RUSH: Syracuse, Indiana. This is Chris. Nice to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Hello?
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Hi. I wanted to compliment you first off with your work in funding for the assorted cancer organizations. That’s really nice of you.
RUSH: I appreciate that, ma’am. Thank you very much.
CALLER: And, like I said, I’m from Syracuse, Indiana. And I’ve most often voted Democrat, but yesterday I called my secretary of state to get parameters because I was curious about what could be done to — to do — anything to be done about Operation Chaos and — and he was a lovely Republican gentleman, very nice; and told me that, you know, there is a certain mechanism for contesting a vote. Like if you had a — a record of voting Republican, that there would be a — a Democratic person there at the poll that could in fact stop that. But I’m kind of curious. Don’t you — don’t you think that what you’re doing is kind of like political screaming ‘fire’ in a crowded theater-type of deal? Don’t you — I mean you said — I listen to your program, and you said that the Democrats have done it to the Republicans, you know, during the McCain — the early part of the Republican primaries with McCain. And the way I look at it, you know, that’s wrong. I live in a county that is all Republican, you know?
RUSH: And you’re a Democrat?
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: What’s that like? Usually it’s the Republicans outnumbered.
CALLER: In Indiana.
RUSH: How do you manage to hold out?
CALLER: In Indiana, we’re a red state.
RUSH: Well, that’s true. That’s a good point. That’s a good point. Well, let me answer your question. I don’t at all think that we’re tantamount to fraud here. I don’t think there’s anything untoward going on with Operation Chaos. It’s sort of like, Chris, when this program started. It was the only program that was not liberal, in a national sense. They had the Drive-By Media all over the place, the network newscasts, and here my program came; and the critics immediately said, ‘There’s no balance on this show! It’s just all conservatism,’ and I said, ‘I am the balance to all the other liberalism in the media.’ Operation Chaos is balance to all of the fraud that is being committed throughout our electoral process. George Soros is tampering with our electoral process with a huge multibillion-dollar fortune. MoveOn.org is tampering with vast fundraising tentacles. The unions… I mean, who doesn’t ‘tamper’ with elections, if you want to get right down to it? Everybody tampers with elections because they’re trying to influence the outcome. But I’m not a tamperer. I’m an untamperer. I’m trying to level the playing field here somewhat. The Democrat Party effectively chose our Republican Party nominee. Now, you’re thinking, ‘Well, two wrongs don’t make a right.’
RUSH: That’s not… No, they had the right to do it.
CALLER: No, they really don’t have the right to do it!
RUSH: Yes. They did it. Anybody can vote for whoever they want to vote for in this country.
CALLER: — and hopefully — hopefully they were —
RUSH: And for whatever reason, Chris.
CALLER: Hopefully there were poll workers, Republican poll workers there to stop them, which should have happened.
RUSH: Chris… No.
CALLER: On your — your point that you made about the broadcasting. You know, I like — I listen to you. I listen to Bill O’Reilly. I don’t — I don’t get — I don’t have cable; ’cause, number one, I’m a 54-year-old student going back to school after I lost my job after 30 years.
RUSH: You don’t know how fortunate you are not watching cable TV.
CALLER: Well…
RUSH: You’d have such a pessimistic view of your own country if you watched cable television. It’s a good thing that you don’t.
CALLER: Well, my point is that I try and keep — I try to listen to different points of view, and I can’t say that I always agree with you, but I still like to listen, all right? And I think that the problem right now in this country is the uncivil discourse.
RUSH: That’s not the problem
CALLER: You know, I — I had a whole bunch of signs down by my road —
RUSH: Look, Chris, I’m getting up to it on time here. I —
CALLER: Okay, well, I’ll let you go, Rush. It’s not —
RUSH: No, I want you to listen to this one more thing here. I don’t mean to be rude, here. I really don’t.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: But the problem is not the discourse. Go back and read how people spoke to one another in the days of the founding, some of the early days around the Civil War.
CALLER: And it was that bad?
RUSH: Oh, it was worse! It was worse. The problem is not ‘discourse.’ Discourse is productive. It’s people debating ideas. The problem in America is too much liberalism. The problem in America is too many liberals, too many people are ignorant. Our most expensive commodity in this country is ignorance, not discourse, not uncivil discourse. There are too many ignorant people who have been short-changed by our education system. In a more balanced and educated society, liberalism would be but 20% of the elected seats in this country. But they have for 50 years weaned a bunch of people away from self-reliance, created a bunch of dependents among every demographic group out there, and that’s how they profess to get elected. But they are destroying the country. They are destroying the institutions and traditions that made the country great. Everything liberals try to fix gets worse. The most recent example, we are now producing food for fuel, and we have food riots around the world. We have starvation around the world.
Do you realize, even before gasoline prices went up as high as they are and the food prices started jumping, there were still 850 million people in this world — according to National Review, 850 million people in the world — who were below the poverty standard and couldn’t get enough food every day? That was before the price of rice and wheat and corn skyrocketed. So now even more people are not going to be able to afford eat, and are going to be pushed into poverty because a bunch of social do-gooders thought that we needed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil so we’re going to turn corn into fuel to be used in automobiles, trucks, and so forth; and it’s resulted in skyrocketing prices around the world, and a lot of people — more so than ever — are hungry. This was a great idea liberals had to save us from global warming and ‘protect the planet.’ The thing that happens when liberals… Liberals stand up for all these principles, but they never stand up for people. The people are always the ones who suffer when liberalism succeeds — and when people are suffering, I don’t think you can shout too loud about it — which you would call uncivil discourse — to try to ring the warning bells that this needs to stop.