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RUSH: Jeff in Monroe, Washington. Great to have you on the EIB Network.

CALLER: I have a question for you. Do you ever wonder how civilizations fall like the Mayans?

RUSH: Wait just a second. What do you do…? I can’t understand a single word you’re saying. It’s not your fault. If you would just slow down a little bit, please, and try again.


CALLER: Okay. Have you ever wondered how civilizations fall? Like they look at the Mayans or something like that and they try to figure out what went wrong.

RUSH: Yeah. In the case of the Mayans, they had goats in the streets that they didn’t control.

CALLER: Right. (chuckles) But I think that’s what’s gonna happen. This whole thing is gonna crash, the Obamacare, all this. All this stuff’s gonna just pretty much cease to exist and then they’ll have to unravel everything later on and figure what happened.

RUSH: Okay, so the honest true here is you’re bouncing off of Ian’s call yesterday in part?

CALLER: Oh, yeah. Because what I’m saying is that if people run scared, there’s gonna be no record of what went wrong when everything does crash. If you guys just say what it is and what’s going on and don’t worry about what people think, then maybe there’s hope, but I just don’t see it.

RUSH: Well, tell me how things are gonna crash.

CALLER: Well, look at Obamacare, what that’s gonna do to the medical system.

RUSH: Right, isn’t gonna work.

CALLER: Right, everything they’ve put in place, all these social programs they said was gonna make things better, nothing’s worked.

RUSH: Yeah, but they’re still functioning. I mean, they’re nowhere near crashing.

CALLER: Well, eventually. But, I mean, talking… I mean, this whole thing that happened with Brendan Eich is the latest thing.

RUSH: I know what you’re talking about. You’re talking about the death of civilizations. What is it that brings it about?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Like the Romans, the Mayans. What happened to them?

CALLER: We don’t know.

RUSH: And in the case of the Romans, there are all kinds of theories, decadence and just cultural rot.

CALLER: I’m just saying in our time, though. It’s just people get stuck on stupid and then that’s pretty much it. They’re too worried about this social stuff and not what’s really important.


RUSH: Well, okay. Let’s say we get stuck on stupid. If the stupid then elect the stupid, and the country runs with stupidity at the helm —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — what is it about that that would necessarily make it crash? Why couldn’t it just continue to exist in rampant stupidity?

CALLER: What they’re doing now with Firefox, I mean, how much worse can it actually get?

RUSH: Yeah. Well, you know something? I know what you mean. See, I’ve been… How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?

CALLER: I’m 45.

RUSH: Forty-five.

CALLER: All I’ve been hearing since I was born is, “We gotta fix education! We gotta fix this an dwe gotta fix that,” and we don’t do anything.

RUSH: I know.

CALLER: You gotta remember, when people are taught all this crap, it doesn’t go away. I mean, something is going to have to happen where people wake up.

RUSH: That’s my point. When they’re taught this, it doesn’t go away. Yet you say it’s gonna crash.

CALLER: Oh, I’m just saying theoretically. If they were ever to get to a point where the health system is gonna have to crash, everything’s gonna have to fall apart. You know, basically they’re gonna have to run everything into the ground before everyone can ever figure out what went wrong. Because now they’re too worried about gay rights and this sort of thing. You know what I mean? It’s getting worse and it’s getting worse and it’s getting worse. Something’s gonna have to bottom out before actually people figure it out. That’s my point.


RUSH: Well, I know. You’re essentially saying it’s gonna fall apart before we fix it. I would contend to you it has fallen apart but it’s still falling.

CALLER: I know. I know. But it’s only gonna get worse, though. ‘Cause even if they try to start fixing things now they’re gonna have to take back what these people did in the last 40 or 50 years or so.

RUSH: A-ha! Okay. Now we’re get something new. So you think at some point they’re gonna have to start taking back some of the benefits, some of the welfare benefits, and that’s gonna —

CALLER: All selectively. All this stuff that they’ve put into place over the whole time.

RUSH: Let me tell you something. I know what you’re saying, but my experience is different. I’m 63. You are 45. I’ve been hearing my whole life how the national debt is gonna destroy the country. Well, here we are at $17 trillion, and we’re still trucking. Now, I’m not trying to be argumentative with you, but I think it’s already crashed. Nothing is working the way it was designed. Everything’s broken.

And what is done at the leadership level?

They break it further.

They continue to build on the mistakes, and they bake them in.

And it’s still working.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I do not want to be misunderstood, this last caller. I know exactly what he was saying. We’re on a dead end course. We’re headed to nothing working. Everything’s gonna fail. We’re gonna bottom out. He was, I think, saying we’re have to bottom out before anything is going to get fixed. Now, all I’m saying is, I want to know how this is going to happen.

