RUSH: Look, I don’t care how you slice it, folks. The number one takeaway in all of this is that the United States government is kowtowing to regimes who are either dictator thugs or who hold America to blame, responsible for their plight and the plight of poor people the world over. This is inarguable. I mean, Obama is propping up Cuba. Obama, look who he chooses to side with in the Middle East: Everybody but our ally.
I don’t think this is even arguable. I think it’s clear that Barack Obama, with all of his apologies that he’s made to countries around the world, clearly believes — ’cause he’s been raised this way; it’s the way he was educated — the United States has been the problem, for whatever reason. Our prosperity was ill-gotten, our racist heritage stole Mexico, stole land from the Native Americans. Well, this is how these people are educated.
It’s been two generations of people now that have been educated in this way of thinking, and they’re old enough now to run for office, to be elected to positions of great power and high authority. So they are now in positions of implementing these convoluted, perverted beliefs. They’re turning on more and more of them at American institutions of so-called higher learning, but there can be no other characterization here.
In relaxing our economic “blockade” (to use Castro’s word) on Cuba, we are propping up a dictatorship in the Caribbean. We are propping up a communist Regime. Now, some people want to say, “Well, Rush, this just proves that 53 years of sanctions didn’t work.” Okay, then let’s take the sanctions off of Iran, okay? Let’s lift ’em. They don’t work. Let’s get the sanctions off. Who else are we sanctioning? We sanction Russia.
Let’s get the sanctions off. Let’s lift ’em. They don’t work. Let’s take what we’ve learned here: If sanctions gave us 53 years of failure in Cuba, then what are we messing around with in Iran for? Well, I mean, let’s at least be intellectually consistent if sanctions don’t work, if the embargo doesn’t work. By the way, how do you define “working”? What was the purpose of the embargo? It had, I think, multiple intentions, but more than anything else it was a statement of American values.
If you want to claim that one of the objectives of the embargo was to harm Cuba economically, then, well, go for it. Whether that’s a factor or not, the US embargo did not cause the Castro brothers to change their behavior toward their people. They, in fact, used the embargo as an excuse. They told their people, “Well, things would be different here, but the evil Satan to the north is denying us equal freedom.” Whatever he tells his people. It was our fault.
But the purpose of it was not to harm the Cuban people. It was to limit the power and reach of the Cuban Regime. There are any number of ways of determining whether or not it worked, but as a statement of American values: We are not going to openly trade with a nation that, by the way, was about to accept delivery of nuclear missiles that would be aimed at us. It was a Soviet Union client state.
There are a lot of things about this that people of a certain age simply don’t know. You think Cuban Missile Crisis…? How do you think the Cuban Missile Crisis is taught in schools today? It would be interesting to know how the Cuban Missile Crisis… (interruption) We bullied Russia, bullied Cuba or whatever, or it’s probably our fault because you know one of the things that’s taught about Castro and Cuba is that it was almost a bidding process.
Back in 1955, ’56, ’57, Castro was deciding which way he wanted to go. He was either gonna align with America and be a capitalist country or he was gonna align with the Soviets and be a communist country. He would come to the United Nations, and I remember this. I’m seven or eight years old. I remember this like it was yesterday. I remember watching Castro on TV, and I can remember the news had Douglas Edwards at CBS News, and Walter Cronkite.
I remember them hoping and praying Castro would choose us, even back then. Hoping and praying. They were all convinced that he wasn’t, but Castro left it open. It was a possibility he was gonna choose to align with us, and then when he aligned with the Soviet Union, oh, it was a letdown. It was a terrible disappointment, and it was portrayed as Castro spurning the US. Of course, even back then Castro was justified in spurning us because Castro was smart enough to know that we really wanted to seek really overthrow him.
The point is that it’s always been our fault. So the Cuban Missile Crisis is an outgrowth of that. “Castro was just trying to defend himself! I mean, for crying out loud…” (interruption) Yeah, it was… (interruption) Well, yeah, but see at the time it was Kennedy, and at the time it was Camelot, and at the time Kennedy was the hero. But it’s popularly known by now that Kennedy nearly blew it in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the… (interruption)
Well, maybe not, maybe not. Maybe I’m a… (interruption) Well, the old movies do. But the Cuban Missile Crisis as it is taught today… Let’s take it away. Let’s stop talking about it in specific. What we’re left with is that in the American education system, more often than not any conflict involving the United States is our fault to one degree or another, and therefore the behavior of the bad guys is justifiably explained by virtue of our overreach or whatever we’re blamed for.
