Michelle in Pensacola, Part Two

RUSH: We go to Michelle in Pensacola. Michelle was with us yesterday. We ran out of time. Michelle, thanks for letting us call you back.

CALLER: Hi. How are you?

RUSH: Well, I’m not in the best of moods today, but I’ll be nice talking to you.

CALLER: Well, thank you. I’ll be nice talking to you. I’m not in the best of moods, either.

RUSH: You were very nice talking to me yesterday.

CALLER: Thank you.

RUSH: Why are you not in a good mood today, Michelle? I would think the opportunity to appear on this program two days in a row would make your day.

CALLER: (giggles) Well, I would think so, too, but apparently the consensus of opinion around here is, ‘Do not talk to him. Do not talk,’ and my family. So, you know, I dunnoooo!

RUSH: Why? Why does your family tell you not to talk to me?

CALLER: (laughing) One of them says you’re an idiot, you’re only going to make fun of me, and you are gonna try to prove how smart you are by using me as your —

RUSH: I don’t have to prove that.

CALLER: Huh?

RUSH: I don’t have to prove how smart I am. It’s self-evident. (laughing)

CALLER: You are so smart, right?

RUSH: But I have no intentions of humiliating you, just the exact opposite.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: We don’t make fun of people on the phones. This is —

CALLER: Well, you know, what you were just saying about people who dream of something good? Unfortunately, that would be me. I am a dreamer. I am a hoper. I hope. All this is about, for me, my hope for our country. And I realize that, you know, God didn’t apply for the position of president. So, other than that, you’re never going to have perfection. So you have to deal with the good and the bad. But I sense and feel that you —

RUSH: Well, now, wait. Let me stop you on that. I wouldn’t take issue much with that, but from what I heard you say yesterday —

CALLER: Yeah?

RUSH: — you don’t want to admit the bad. You only want to see what you think —

CALLER: No.

RUSH: — is the good.

CALLER: No. No. I do want to… I prefer generally keeping out of it because I am a novice to politics. But —

RUSH: Well, see, I want to change that, Michelle.

CALLER: (giggling) I think ignorance is better.

RUSH: No, it’s not. No, no, no.

CALLER: (giggling)

RUSH: No, it’s not.

CALLER: I truly believe it.

RUSH: Michelle, ignorance is not better. It doesn’t make —

CALLER: Well…

RUSH: It doesn’t make you happier. It makes it easier for people to take advantage of you. It makes it easier for people to end up harming you when you think they’re helping you. Ignorance is not good here, and it’s one of the things I wanted to deal with. I want to also be very brazen with you about something here. You said you’re a hoper and a dreamer. Now, I love dreams. You know, I think too many people are told that their dreams are fantasyland and so forth. But dreams led to inventions; dreams led to this country. But hope is a different thing. ‘Hope,’ in many cases, Michelle, is simply an excuse for not doing anything. After you ‘hope,’ what have you accomplished? You can hope all you want — and I’m not talking here in the religious sense. I don’t want anybody who… I’m not defining ‘hope’ in the religious sense here at all. But after you sit around and hope and hope and hope and hope… Dreams sometimes can inspire you to action, but hope never does. Hope is a substitute for action. You want everybody to get along, but that’s not gonna make it happen, and in fact everybody getting along is an unrealistic expectation. It’s never been the case.

CALLER: And I understand that. I’m not that much of a dreamer. I’m sorry to have interrupted you. Go ahead.

RUSH: No, no, no. But what you said yesterday was that you think that Obama wants to end all the divisions in the country. You really believe that he wants us all to get along.

CALLER: I really believe that he is trying to unite us, yes. That is my whole reason for this call.

RUSH: Right. Now, Michelle.

CALLER: Yes?

RUSH: Just so you know where I’m coming from.

CALLER: Yes?

RUSH: You couldn’t be — and I don’t say this to humility you or to make fun of you — you couldn’t be more wrong. Barack Obama is one of the most divisive presidents that we’ve had in my lifetime. You know who is really trying to unite us was George W. Bush. When he first assumed office, he let Ted Kennedy help him write the education bill. He operated under the concept of ‘the new tone.’ He was trying to make all kinds of friends with Democrats, make friends with his enemies. George Bush tried to unite, tried to bring everybody along. What you’re reacting to is Obama’s campaign promises, ‘We’re going to unite. We’re…

CALLER: No, no, no, no.

RUSH: ‘Cause there’s no… Look, 55 million Americans voted against him, and they haven’t changed their minds.

CALLER: He won.

RUSH: Yeah, he won.

