RUSH: To the phones, to Kansas City. Hey, Mark, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Hello. What an honor to actually be able to talk to you on this great anniversary. Congratulations on that. I just wanted to say, I graduated high school in 1992, and my job at the time was at a tool and dye company where I had to sweep metal shavings from one side of the warehouse to the other pretty much all day. Once you were done, it was just filled up again.
So that’s all I did, and this is before iPods and all that stuff. So I didn’t really have anything other than music and there’s only so much music you can listen to. I don’t even know what else was on AM radio at the time, but I was flipping through dials, and I heard you. I wish I could put into words what you’ve done for me life. I mean, I just love you, man, your insight and your whole attitude about life basically all day.
Every day I just listened to you three hours a day, and I remember when your books came out. You know, I got your books in hardcover and read ’em, and then on audio cassette (chuckles) because we didn’t have podcasts or anything like that, so I couldn’t hear you other than at work. So then basically I was able at get your tapes and listen to you over and over on your books.
The Rush TV show, searching TV stations at like one in the morning on whatever night it was that they stuck you. I loved the show and watched that as long as it was on, and just have listened to you all the way up until today. You just have been an incredible influence on how I’ve looked at the world and how I am today as a person. It’s actually kind of sad, in a way, because now today I’m a little down on the Republican Party and where we’ve ended up as a country and as a people.
You know, I got laid off a couple of years ago from a job that I loved and had been at for years. You know, and now I have a daughter going to college and I’m cannibalizing like an old laptop — a Dell laptop — to try to get her to have some kind of computer to go to school, and it’s just kind of depressing that this is where I’ve ended up, you know, after being so bright-eyed and happy in the nineties.
I was listening to you and taking what you were teaching and being successful for a time outside of Kansas City which you know. You’re in Cape Girardeau. So being in Kansas City, in my mind, wasn’t much different. We’re kind of out here in the boonies, you know, compared to the all the great big cities out there. But I was able to move to Chicago and get a great job.
This was all due to you. I mean, this was all due to what you were teaching, and, you know, what we were listening to. I’ve pretty much grown up with you. I think you’re an awesome person, you’re just an excellent influence, and I’ve just never understood the hatred. I mean, today with the Internet, of course, it’s all over the place. You know, you’re just speaking your mind.
You’re speaking what you’ve learned. I listen to your grandfather there. He was a great person, and you could obviously tell that you were influenced by that. But the crop of people out there and what they say about you — what they say about what you believe and what we believe — I just don’t understand it. I don’t believe it.
RUSH: I share with you the sense of great unease about it, about the country, about where it’s going, how it’s happened. Everything seems upside down, and there doesn’t seem to be any push-back to it. In fact, you know, outside of you and others like you and the way you think, there doesn’t even seem to be that many people upset about it. They’re just adapting to it. Now, I’ve had to struggle myself to try to explain this to myself and to others. And you talk about the hatred for me out there. I’ll tell you why I think it is. It isn’t personal. None of these people know me.
There is and has been in this country, longer than you and I have been alive, there has been a battle for who is going to define this country. There are people — and I’ve shared with you. Intellectually, the way I was raised, what I was taught about this country, I literally — this is a conflict, because intellectually I understand it, but in my heart I don’t understand how anybody could hate this country today. I don’t understand it. But they do. So I’ve given up trying to figure out what their problems are. To understand where the country is today, you have to understand that the left is not just in opposition.
They’re not just opponents. The left has designs on the country. They don’t believe in the Constitution, as founded, the country as founded. They don’t believe in the concept of individual liberty. They don’t trust it. They don’t trust that people will do what they want them to do if left alone. So they must control everything or as much of everyone’s life as possible in order to create what they want. That leads to an all-out assault on individual liberty and freedom. And that’s the battle that has been waging in this country since the day it was founded. There are some people threatened by it. There are some people opposed to it.
Even the rank-and-file left, I mean, the people you’ve never met, just the average, ordinary, nonelected, nonleadership, these people that post comments in an anonymous fashion on all these websites, they simply — it’s hard to explain. They do not trust that you’re going to be behave the way they want you to, and they’re not content to let you behave the way you want. You must conform to the way they want you to live. You must conform to the way they want you to believe.
Now, you and I are not like that. You and I are laissez-faire. We’re content for everybody to live the life they want to live and we’ll enter the arena of ideas and we’ll try to persuade them to join us in the way we view life and the way we view liberty and freedom. But it’s not in our Constitution to force anybody to do anything, to punish anybody for the way they believe, think or live, but it’s not that way with them. Any person or thing that they perceive as a threat, and they perceive me this way, must be destroyed, my reputation, character, must be impugned, credibility. It’s all about the ideology.
This is why I have this fervent desire that I could make everybody in this country understand what liberalism really is. It is not a way of thinking. Liberalism is the denial of liberty. It’s the denial of freedom. It is the imposition of restrictions on people. And they are not content to simply live the way they want to. You must do everything they want, think the way they think, and if you don’t, you’re either gonna be punished or they’ll try to relegate you to insignificance because you represent an enemy, you represent a threat to them. And that’s what I am. It really isn’t personal, as I say, because they don’t know me.
