RUSH: Elia in Euless, Texas. I’m glad you called. It’s Open Line Friday, and it’s your turn. Great to have of you here.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. You know, I’ve been hearing a lot about the… Well, I’ve been listening to you for years and years, so I’m totally in agreement with everything you say — and if I disagree, I’m usually wrong anyway. So anyhow —
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a mature audience member to realize that.
CALLER: Anyhow —
RUSH: You are very, very mature — not only to know it but to admit it! That’s applauded.
CALLER: (laughing) Okay, Rush. Well, anyhow, I wanted to tell you that growing up as a little girl —
RUSH: Wait just a second. Hold on. You just admitted that when you think you’re wrong, it’s usually that I’m right.
CALLER: That is so right. I mean, when my husband says you’re wrong, I say, “No, not yet. Rush is still right and I’m still in agreement with him.”
RUSH: I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, because this is a huge admission. I want you to hold on after your call ’cause I want to send you an iPad.
CALLER: Oh, my goodness. Thank you, Rush!
RUSH: I want to send you an engraved signature EIB iPad —
CALLER: Wow.
RUSH: — for recognizing that it’s always going to be the caller who’s wrong no matter what the caller says. That’s such a big admission.
CALLER: Yeah, you’re so wonderful with words, and you just said what I really wanted to say. Thank you.
RUSH: So an iPad, big or little, is coming your way. You pick after the call. Don’t hang up when we finish talking.
CALLER: Okay, I won’t.
RUSH: Okay, now, pick it up where we left off.
CALLER: Okay, anyhow, I’m 66. Growing up as a little girl way back then, five decades ago, I would hear the grownups and the old timers talk about being a Democrat and why we should be Democrats. It was because the Democrats were our friends and they’re gonna take care of us, and they’re always for the poor. They’re always for the minorities. Back then, all the Hispanics were in the minority class. They felt that they were, anyway, even if maybe they weren’t.
Today, 50 years later, I still hear the same words echoing in the younger generation.
I mean, I don’t know who can penetrate that mind-set because they’re still all of the same belief when I talk to my family. I was able to convert one of them to a Republican, anyhow. They agree with Republicans, and it’s like, “Well, why aren’t you voting for Republicans, then? You need Republicans in the White House, locally and at every level.”
They say, “Well, because the Democrats are for us.” It’s always that way. They always have that belief. It’s like they’re scared to go across the line because they might get their toes burned or something. I don’t know what their thoughts are, but they’re still all of the same belief.
RUSH: So it’s changed in 50 years that Democrats care more for the poor? Is that the point?
CALLER: As long as Hispanics feel that way, it’s tough to penetrate that.
RUSH: Yeah, you know, those are the cliches that have survived. I’ve been doing this program 25 years and people have asked, “Rush, how do you change that?”
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Well, that’s why I’ve always said conservatism is an intellectual pursuit, as opposed to liberalism, which is feeling. Let me give you an example.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: You walk down the street — you and, say, a Democrat friend. You and this friend are walking down the street, and you see an obviously poor person. Your friend is a Democrat who says, “Oh, my God! Look at that poor person. We have to do something. Oh, my God. Oh, that’s just horrible. We’ve gotta do something,” and at that moment, that person thinks they’re wonderful.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: They care, and they’ve got a lot of compassion, but they haven’t fixed anything.
CALLER: No, they haven’t.
RUSH: And they’re gonna vote for people who are gonna make them continue to feel like they care and like they’re good people and they’re compassionate and so forth. Now, the conservative walking down the street — you — will see the poor person and say, “How are we gonna fix this?” And then you’ll say, “We’ve got to somehow teach this person to self-provide, to self-sustain. We’ve got to reeducate them.” We believe that that person has potential. We believe that that person can be made productive.
We believe in the goodness and the decency of people.
But that’s a thought process. It’s a time-tested theory, but it takes effort, and people rolling up their sleeves and getting to these people and speaking tough while optimistic to them (while the liberal gets away with just pointing to them and say, “Oh, that’s horrible!”) means liberals are automatically assumed to have compassion. They don’t have one solution. Their proposed solutions do nothing but sustain that person in his poverty. But it’s all about feelings. And these people, they feel that the Democrats care about “the little guy” because that’s all the Democrats do is talk about caring for the little guy.
That’s all they talk about.
CALLER: Yes, you’re right.
RUSH: And it’s tough. We’re going up against the Democrat Party and a media which are one and the same, and there are caricatures of the Republicans, and the Republicans do not have enough people who know how to articulate the real compassion of conservatism.
CALLER: I see. Well, listening to you, I have really grown a lot and learned so much. I knew that I was conservative. I always knew that, but I didn’t know how to voice that. I didn’t know how, other than voting. I didn’t know how to voice that thinking to someone else.
RUSH: We’ve all had someone in our lives, all of us conservatives, who helped us to learn why we think what we know so that we can then explain it to people. Conservatism, I say, is an applied intellectual pursuit. What I mean by that is in explaining it to others and articulating it and implementing it. Liberalism? It’s the most gutless choice you can make. You don’t have to do anything.
Just “feel” and tell people how bad you feel for other people, and you’re automatically a kind, big-hearted, compassionate person. But you’re not doing anything, except making yourself feel good in the face of misery. You’re not solving the misery. You’re not even tackling it. And then you make yourself feel really good by pointing to people that you think don’t care and criticizing them.
You know, fixing poverty is not gonna be done with feelings. Fixing poverty is gonna require specific policies — and we’ve shown, after 30 years of feeling bad about it and transferring money, that we haven’t fixed it. We’ve shown that the Democrat Party way of fixing it doesn’t work. That may be, I think, the best thing you can do these people. You say, “You know, for 30 years we’ve been giving them welfare.
“We have, for 35 to 40 years, been giving them welfare, and they’re still poor.” They’ll come back at you with, “I don’t care! I don’t care! The Republicans just don’t care.” It’s all about feelings with these people, and that’s tough. Those are tough things to permeate. Anyway, I have to take a break here, Elia, and I want you to hang on, because Mr. Snerdley is going to get your shipping information. You just tell him whether you want an iPad or an iPad Mini and what color you want, and we will handle the rest.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Travis in Boston. Welcome, sir. It’s great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush, from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I wanted to talk about something you touched upon yesterday, because I feel like people don’t understand the true magnitude of this benefit, and that’s the free college tuition we’re giving to illegal immigrants. As a recent college grad myself — I’m 27 now — it’s not unusual to come out of school, particularly private institutions with 20, 30, 40, upwards of $50,000 in federal student loan debt. What that does is two things: First, it limits your ability to pursue a job in a field in which you’re truly interested ’cause you need income coming in to make these payments. Secondly, the economy being how it is, if you find yourself unable to make these high payments and you fall into a default status, student loans are unique in that the interest starts to compound.
RUSH: Wait a second. Everybody’s gonna have student loans. The tuition is not free for the children of illegals, is it?
CALLER: It certainly is in Massachusetts. That’s been a policy —
RUSH: Free? Free tuition, or state-cost tuition?
CALLER: Well, free tuition for state-cost tuition. That’s correct. But for a lot of public institutions — for example, I went to the University of Michigan — the tuition there can be substantially higher for people who are from out of state.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So, if you find yourself unable to make these high payments for whatever the case may be, if you do reach a default status, the interest compounds.
RUSH: Well, we have to extend these benefits to the Hispanics because we’ve offended them so much over the years. That’s why.