RUSH: You know what I was thinking of? I saw a picture of that TIME Magazine cover they did on me back in the nineties: ‘Is Rush Limbaugh Good for America?’ The subhead on that headline: ‘Talk radio is only the beginning. Electronic populism threatens to short-circuit representative democracy.’ I’m thinking, looking back… What’s the date of this thing? I think it was 1995. So here we are 15 years later, and how prophetic were these fearmongers at TIME? The same question asked about me in 1995 is being asked about the Tea Parties today, and it was asked about the Internet two years ago. And it’s because interactive engagement in politics by people who make the country work and who love their country, scares the hell out of the ruling class. I scared the hell out of the ruling class back in 1995. Sadly, I didn’t understand why. I knew they didn’t like me but I didn’t understand why.
I wasn’t thinking of ruling class. I wasn’t thinking of high school cliques. I was thinking professional jealousy., and there might have been some of that. But that’s really not what it was. Oh, my. What it was, what they were afraid of, was the inmates running the asylum, in their lingo. To the ruling class, this is an asylum, and we are the inmates. The people who run it are in Washington. They’re the wardens or what have you, and now there’s a revolution or a rebellion, and we the inmates are going to run the asylum. That’s what they looked at me as in 1995. That’s how they see Palin. That’s how they see Beck, Levin, any of us. It’s how they see the Tea Party. It is how they see conservative bloggers. Some of them. Some conservative bloggers they love because they’re actually statists themselves, but regardless. So TIME could do a new cover here now: Are the Tea Parties Good for America? I’m sure they’re thinking the same thing.