RUSH: Brian is a trucker from Phoenix now in Austin, on the road.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Great to have you on the program, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you, sir. Appreciate you taking my call. I’ve listened to you forever and I wanted to call in, but scared most of my life to even talk to you. But I heard that gentleman talking about the dental story and I laughed so hard, I thought I better tell Rush my story.
RUSH: Isn’t that great? I know.
CALLER: That was awesome. To get to the point, ’cause I know you’ve got more important things. My brother is a Republican, and I’m a Republican conservative Christian that 25 years ago was hoping Jesse Jackson would become president when I was a liberal, dumb college student. And my life has changed. I’ve seen in reality that stuff doesn’t work. And his business and my business are very well. We have children and mine are 16 and 18 and just doing wonderful. Long story short, I got your first book, the Rush Revere one about the Mayflower and the Pilgrims for his children behind his back because he thinks that everyone on the far left and the far right, including me, and you, were all wacky. He’s right down the center, and that’s normal, he thinks.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I ended up getting the book for him. My daughter, his kids look up to my kids so much. She was babysitting them, I went over there when he was gone, read the first chapter in front of my daughter and his two children, and I made the voices of the horse, and I made it really fun so they would get hooked on it and they loved it. I left the book there hoping that I wouldn’t get in too much trouble, and hoping that the kids would want to read it. And sure enough, when he came home he went ballistic in front of my daughter, angry, yelling. She’d never seen him act this way, just because your picture and your name are on the book, holy smokes, it shows who people really are.
So what took place was the kids really wanted to read the book. They liked that first chapter. I really made an impression on ’em, or you did. And so instead of throwing book away, ’cause, you know, it costs a little money and it was from his brother, even though he thinks I’m wacky, he ended up telling the kids, “You can bring it to school, and if they will read it there, then you can read it.” So my nephew brought it to his school. It’s a Christian private school —
RUSH: Okay, I’m out of time. Can you hang on?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: We’ll have to wait breathlessly here for the end of the story.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back now to Brian, a trucker from Phoenix on the road in Austin. He may be up to Dallas by now.
CALLER: (laughing) I’m working my way down to San Antonio.
RUSH: Oh, okay. Cool. San Antonio. I’ve been there a lot.
CALLER: Nice city. Nice city.
RUSH: It is. It is. Now, just to reset. You have this brother who calls himself, he thinks he’s a centrist. He thinks people on the left and right are wacky. He thinks he’s an independent right-down-the-middle guy.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: You used to be a Jesse Jackson liberal.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: But you’ve been listening to this program for a long time, and now you’re home. You’re a conservative, you have some kids. You have been listening for a long time. You bought your daughter a copy of Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, and you gave it to your daughter. She took it over to your brother’s house. Somehow it ended up over there —
CALLER: Yeah, I brought it over while she was babysitting his two children.
RUSH: That’s right. And you left it there, and your instincts told you he might not be happy about it. It turns out he wasn’t. He got home, he saw the book there, and your daughter said he reacted in ways, behaved in ways she’d never seen him behave, got angry.
CALLER: Like never before.
RUSH: And so he relented, if they would just get the book out of the house, and the way they did that was to take it to school.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: Now, how old is your daughter? What grade is she in?
CALLER: She’s an 11th grader, and 16 years old.
RUSH: Okay. Cool. And she liked the book?
CALLER: Yeah. I read it to all three of the kids.
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: I was over there, dropped her off to babysit, had the book in my car hidden from him —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — and brought it in when he left.
RUSH: That’s right.
CALLER: And I had about 10 minutes to read it, read the first chapter, they were hooked. They loved it.
RUSH: Okay. So pick up the story. Your brother relents, the book can stay if it leaves, and so they took it to school.
CALLER: Yeah, he didn’t want the book. He was really upset because you had anything to do with it, you know, your picture. He called me, e-mailed me, really upset, and I’m like, “Jason, your kids didn’t even know what the Mayflower was. That’s why I bought it.” I drive a truck.
RUSH: Wait a second. Wait, now, wait a second. Is that true? His kids didn’t know what the Mayflower was?
CALLER: Absolutely. I asked them before I brought the book out. Before I dared to do that, because I knew I’m gonna walk into a little bit of trouble with my brother, we work together. And I just asked them —
RUSH: Now, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, hold it. Your brother’s kids, I assume the same age, similar to —
CALLER: No, they’re seven and 12.
RUSH: Seven and 12. And honestly they had never heard of the Mayflower?
CALLER: Honestly. I swear. Because I asked them right in front of my daughter, right before I took the book out, and that was kind of my way of introducing the book. “Let me explain to you what the Mayflower is,” and I went on and read the first chapter, and they loved it.
