RUSH: Carroll, San Antonio, Texas, great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: How you doing? My comment was that I think it’s a lot bigger than anti-establishment that’s going on on both sides. I think what’s really going on is that the American people, not directly knowing, but they are rejecting Keynesianism, because Keynesianism prevails in DC because it is a economic mind-set that allows for the growth of government on both sides, but Keynesianism doesn’t really work with us regular folk out here. We can’t spend more than what we take in —
RUSH: That’s it. You know something, Carroll, I think for a caller, you’ve come close to hitting a bull’s-eye today. Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal today, his column is: ‘It’s the Spending, Stupid.’ That’s what Carroll means here by Keynesian. Keynesian economic theory is spend, spend, spend, government spend, that’s how you stimulate a stagnant economy, spend, spend, spend, and spend some more. This is more control. Command control economy. You spend money on the stimulus, if it doesn’t work, you didn’t spend enough. You spend, spend, spend and Henninger points out and Carroll is pointing out here, the American people, they may not know Keynesian, some might pronounce it Keynesian if they saw it written, but they know what it is, spending, and they know that it’s out of control, and they know it’s destroying the future for their kids and grandkids. They know at some point some of this is going to have to be paid back. They know it. It is the spending and they also understand that because of all this debt that’s being racked up, that freedom is imperiled as a result of it.
But even without that, how can these intelligentsia suggest that freedom is not really at risk here after they’ve read Obamacare? I mean just today New York City has announced further places you cannot smoke, and they’re all outdoor places. You can’t smoke in a park. You can’t smoke at the beach. You can’t smoke wherever. It would be easier for New York City to publish a list of where you can smoke. It would take one page. Now, we’re talking about a legal product. We’re talking about a product whose taxes fund health care for the children. And here’s the do-gooder nanny governor, or mayor, ‘Can’t smoke it here. Can’t smoke it there. Can’t smoke over there.’ This is not incidental, this is not insignificant. It’s a legal product and yet they’re telling us what we can’t do and can’t use it and where we can’t use it. And, of course, a lot of nonsmokers will go along with it, oh, yeah, ’cause they hate smokers. I can prove it by using one of my e-cigarettes in a bar, in an elevator, you ought to see the panic. It’s fun. Bring out the e-cig and people just freak.
I told you about in Hawaii a bar manager came over, ‘Mr. Limbaugh, smoking is not allowed.’ ‘I’m not smoking, it’s an e-cigarette, it’s water vapor and I blew it in his face.’ ‘Ah, smells like vanilla,’ he says. ‘That’s right.’ He came back later, ‘Mr. Limbaugh, people don’t like the sight of it. It’s making them uncomfortable watching you pretend to smoke.’ I said, ‘That’s their problem. I’m not hurting anybody. Why don’t you go tell them to move?’ Don’t tell me we are not losing our freedoms. Don’t tell me this is some abstract concept. Go read the health care bill. Obamacare. Go look at the financial regulatory reform bill. Folks, I joke about this, but I can’t turn on outdoor lights eight months a year on property I own because state and county ordinances, which are multiple, threaten me with fines and imprisonment? In a couple years we’re not going to be able to have a Thomas Edison light bulb in our house. Light bulbs! We’re gonna lose American jobs on the basis of a hoax.