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The Idiocy of Thomas L. Friedman

by Rush Limbaugh - Jul 20,2011

RUSH: Thomas Friedman, the New York Times, who travels the world for the New York Times, writes about foreign policy. Thomas Friedman thinks that the country that is the be all, end all right now is China. We need to be more like the ChiComs. Well, Tom Friedman was on CNBC’s Squawk Box today. They had a discussion about the unemployment numbers. The cohost Becky Quick said to Thomas Friedman, “Iran’s trying to turn back the clock right now. They’re creating their own Iran net [Internet] where you can only see what they want you to see. Can they do that, Tom? Tom, can they do that?” So Friedman was being asked by CNBC, can the Iranians do that? Is that fair, Tom, can they set up their own Internet?

FRIEDMAN: One of the things we’ve missed and it relates to the job picture a little bit is that this great what I call inflection, this technology diffusion and penetration has gone to a whole new degree. It’s affecting productivity. We see that it’s driving productivity at higher and higher levels. Companies able to do more and more things with fewer and fewer people. And it’s having huge geopolitical consequences. But we’ve been so caught up with our recession, that I think we’ve missed something pretty big.

RUSH: Yeah, but I’ll be damned if he can tell us what we’ve missed because I don’t know what he’s talking about. Did any of that make any sense to any of you? Well, it’s affecting productivity. We see that. I mean it’s driving productivity higher and higher levels, companies able to do more and more things with fewer and fewer people, and it’s having a huge geopolitical consequence out there. But we’ve been so caught up with our recession I think we’ve missed something pretty big. So this is kinda along the lines of the AP story we had yesterday, stop whining and realize the world’s better off, just stop whining.

Oh. There’s a story, I can’t wait to get to this one. Somebody from the Obama administration, they’re in court answering charges on the mandate to buy health insurance. And a guy from the regime actually says, (paraphrasing) “Look, if you have a problem with it, just don’t earn a lot of money. There is a level at which if you don’t exceed that in earnings, then you aren’t affected by it. So if you don’t like the mandate, just don’t earn a lot of money.” I’m not kidding. That’s the regime’s answer to this in court. Yeah, there’s an easy way around the mandate, stay poor ’cause at a certain level of income you don’t have to buy it. We exempt you.

Now, Thomas L. Friedman lives in a multi-million dollar mansion in a wealthy Washington suburb, it’s actually in Maryland, while he preaches green socialist policies and celebrates the tyranny of the ChiComs and he married his wealth, which is fine, I’m just passing along information to you. Working at the New York Times is great, but you don’t buy mansions with what they pay you. He went the John Kerry route. Yeah, except I think Friedman got in on the first shot, Kerry, you know, took two or three stabs at it. And didn’t Kerry, I think he did try to open his own lollipop store or something, or ice cream store at some point? Didn’t he, somewhere in Boston? For some reason lollipops sticks in my mind.

So Friedman’s got it made, but he still preaches austerity for everybody else. And the point is we’re too obsessed with our recession. We’re just too obsessed with ourselves, we’re too obsessed. We’re spending too much time whining ’cause there is no recession for Thomas L. Friedman. He’s not really participating in it. But all the rest of you, well, you’re wasting too much time on it, you’re obsessed and you’re missing all these important geopolitical shifts taking place out there.

So the other cohost on this show, Joe Kernen said to Thomas L. Friedman, “You saw the media and political reaction to the President’s proposal for the 1967 border when Netanyahu was here. Bipartisan supporters of Israel reacted vehemently to those proposals. I’ve seen some of your columns about Mubarak and the similarities to Netanyahu. Are we wrong if we support Israel to take Netanyahu’s side on this? Make the President’s case for me.”

FRIEDMAN: What is the greatest threat to Israel today? I believe that it no longer is a Jewish democracy. There are 300,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. There are 2.4 million Palestinians. For me as a Jew, as a supporter of Israel, the worst thing in the world would be Israel permanently controls the West Bank and basically because of demographics in a very short time, you’ll have a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority. Look, Netanyahu can get a standing ovation in the US Congress if he reads the DC phone book just like the Palestinians can get a standing ovation at the UN if they read the New York phone book. So the question I’d ask Netanyahu is what kind of ovation do you think you’d get speaking at the University of Minnesota? University of California? That’s what really matters to me.

