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RUSH: Brian in Los Angeles, I’m glad you called. You’re up first on Open Line Friday. It’s an awesome responsibility. You set the tone for everybody to follow.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I appreciate that. I agree with you 49.9% of the time but I always marvel at your ability to communicate your ideas. I really do.

RUSH: (chuckling) Okay, I’ll bite.

CALLER: No, no. There’s no deception in me. I agree with you about 49% of the time. I disagree with you on social issues. I agree completely with you on issues related to our defense and what we need to do overseas.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: But to get to my point my favorite adage is, “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it,” and I’m referring to all of us — me included, you, all of us — talking after 9/11 about what our government needs to do to keep us safe.

RUSH: You know what? Brian, I’m not gonna take away time. You just reminded me of something and I’m gonna get of a challenge to my Web people. I think the first two days within the first two days after 9/11, I specifically said or warned or asked or begged that whatever we do, we do not do anything that takes away our rights or encroaches on them or freedom. I remember making that point, “Whatever we do…” So I’m taking a stand: I did not wish for what’s happening now, is the point. I was worried that what’s happening now was gonna happen precisely because of 9/11.

CALLER: I’m worried, too. W all recognize we need to keep ourselves safe. Some of the people that are complaining about what’s going on now are the same ones last month when the Boston bombing happened, they wanted to know why hadn’t Obama found them in the first five minutes? You know, you have to decide: Which side do you want?

RUSH: Well, now, I’m glad you mention that. I honestly am. Because this kind of data collection has been going on before the Boston bombing. I would like to know how in the world…? Remember the news, Brian? We knew that the Russians had warned us about these guys.

CALLER: Yes, absolutely.


RUSH: And we ignored it! So even though we had the data, our intelligence people ignored it, thought it wasn’t any big deal. So it leads to the question: “What good does having all this data do if you’re not going to use it?” Which leads me to then ask: “Why is it really being collected?” They say national security, but the Russians and a number of others had warned us about the Tsarnaev brothers, and we discounted it. We forgot about it, or we didn’t give it much credence in the first place. Look, I want you to hold on because I took more of your time than I intended, but you kept inspiring me.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We had a call from Brian, and, by the way, is Brian still there, H.R.? He held on. Brian, welcome back to the program. I wanted to keep you here because I told me I wouldn’t take away from your time, and I did, so I want to give you a chance to say what you want. But while you’re here, you know, I mentioned in one of my monologues after the original 9/11 back in 2001, this is what I want to read to you and everybody else. My opening monologue September 12th of 2011. It went like this.


I‘ve heard a number of media people throughout the course of the past day, the past 24 hours, refer to the possibility that we may have to tighten down some of our freedoms, that the age of innocence that is America is over and that we all now may have to join in some sort of sacrifice of our liberties and freedom in order to protect ourselves in the future. And I’m here to tell you right now that if anybody thinks that, I don’t care if you’re in the news media, I don’t care if you’re a member of the general population, you are missing the whole point of what being an American is. You do not understand it.

You’re missing the whole point of the Constitution. You’re missing the whole point of the reason for the founding of this country, the reason for this nation’s existence. If you think that the proper response to 9/11 is to ratchet down freedom because of this, if you think that it’s worth trading a little freedom in order for security, you must work hard to banish that thought. The exact opposite is what needs to take place here. The exact opposite is what needs to be our motivating attitude. The exact opposite is what’s necessary. This nation must reaffirm its freedoms. This nation must rebuild itself, expand upon its freedoms. We cannot allow an event like this to cause us to shrink smaller within ourselves, to become fearful.

And I even said that if it were up to me, the next time and every anniversary of 9/11, we would go to work. We would not take the day off. The terrorists were able to shut this country down on 9/11. They stopped an election in New York City. They shut this country down, and Rudy Giuliani disagreed with me. He thought it would be appropriate to take a day off and have a memorial, but I thought everybody should get up and go to work that day and make sure that the world knows this is not gonna shut down the country. I want to thank you, Brian, for reminding me I’d said that. Now, it’s your turn.

CALLER: I just want to applaud your consistency. I don’t remember that you had said that, but I think that’s very apropos now with what’s going on. We have to balance daily, you know, the ability to protect ourselves with our rights, and I think there’s gonna be stumbles along the way. I don’t think — like you do — I don’t think it’s a power play on Obama’s part. I think he’s continuing and maybe even toughening what Bush started, but I think we need to be watchful, and I think the place I disagree with the president with the most is that they’ve gotta be open, not with exactly what they’re doing so that our foes know what we’re doing, but they need to be open with the American people in that we have to know what our government is doing to protect ourselves, and we have to know when they’ve gone too far.

RUSH: Well, there’s no question about that. Here’s my problem with what is happening. I have an institutional fear of big government. I have an institutional opposition to bureaucracy. By definition, they get bigger; by definition, they want more power, no matter who’s running it; by definition, they become less efficient and they get less done, and, by definition, they exist for the sole purpose of existing.