You know, I happen to hold the same view that the course that we’re on is going to equal catastrophe and destruction. But at the same time I’ve been hearing it my whole life. My dad was telling me when the national debt was $5 trillion, how it’s gonna be the end of the country, and here it is 55 years later and there’s no end in sight to it. We’re not getting a handle on it.

Nobody’s engaging in any repair work or proposing any policies that are gonna fix this, or even change direction. We’re keep adding to the debt, we keep creating entitlements, we keep paying people not to work. It… (interruption) What’s an unnatural circumstance? (interruption) Well, no. In this case I don’t know that Obama’s race is a factor. Whether Obama’s black or Martian, the number of Americans who expect to be taken care of and want to be is growing.


And there’s a whole political party of all kinds of people that have been promoting that, the Democrat Party. Obama’s just the latest of a long line of leaders of that party. But, no. Look, I don’t want to make this any more confusing than it is. I live in Realville. I’m a literalist. When somebody tells me that we’re gonna crash, I ask, “Well, I know. How?” What does that actually mean? How does our system implode? How does it collapse on itself?

You think thousands of people aren’t gonna get medical care in this country? Let’s take a look the western socialist democracies in the European Union. The last I heard, Greece was finished, but planes are landing there, and people are living there, and they’re getting health care there, and they’re eating and they’re drinking there, and they’re going fishing, and I have friends are still cruising the Greek isles on boats.

Then I heard that Spain had 20% unemployment, and they were about to bottom out, and everything was going to hell in a handbasket. I’ve heard it about France, too. Yet last I saw, planes are still landing there in Madrid and rock concerts are still taking place, and people are getting up and going to work and having the siestas and all that. I mean, when does this happen? So I don’t know.

The whole thing about it collapsing, to me, I ask, “How many times did that actually happen?” The Roman Empire collapsed, the Mayans ceased to exist, but it doesn’t happen to everyone. I mean, the Chinese are still the Chinese. They’ve had their Ming Dynasties, other dynasties. They’ve got communism. The same thing with the Russians and the Soviets and so forth, but they’re still there.

Now, I wouldn’t want to live in any of those places, don’t misunderstand, and I’m not being purposely naive here to stoke conversation. But if you’re gonna start talking about the death of a nation or the death of civilization… See, I think there’s always gonna be an America. Even if the left wins everything, there’s always gonna be an America. It just may not be the America that was founded.

It may someday look nothing like the America that was founded. But the actual manifestation of, say, Social Security failing? What more is it going to take? Social Security has not been properly funded for decades. The government can continue to print money and borrow money to pay for it, and eventually there might be a 75% income tax rate. I don’t know who’s gonna pay it, because there are gonna be fewer and fewer people working.

And, no, I’m not saying I’m throwing up my hands in despair and conceding anything. Don’t misunderstand here. We’re on the wrong track. I want to get off the track. I want to fix this. Everything I stand for I still stand for. It’s just a guy calls here and says it’s over, it’s gonna bottom out, and talks about the Mayans and the Roman empire. Okay, well, how’s that actually gonna happen here?

He had no answer, really.

“Well, it’s just gonna implode on itself.”

What is gonna implode? I mean, even if we get to 20% unemployment, there gonna be people that day getting up and going to work. It may not be a country that offers the same opportunity for prosperity and all that that it has been in the past, and that’s what we’re trying to preserve. We’re trying to get some sanity. We’re trying to reestablish, you know, a moral code, decency and all that.

I think most people, if you really could pin ’em down, they’re really want that. When you start talking about the collapse of the country, I think what most people are really worried about is what the Wall Street Journal once called “the guardrails” that keep everybody on the road morally are gone. And when there is no right or wrong, when you’re not allowed to proclaim it or even know what it is, then you’ve got utter chaos.

And that’s what I think a lot of people really fear is taking place here. (interruption) Yeah, Detroit clearly has collapsed. But Detroit’s still functioning. They’ve still got a mayor; they got a city council. They got people live there and go to work. Detroit still has the Detroit Lions. They got the Detroit Pistons. They got the Detroit Red Wings. They still have the bridge that connects ’em to Canada. (interruption)

Most of the people have gone? Well, yeah, they’ve gone, moved out, but Detroit is still there. It’s still on the map, is the point, and there are people still being born there, and they still want to live there, and they’re still voting for the people who did that to Detroit. They’re still voting for the same party that destroyed the place. The same party that destroyed the place continually is reelected.

