Our Miraculous Declaration of Independence (and Rush’s Clubs)

RUSH: Here’s Jerry in Cookeville, Tennessee. Hi, Jerry. Thank you for calling. You’re on Open Line Friday. You’re next.

CALLER: Hi, Rush.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: First off, I’d just like to say to you and all your staff, a very happy Independence Day. Out of 233 years, this might be the last one as we know it to be a real Independence Day. I called to ask you: ‘What kind of golf clubs do you use?’ I mean, are they Pings, or —

RUSH: No. My bag is full of different kinds. I have a Cleveland Launcher driver that’s 8.5 degrees loft. It’s about three or four years old, and nothing I’ve tried since is as good. I love the damn thing. My irons, 4-iron through wedge, are TaylorMade r7s, and I have a couple of Vokey 54- and 60-degree wedges. Utility clubs, 3- and 4-iron are TaylorMade. (interruption) What are you laughing at in there, Dawn? Golf game — well, he asked. It’s Open Line Friday. And I use the Scotty Cameron custom-made for me putter.

CALLER: Have you ever used the foot wedge? Those are pretty handy sometimes when you’re in tough shots.

RUSH: When nobody’s looking, yes.

CALLER: Oh, absolutely. It’s the club that’s not in your bag.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: But if I could just change the subject real quickly: Our president — when he was Senator Obama — kept saying that he wanted to change the fundamental values of America. Those are ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ So nobody should be surprised by what he’s doing.

RUSH: It’s not just Obama. You know, you raise a good point. The American left — Obama makes it plain. He looks at the Constitution as constraining him. He said the other day the Constitution prevents us from taking bold action real fast. If he could get rid of it to where he could wave his magic wand or do things by executive fiat, he would do them. But the whole left looks at the Declaration of Independence that way. You have to understand: the left in this country, for the longest time, despises the Declaration. This whole notion that we are all endowed by our Creator (they hate that; they don’t believe in God) with certain inalienable rights? See, when you say that we’re all ‘endowed with certain inalienable rights,’ that’s final. There is no more. You can’t add to it. ‘Certain inalienable rights’ is final. ‘…among these are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.’ Those are final. You can’t build on them. All you can do is take away. The left doesn’t like any of this and they certainly don’t like the US Constitution. It’s been this way for a long time.

The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence — I have a great piece on it here from… Well, the Heritage Foundation has a good one, but there’s also one here from the American Thinker that I’ll have to find. It’s brilliantly put together about how the Founding Fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence didn’t put it up to vote. They didn’t poll it. They didn’t do anything that politicians today do. It makes the point that if the Declaration had been put up for a vote in colonial times, it might have failed, because we had the same mix of people back then. They were scared to death of the King, scared to death of ruffling any feathers. ‘No, no, no! I don’t want to go on my own. I don’t want to fly alone.’ They didn’t do that. They knew that they had… Well, it was a miracle. The whole thing in Philadelphia and the Declaration and later the Constitution, it’s a miracle. There’s no more perfect form of government that’s been devised. I know Churchill’s line is surviving, regardless.

But nevertheless, you can’t go beyond certain inalienable rights endowed by our Creator. ‘Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness,’ these are final concepts. They’re not things that have starting points that you build on. What they are are things that have to be torn down and broken apart, and there have been people trying to do this since the days of ratification. It just so happens that in our lifetimes, those forces have become powerful enough to get elected now. And that’s the battle that we face. The battle really is over the founding of this country and what kind of country it’s going to be. And when Obama talks about ‘remaking’ America, the caller here is exactly right. ‘Remaking America’ means destroying these traditions, institutions that have defined America and its greatness since the founding.