They don’t want competition for your mind. They don’t want anybody convincing you that they’re wrong. They don’t want anybody telling you who they really are. And when anybody pops up that effectively does that, here come the long knives. Anyway, that’s a short version of it. It’s much more complicated and complex than that, but that’s best I can do in a short period of time, in a nutshell. I appreciate the call. I really do. This man’s call, folks, is exactly what I was talking about in the first hour when I talked about the intimate connection that can be made with an audience on radio. Everything he said is what’s beautiful about radio and what’s possible with it, and I appreciate the call. I thank you very much.
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RUSH: Let me try it this way. For 25 years I’ve been trying to explain liberalism to people. I’ve come up with as many different ways to explain it as I’ve engaged in. Let’s put it this way. And by no means is this the best or the final. I’m gonna be struggling with this for as long as I do this. What liberals want will never happen on its own. People will not live the way liberals want if left to their own devices, because people will not build walls to keep themselves in places that they don’t want to be, such as the Soviet Union, such as China, such as Cuba. Those places are all run by liberals. You can call ’em communists or socialists or whatever.
Left to their own devices, in a free country, people will not choose liberalism. If they want to eat salt, they’ll eat it. If they want to eat trans fats, they’ll eat it. If they want to eat beef, they’ll eat it. The only way liberals can get you to live the way they want you to is to deny you freedom to do what you want to do. And they’re not happy with you living and thinking in ways other than the way they live and think. You must conform. If you dare speak outside the acceptable liberal norms, they’re gonna come after you. They’re gonna do their best to destroy whoever does that so that that person or group of people will not persuade others.
Liberals cannot survive in an unrigged contest in the arena of ideas. They are not about ideas. Liberals are not about choice; they are about imposition. The way they live, the way they believe, must be imposed on people, otherwise they won’t do it on their own. It’s taken them 50, 60 years to get to this point of conditioning people, of taking hold of the education system, the university, academia system, the media. It’s taken a long time to condition people not to stand up for themselves, not to exercise freedom, not to speak outside the acceptable norms. What is political correctness but speech censorship, is all it is.
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RUSH: Here’s Richard, as we head back to the phones at Oxnard, California. Hi, Richard, I’m glad you called.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush. Happy anniversary.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Thank you for 25 great years.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
CALLER: I’d like to discuss liberalism with you just a bit further, if you don’t mind.
RUSH: No, go right ahead.
CALLER: Okay. As you know, being a strong conservative, our conservatism is based in faith and freedom and the truth. To contrast that, liberalism is… They live in fear, Rush. You’ve made comments through the years… I’ve listened to you 25 years, and you’ve made comments through the years about how things that you know to be true are said to be false, and then things that you know to be false with said to be true. That’s the power of denial that the liberals use in confronting conservatism.
RUSH: Well, there’s no question. One of the most upsetting things about where we are is that liberalism is a series of lies that people have come to accept.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: It is one of the most amazing things, but it’s been a slow evolution. They’ve been working at it for more than 50 years. They get hold of kids in school, start propagandizing them then, and then those kids become parents, and the cycle starts repeating itself. One of the real keys is that there is no conservatism in pop culture. It’s all liberal, and so it’s made to look cool. It’s made to look hip. But none of it’s right, none of it’s real. It’s all a fabricated series of lies or untruths. You’re absolutely right about that.
CALLER: I think the best example we have today is our current president and the regime that’s in the White House and running our government. They say one thing that they profess to be the truth, but everything they do is the exact opposite. They live in denial of the truth.
RUSH: Well, it’s worse than that. The things that are happening are said to be not happening because of the people doing it. The people doing these things are getting away with acting like they are fighting it! The real, accredited liberals know that it has to be forced on people, that it has to be imposed, that people have to be tricked into accepting it. And that’s what Obama is. He’s a trickster artist, and he’s really good at it.
That’s why the perpetual campaign.
That’s why he’s appearing to be opposed to everything that’s happened and happening, and trying to fix it. He is “trying to create jobs” when his policies are destroying them, shrinking job opportunities for people, on purpose, to make government necessary in people’s lives.
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RUSH: Folks, there’s another very important and crucial aspect of liberalism to understand. One of the fundamental elements of liberalism is a promise to people that others will be punished. There are many liberals who love to hear that the rich are going to get a tax increase. Liberalism spawns, sponsors, promotes class envy. Liberalism promotes and sponsors the division of people.
Liberalism pits groups of people against each other. Liberalism promises certain people that others are going to be punished, that the brute force of government is gonna get even with people. It’s a hideous, hideous thing. It is destructive. You look at any city in this country or any country in this world that has been run for years unchecked by liberals, and you’re gonna see total destruction. You’re going to see poverty.
You’re going to see economic distress; people enraged, angry, depending on somebody else to get through the day. It is an ugly, ugly picture, and it all happens under the guys of compassion! It all happens under the false promise that you’re being taken care of, that you’re being cared for, and that people doing this to you care about you and the other guys (i.e., Republicans) don’t. It is a series of some of the most amazing lies, and that’s what’s breathtaking about it.