RUSH: My friends, it is very simple. It’s not hard to understand at all. When the speaker of the House of Representatives, third in line to the presidency, accused Americans at town hall meetings of being Nazi sympathizers — when she started it — I pushed back twice as hard. Anybody have a problem with that? … David Brooks. You talk about David Brooks and what he said, saying that what I said was ‘insane.’ You know, David Brooks is no more informed about this subject than Obama was informed about what happened with Crowley and Gates. They both popped off about things they didn’t know about, and they both admitted they didn’t know about it. Brooks said he had no clue what the Rush Limbaugh thing was, but leveled it ‘insane,’ pronounced it ‘insane.’ We’ll get to that in just a second.
But there’s a tally, a final weekend tally. Pelosi; None. Gibbs. None. Durbin: None. Rush, too many to count. That’s the score, my friends. Rather than talk about the obvious flaws in health care, the subject was changed. They talked about references to Nazi Germany. The House… All weekend long, a thousand references to me over the weekend, and they are rattled at the White House. F. Chuck Todd admits that they’re rattled and they’re unsettled over this. House Democrats have set up a health care war room. Obama has a brand-new health care website. They have marching orders and instructions for people to go visit congressmen one-on-one in their offices to lobby for health care reform. If you need to do all of this, if you need a new website to go along with your snitch website and to go along with your Organizing for America website — and if you need a war room in the House of Representatives for the Democrats there to use, and if you need a new organizational plan to send people out to members of Congress — it seems to me that it is a sign people really don’t want what you are selling.
Rather than talk about the people who raised the specter of swastikas, rather than talk about the people that raised the specter of mobs — unruly mobs — rather than talk about the people who brought up this whole Nazi Germany business in the first place (Pelosi, Durbin, and Gibbs) all weekend long they talked only about me, your lovable host. Ugly, vile hate speech, no problem! Hitler had a youth movement, folks, who snitched on their parents. Obama has got an APB out for people to snitch on their neighbors. What would you call this? You got a snitch website. Now, they’re out there denying it’s a snitch website, but it’s a snitch website. Now, let’s play the David Brooks sound bite. Because if they want to continue this, if they want to get this right, if people are going to comment on this, they need to be informed. Like Obama should have been informed and been a little bit more discreet when making comments about the Henry Gates, Sergeant Crowley episode. David Brooks yesterday on the Meet the Press said this in answer to a question from David Gregory: ‘What’s going on here? How does the president retake center stage here?’
BROOKS: I hadn’t seen Rush Limbaugh thing. That is insane! Huh huh huh. What he’s saying is insane. Leaders of both parties could have gone out to these town meetings. They didn’t do it. They chose more or less a Democratic plan and now all hell is breaking loose, and we are now — and it’s not just the crazies among whom we just saw some. But if you take overall poll ratings for health care they are — people — the American public is now as skeptical as they were when Clintoncare collapsed. So there… It’s not just the crazies. There is a real public concern about real issues.
RUSH: So Brooks didn’t even know what I said, didn’t know why I said what I said, yet pronounced it ‘insane.’ Now, Byron York sent me an e-mail yesterday afternoon, he was wanting a response at the Washington Examiner from me to what Brooks said. And I wrote him back and I said, ‘Everybody seems to forget that Nancy Pelosi started this.’ Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives started this by telling TV cameras and microphones that Americans showing up to protest health care were wearing swastikas. That’s saying they’re Nazis, and then they were called mobs and ugly mobs and unruly mobs and so forth. And I told Byron, ‘For my whole career, I have sat here and I have listened to conservatism be compared to Nazism. I had eight years of ‘Bush is Hitler.’ I have had all of these comparisons.
‘I had Dick Durbin talking about our interrogators at Gitmo being like Nazi thugs. We’ve heard Obama make the comparison to our court system being like Nazi Germany. Finally I’m hitting back, in kind, and I’m not surprised they don’t like it.’ Now, I want to say a little bit more here about Brooks and this ‘insane’ comment here. Let’s leave aside the fact that the term ‘Nazi’ comes from the German word for National Socialism. That’s where the word ‘Nazi’ comes from. Now, if you guys in the White House, if you don’t like being compared to the socialism of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, fine. I’ll just as easily compare you to the fascists of the twenties and thirties if you prefer that. But socialism is socialism. I don’t care who ran it. I don’t care where it happened. It is what it is, and there are parallels to this stupid plan and what was done — and why — in Germany.