And, you know, every four years, people show up at City Hall and demand their Obamacare housing rent vouchers. It’s just what life becomes. It’s very sad, obviously, but I’m not trying to be depressing here. You know, I’m just injecting a little reality. If somebody says, “We’re headed toward collapse,” I want to know what that means in that caller’s mind. That’s what I was getting at.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One of the things that our caller two callers ago was talking about: “How did the Mayans and Romans collapse? What happened?” One of the things that he mentioned was that we’re gonna have to start taking things back, meaning reduce benefits. The only thing Obama has taken back are sign-up deadlines, the employer mandate.


He’s waived everything. He’s moved all of the really harmful, punishing, deleterious, damaging aspects of this. He’s moved it all beyond any other election that will matter to him. Robert Gibbs said that if they’re gonna take back anything, that it would be the employer mandate. He said this yesterday. Robert Gibbs said that if any aspect of Obamacare does actually get implemented, it will be the employer mandate.

He actually said that yesterday. But Obama’s taking things back or delaying all these things not to fix it, but rather not to harm the political impact to his party. So let’s take this further. Okay, what other benefits might be cut? Let’s say Social Security. Who’s gonna do it? There isn’t a politician in the world who’s gonna do it who stands for reelection. They’re all gonna propose it 10 years from now, 15 years from now, whatever fix.

No politician alive… Well, there might be exceptions, but you get my drift. It would be a death sentence. You have a guy running for office: “I’m gonna have to cut back on Social Security by an average hundreds a month for every recipient! I’m gonna have to cut back to food stamps.” Can you imagine what would happen? So these things are going to have to happen at some point.

Maybe they happen and they don’t get announced, they just happen? And you’ve got what, maybe riots? ‘Cause I’ll tell you what it does look like. You know what the collapse of America as you and I know it looks like? It looks like the Great Depression. It looks like people losing their savings and their pensions and investments, because that’s where the government will go to fund itself.

The government will take as much private sector cash as they can get their hands on. It looks like people in lines, the collapse. It will look like people who rely on government programs seeing those programs end. It eventually will happen. I don’t know if I’ll still be alive. But if this doesn’t change, these things are going to happen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I want to get back, ’cause I asked the caller who said, “Rush, it’s finished; it’s over. The Mayans collapsed and we’re in the process. We’re gonna collapse here.” I wanted this guy to tell me what he meant. “What does it look like? What does collapse look like?” I want to run through this again. I want to tell you where we’re headed, if there aren’t changes, and what we will look like. The road that we are on takes us back to the Great Depression.

That’s what things will look like.

People lined up for food, shelter. It’s gonna be ugly. People will be losing their savings and their pensions and their investments, in any number of ways. A, they just become worthless. The value of money evaporates when the government prints too much and there’s too much is in circulation. Or the government takes it, confiscates it. “Come on, Rush! They can’t take the money.”

Folks, the Reverend Jackson himself has personally suggested that government actually confiscate everybody’s pensions. He says, “There’s trillions of dollars there. We need it. We need it for benefits.” Don’t think that can’t happen. Pension, your investments, gone. How about this: Of those that are invested in tax-free municipal bonds, what happens if one day the IRS — not Congress, not Ways and Means Committee, not a piece of legislation.

What happens if one day a new regulation is written that removes the tax exemption for municipal bonds? Your municipal bonds are then worthless if somebody all of a sudden decides to try that. There’s all kinds of muni bonds, tax-free. Ross Perot. Billionaire. At one time the vast majority of his portfolio was in tax-free munies. I don’t know if that’s the case now. Meaning that when you sold the bond, you paid no tax on the income that the bond had generated over the life of it.

What if somebody just takes that away? There are any number of little things that government can do to get its hands on money when it doesn’t have any more of its own. How about government deciding to nationalize businesses? “Ah, Rush, come on! That can’t happen.” Well, who owns General Motors? One of the reasons I keep telling you what the latest in Venezuela is, is because of my fear that we could someday look like that. I don’t care anything about Venezuela other than how it relates to the United States.


You know, Venezuela is an object lesson.

Venezuela is run by people who go running our country today. It’s the same people, same philosophy, same theories. What is gonna keep us from becoming Venezuela if these people keep up? Nothing, folks. That’s the point. We’re not immune just because we’re the United States of America. We’re not immune. If a bunch of leftists can destroy Detroit, can destroy Venezuela, can destroy Cuba, can destroy Germany, then left leftists can destroy this country.

Some would argue they’re in the process of doing it. You want to know what it looks like; I’m telling you. Athens, Rome, Egypt. As I said, they’re all still there, but they’re nothing compared to what they were. In fact Rome, outside of St. Peter’s, one of the greatest attractions is what it was: The ruins the Roman Empire. Egypt, ditto. Great pyramids, the Sphinx (which look like my basset hound). Egypt today?

