RUSH: Kyle in Orlando, Florida. We head back to the phones, Open Line Friday. Hello, sir, great to have you.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Many libertarian dittos —
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — from sunny University of Central Florida.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, el mucho.
CALLER: I wanted to call especially in light of the gay marriage issue coming to the forefront right now. Being a college student, I’m pretty tied into the libertarian movement through social media and on-the-ground type things. There’s been a very unique change in the collective opinion these days, especially in light of the Rand Paul filibuster.
RUSH: Collective opinion of libertarians?
CALLER: Yes, that’s what I meant, sir, in that we’re starting to eschew the idea that we can only have and be happy with these Puritanical, Ron Paul-type libertarians. A lot of them — a lot of us — are saying that in the future, we’re very content to take conservatives and move forward on economic issues and try to go to limit the size of government.
RUSH: Is that right? You libertarians are willing to take us in?
CALLER: Hee-hee. Yeah, well, or the other way around.
RUSH: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. See, the Obamas won’t have me, but the libertarians might.
CALLER: Yeah. We are very devoted to limiting the size of government through whatever means possible, and especially with the size of the debt. We want to come together with everybody as much as possible.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: There are a lot of the sort of, you know, FEMA-death-camp libertarian type people going back into the shadows now, and the people that just want a constitutional government are really defining our voices right now through social media and on the ground.
RUSH: Where does marijuana fit in this?
CALLER: Marijuana is one of the bigger social issues because of the amount spent on the Drug War and various other things. But, like, just the other day on one of the biggest libertarian Facebook pages, have begun quoting Thomas Sowell like crazy. We are way more narrowed in on things that we can agree with you on, Rush.
RUSH: Well, don’t misunderstand the question, but up until this moment of inclusiveness that you’ve experienced, was there animosity among “you” libertarians for “us” conservatives?
CALLER: Well, I’ve been a long-time listener of your show. I was raised a conservative and recently became more libertarian. So I’m more of a Rand Paul-type conservative libertarian, but you can bet that there were great deals of animosity towards conservatives.
RUSH: Why? What’s the primary source of animosity from libertarians for conservatives?
CALLER: I’d say that the primary reason is that they do not believe that Republicans are dedicated to limiting the size of government as they say they are. Now, obviously, that’s a big issue.
RUSH: What about the borders? Where do you guys come down on the border?
CALLER: That is our most highly debated issue, actually. (chuckling) But I’d say that we skew towards the sort of Rand Paul/Rubio idea of solving it now and getting the border tight and opening up the border for legal immigrants a little bit and having a pathway to citizenship, uh, for those who are here not causing any trouble.
RUSH: See, this is another one. I don’t mean to harp on this, but this is another example of language. “Illegal immigrant.”
CALLER: (chuckling)
RUSH: An “immigrant” means something.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: To put “illegal” in front of it as though that is a kind of immigrant is incorrect, actually — and to the extent that words matter, I think it’s relevant. Well, anyway, look, I appreciate the call, Kyle. I’ve had entreaties from libertarians over the entire histoire of my radio program, and there traditionally have been some problematic areas. A lot of it has to do with the laissez-faire. Many social conservatives think that full-fledged libertarians don’t stand for any moral code, for example, at all.
They think that is where you guys have some similarities with the left, in the sense of the belief, “Well, if I can do it and it doesn’t hurt anybody then why should not be able to do it?” It’s that “not hurt anybody” that becomes the obstacle. This is true for a lot of people. People’s lives are not lived in a vacuum. If you had no family… In fact, I don’t think the case can be made that even a single person with no family, whatever he or she does, doesn’t affect anybody.
If you have a job and you engage in a behavior that’s destructive to you, but theoretically not to anybody else, it still is destructive. You still work for somebody. You’re still impairing your ability to do that, depending on the behavior that we’re talking about. My big problem has always been that: This idea that whatever you want to do, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, is fine. I don’t think that type of vacuum exists, particularly under the umbrella of acceptance and constitutional republicanism and the idea of what it is that constitutes a great America.
There has to be a unified sense of purpose among everybody, and we don’t have that now.
This country isn’t unified on anything, I don’t think. As long as nobody’s attacking us, and as long as there’s no direct external threat, then some people think that’s not a problem. That’s where I disagree. There are internal threats to the sanctity of and the strength of and the solidness of the country and the population as it exists. It’s always been under assault. There have always been people that don’t like the country as created and founded and so forth. But they’ve always been in the minority, and it’s a question now if they are. If they’re still a minority, they’re pretty large.
But, Kyle, nevertheless I appreciate the call. I really do.
I appreciate your taking the time.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I do think that we just had an olive branch extended here by at least one college libertarian from Orlando, and we don’t reject these olive branches out of hand by any stretch of the imagination. One thing you can say about these libertarian college students as opposed to the mind-numbed robots of the left: At least they are actively engaged thinkers. I don’t know if there’s any question about that.
The last thing they are is mind-numbed robots. Now, some of them get caught up on some of the personal behavior stuff. But even that, I think they’re aware what’s going on. They’ve thought about it, and they’ve come to a conclusion. They are what they are because they’ve thought about it, as opposed to having been programmed or propagandized, for the most part. There are exceptions to everything, of course.