One of Hitler’s major domestic priorities was to complete and politicize the process of nationalizing all aspects of German health care. And a good friend of mine, Andy McCarthy, sent me a long article today published in November 1993 by a US doctor who saw the health care issue as a perfect example of the inevitable pattern of socialism: Taking something that was initially the province of individual choice — guided by, of course, the individual Judeo-Christian notions of charity for the poor. You take something initially the province of individual choice, you move it to the ambit of state responsibility on the welfare state theory that it is government’s responsibility to redistribute resources to ensure everyone’s needs and you finally get the dictatorial control.
Because as the state becomes more totalitarian, the leaders of the state necessarily make political choices about how the available resources got rationed. Now, let me say up front here that nobody is saying Obama is Hitler. Nobody is saying that Pelosi is anybody else in Hitler’s regime. But there is no denying that what happened in Germany is a socialist legacy based on the leftist premise that health care is not a matter of individual responsibility, but it is fit for government control. You want to know what happened in Germany? I’ll tell you what happened in Germany. Bismarck socialized medicine in the late Nineteenth Century. In typical lefty fashion, he called it ‘anti-socialist’ legislation. This guy had it on Saul Alinsky before Saul Alinsky was born. But as the doctor explains in this article, it was page one in the moderate playbook. You provide little socialism in the inane hope of avoiding a more radical government takeover. Even though once government gets its foot in the door, we all know what eventually happens.
Now, the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic naturally squeezed out any notion of health care as a private matter. That is what statists and totalitarians do. Everything seemed hunky-dory until post-World War I economic downturns when doctors, who are now partners of the state rather than servants of their patients, started rationing available health care based on the state’s cost-benefit analysis. It’s all in the House plan! Everything that was done in Germany in the thirties, nationalizing health care. It’s all in the House plan perform what this… It laid the groundwork for Hitler’s National Socialism. They used the health care in Germany, and the government takeover of it as the foundation for socialism nationwide. Because it allows to you to regulate every aspect of everyone’s behavior. It allows you access to everybody’s privacy.
All in the name of ‘doing good.’ All in the name of some confused ‘right’ to good health that people have. And in the process what used to be a matter of individual choice and what used to be a matter of individual responsibility, health care, now is out the door, and the government’s gonna take care of all of it. And in the process, you lose your privacy, and you lose your liberty. Now, Hitler’s propaganda stressed government responsibility for national health care. Doctors rushed to join the Nazi Party because everybody had gotten used to government control of the industry, and Hitler’s regime was going to decide things like what medical research funding went to which institutions and who would be allowed to practice what kind of medicine, and so it’s sort of like the global warming movement. The people who want grants have to adopt a certain party line that there is manmade global warming.
In Germany, the way Hitler got the doctors was to bring them in on it and make sure that the chosen ones — the ones that signed up — were the ones that got the assignments, the money and so forth and so on. With the public in Germany having accepted the premise that health care was a government responsibility, then it was just a matter of time. Health care seamlessly became the slave of Hitler’s other policies. Now, Jewish doctors were barred. Reproduction rights were denied to those deemed genetically inferior. There were forced abortions and euthanasias and so forth. Now, I can understand why the White House is upset about all of these comparisons. But socialism is socialism, as I say. If you want me to I’ll go back and give you the fascists of the Twenties and Thirties.
They don’t like Nazi Germany, I’ll give you Mussolini’s Italy. Or I can give you the Soviet Union any time in the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties. Whatever you want, I can give you — I can give you the North Koreans today. Socialism is socialism wherever it is, whatever you call it. But don’t forget, folks, the term ‘Nazi’ comes from the German word for National Socialism. And Obama’s got his people out there, and Obama is even saying, ‘Well, there’s no euthanasia in the plan and there are no cutbacks in Medicare.’ What plan, Mr. President? You haven’t presented a plan! How can you tell us what is or isn’t in the plan when you don’t have one? All we’ve got to go on is the House plan, and it’s all there. This is mind-boggling stuff. They deny what’s there. They deny what’s in it. As though we’re supposed to believe Obama, like a cult following.
Just because he says it, we’re supposed to believe it. Problem is, we’ve read it. And people are showing up at these town hall meetings — and the union thugs have come out now and it’s getting violent. You know — on his orders. He’s the one that’s ordered all this up. They’re the ones who said, ‘If they hit you, we’re going to punch back twice as hard.’ Well, Nancy Pelosi called all of you and me and everybody showing up at these town meetings Nazis. She used the swastika. Durbin has done it. So I pushed back twice as hard, and they’ve got a problem with that. Now, Mr. Brooks, I know you’re not uneducated, but it really is ‘insane’ to proclaim something you know nothing about to be insane. Now, one more time here: Nobody is saying that Obama is Hitler. Nobody is saying that Nancy Pelosi is Goebbels.
