CALLER: Hi, Rush. It is an honor to speak to you.
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
CALLER: I’m a peace activist and I was born in Sri Lanka. I’m a doctor, and I believe in peace.
RUSH: Oh, wow. You are a peace activist?
CALLER: Yez. Yez.
RUSH: Oh.
CALLER: Now, I — ah — we need to go back to the history of how we acquired these California, Texas, and —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
CALLER: — New Mexico.
RUSH: What is this ‘we’? You are from Sri Lanka.
CALLER: Well, I’m an American citizen now.
RUSH: Oh, well, welcome! Congratulations.
CALLER: (Chuckles) Thank you. Do you know the history how we acquired these — all these states, a lot of land? How much land did we acquire from Mexico?
RUSH: Well, it’s a lot. We bought a lot of the country, the Louisiana Purchase, then we beat the Indians in a bunch of wars, and we beat the Mexicans and we took what we wanted and annexed it and made it a great country.
CALLER: Beat the Indians? We killed them to get the land, didn’t we?
RUSH: In the history of human civilization —
CALLER: Those were native Americans!
RUSH: You can’t find a place on earth where that hasn’t happened.
CALLER: Well… Don’t…
RUSH: You’re going to try to attach all kinds of immorality to it. Are you heading in the direction…? Did you call here to say that we took the land from Mexico and so they have rights to that land and so they should be allowed to come here illegally?
CALLER: But they were not compensated, right? I mean, how much is California worth today? Would you donate California to Mexico?
RUSH: It depends on who you talk to now. California may have lost some value, depending on your perspective, depending on your point of view. What do you mean, ‘compensate them’?
CALLER: Well, I mean it was taken — acquired by force.
RUSH: I don’t know how many financial crises we have bailed Mexico out of over the years. I don’t know how much foreign aid we have sent them. We buy oil from them. We’ve done everything we could to help the Mexican government and the Mexican economy become free market. We’ve done everything we can do! I can’t believe you’re serious about this.
CALLER: No, stealing land is one thing, but we stole it and killed them. That’s mass murder! That’s what we are doing in Iraq. Aren’t we doing the same thing in Iraq to get the oil? I mean, this is an outrageous crime.
RUSH: Yes. Yes, I know.
CALLER: It’s a crime against humanity.
RUSH: Oh, give me a break. (Laughing.)
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: My gosh, you are a peace activist. Can you name…?
CALLER: I want peace! I think we can live in peace!
RUSH: Wait a second. Wait. You’re from Sri Lanka.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Can you name for me one area of the world that has not been conquered by people and claimed as their own without, quote, unquote, ‘compensation’ to the losers?
CALLER: You know, we say ‘losers.’ We killed them and took the thing, and we should — we should be compassionate about those people.
RUSH: You’re not answering the question out there, David. I’m trying to a peace-oriented discussion with you here.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I’m trying to illustrate to you that this is the way of the world. You’re trying to attach immorality to the existence of the United States. You’d do great teaching American history these days in American high schools because they’re out there trying to say that everything about this country is illegitimate because of the way it was founded and the way that it was expanded and the way it was acquired and so forth, and it’s an absurd argument. It’s totally absurd, because we’re not going to give anything back.
CALLER: You don’t justify slavery because that was the normal in those days, you know. You ought to condemn that.
RUSH: I’m not justifying that! We’re the one nation in the world that led the world in getting rid of slavery. We had a Civil War partially about slavery. What are you talking about, here? We don’t have slavery here.
CALLER: We did have slavery.
RUSH: We did, but we fixed it. You’re obsessing.
CALLER: — and that was normal.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what —
CALLER: Rush, you know, we are doing an orphanage in Sri Lanka, if you want to contribute to that, you know?
RUSH: If you want to contribute?
CALLER: We lost six thousand people in Sri Lanka.
RUSH: Oh, now you’re asking —
CALLER: I have the website if you want to do that.
RUSH: — for a donation?
CALLER: (Laughing.) Right. I mean, we want to make peace.
RUSH: Well, you’re a great peace activist, I gotta tell you. You’re one of the best peace activists that we’ve ever had call this program. You take the cake for it, David. It’s great to have you with us. Thanks so much. People need to hear what you think, people like you. People need to hear it not from my lips but from yours. I appreciate the phone call?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Steve in Carrizozo, New Mexico. Steve, nice to have you with us, sir, on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Good, sir.
CALLER: I just wanted to correct the fellow from envying who said that we didn’t compensate the Mexicans for the land we took. It’s dead wrong. We did. We offered them 17 and a half, I think it was, million dollars prior to going in, and then after we took it, we ended up paying them the money anyway. They refused the money to begin with, and we had the war, we won the war and we got the land, we paid the money anyway, and this is very important. Most of the people that were living in this part of the United States were former… Remember, this had only been part of Mexico for 30 years. Prior to that, it had been Spain for 300 years, and they were Spanish — you know, descended from the Spanish conquistadors.
