RUSH: Mark Steyn got a thread going at the National Review Online corner on Friday or Saturday of last week. He posted a piece by a professor, interestingly enough, from Hillsdale College, who said that he thinks that this is our finest hour, conservatives’ finest hour. This guy, Paul Rahe, Hillsdale professor, he wrote: ‘We are not yet a people apt to acquiesce in dictates handed down by our lords and masters. When Britain and Canada drifted into socialism, there were no tea parties spontaneously formed by ordinary citizens to buck the trend. The British and the Canadians lacked the spirit of resistance — though, to be fair, it lived on in the likes of Margaret Thatcher. We Americans are made of sterner stuff. During the Cold War, we defended the Free World. In our absence, I am convinced, everyone else would have given way. … In my view, [Barack Obama] and today’s Democratic Party represent the last gasp of the Progressive impulse. The tyrannical ambition hidden at the heart of 
Progressivism’s quest for what Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed ‘rational administration’ Barack Obama has made manifest; and to all with eyes to see, the danger that we have temporized with for nearly a century is now perfectly visible,’ meaning they’re out in the open, we know exactly who they are, they’re not even hiding it.
‘What is required in what he calls ‘this defining moment’ is what Abraham Lincoln once called ‘a new birth of freedom.’ The period we just entered could be our finest hour.’ Now, this started an interesting flood of reaction because Paul Rahe, the guy from Hillsdale, basically said since the left is making it clear who they are, and it is so repugnant to Americans, there’s no chance that they have to go any further than this. This is their Waterloo, even passing it. Now, he’s a down-the-line constitutional scholar, educated individual as well, must be, to teach at Hillsdale. But it’s interesting because there were two people, young people, judging by their pictures they were in their twenties and thirties, who reacted to him with total objection, based on the laziness and the entitlement expectations of their own generation.
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RUSH: Okay, so Paul Rahe, Hillsdale College: This is a golden opportunity, the left is totally exposed, the American people, when they see this kind of ultra-radicalism want no part of it, could be our finest hour. Mark Steyn published that response, National Review Corner, over the weekend. Somebody named the Hyacinth Girl, no idea what her name is, has a blog, her picture next to it, she looks very young, looks like a blonde in her twenties. She’s one of us. She writes: ‘While it would be superawesome if Paul Rahe were right, I’m not holding my breath. Perhaps I’m too cynical, but with our near-permanent welfare class and a generation of kids who’ve been told that they are children into their late 20’s, I cannot imagine a prolonged revolt against Obamacare. As I’ve said before, ultimately free candy wins. Of course, there will still be the core of the Tea Party, but when the outrage wanes, a lot of people are going to tell themselves that, well, if the government is giving things away, they might as well get in on it.
‘I mean, why fight it? If it’s going to happen anyway, might as well benefit from it. Culturally, we readily accept the idea that we must follow the whims of our ‘betters’ — how else do you explain the thousands of ‘Rachels’ roaming the country throughout the ’90s? How else do you explain the persistence of Hollywood to dictate public policy and influence presidential elections? Barack Obama is our first cool president, put into office by the endorsements of our self-appointed betters. Celebrities are our new royalty, and sadly for this nation, the opinion of Jennifer Aniston is a lot more important than cold, hard facts. We are a lazy, spoiled, ADHD culture-soft and uninterested in thinking for ourselves. At least my generation is. I’ve met women my age who are almost proud of ‘knowing nothing about politics.” I have, too, by the way, of all ages.
‘A mom told me once, ‘Can you just write up a list of people we should vote for?’ Her playdates, soccer games, and story times at the bookstore were much more important. Obviously. Sooner or later, the outrage runs out. The relentless media rebranding of the ‘Teabaggers’ as angry, racist, uneducated, violent militants becomes mainstream knowledge and a pushback against the gaping maw of massive government and taxpayer debt becomes the last gasp of the marginalized, unnecessary white male. (Which is, paradoxically, sometimes led by an attractive, young, strong and well-spoken woman. But it’s best not to think about that for too long.)’ Now, I think this is a woman in her late twenties writing this. I’m just basing it on her picture. ‘As a society, we’ve accepted the idea that the famous are better than the normals. Certain educational levels render one more or less credible to form a coherent thought, where one’s diploma is from further underscores the previous point, the wealthy are inherently smarter than the poor, and that journalists have our best interest at heart, and since they’ve got degrees, we should really listen to them.
‘So I’m not buying the idea that Obama is effing up in phenomenal fashion and taking the Democrat party with him. If a coordinated attack on the American mainland and the deaths of over 3,000 civilians doesn’t rouse (and maintain the interest of) a sleeping giant, what makes you think that the (relatively) instant gratification of unsustainable, expensive entitlements will?’ That’s one reaction to Paul Rahe. There’s another one, and this is from a blog called Five Feet of Fury, and again, I don’t know who wrote this. These people, if they name themselves, I can’t find it. ‘Paul Rahe’s America Doesn’t Exist Anymore. It’s a friendly argument I’ve had with allies like Ezra Levant. They counter my pessimism about ever changing Canada’s politically correct culture by reminding me about, say, Canada’s bravery on Juno Beach. But of course, most of those men are, well, dead. The Canada that produced them was intentionally destroyed in the 1960s, and now we see the results. Now, Hillsdale’s Paul Rahe writes of his fellow Americans: ‘We are not yet a people apt to acquiesce in dictates handed down by our lords and masters.’