But there is no denying that what happened in Germany is a socialist legacy based on a leftist premise that health care is not a matter of individual responsibility but is something fit for government control. If the question is, ‘Who is more like the Nazis?’ and the choices are Obama-Pelosi or people showing up at town hall meetings who want to protect their individual liberty, that’s not even a close call. (interruption) No, I’m not going to apologize for it. They started this. Everybody seems to forget that the Speaker of the House does not get a pass. The Speaker of the House does not get to call over half the people in this country who oppose her plan Nazis with impunity. Nobody reported it. Nobody talked about her. Nobody mentioned Durbin over the weekend and what he said on the Senate floor.
If you want to get into a comparison of Obama and Pelosi and this health care bill that’s in the House, and the tea party people or the people showing up at these national town halls to address their congressmen about preserving their freedom and liberty… You want to get into an argument over who’s closer to the Nazi policies in the thirties and forties in Germany? It’s not a contest, folks. It is not a contest. The left has been pinning Hitler and Nazism on the right for decades. My entire career on this program, 21 years, I’ve put up with it. I’ve listened to it. Well, what happened in Germany, from the period of 1880 to 1945 was a socialist phenomenon. Adolf Hitler was a man of the left. He was not a man of the right. They can deny it all they want, but it is a fact: Hitler was a leftist.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, Germany was the first country to develop a national system to insure people against medical costs. It was in 1883 that one of the most conservative of politicians, Otto von Bismarck, laid down the first foundation slab to the modern European warfare state, as I just explained to you. And it was just the first step, and it was not going to be any more than just the first step. It was just going to make the things a little easier, but once the foundation was laid then the premise, ‘Hey, you know, government can do all of this, and government should do all of this because government wants to control everybody,’ didn’t take long. Scientific and medical research was a pillar of Germany’s economic and industrial development strategy from that time as well. These policies and structures helped develop an advanced, highly medicalized technological health care system, and once Hitler took over… Well, I’m going to forget all that. I’m telling you, it was in Germany and Hitler just completed what Bismarck started. Now, let’s go be back. Let’s not forget, because everybody seems to conveniently want to ignore that Nancy Pelosi last Tuesday got all of this started in San Francisco.
PELOSI: I think they are Astroturf — you be the judge — of carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on health care.
RUSH: ‘You be the judge… carrying swastikas and symbols like that.’ Maybe, you know, I could sit here and say, I’m just trying to help Pelosi out. She might have been confused about seeing swastikas since Obama’s signs look a lot like them. Well, that teed ’em off! Let’s not forget, Dick Durbin, June 14th, on the Senate floor.
DURBIN: If I read this to you and didn’t tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis; Soviets in their gulags; or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others; that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that’s not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of our — their own prisoners.
RUSH: Yeah. Americans were acting like Nazis. Our interrogators were acting like Nazis, according to Senator Durbin — and don’t forget 1997. Jay Rockefeller and another Democrat, Tom Daschle, had the typical playbook page where they bring some aggrieved citizens up to help push some cause; and this guy’s got a swastika tattoo on his arm! He was introduced as one Jay Rockefeller’s best friends. Oh, we didn’t know this guy had the tattoo! Well, we found out about it; he did it in his youth. He didn’t know much about it. Folks, I’ve sat here for 21 years. You know it. I’ve had to sit through, we all did, all those Bush-Hitler signs — Bush = Hitler — from the leftist blogs and some of the Drive-By Media reported that.
They didn’t say it themselves, but they reported it during the second term of George W. Bush. We had to sit through the media reporting on books and a movie on the assassination of George W. Bush, and we were told we had to appreciate the art. We’ve been told we had to appreciate the art and pay for it, of a low-rent piece of pond scum putting a crucifix in a jar of urine and putting it in a museum, on taxpayer dollars. We’ve had to put up with all of this stuff. We’ve had to put up with people on the left comparing conservatism, which is the essence of liberty and freedom and the individual, we’ve had to have ourselves compared to Hitler, Nazis, and all this sort of stuff for as long as I’ve been alive. I’m finally responding in kind, because these people, this incident, they started it — and they don’t get away with it on this show anymore. I’m not surprised that they don’t like it.