RUSH: Unbelievable. Netanyahu, standing O, US Congress, Thomas L. Friedman not impressed. Now, to prove it to Thomas L. Friedman, Netanyahu should go to University of California, University of Minnesota, see what he gets there, that’s what really matters to Thomas L. Friedman. Here’s Friedman, you know, you’ve heard the term self loathing. It just isn’t right, this isn’t right, 2.4 million Palestinians, and 300,000 Jewish settlers, we’re the minority, we shouldn’t be running anything. That’s not fair. That makes me very nervous. No assessment of good guys, bad guys, or any of that, just utter blather, pure pap.

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RUSH: I have a little bit of an analogy for you based on Thomas L. Friedman and his guilt that is driving him to say ridiculous things about Israel. I’m told, folks, that in about 75 years we will have a Mexican majority in our country. Seventy-five years. So why don’t we just cut a deal right now with Mexico? I mean, they make claims on Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona, why don’t we just give it to ’em? Because in 75 years they’re gonna be the majority anyway. You see the stories about demographics in this country, where we’re headed. The replacement birth levels aren’t where they are. Immigration, any number of things are causing these demographic changes to take place — and what can we do?

We can start by, instead of “Arizona,” we’ll just call it “Occupied Territory Number One;” Texas, “Occupied Territory Number Two;” New Mexico, “Occupied Territory Number Three;” California, “Occupied Territory Number Four,” and so on — and we can call our citizens in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas “settlers,” and we’ll just turn these places over to Mexico, because Mexico is gonna be the majority of our country in 75 years anyway. So why don’t we just realize where we’re headed and be done with it? That’s what Thomas L. Friedman is suggesting happens in Israel.

“The Jews are, eh? Chump change! Just 200,000 or 300,000 settlers on the West Bank. It’s not fair, it’s not fair.” Thomas Friedman, you see, my friends, is typical Ruling Class. He does not have to live the life that he demands others live, like the Jews on the West Bank of Israel, or like the people of China who have to live under the ChiCom dictators. He doesn’t have to live like the way he advocates everybody else live. ‘Cause Thomas Friedman’s protected by our Constitution. His mansion is protected by our belief in property rights. There aren’t any terrorists or others making claim to Thomas Friedman’s wealth or his property. Nobody’s telling Thomas Friedman how to live. But this is the arrogance and the conceit and ignorance of the left epitomized by Friedman because he — smarter and better than everybody else — is telling everybody else how they should leave. He says, “Look, I’m Jewish. I support Israel. What I say counts.”

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RUSH: Robert in Oakland, great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you very much, Mr. Limbaugh. A pleasure to talk to you. Mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: My comment is about the global implications of the Internet that Friedman talked about. He said that productivity, of course, was dramatically increased for business and services and all that, which I agree. I think he was probably also right that we’ve missed the global implications of the Internet because the American exceptionalism that, like, won World War II or executed the Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan and all that has been somewhat blotted out by Obama’s apologetic trips he’s taken around the world, while the North Koreans and the Arabs and these countries have actually used the Internet to control the aggression of their people if nothing else, while we’ve let (unintelligible) such things as Radio Free Europe or (unintelligible) and all this (unintelligible) American flag, so it seems that the White House (unintelligible) still bowing to Hugo Chavez or PLO, and Al Jazeera is getting more global currency than we are because we don’t use the Internet. We’re reluctant to use it for the propaganda of freedom. And in that case Friedman may be correct about some things that we are missing, that they are not. Using it against us.

RUSH: I’m having a real tough time understanding you because you’re on a cell phone. It’s not your problem. It’s mine.

CALLER: I’m sorry.

RUSH: Are you saying that other countries are creatively properly using the Internet and we aren’t?

CALLER: Right. That as a country we’re not using it, but as a country, the North Koreans and the Middle Easterners are using it, and to great effect. Which again —

RUSH: How so? North Korea is using the Internet productively how?

CALLER: Oh, not productively as far as industry is concerned, but in controlling their social environment.

RUSH: So you want the federal government to control our social environment with the Internet?

CALLER: Absolutely not. But to advertise us, the beacon of freedom, to the rest of the world as a country.

RUSH: Oh, oh, oh. I see.

CALLER: Just as Al-Jazeera and the Middle Easterners —

RUSH: We are not using our Internet effectively as a propaganda tool?

CALLER: Exactly, for freedom.