My only point is that two generations of young people have been brought up and educated this way. (interruption) Now they’re citing The Godfather to me, to prove my point. (laughing) See, this another thing that happens. We all like, “Yeah, you should see I’m telling the truth because it was in The Godfather.” The Godfather was a movie! It was a script! Somebody wrote a script, even in… (interruption) Right. (interruption)
Well, the Mafia did take over.
The Mafia owned Cuba for a while, but Castro was portrayed as the good guy kicking ’em out “for the people.” (interruption) Well, yeah. There’s all kinds of those. (sigh) So the takeaway is that we’ve now elected somebody that’s been educated to believe all this stuff, that the US is the problem in the world, and there are people — and I know them. There are people who are very happy because they think the lifting of the embargo is for humanitarian reasons.
Because they believe it’s our fault. They believe that the Cuban suffering is our fault, and they eagerly support lifting the embargo, or normalizing relations, because it allows them to continue this illusion that they are, too, are humanitarian; that they, too, are good people. They recognize suffering and they know who’s responsibility for it. And here comes Obama: Saving the day for the suffering once again by realizing the US was out of place and wrong invoking the embargo in the first place.
It’s just obviously not healthy for a growing percentage of the population to think its own country is the problem in the world, and I’m not talking about being nationalistic to the point of forgiving and ignoring occasions when America makes mistakes, but these people don’t forgive. There’s no forgiven whatsoever. America must be perfect, and if it makes a mistake then it must pay the price in ways that are very punitive to America.
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RUSH: Now, you should have seen my e-mail after I raised the question, “How is the Cuban missile crisis taught in the public school system today?” I got e-mail after e-mail, “Come on, Rush, don’t be silly. JFK’s the biggest hero, he’s still a god. The Cuban missile crisis, doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s JFK, he’s brilliant, he’s the best, he’s great, it’s Camelot.”
Not true anymore, folks. This is my point. I have it right here, the details in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. It’s a story from the New York Times from November 11th last year, 2013. “Textbooks Reassess Kennedy, Putting Camelot Under Siege … A 1975 high school text by Clarence Ver Steeg and Richard Hofstadter said that in his handling of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, ‘Kennedy?’s true nature as a statesman became fully apparent.’ In ‘A People and a Nation,’ they said his 1963 limited nuclear test ban treaty ‘was the greatest single step toward peace since the beginning of the Cold War.'”
Okay, that was, for all intents and purposes, the way Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis were portrayed as recently as 1975.
“Using the same title in 1982, Mary Beth Norton and several others took a very different approach in a college textbook widely used today in Advanced Placement courses. They said he ‘pursued civil rights with a notable lack of vigor.’ They blamed him for the missile crisis, saying Cuban-Soviet fears of invasion were stoked by the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing and other United States moves against Cuba. They said Kennedy?’s real legacy was ‘a huge military expansion that helped goad the Russians into an accelerated arms race.'”
So in advanced placement courses in America universities from 1985 on, Kennedy is blamed for the missile crisis; Kennedy is blamed for the Soviet arms buildup because of his numerous efforts, starting with the Bay of Pigs, to invade Cuba. You know, my instincts, I never doubt my instincts. This is — (interruption) I don’t know if I’m gonna take the time to defend Kennedy, but my point is that it’s changed. That everywhere it’s America’s fault, even to the point of having to blame JFK. If the textbook writers, if the educators, the curriculum determiners are so hell-bent on blaming America, they will even lump JFK in now, is the point. That’s how pervasive the blame-America crowd is.
That’s how deep their tentacles spread throughout education now. And you can’t believe it. You sitting there, you can’t believe that anywhere in America JFK would be blamed for anything, much less the Cuban missile crisis. And since 1985 and college advanced placement textbooks, according to a New York Times story last November, right here, that’s the truth. And 1985, folks, we’re talking 30 years ago. That’s a generation of people coming out of college who believe the — I’m telling you, the notion that America’s the problem in the world is widespread among educated elites.
Educated elites end up where? They end up in government bureaucracies. They run for office. They end up on Wall Street. They end up as CEOs. They end up in any number of influential places.
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RUSH: Well, you better start believing it, because it’s not the only example. Snerdley just said to me that he can’t believe that, for the last 30 years, advanced placement foreign policy education in American universities has been teaching the US was at fault for the Cuban missile crisis. I just read you the relevant passage from the textbook, 1985, JFK was blamed for goading the Soviets into arming Cuba because of the Bay of Pigs. And not just the Bay of Pigs, but, you know, JFK running around huffing and puffing and talking about US military might and so forth, goaded the Soviets. Once again, the bad guys of the world were only made bad guys by virtue of US policy or US action.