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RUSH: Vinny in Manhattan. Hello, Vinny. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Great one, FDNY dittos to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Leaders Boehner and McConnell should have been on the steps of the Capitol demanding Nancy Pelosi step down. To hell with her apologizing — and anyone from the Democratic Party regarding the swastika comment. I mean, how long is the GOP, if you’ll pardon the expression going to keep that powder dry here? All right? This woman needs to be called out, and we need to create a spectacle! That’s what we need to do, instead of all this pussyfooting around. The hell with Nancy Pelosi, the hell with the Democratic Party and their power grabbing socialize every man, woman, and child in this country! We need to start making a spectacle of ourselves when things happen like this, okay? Every member of Congress should have been outraged at what she just called every person in this country that believes in the freedom to debate ideas that come down from the holy offices of Congress, okay? I mean… Hey, I’m a conservative, and I believe where we’re headed, but our members of Congress need to step up and say, ‘Who the hell do you think you are telling the media that there are conservatives running around with swastikas on signs?’ Nothing like that has happened at these meetings, and nothing will, because we’re not like that. I’m angry about this, quite frankly.
RUSH: You ought to be angry about it and this is the often asked question that I can shorten and repeat it thus. Where’s the Republican Party? And I haven’t got the answer, but frankly we didn’t need ’em. We got attention focused on this.
CALLER: You took the bullet as usual.
RUSH: Yeah, I know. But your point really is well meant. That outraged me, and these guys in Congress, they’re Republicans, they’ve been called Nazis. They’ve been allegedly called Nazis all these years, especially if they’re conservatives and so forth — and she’s their speaker. They shoulda stood up and raised a little hell about it. I think to them it’s just words, an inside-the-Beltway game stuff that goes back and forth in the House, and it could well be that they want the words to stand on their own and not call attention to it, who knows. But since I’m not the leader of the Republican Party and nowhere near that position, I can’t tell you why they didn’t do it.
CALLER: Well, Rush, we appreciate all the bullets you take for us day in and day out. You certainly know you’re not alone. But the leadership needs to know that even though you are still the ‘titular head’ of the conservative movement in this country —
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: — they need to be out there raising a little hell, and Nancy Pelosi cannot be allowed to get away with what she said. Thank you, sir.
RUSH: Well, in terms of State-Run Media, she got away with it. They didn’t report it. They didn’t make a big deal about it. In fact, all these people commenting on what I said conveniently left out the fact that she started it and that I was just responding in kind, finally. And I’ll say again, folks — to cut to the chase on this debate — if we want to ask the question, ‘Which group of people are closer to the National Socialism of Germany on this health care plan: Is it Obama and the Democrats and the plan, or is it the people showing up to protest the plan at these town hall meetings?’ It’s no contest. The people who are the closest and bear the most striking resemblance to the socialist policies of Nazis is today’s Democrat Party, with this health care plan. I’m not saying Hitler and Pelosi are the same thing. I’m not saying that.
But I mean Nazi is derived from the German words ‘National Socialism.’ The German words for National Socialism, that’s where Nazi comes from. Socialism is socialism wherever it is. Be it in the Soviet Union, be it with Hitler in the bunker back in the Thirties and Forties, be it with Kim Jong-il today and whoever else, Hugo Chavez down in Venezuela. I’m telling you that what the Democrat Party today is doing with this health care, from the president on down, bears far more resemblance to socialized policies of previous regimes in the world including the Nazis, than anything the people protesting this are doing. They don’t resemble anything at all to do with socialism. These people are protesting to stand up and maintain their liberty and their freedom. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, were all men of the left.
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RUSH: I want you to listen again carefully to this New York Times story today by Eric Dash. We’ll get to the Pelosi sound bite in a minute. ‘The resurrection of the guaranteed bonus is sure to become a hot-button issue for the Obama administration’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, who is preparing this week to review how compensation should be structured at seven companies that received two or more federal bailouts. The companies must each submit 2009 compensation plans for their top-25 earners by Thursday [this week], and Mr. Feinberg has 60 days to rule on them. He has the authority to single out any of those employees and adjust their pay packages,’ and I would ask: How in the hell does he have this authority? He’s not a cabinet member. How does he have this authority? From where does he get this authority?