The last thing a bureaucracy needs is a problem solved. There’s no need for the bureaucracy at that point. I have that as a general belief about government and bureaucracy. Now, add to that the kind of people that might be running it any given day. In this case we have people running the government who want it to be as big as they can make it, they want it as powerful as they can make it, and they have made it clear that they will use that power against citizens. The people that run this government now have openly expressed their dissatisfaction with the Constitution. I’m sorry; those are huge red flags to me.

So in the context of all that, since the Boston bombing, look at what we have learned is going on in this country. Now, I don’t want to come across as a conspiratorialist; I’m not. I don’t think you have to have a giant, secret conspiracy for any of this to happen. All you need’s a bunch of liberals. This is how they think; this is how they’re oriented; this is what their lives are devoted to, is getting control of government and running it and using it. Because the thing that motivates a leftist more than anything else is eliminating opposition, getting rid of it, however is necessary. And I believe that with every fiber in my body. And I know that that’s exactly the modus operandi of Barack Obama. It has been in every campaign he’s ever run, and it’s how this government is being run. Just look at the IRS scandals or Obamacare. Look at the things that are happening against the will of a majority of people in this country. It is overwhelming the things that are happening here.

One of the problems we have is that the inside the Beltway intelligentsia of both parties is as disconnected from the ebb and flow of daily life in this country as they’ve ever been. To them this is just standard operating procedure. The Democrats run the show one year, the Republicans run it the next year, and they get along happily ever after, and it’s no big deal. And really the only objective is that everybody wants to be in charge of the money for four years. That’s why they want to win the elections, committee chairmanships in the Senate and this kind of thing.

But all of this affects us. Everything they do at the government level affects us. And we elect people that we think agree with us that it needs to be stopped and made smaller and roll back, that individual freedom has been encroached upon enough, that some of it needs to be replaced. We think we elect people and we think we have people in the media ostensibly on our side who also agree with that, and then certain things happen and we end up being surprised that they’re not as committed to it as we are, which is what gives rise to the Tea Party, by the way.

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The Tea Party came into existence precisely because a sizeable number of citizens in this country did not feel represented at all in their government in Washington and in some cases at the state level. That’s why the Tea Party came into existence. I mean, the specifics were spending, debt, taxation, out-of-control growth. But the real reason the Tea Party ended up coming into existence is because there was nobody representing that view that they trusted in Washington, in either party. That’s where we are now.

This is the natural state of bureaucracies. You don’t need to have a conspiracy. You just need a bunch of liberals. They do believe in certain things. You can typecast them. You can profile them. Speaking of which — sorry for my hodgepodge, scatter shot approach today, but as things come to mind I’m going to share them. This massive sweep, just yesterday we learned of the Verizon sweep and all this metadata — and, believe me, there’s more to metadata than what these people are telling you. “Well, it’s just the phone numbers of the calls and length of the calls.” I need to tell you, no, it’s not like a wiretap in terms of content, but why do they want it if it’s so insignificant?

“It’s just metadata, Mr. Limbaugh. You don’t really need to be concerned.”

Well, then why do they want it?

“Well, Mr. Limbaugh, because they’ll be able to detect trends in frequent conversation perhaps with foreigners outside the country. They’ll apply the algorithm.”

Oh, okay, so we gotta trust the algorithms. Cool. Fine. Count me in. Why don’t we just profile? Why do we have to sweep every phone call up in this operation? I mean, people calling Domino’s? Why, do you realize the people that commit terrorist acts in this country, by and large, can be profiled, just like liberals can be profiled and conservatives can be profiled? Tell somebody you’re conservative and they pretty much, if they’re educated, know what you believe in.

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If you tell somebody somebody’s a liberal — and if they’re mature enough, educated enough, informed enough, and brave enough — they will tell you they know what that means. If you don’t know what a liberal is, take a look at this administration. Everything happening in it is happening because of their ideology. They’re liberals. It’s that simple. So you don’t need a conspiracy. You just need a bunch of like-minded people.

You don’t need Obama issuing orders. You don’t need an owner’s manual. You don’t need instructions. There isn’t a smoking gun. They’re all trained to think this way. They all believe it in their fiber. They are trained in the Ivy League schools to come out and populate government and start doing things, be it at the fish and game desk, be it at the IRS, be it at the EPA, be it at the FDA. It doesn’t matter where they are, they are there because they want to use government to further their political agenda.

“Don’t you conservatives want to do that?”

No, no, no, no.

We don’t want to use the government to further our political agenda is the point. Our political agenda is freedom. Our political agenda is liberty. Our political agenda is people being free to be the best they can be with as few government regulations in their way. We don’t want to use government against people. We don’t want to use government to reward. We don’t want to use government period. We want it to administer the things that are necessary and then leave us alone and get out of the way.

We want it to focus on what it’s supposed to do and be good at what it’s supposed to be good at and then stop. But liberals don’t look at it that way.

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