RUSH: Mike in Atlanta, nice to have you on the program, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Merry Christmas, Rush, and may God bless you, your loved ones, and the entire EIB staff in this new year.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: Listen, yesterday you had a caller, I believe his name was Jerome, and he said that he agreed with you 99% of the time until recently, when he had to go on unemployment. And, you know, by extension I would argue that he always agreed with you until he had to rely on unemployment. So this is an example of what economic hard times and economic disaster can do to even the best of conservatives. You know, when you have no options in life, your only option is the government. And, you know, it’s just to me a perfect example of, you know, it’s a micro of the macro that’s happening right now.
RUSH: Well, I understand your point. The point is that we can lose conservatives to economic reality brought on by liberals. That even the most committed conservatives, when confronted with economic reality and have to turn to only one place for support, the government, we can lose ’em.
CALLER: No one can say it better than you, Rush.
RUSH: Is that what you meant?
CALLER: That is exactly what I meant.
RUSH: So the only area where I would disagree with you and what I was trying to make clear to him was, the government’s not his only option. He’s his best option. The government doesn’t care about him.
CALLER: Oh, I couldn’t agree more, Rush. I’m self-employed, and I’m not eligible for any unemployment.
RUSH: Yeah, I hear you.
CALLER: So when times get tough, it’s me, it’s me against whatever, and I have to make it work.
RUSH: Well, yeah. Everybody does. You know, we’re all different. Not everybody’s cut in the same cloth, obviously, not everybody is a self-starter, not everybody is cut out to be self-employed, not everybody is hard-wired the same way.
CALLER: Can I bring up another topic, Rush?
RUSH: Yeah, go ahead.
CALLER: ‘Cause you and I have a lot in common, actually, aside from being lifelong conservatives. I hated school, and as a result I never went to college.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: But I’m an engineer, I work in the professional world, I’m licensed in several states, and you’ve mentioned it, you know, how do you define intelligence is something I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on, okay? Because life doesn’t give you a scorecard, it doesn’t give a report card, so the point is, the best definition I’ve ever heard of genius is somebody who affects the way other people think or behave. And when I look around and I see the influence that you’ve had on our society politically, the broadcast world, I’m not trying to suck up to you, Rush, but, frankly, in my opinion, you’re the greatest genius that has ever been in broadcast or political history.
RUSH: That’s gonna make Larry King very mad.
CALLER: Yeah, well, I think he’s gonna get over it. I mean, after all, he is pretty old.
RUSH: Well, it’s not his fault.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: You know what Larry wants to do next? He wants to go on a comedy tour.
CALLER: Well, you could arrange it for him, but, you know —
RUSH: No, I mean he wants to be the one telling the jokes. That’s the interesting thing about it.
CALLER: Well, your setting it up would be the funniest part of the whole thing.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: Anyway, Rush, we love you, we’re out here, and keep on, and Happy New Year, buddy, okay?
RUSH: Mike, same to you. Thanks very much. What he was talking about, defining intelligence, we have a way of defining intelligence. That’s IQ. What I’ve always said is we’re gonna have to redefine smart. Smart used to be defined basically to whatever degree you were educated, you know, formerly educated. I remember Bill Buckley back when I was in Sacramento — this might have been in 1986 — he wrote an article in Playboy magazine, ‘Redefining Smart.’ And he tackled it from the standpoint, at what point in human civilization was it no longer possible to know everything that was known at the time. And he calculated the knowledge that gets charted each and every year, in virtually all fields, and he made the point that it wasn’t all that long ago that you could know everything that was known, that it was possible for somebody to know everything that was known. Not to know everything that is, but to know everything that was known at the time. Now that’s not possible. It is simply not possible for anybody to know everything. It was possible at one time in long ago human civilization.
So what defines smart? I don’t think Obama’s smart. Obama believes things that are terribly wrong. Obama believes things that are destructive. Obama is educated. Obama’s able to sound like he’s confident in what he says. But how can somebody who is wrong at the same time be smart? Okay, Snerdley says, ‘Well, wait a minute, how can you become president if you’re not smart enough to navigate the political battlefield and so forth and so on?’ Well, you can be formally educated and smart, and you may not be formally educated and be smart. Every individual is different. That’s the point. But we have this blanket assessment of people that says, ‘Yeah, he’s a pretty smart guy.’ Based on what? To me there are a lot of publicly known people who are said to be very smart, and they’re dead wrong about so many things. So my question always is what is smart about being wrong? Are you smart because other people think you are? Are you smart because the right people say you are? Are you smart because you sound smart?
Look at the people who are called dumb. Look at the people who are called stupid or shortsighted or what have you. You know, there are an awfully lot of stupid, very successful people. And there are a lot of smart failures. So it’s always amazed me how we define smart. I always fall back on common sense. Common sense to me is something that really can’t be taught. It’s born of experience; it’s born of innate intelligence. It has nothing to do with education. Some of the greatest wisdom in human history has come from people who never set foot inside a classroom. But they had certain life experiences that taught them things. They read certain things that taught them things, of course.