RUSH: Ah. I got you.

CALLER: We instead use it, or the White House to let the PLO and everybody else know that we’re just as bad as they say we are.

RUSH: Well, does this not sort of make sense, given who’s running our country right now?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: You got a guy, you have a president who’s running around apologizing for the country. You have a president with a chip on his shoulder about this country and its illegitimacy as a superpower, does it sorta stand to reason, therefore, that this guy would not want to start using the Internet to sing your version of the praises of America, ’cause he doesn’t see it that way.

CALLER: Absolutely. I agree 100%, and I think Friedman almost agreed and just didn’t realize it when he said we were missing something. I think that’s what we’re missing.

RUSH: Well, except Friedman admires the wrong people.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: Do you want to live like the Chinese live?

CALLER: Not in a minute.

RUSH: Of course not. There’s no way. Friedman extols the virtues of China, but I don’t see him moving there. You know, these people are too smart by half. Thomas Friedman is never, ever going to have the kind of control over his life that he advocates over everybody else’s life, because he’s a classic elitist in this sense. He is above being controlled. He doesn’t need to be. He’s smart enough to do the right thing on his own. But the rest of you hoi polloi, great unwashed, you don’t know enough. It’s the same arrogant condescension that the Democrat Party looks at its very constituents. They’re too stupid, too uneducated, too unsophisticated to understand how to get through each and every day making the right decisions not just for yourselves, but for the state.

Now, Friedman talks about missing the global implications of the Internet, that we miss the global implications, what does that mean? Does “we” mean the government? The point is that if you free up people from having to work so hard to pay their taxes or to make ends meet by encouraging wealth creation and innovation, which will result from free enterprise, then this “we” stuff, which means government managed and directed objectives is meaningless, and it isn’t necessary. But you have these guys like Friedman and Obama, frankly, and others who look over the great unwashed, and they see total incompetence. You can’t get across the street without them setting up a mechanism for you to do it safely. Consequentially you’re not capable of entrepreneurism, you’re not capable of making proper decisions. So they have to manage it for you.

You can’t manage them. Oh, no. They are not going to be subjugated. They are not going to be subordinated to your rules. They’re gonna be way above them. Friedman talks all the time and he is illustrative in this, as if we have some kind of all knowing dictatorship in this country, if we would have this, if we would only do that, if we can only incorporate some of the wonderful things about the ChiComs, with the right people making the decisions, why, then we could create new technologies and great innovations and products and services, and we could be a great country again. If just the right few number cabal of people were running the show. That’s what this all means. You know, to hell with them. This country wouldn’t last a week with these people in charge of it.

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RUSH: I don’t know, I still can’t get past this Thomas freedom business in telling everybody else how to live, the ChiComs have all the answers, and centralized planning with a select elite few. Folks, I know who makes this country work, and you know, if you’ve listened to me long enough, you know exactly who I’m talking about. I’m talking about people that you’ve never heard of. They labor away in anonymity. They’re not seeking fame or stardom or anything. They have their dreams, their sense of responsibility. They have their passions, God bless em, and they go about doing things.

Now, I don’t know how many of these intellectual giants, these elite geniuses, I don’t know how many of them, for example, have ever started a business or run a business or have the slightest idea what it is to bring a product to market and what all you have to go through to do that today. I know that in the Obama administration there is nobody among his czars or cabinet people that have worked in the private sector. They are theoreticians from academia. I don’t know how many of them have invented anything or have created some innovation, service. I don’t know how many of them have milked a cow or fed a chicken or driven a truck or how many of them even clean their own homes, and I don’t know how many of them actually even raise their own kids. But if you listen to ’em, they know how to do everything, and they’re the only ones that know the right way to do everything. And they, therefore, know how to tell all the rest of us how to live.

Now, the way you create new technologies, services, innovations, products, or what have you, is not by some columnist or government czar or some other bureaucrat telling us how to do it. You do it by allowing tens of millions of people to make hundreds of millions of daily decisions in freedom. You allow people to follow their ambitions and their desires. And you celebrate that, for crying out, and you get out of their way. And then you don’t punish them when they succeed. The ruling class people like Friedman would rather see this country run by communist Chinese than people like Sarah Palin. And don’t doubt me on that. Sarah Palin represents a greater threat to them than the ChiComs running this country. Don’t doubt me.

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