RUSH: I can see why you’d want to.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Okay. So they loved it, and it ended up in —
CALLER: He got back from his date with my sister-in-law, his wife, and he walked in the door, and they jumped at him. The kids, his two children, “Look what Brian bought,” and they loved it. They were wanting to show it off. He freaked out, yelled. I wasn’t there, but this is what my daughter came over and said, “Dad, you know, you can’t believe the way your brother –” I don’t want to say his name because we have a great relationship. He’s a wonderful person and I love him to death —
RUSH: I know, but, you know what? It’s classic. He thinks he’s — well, he’s open-minded. That’s probably what he thinks he is, a guy being in the middle. If he’s outraged at this book, you better have him look into what books are in the schools these days. If he really wants to get irritated, you might clue him in what his kids are being taught.
CALLER: He has his kids in private Christian school, ’cause he knows, but he still thinks far right wacky, far left wacky, down the middle is normal, that’s what he thinks. I’m not saying left is wacky or write is wacky. I’m just saying —
RUSH: I know the exact personality type. I can explain it to you without even knowing your brother. I can tell you why he thinks he’s in the middle. But I don’t want to waste time doing that. You love your brother, and I don’t want to be critical. That’s not my point. I just want to find out what happened to the book.
CALLER: Okay. Long story short, get to the end of it, they read it to the older son’s classroom. He brought it to the school because my brother wanted it out of the house and the kid didn’t want to get rid of it, so he brought it to the school, the teacher agreed to read it to the whole class. So 30 kids got to read that one book that was just intended for my niece and nephew. The last day of school in May he asked me, he’s busy with his business, “Can you go pick up our kids from school?” So I went and picked up his two kids, and asked, “How did your class like the book?”
They loved it. The teacher said they loved it. I went over and picked up my niece, who is only seven. I told her a little bit about the books, and she said we’d love it in our class, too. So I’m just recommending to parents, give it not only to your kids, but give it to your relatives’ kids and give it to schools. I haven’t read the book, but I know exactly what it’s about. These kids don’t know anything about the history of our country, and our country’s dying before us, and we don’t want that —
RUSH: Let me just tell you something. Let me give you a little project, if you want to. I mean, it’s by no means — if you have some spare time.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Because there’s a lot of misrepresentations. You told me that your brother’s kids go to a private school, a Christian school, ’cause he knows, he knows what’s in the public schools. But I would wager that if you dig deep you would find that a man named Howard Zinn is the author of the textbook on American history that’s being used in that school. And if it is, that’s why nobody’s ever heard of the Mayflower. Howard Zinn is the author of the majority of junior high and high school history texts that are outrageous. They’re simply outrageous in the way they rewrite and revise American history. Howard Zinn would be why his kids never heard of the Mayflower. Z-i-n-n, Howard Zinn.
CALLER: Okay. I’ll look into that. It’s a wild guess, but my point is, just because it’s a private Christian school, don’t assume that it hasn’t been corrupted by leftists in the curriculum. They’re everywhere, Brian. That’s why I did the books and your story — here your brother wants to get the book out of his house. It’s gonna taint him and his kids. He’s a centrist. He’s a moderate. He’s not a wacko left or rightist, doesn’t want this, and it goes to school, the kids love it. That’s music to my ears. That’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve here. And I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want to send you a bunch of copies of both books. Now, there’s a second book, Rush Revere and the First Patriots. And that’s been out since the early part of the year, six months or so.
CALLER: I know. I’m planning on already doing it, but I’m waiting on the right timing. I really don’t want to take any of your books. I’d rather buy ’em from the airport, you know, because it shows that we’re buying books, and it’s good for those businesses that don’t even want ’em on the shelves. We buy ’em from them and they’re like, “Hmm, let’s buy some more of these books.”
RUSH: Okay, I appreciate that. I’ll tell you what, then, let me send you a couple of versions of the audio copy of the book read by me.
CALLER: Well, I appreciate that. I accept that.
RUSH: I mean, I offered you the books and you said, “No, I’d rather buy ’em,” and I appreciate that, too. I understand exactly what you mean, so you go buy ’em, and if there are any in the future, I mean, keep a sharp eye, you never know — wink, wink — but I’m gonna send you the audio version and we’ll send you some stuff that we also include, some Ted-Tea Bears and some other stuff in there that the little girls will like, so —
CALLER: Oh, she’ll love it. She’ll love it.
RUSH: You hang on and let Mr. Snerdley get an address from you where we can get the stuff out.
CALLER: All right. God bless you so much, Rush, I appreciate you.
RUSH: Well, it’s two-way street, Brian. Really is. I appreciate all of you much more than you can ever appreciate me. And I know you appreciate me a lot, but I’m telling you it’s much more the other way. You’ll never know. I don’t have a way to adequately thank all of you. What you’ve done here and the kind of effort that you’ve undertaken to spread this around just has me in awe, and it makes me feel really humble, and I can’t thank you enough. So let Mr. Snerdley get your address and we’ll go from there, and send you a care package of thanks, ’cause we really do sincerely appreciate it.