RUSH: That’s right. That’s why they speak Spanish in Mexico.
CALLER: Yeah, there you go.
RUSH: Everybody —
CALLER: A lot of people say, ‘They don’t speak Mexican?’ That’s funny. But no, we let ’em keep their land. Many of them collaborated. They invited the United States to come in because they didn’t like being governed by Mexico City, having been governed by Spain for all those years.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: They invited us in in many respects, and Spanish land grants are all around me here in Carrizozo. We have named like Ortiz and Vega and Zamora. You know, the landowners galore have Spanish names.
RUSH: I know.
CALLER: So we didn’t take their land.
RUSH: Furthermore, we continued to honor their heritage by building adobe houses in the part of the country where you live and maintained their architectural style.
CALLER: Yes, yes.
RUSH: There were many, many tributes to the Mexicans after we kicked them out.
CALLER: Now, the Indians are a different story. Remember, the Spanish had been beating up on them for 350 years prior to us taking over, and the Mexicans. So we came in and we settled them in 50 years, and in this county where I live, the Apaches — it’s the Apaches — they have the juiciest land in the county. They have a big casino and lake and all that other stuff out there.
RUSH: Exactly right.
CALLER: They’re making money hand over fist.
RUSH: We’re probably the most generous people, and since our founding, what we’ve basically done is liberate people.
CALLER: Very much so.
RUSH: Who are oppressed one way or the other. But I’ll tell you what, the Mexicans don’t have a clean slate on this. They wiped out the Mayans, the Aztecs. It’s the way of the world.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. Yes. We have treated indigenous people better than any other country in the history of the world.
RUSH: And —
CALLER: So-called indigenous, let’s put it that way.
RUSH: Yeah, because who’s from where?
CALLER: Yeah, exactly.
RUSH: Where did the original Native Americans come from?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: I mean, they had to come from someplace.
CALLER: Well, 25% of them came from Europe. That’s just been discovered, thanks to this DNA stuff.
RUSH: How did they get here?
CALLER: They came across an ice bridge across the Atlantic Ocean.
RUSH: An ice bridge?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You mean when it was colder than it is now?
CALLER: It was much colder than it is now.
RUSH: But they were still able to make it?
CALLER: Some of them probably could, Rush.
RUSH: I’m probably not …
CALLER: They call them Irish now.
RUSH: (Laughing.) Anyway, I’m glad you called because that’s all true. Poor old David from Sri Lanka, he’s a classic peace activist. He’s a guy that thinks he’s got a biggest heart in the world and he’s suffering all this guilt at all the people that are being conquered and they haven’t been compensated, so to make himself feel — if you missed the call, to make himself feel — better, he believes that we ought to let any Mexican here have whatever they want. Give ’em back California because it was theirs, and we took it from them. It’s nonsensical, but it’s how he makes himself feel better. Thanks much for the call out there, Steve, and I got a quick time-out here, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, actually everybody’s got this whole thing wrong. We did not invade Mexico. We didn’t go out there and ‘steal’ anything. We bought California, Nevada, New Mexico, parts of Utah, we bought it. It was the Treaty of Guadalupe. Look it up, folks. I as your host know of this treaty. Yeah, treaty, Guadalupe, 1848 Santa Ana sold all that land for 15 million bucks. Look at what we bought Manhattan from the Native Americans for: the equivalent of 24 bucks and a pizza. Ray’s Original Pizza.
I’m catching all kinds of flak now from the health nuts. ‘Dear Rush. Are you saying you don’t think the sun causes skin cancer? I think you know not what you say. My dad has skin cancer, and up until he retired at 70 he worked outside as a lineman for a public service company and as an electrician. Now he constantly has to go to the doctor to have biopsies done, mostly on his face and arms and neck.’ No, I’m not saying that the sun doesn’t cause cancer. I’m saying that we have created a scare climate about the sun and people are afraid to go out in it at all unless they’re all covered up. Some people have sensitivities to it and so forth, but I’m just saying the sun is where we get Vitamin D. Keep all this in context. People are out there taking supplements. Now I’m going to hear from the supplement/vitamin crowd thinking I’m hurting their business, you know, just like the compact fluorescent guys. They’ve been on my case now for months.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: My adopted hometown, Sacramento. This is Steve. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Regarding this argument over indigenous people and their locales and who owns what, we need to take it to the limit. Right back to before the dispersion of all people at Babel, which is located 60 miles south of Baghdad! (Laughing.)
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: Saddam Hussein was trying to rebuild the tower!
RUSH: (Laughing.) What a way to wrap it up. Thanks a lot, Steve.