Pelosi, yeah, she’s Speaker of the House. Yeah, she got health care done, but is she smart? She’s calculating. She understands how to put the fear of God into people she’s leading. But when it comes to really common sense right and wrong, is the woman smart? And, folks, I swear, I listen to her and no way is this woman smart. But she’s very skilled and very talented at certain skill sets. They said Hillary Clinton, I’ll never forget, ‘the smartest woman in the world.’ Why? What did Hillary Clinton ever do but allow herself to get stepped on every day of her marriage, but turn it around to her benefit? I mean a lot of women wouldn’t put up with one-tenth of what Hillary’s husband did. A lot of women do. When you talk about somebody who’s smart, it’s always interesting to me who’s calling them that, who’s telling us so-and-so is smart? And I know that many of the people I think are smart and brilliant are routinely laughed at, made fun of, impugned. Most conservatives are considered to be — and, by the way, I think, now that I bring this up brilliantly, I think this whole business of who is considered smart is what motivates many of our people inside the Beltway to say and do things that they say and do, so that they will be perceived as smart by the people handing out the judgment.
I think there is a quest on the part of many to be smart, and in some cases, to be the smartest in the room. I look at commentators left and right, inside the Beltway, and I see that many of them one day want to be thought of as shapers of events, and the next day they want to be thought of as having nothing to do with events, they’re way above them and just commenting on them, as the wise men of the world. And what’s the quest? The quest is to be thought of as smart. In fact, in this analysis of Obama having won the day, ridiculed the Republicans, just really outsmarted the Republicans here in the tax deal, really, this guy’s so smart, why, he’s the comeback kid. I go totally against the conventional wisdom when I say I don’t think Obama is smart, because I think Obama’s wrong about so much. I have trouble with that contradiction, being wrong and yet being smart. Yeah, I know I have said in the past that the ugly know who they are. Unfortunately, many dumb people don’t know they’re dumb, which is one of the problems. We are led by a bunch of those people.
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RUSH: Here’s another one. How smart was it for Obama’s voters, believers, supporters, to believe this notion that he was unlike any politician that ever trod the earth? How smart was it to believe the guy was a deity? How smart was it to believe this messianic stuff? How smart was it to believe that? But more importantly, how smart was it on the part of Obama to act it? Was Obama smart in also thinking of himself that way? Is that smart? You know, so much of what we call education today is nothing more than indoctrination. Do you think most people in college today are taught to think? I don’t. I think they’re indoctrinated. I think they walk in there as young skulls full of mush, and the liberal establishments at these places bend and shape their minds into a bunch of miniature human robots. They come out of these institutions thinking that they’re special; that they’re smarter than everybody else; that they are above and beyond, and they end up being arrogant and condescending. They haven’t learned anything. They’ve just been indoctrinated.
Not only have they been indoctrinated, what else has happened to them — and this is one of the major problems of higher education — the establishments at these schools, the professoriate, they instill a respect for the authority of the establishment’s perceived wisdom. While they’re being indoctrinated, at the same time they are told to respect the utter infallible authority of the professor, of the establishment, of the university, and as such, rather than being revolutionaries, these young students actually are obedient. Rather than revolting and protesting things, they end up actually being obedient. And this kind of instilled respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth, because it kills, stymies the pursuit of truth. It does not promote critical thinking, and therefore real wisdom never happens. You can’t have wisdom without an active, thinking mind. Look at global warming. Look at how simple it has been to indoctrinate a bunch of people into believing a hoax, and global warming is just one. But how is that possible?
How can thinking people not at all be curious about the other side? How can thinking people automatically reject the opposite point of view? They can’t. But an indoctrinated person can. Somebody who has had instilled in them the ultimate respect for the establishment liberal authority becomes a member of that army, and anybody that opposes that authority that has indoctrinated them is a denier; is a radical; is an extremist or what have you. And, look, the so-called smartest people among us all believe in man-made global warming. We’re in the middle here of a mini-ice age, it looks like. I’m not just haphazardly putting syllables together when I say this. Some German scientist — I had it in the Stack of Stuff this week — some German scientist has done a study, he says not only are we not in any kind of a warming period, we actually have the aspects here of the beginning of a mini ice age going on, and he’s citing not just meteorological data, he’s citing climate data as well. You know what this guy is gonna have happen to him.
Look at how easy it’s been to indoctrinate the kids of this nation with a phony movie. Look at how easy it’s been to indoctrinate people to believe that polar bears are dying off because of fraudulent, phony Photoshopped pictures. That’s only possible if those people are not being taught to think. If they’re not being taught critical thinking, they’re just indoctrinated boobs with an instilled respect for the establishment authority that’s doing the indoctrinating. So instead of being smart, they’re robots. They’re programmed little liberal automatons. They think they’re the smartest people in the world, and they don’t know diddly-squat. And yet they’re called smart.
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RUSH: Here’s the thing. Smart people never have to advertise that they’re smart. Smart people don’t have to run around and tell other people they’re smart. It’s like me. I never tell you I’m smart, and you know I am. You know, half my brain tied behind my back, I’m not talking about how smart I am. I’m just talking about how little of my brain I need to be smart.
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RUSH: Here is a portion of William Buckley’s original mission statement — this is from November 1955 — the mission statement for National Review, the magazine. This is a portion of it. ‘The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservation, on the side of excellence (rather than newness) and honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).’
Now, you can search him thanks to Hillsdale College. Hillsdale College has all of Buckley’s works archived on their website, Hillsdale College, William F. Buckley. The Hillsdale website contains the complete writings of William F. Buckley Jr. I don’t know that his own website does that. I don’t know that they don’t, but I do know that Hillsdale College does. But in 1955 it was the same problem. Education wasn’t education. It was indoctrination and it was instilling in these young skulls full of mush a conformity, an obedience to the authority that was indoctrinating them. And, you know, it still happens to this day.