‘In the next phase, he is to review the packages of the next 75 highest earners in each company. For them, he can set pay formulas to be applied broadly.’ So we have one guy working for Obama who has not been confirmed by the US Senate who can sit there and tell people on Wall Street what they can or cannot make based on whatever he feels is fair, right, just for whatever reason. All right, let’s go back and compare this to Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. ‘The German Labor Front, the DAF, was the amalgamated national socialist Nazism.’ Nazism was officially National Socialism. ‘It refers to the ideology and practices of the national socialist German workers party under one Adolf Hitler and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. A trade union…’
This is how they defined it: ‘A trade union or labor union is an organization run by and for workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas such as wages, hours, and working conditions, organizations which replaced the free and diverse Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was the democracy and republican period of Germany from 1919 to 1933. Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German revolution in November 1918.’ ‘A trade union or labor union is an organization run for and by workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas such as wages, hours, and working conditions.’ Now, Adolf Hitler had a labor czar. His name was Robert Ley, L-e-y.
German Labor Front Facts Discussion Forum Encyclopedia article: ‘The DAF, the German Labor Front leader was Robert Ley was a Nazi Germany politician head of the German Labor Front from 1933 to 1945. He committed suicide awaiting trial for war crimes. He stated that the aim of his organization was to create a true social and productive community. Now, theoretically the German Labor Front existed to act as a medium through which workers and owners could mutually represent their interests. However, in reality it was a means by which workers were controlled. Ensuring wage demands were not made too often, wages were set by the 12 trustees of the German Labor Front,’ which was headed by the pay czar, or the labor czar, Robert Ley.
So Obama has a pay czar demanding compensation schedules for seven Wall Street companies by Thursday after which he will have 60 days to reject or accept and change and modify. The big difference here is that Hitler and his boys dictated wages for the unions. Which Obama in his own way is, I guess, doing by giving them ownership of General Motors and Chrysler and so forth. Now, once again, folks, I’m telling you: Nancy Pelosi started this. If she didn’t want to go down this road, she should not have said that there are people at these town hall meetings carrying signs with ‘swahstih-kahhs’ on them. And, by the way, we’ve looked. We have found one picture of a protester with a swastika on the sign, and it had a line drawn through it, meaning ‘no.’ It was not supported. It was meaning ‘no.’ We haven’t found one beyond that, and even that one that was found has been misrepresented by people like Nancy Pelosi. Speaking of whom, let’s go back to the nutroots convention in Austin, July 19th, 2008.
PELOSI: You make America more American because of the vital participation in the process and, as Mr. Doggett says, to hold elected officials accountable. While we may not always agree on the resolution and what we have to deal with, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be persistent, dissatisfied and relentless in making us, taking us, pulling us over to, uh, where you believe our government should be.
RUSH: So here’s Nancy Pelosi talking to the insane lunatics of the far left fringe on the websites out there, ‘Hey, hold us accountable! Hey, drag us and tug us and, you know, pull us over where you believe our government should be.’ Now — now, now, now — it’s people that do this are Nazis. Lloyd Doggett is who she was talking about, the guy got run out of his own town hall meeting with questions he didn’t want to answer.
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RUSH: All right, let’s go back to the audio sound bites. Wolf Blitzer on Friday on CNN’s Situation Room tried to make a point of fairness with The Forehead, as his commentator/analyst, but it didn’t work.
BLITZER: Rush Limbaugh makes the point — and I’ll throw it to Paul Begala — that, you know, he started making these comparisons after Nancy Pelosi said some of these protesters — some of these, quote, ‘crazies’ — were carrying swastikas.
BEGALA: The Speaker was reporting the truth.
RUSH: That’s Begala there saying, ‘The Speaker was reporting the truth.’ We’ve only found one picture that was a Nazi sign with a slash through it. Begala went on…
BLITZER: Should the Democrats simply ignore a comment like this from Rush Limbaugh?
BEGALA: No! I, months ago, sent out a memo saying Rush Limbaugh was the leader of the Republican Party. He helped to whip up this frenzy. When we did it, we knew there was one big risk: If a leading national Republican stood up and denounced Rush Limbaugh, he or she would become the leader of the Republican Party — and I was, frankly ,worried that maybe Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin would do that. Bill Clinton picked big fights with labor unions. Barack Obama picked a big fight with the Clintons. Strong leaders have to take on the entire leadership of their party.
RUSH: Well, so, The Forehead is now finally admitting that he was behind that strategery to make me the leader of the party in order to get me denounced. But it didn’t work because I wasn’t the leader of the party anyway. Now let’s move to CNN’s State of the Union, John King… (interruption) What? Mmm-hmm. Powell was fulfilling his role set forth by the Mr. Begala because Powell did denounce me? But Powell didn’t become the leader of the party, did he? Begala failed. (interruption) Well, I don’t know that Powell wants to be the leader, but Begala said that whoever denounced me would be the automatic real leader of the party. Now, to David Brooks, Powell is the ideal, the epitome the modern-day Republican.