This is my point. I’m really doing a lousy job of making the point today, folks. I’m weaving around it, and I haven’t hit the bull’s-eye. Well, I’ve hit the bull’s-eye but I haven’t — the idea that it’s the United States that’s the problem in the world, and that’s not just a casual thing. It’s a formative, central part of people’s education for the last 30 years in elite universities, and those people who graduate end up populating elite institutions and thus end up corrupting them. I’m telling you, that’s why I’m not surprised when something like North Korea or whatever threatens this or that and hacks Sony and Sony kowtows.
At the root of that is ultimately guilt, guilt and fear. Guilt that the North Koreans might be able to do something, guilt that maybe we’re to blame for it, we shouldn’t have done the movie. I’m telling you, it’s pervasive. It’s what’s guiding immigration policy. It’s what’s guiding every foreign policy that this administration’s in charge of. It’s diminishing the United States.
We are clearly a nation in decline and we’re being told our best days are behind us. Obama’s telling us this. It’s being taught. Ninty-two million Americans are not working ’cause they don’t think there’s any reason to. Our best days are behind us. So we’re a nation in decline, and the way you get your stuff now is different than the old days. In the old days you worked for your stuff. Now you game the system or become part of the system. But the nation is in decline because the nation deserves to be in decline because the nation has been fraught with injustice and immorality from the days of its founding.
I know I say that, it rolls off my tongue like it’s just natural syllables, but I’m telling you, I mean it with every fiber of my being. This is what more and more young people have been taught. The women’s studies courses go even further than that. Let me find those stories in the Stack. And, by the way, the only reason we’re learning this is because there are some really gangbuster young people doing conservative blogging and website building that are monitoring what’s going on in the, quote, unquote, academy.
The Drive-By Media would never tell us. Campus Reform is one. There’s some really great people. They’re all Rush Babies doing this, by the way, and I don’t mind admitting that. They grew up with this program and they are entering life as conservatives and somehow they escape the corruption and they’re exposing the things that are being taught in the classroom, taught for 30 years that nobody’s heard about other than, you know, little Johnny comes home from school, tells mom and dad what he’s learning.
Mom and Dad, what are they gonna do? They’re not gonna bitch at that because that will make the university mad at little Johnny, might not get his A or B. So everybody shuts up and lets it happen and rolls the dice that little Johnny will turn out okay anyway and think that’s a one off. When none of this is one off.
(interruption) Who is Stalin? (interruption) Right. Stalin killed 20 million. So what? That was then, this is now. The guy that wrote about Stalin got a Pulitzer Prize. Screw it. Stalin killed 20 million people. Mao killed 50 million people. So what? They did it for their people. You don’t understand how corrupt this. I don’t really think you understand how deeply corrupt. These young people end up supporting murderous regimes on the basis that it was done for the people.
No, there is evil. There is evil. The United States made all these people bad. The United States made Stalin kill. If we hadn’t had designs on Cuba, if we hadn’t opposed ’em, if we hadn’t stood in their way, if we hadn’t invented the CIA, whatever, then Stalin wouldn’t have killed the people. All of this, all of the problems in the world are traced back to the United States. If you doubt me, just open your eyes. Global warming, climate change, you take any issue that has become prominent in the Democrat Party or in the American left, and I guarantee you, all of it, every one of those issues, you can trace it back, its origins back to the United States is to blame.
I give you the way the missile crisis in ’62 is now being taught, JFK’s fault, goaded the Soviets. Yeah, Khrushchev, then Brezhnev, they were minding their own business and then we come along, we start this big nuclear buildup, with their scientists, by the way, scientists from Germany, scientists from East Germany, we stole their scientists. Those bombs should have been theirs in the first place. We stole the scientists.
Their scientists come along and help us get to the moon first. We provoked ’em. Now your question, there’s no good and evil, I know what you mean. And in terms of the way it’s being taught, yeah, there’s no good and evil with us being the good guys. (interruption) What is Iran? Iran is a fledgling nation doing what it can to keep up with aggressive enemies. The United States and Israel, wants to come up with nuclear capability to defend itself, and why shouldn’t they, because we have one, and who are we to say — you don’t even have to have Obama for that.
You can trace that one back to Ron Paul and the Libertarians. You think Obama is seriously engaged with sanction talks to limit Iran from getting a nuke? Yesterday I gave an outsized example. You wait. You’re gonna wake up one day and find out we sold them their first nuke. I was joking and so forth to make a point. It’s made to look serious, but there’s no attempt to stop Iran. Do you think there is? Getting a nuclear weapon? (interruption) Do you see any evidence of it? (interruption) They don’t even give it a bunch of lip service.