s mainstream to print it. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, do you know what the big challenge now is? Can the government spend it fast enough? That’s what the media is now asking. The crisis depends on the government spending it fast enough. Do you realize this happened inside of a month? Fifty years of economic thought just reversed 180 degrees inside of a month?
In Philadelphia, Andrew, hello, sir. You’re next on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, thank you for taking my call. I’m curious because Mayor Michael Nutter just met with Barack and has a plan to use some of this $1.2 trillion dollars to spend on the Philadelphia Zoo, and just this week they announced that they were going to be closing 11 libraries saving $8 million. Why are we not keeping those libraries open and also some fire stations?
RUSH: Easy.
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: What are we talking about here? We’re talking about Philadelphia, right?
CALLER: That is correct.
RUSH: When was the last time you went to the library?
CALLER: I actually frequent it, quite often.
RUSH: All right. Well, how many people are in there when you go.
CALLER: Not very many.
RUSH: Yeah. Ever been to the zoo lately?
CALLER: I have not.
RUSH: Go.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Go. You’ll be standing in line to get in as people are asked to name the new jaguar cub or feed the dolphins or whatever animals they have at the Philadelphia Zoo. The animals are at great risk from global warming. We may not see these animals anymore if things keep going ’cause they might become extinct. But the Internet? (snorts) Why, Google has this massive project to digitize every book ever published. If they get their way, you’re going to be able to access every book ever written on the Internet.
CALLER: What about the fire stations?
RUSH: Fire stations?
CALLER: Yeah, they’re closing fire stations down as well.
RUSH: Oh, that’s just a trick to get you to pay more taxes. That’s how cities and governments do it. They close down these vital services rather than all the waste like the cappuccino machines and so forth. That’s just designed to get you to agree to more spending, more taxes, so they don’t have to close the fire station or the police station. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, but see, I must apologize. I forgot one thing. Forgive me. It’s going to take me awhile to make this rote. There aren’t going to be any arson fires ’cause Obama’s president, there’s going to be so much love. The existing fire departments can handle the accidents.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Richmond, Virginia. This is Sandra. Sandra, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. And thank you and Snerdley for being individualists, much as myself. I need your help.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I’m a fairly new listener, just started last year when the election really got kicking good, and I realized I need to get more involved. How can an individual like I, who’s an individualist and believes in individuals and the American way, how can we stop what we just heard this morning?
RUSH: Well, now, see, it’s a great, great question, because you have to have realistic goals. It may not be possible. I don’t know how we’re going to stop this for a couple of years. Now, hear me out on this, Sandra, because this is a very important question. Elections have consequences. I don’t know how we’re going to stop this. I haven’t seen yet any evidence from our Republican Senate and House minorities that they’re really interested in stopping any of it. What I’ve seen so far, and it’s going too far, it’s outta hand, there are too many people who are saying, ‘We need to step aside and halt our criticism. We need to hope the new president and his administration have success and so forth. We want to work together with them.’ This is politics and it’s the future of the country, and this is not how these guys are going to win votes in 2010. This plan that Obama has, anybody who’s on our side of the aisle who has any degree of education and experience and knowledge of history knows full well the disaster that awaits us. He’s going to get 95% of what he wants early on, folks, because of this attitude, the Republicans, ‘Oh, we hope he succeeds. Oh, we can’t be seen as critics, oh, no, no, that will not help us with the minority vote in 2010, 2012.’
All that’s bunk. We stand up for what’s right and what we believe in or we cave. Right now our side is in cave mode and they’re out of fear. That means, Sandra, it’s up to us, as it always is. So what can you do? Well, I’m going to tell you three things that you can do, and number one, and this is true for every one of us out there. You have got to stand firm in what you believe in, live your life that way, vote when you have the chance to vote that way, and you have to not be afraid to talk to people that disagree with you about it. The people that care about this are the ones that have the chance to make changes. The people out there watching MTV and doing other things, forget them, because they’re not engaged. They show up every election. Now, don’t forget ’em, but that’s another thing we gotta do, we’ve got to somehow assert ourselves into the popular culture. Popular culture right now is just accepted as liberal, there’s not any contention, there’s no disagreement. And the people that only know America via popular culture are seeing nothing but anti-Republican, anti-conservative, anti-Bush, pro-liberal, pro-cultural rot. They see it all over the place all the time, they think it’s normal. Anybody who disagrees with it is the enemy. It’s unrealistic to expect those people every election to all of a sudden go ahead and vote for a conservative. So that’s a project.
