RUSH: Mayor Doomberg in New York: “In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will ‘have to change’ to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks. ‘The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,’ Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. ‘But we live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.'”

Didn’t we add Homeland Security under the same premise? The Department of Homeland Security, wasn’t it created with the same argument that it’s worse than it’s ever been. We’ve gotta take extraordinary steps, so we’re gonna wand you and we’re gonna search you and we’re gonna disrobe you. And it hasn’t stopped anything, has it? We’re gonna streamline information, but it’s made things more miserable. And it didn’t stop what happened at Boston.

So here we go again, it’s the same old thing. Government gets bigger, fails to stop something, and then government says the answer is we gotta get bigger. The mayor said, “‘We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That’s good in some sense, but it’s different from what we are used to.’ The mayor pointed to the gun debate and noted the courts have allowed for increasingly stringent regulations in response to ever-more powerful weapons.”

So we’re gonna have to change the Constitution the way we interpret it. And what that means is, you’re really not gonna have the kind of freedom that you’re used to. We can’t let people have that much freedom anymore. That’s getting us into trouble. People have too much freedom to do bad stuff and we’re gonna have to limit it. And this is all rooted in the belief that the Constitution has way too many limits on government. That’s what Doomberg means, the Constitution has way too many limits on government, and we’re gonna have to change that. We’re gonna have to have a different interpretation, where the Constitution spells out more of government can do, which, by the way, is exactly what Obama believes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Here’s Charles in Boise, Idaho. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. How you doing, Rush?

RUSH: Very good. Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Hey, you brought up something earlier where someone was suggesting that we’re gonna have to start trading away some of our freedoms to make our country more secure.

RUSH: Ah, ah. That has not been said on the program today.

CALLER: I’m not saying you said that, you said somebody else was bringing that up.

RUSH: Mayor Doomberg said we’re gonna have to reinterpret the Constitution and his intent was that the Constitution limits government too much and we’re gonna have to do away with some of our freedoms to stay safe.

CALLER: Well, what I’m thinking is, the founding fathers, when they were drafting that Constitution, were trying to get themselves away from a government where they had that security, that already limited their freedoms, or freedoms that weren’t available to ’em at the time. And they chose the freedoms over the government security because when a government has the security, they can utilize it in any way they want to. They can deem anybody a threat, whether it’s actually a threat to the people or a threat to the government itself. But people today, they think, well, we have all this technology, we’re so much smarter than they were 200 years ago, but that’s just not the case. The simple fact remains we would still rather have the freedom to protect ourselves because the government cannot always protect us.

RUSH: Well, I think it’s a brilliant point, ’cause I made it last week. So you and I are on the same page. I made the point that you just made in the context of the gun control argument. And what happened in Boston proves they can’t protect us. And while that was going on last week — look, I hate to say this. I really am not trying to be provocative. These two guys shut down an American city. Bostonians were cowering in their homes. If we didn’t know better, we would think they’re cowering in the corners in fear. The authorities said, “Don’t go outside, stay in your homes.” One guy’s dead, one guy’s in a boat underneath a tarp. They cancel the hockey game. They cancel the baseball game. They succeeded. They shut down a city for a full day, in addition to the 264 injuries, the loss of limbs, the loss of life. Imagine what this trial is gonna be, in terms of people’s movements being restricted and the things they can do, places they can go. And you’re right, I made the point exactly as you did here, that people are gonna have to be able to defend themselves under circumstances.

CALLER: And us having all this new information that we have today and thinking we’re so much smarter and we know what threats are gonna be out there and the government’s gonna be able to protect us from ’em, I mean, the governments were able to do that 250 years ago, and they still moved away from it because people would rather have the freedom.

RUSH: You know what Ben Franklin said about this. This is one of my all-time favorite quotes. Benjamin Franklin once said: “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.” Benjamin Franklin, and that’s exactly right. People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. People willing to trade their freedom for economic security, people willing to give up their dreams, people willing to trade the hard rigors of success in exchange for a modicum of existence will never know success, and their modicum sustenance hangs by a thread based on the good intentions of a government.

In other words, if you give up the right to provide for yourself, if you trade the hard work and the ambition of success, attempted success, for the guarantees of a government that you’ll always have a phone, cable TV, and McNuggets, you’re gonna be disappointed over both decisions. And, by the way, when you trade your freedom for temporary security, when you’re not in charge of your security, when you have no control over your security, when you have no control over your economic circumstances, what kind of a thin thread are you hanging by? You’re depending on the performance of other people that don’t even know you. Politicians in a distant capital who, on a whim, could cancel whatever program that you depend on. Maybe cancel the McNuggets program, cancel the Obama phone program. It may happen. What if that’s all you know? You depend on Santa Claus instead of yourself. It’s exactly right. Glad you called, Charles.