It’s there, yeah, but not in any sense its old glory. Athens? They’re all still there, but they collapsed. Germany? Look at Germany. In 100 years it has gone from all-powerful to defeat in World War I, to depression, to the rise of the Third Reich, the Nazis and Hitler. Look at all the hell it unleashed. And then its defeat and collapse and depression all over again. And then, after that, the country’s divided into East Germany and West Germany.

Then it gets united again into its current state, thanks largely to the Western powers of United States, Great Britain, and Canada. My point is, the world and history are full of examples. We talk about this society collapsing. What are we really talking about? We’re talking about the destruction of our society, which includes our culture — and don’t for a minute think that it isn’t under assault. It is.

It’s under assault by people who do not like what the old definition of normalcy was, who don’t like what the old definitions of virtue and right and wrong were. They don’t like any of that, ’cause for some reason they thought it didn’t include them. They don’t want to be oddballs. So now it’s all gotta be redefined so that it includes them and excludes you, when you get right down to it.

We’re talking about the destruction of our governing system. That’s underway. I never thought that I would actually live to see the United States Congress willingly give up its power to the executive branch the way it has happened here. When I grew up, people that ran the House of Representatives — it was all Democrats back then, but even when they were Democrat presidents — there’s no way

They fought truth and nail. They were trying to steal executive power. They were trying to thwart presidents often, as designed. That’s what the separation of powers all about, throw in the Supreme Court as well. Now the executive is just amassing power, and members of his own party are suggesting that their purpose in the House of Representatives is to write executive orders for him to sign.

Thank you, Sheila Jackson Lee/idiot.

But that’s a dramatic change in our governing system. Checks that you were taught growing up Civics 101, there aren’t any, or they’re not being used. The economic system is collapsing. The Federal Reserve has decided to pick winners, and they are on Wall Street, not Main Street. Part of the problem is that when you are living on the bubble as a nation — and we are, and by that I mean we’re living on borrowed money.

We’re living on future earnings that haven’t even been created. We are spending future tax revenue that hasn’t been collected, because the money that would generate that tax has not been earned yet. You don’t see it. When you’re in the bubble, you don’t see it. When you’re in the housing bubble, the dot-com bubble, you don’t see it until the bubble bursts. But we can’t keep this up. We cannot keep spending money that we don’t have.

We can’t spend tax revenue that’s been not been collected, because it’s gotta be collected by somebody at some point. We are spending tax revenue that your grandchild who’s still crawling around on the floor is gonna someday earn. That’s who’s money we’re spending. Maybe your grandchild’s kids’ earnings are being spent right now. So everything seems fine, on the surface.

You can still live your life, get in your car, drive where you want to go, you want to turn on E! Entertainment TV or TMZ, you can, you want to keep up with the Kardashians, you can. If you want to worry about whether the British chef Nigella Lawson can get into the country or not, you can worry about that. (interruption) Well, that was the big story at Page Six today, Snerdley.

Some British chef, Nigella Lawson, was denied entry into the country. (interruption) I don’t know what she did. I don’t know why she’s in the news. I’m sorry, I’m not up to speed on it, but apparently she’s married to some guy or divorced some guy doesn’t like her and is making her life hell, and for some reason… I assume that this woman has got a TV show somewhere, which is why she’s news.

But, yeah. You can still get in your car. You can still pick up your phone, make a phone call. You can still watch your big screen, you can still fill out your brackets for the NCAAs, the March Madness. Is that over with yet? (interruption) It’s not? Is this the final weekend coming up? (interruption) Well, why do they call it March Madness, then? Why isn’t it finished in March? Ah, never mind. I don’t care.

I have nothing against it.

(interruption) Can you get jobs in this…? No, you can’t get the job that you want, but you can still eat, and you can still get your phone and you can still watch your big screen. You can still go to the NCAA. You can still do all that. You can follow the NFL Draft. But the main thing is, even if you don’t have a job, you get your food stamps and you still eat. You can stay in a heated domicile. That’s the point. You don’t realize it. You don’t have a job? Fine! You’re into, what, your fourth year of unemployment benefits!

Yes siree bob. Fourth year.

They’ll probably be extended, the next time some Democrat gets in trouble around election time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, I went way long in the opening monologue, much longer than I should have, and I’ve only got a minute here in this segment. That was very, very bad form. That was poor execution of the programming format. Normally I have guidance. Normally I have shouting in my ear saying, “Ahem!” But that did not occur. So I’m just lucky I caught it myself here.

originalThe point is that, folks, there have always been voices throughout history like this. Every generation thinks it’s in its last days. Every generation has people that think it’s worse now than ever before. There are always voices throughout history warning about coming doom in societies and republics that start sliding into tyranny — and those voices have been ignored, largely, by their contemporaries. If you want to find out how democracy ends and what happens, read de Tocqueville. Read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

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