A guy named Andrew Breitbart and his website in California is spearheading that with some help from others, but what can you do, Sandra? Don’t live in a cocoon. You have no idea how many people you will influence just by virtue of the way you live your life, just by virtue of the way you communicate with people. If you believe in it, try to change people’s minds. It may lead to some arguments. You may think it’s pointless; you may think it’s fruitless. Another thing to do is keep listening to this program, and I say this in all sincerity. This program will keep you inspired, motivated, and happy. This program will keep you armed. This program, my newsletter, website, and this program will keep you up to speed, and it will give you the inspiration to continue to go out and do this. It’s the country we’re talking about, right? It’s talking about the things we believe in, the future, for those of you that have kids and grandkids. I’ve got nieces and nephews, you care about the future, this is what it’s all about. And we’re heading to a disaster here, and depending on how deep this disaster penetrates our country, it could take a generation to turn this stuff around. If they get national health care, folks, that’s a biggie. They’re going to get Supreme Court nominations, I told you before the election, this stuff matters, elections have consequences. Okay, yeah, we’re in a hole. But I’m not going to be on the bus when it goes over the cliff.
Now, I mentioned yesterday, here’s something else you can do, something I did. You know, a lot of people have asked me, ‘Where did you learn?’ People ask me all the time, ‘What did you do? How did you learn what you learn?’ Well, family, obviously. But, man, there’s so much brilliant conservative thought out there, and a lot of people have heard about it, a lot of people haven’t, a lot of people don’t have access to it. We’ve got a new partner here at EIB, the Heritage Foundation. These are think tank specialists, they’re scholars, scientists, economists, demographers, and they are brilliant, and they work, some of them, in the basements of anonymity, churning stuff out that, if you can have access to, a world of knowledge is open to you that you didn’t know existed. You’re not going to find this stuff in the mainstream media; you’re not going to find it in the library; you’re not going to find it in the places you would normally seek to go. They’ve got a website www.AskHeritage.org. You can become a member of this. There are 400,000 people who are, all across the country. Go to this website. We link to it also at RushLimbaugh.com. AskHeritage.org.
Ask them anything, and they’ll find the answer to your question in all of the digitized research on their servers. I mean it’s just waiting. This stuff is not taught in schools. This is crucial. If you’re a homeschooler, AskHeritage.org. I’ve talked about the Heritage Foundation over the years, because they have been invaluable to me. I’m an instinctive conservative. I always knew what conservatism was. I always knew what liberalism was. I never have had any doubts. What people like the Heritage Foundation enabled me to do was to explain and understand why my instincts were what they were, and my family as well, of course. But you can’t just have one source: www.AskHeritage.org. This is a gold mine, my friends, and wait ’til you join and play around with this. I mean from any topic you want on conservatism, be it the economy, foreign policy, war on terror, military matters, they’ve got perhaps one of the greatest libraries on Ronald Reagan, what would Reagan do in a circumstance, if that intrigues you, AskHeritage.org.
So Sandra, there’s all kinds of things you can do, but all the rest of you just interact with people and don’t be afraid to be who you are. And be prepared to have people offended by how confident you are in what you believe. That’s something that offends people more than anything else. Most people don’t have the confidence to think they’re sure of things. When you come along and you’re sure of things that’s going to intimidate people. ‘Nobody could be that sure.’ ‘Cause everybody’s been conditioned to think that there are two sides to everything. There aren’t. There’s right and there’s wrong. And wrong is invalid. We don’t have to give wrong the time of day just to be fair, just like we don’t have to give evil the time of day just to be fair. Just like we don’t have to give defeat a chance on the battlefield just to be fair. But so many people are so wishy-washy, ‘Well, you know, I can understand why we should, but on the other hand I don’t think we should offend, but on the other hand…’ you get frustrated dealing with these people. But it can be worth it.