‘But the article would have been more realistic if it has been dated 1955 or so. We do see the resistance he lauds, in the Tea Party movement obviously. But the trouble with the Tea Party movement is that they tend to target their anger at only one source: Big Government. However, angry Americans really need to face the unfaceable: that most of their fellow citizens are just as corrupt, incompetent and compromised.’ Who do you think elected these people? ‘Rahe talks about the American Revolution and so on. But the nation’s ethnic makeup is different now, for one thing. Way more residents/invaders/settlers from ‘manyana’ cultures. More illiterates, more people with no sense of history. Plus there’s the Katrina Culture. Did any of those ‘Help Us’ types waiting on the ‘gubmit’ to rescue them look capable of crossing the Delaware to you? They’d have been more inclined to steal Washington’s boots.’
He goes on to quote Paul Ryan that we’ve reached a tipping point where more people receive some sort of government aid than do not. So the question — and I never do this, folks, I rarely do this — but I’m going to ask you what do you think? Normally these programs are what do I think. What do you think? Is Paul Rahe right, this is our finest hour, because of who this bunch is we have a better chance than ever of defeating liberalism or is the country lost? Too many lazy, entitled people who want to get in on the goodies, young people, generations who have been brainwashed and just think anything government does is wonderful, anything journalists say is right.
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RUSH: So what is it? Are these two young people right, our young generation and most Americans just don’t have the stomach for the fight? You won’t find the equivalence of the Founding Fathers among them. By the way, on this point, I’ve been talking with people about this personally, and, you know, we have in the Republican Party some of the big donors, some of the wealthiest Republicans really pride themselves on being moderates. They’re the kind that would not like me, for example. These guys would no more take any action that might cost them a penny, such as repealing health care. I mean these people I’m talking about have the kind of money to pay whatever health care is going to cost ’em and not worry and not even miss it. Now, there aren’t a lot of them, but they are the people who are going to oppose this kind of thing, and they’re going to give money to other Republicans who oppose repeal. My point is that the Founding Fathers, even though back in the colonial days only one-third of the colonists were in favor of revolution, the leaders were in favor of it. But to say that we might have the equivalent of the colonist population, we don’t. Ethnicity is one thing, but wealth is another.
A lot of people, despite all that’s gone on, are pretty comfortable. Snerdley is frowning. Look at the signers of the Declaration. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor. And they lost it! They lost it all, they lost kids. Do you think anybody alive today is willing to go through that to repeal health care, even if it is to literally save the country as founded? Now, I’m not saying we’re going to need that. I’m just illustrating here why these young people are saying what they’re saying. You take that, then you couple it with the younger generation that they know, and they see a bunch of sloths, they see a bunch of kids that have been coddled and told they’re kids ’til they’re 27 now. And they see kids that have been programmed with attention deficit disorder, they’re all on Ritalin or whatever the drug is that makes ’em just zoned-out zombies, not a whole lot of initiative, high expectations just because they might graduate from college. And then you couple that with the fact there’s no jobs for them to get once they graduate.
What choice do they have? Live at home with mom, stay on the health care insurance, and hope that dad doesn’t lose the gig or that his house loses value, but I got a story in the Wall Street Journal today about just such a family, upper middle class, very professional, guy earned half million dollars a year, he got canned, he’s got three kids starting school in two years, 50 grand a year each tuition, he doesn’t know how he’s going to pay for it, he’s been saving for it all of his life and it’s gone. And Obama applauds, by the way. This family is the precise target of the regime’s agenda. Or, instead of the circumstances these young people describe it, is Obama ultimately transformational? Has Obama made a profound influence on America? More than Goldwater, more than Buckley, even more than Reagan, has Obama transformed our country from left to right? This is what Paul Rahe is saying. He has shown Republicans and independents and free thinkers what left-wing radicalism is and what it leads to. He has reshaped the Republican Party into the Conservative Party.
I’m asking you if you agree with this. Do you think this is on the way to being true? This is what Paul Rahe is saying. He could be one of the great American presidents by leaving us a legacy that will get America back on track. That’s what Rahe is saying. So which of these two do you believe? And all of this revolves around repealing health care. You know, that’s the new battle cry. Is it worth it? Can it work? Or will there not be popular support for it? And even if there’s not popular support for it, should we try. Well, yeah, I mean there’s no question we should try and do whatever it takes to get it done. While you mull that, let me go to the phones now. People have been waiting. Well, another thing, the Founding Fathers didn’t have any bread and circus acts. There was no big-time television media, Hollywood, all this to distract ’em. You know, it took days to get a letter delivered to anybody.
Now all we have is Facebook, MySpace, My Butt, My Nose whatever the hell it is. There’s instant this, instant that. And all these people using My Face, MySpace, My Butt, Twitter, what time do they have to think about politics or the future or liberty? They’re all into themselves. That’s what these two young people I think are essentially saying. And, by the way, Great Britain, the old saying, ‘The sun never set on the British empire,’ look at them now. And World War II, that’s what Churchill said was their finest hour, and look how little time it took them to totally crash and become the socialist democracy they are now, after their finest hour. So we say, ‘Well, we’re not the Brits. We have exceptionalism. There is American exceptionalism.’ Not that we’re better people. I’ve been through this riff before. So I just put the question to you. What do you think? Is it over? Or is that a great opportunity?