CALLER: So let me just say this. If —

RUSH: But if Barack Obama, according to my beliefs — you know, I take my beliefs very seriously. My beliefs are heartfelt, I’m a traditionalist, I believe in the founding of the country, believe in the individual. If I believe, even though he won, that Barack Obama’s ideas will forever alter this country for the worse in comparison to how great we’ve been, why should I support it just because he won, just to get along? That’s not —

CALLER: You shouldn’t if that’s what you believe.

RUSH: Well, that’s what I’m doing.

CALLER: Okay, I — I agree. I understand. If that is your belief, and that’s your feeling, you have every right to say it.

RUSH: Now, would you categorize yourself as a liberal or conservative or as anything?

CALLER: Well, if I had to, I would probably say an American. I wouldn’t… I don’t like those categories. I really choose not to use that.

RUSH: But they’re very meaningful.

CALLER: I understand. But, you know, what? Like you said yesterday, the division goes back to the Pilgrims. It’s been that way since that long? Correct? You said that.

RUSH: Adam and Eve, if you want to talk about the —

CALLER: (laughs) True.

RUSH: The idea of people in a nation or even a family all getting along, Michelle, it doesn’t happen. It’s unrealistic.

CALLER: Exactly. Oh, I do! I am not that much of a dreamer.

RUSH: You think Obama can pull it off because he wants to unify us?

CALLER: The —

RUSH: Did you just hear me talking about the Department of Homeland Security report he put out, which some people like me are right-wing extremists ready to form militias and take over the country?

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: That’s absolute BS.

CALLER: Okay. Okay. Let me just say this. Two things. To answer that, I would like to hear your idea rather than what he has. You know? If you had nothing good to say, why say it? But it’s because you’re an entertainer. This is your job —

RUSH: No. You know what?

CALLER: Yes. You told me yesterday that you didn’t want to be a politician because you’d have to take a pay cut.

RUSH: That’s right. But I don’t want to be a politician because that’s a different line of work, and I’m too honest to be a politician.

CALLER: You what?

RUSH: Too honest to be a politician.

CALLER: Well, see, you know, that’s what I think, too, that there’s been so much corruption for so many years, and I feel that —

RUSH: Okay, now.

CALLER: — people are being outed now, which is a good thing. Do you agree or not? Yes or no.

RUSH: Uh —

CALLER: People being outed.

RUSH: What do you mean, ‘outed’?

CALLER: Well, that they are corrupt. You’re seeing it every day, the politicians.

RUSH: No. No. What I see is the corrupt getting away with it.

CALLER: Well, they’ve been getting away with it.

RUSH: Well —

CALLER: Correct?

RUSH: And they’re continuing to get away with it.

CALLER: Well, you know what, Rush? He’s been in office for three months. Give the man a break. He’s only human.

RUSH: Who said…? Now, wait a minute.

CALLER: Obama.

RUSH: What did you think of the mood in the country?

CALLER: The mood? I think —

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. What did…? When George Bush was president — when the left in this country was calling him Hitler and calling him a liar and they were trying to engineer the defeat of the US military in Iraq — what did you think then about the attempt to unify the country and everybody get along?

CALLER: Again, and I don’t mean to sound… You know, I wasn’t aware of so much back then. I would hear things. I would hear bad things about Bush. I don’t… I didn’t like politics because of all the lies, because of all the deceit.

RUSH: But now you like politics because of Obama?

CALLER: Because Obama suddenly inspired me, and I thought, ‘This man is saying what I need to hear, what I want to hear.’

RUSH: See…

CALLER: I want — I want —

RUSH: See, you have made a point that I’ve been making: ‘It’s not what he says. It’s how he says it.’ You think he’s been saying what you want to hear, but you probably couldn’t tell me specifically what he said. He just creates an aura or an image for you, a blank slate, and he can become a solution to all these problems that you’ve grown up around with America and so forth. So he has inspired you, and he has done it all with talk. Michelle, I have to go. The segment here has gone long as it is. You know, dreamers and hopers, I just want to tell you since you’re a dreamer and a hoper, dreamers and hopers succeed through liberty. Not government control, not taxation, not brilliant speeches. That’s the opposite of nurturing dreamers and hopers. Reliance and dependence destroy dreams and hopes. Dreams and hopes are fine, but without action, they’re nothing. You’re just sitting around hoping. And when you’re sitting around hoping, you can fall prey to some slick speaker who can make you think your hopes and dreams are coming true when in fact the country you’ve known and grown up in is being torn apart right around you and you don’t even see it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One thing about Michelle, she said she wants to know what I stand for. That’s not hard to do. You turn on the radio and you listen, or you go to the RushLimbaugh.com. You see, what’s happening is, she is listening to her friends, family, or whatever, who are telling her, ‘Don’t call, you’re going to be chewed up and spit out,’ and so forth and so on.