RUSH: Liberalism is the most gutless choice you can make, and I mean precisely that. When I say that conservatism is an applied process or behavior, I know that sounds confusing because you may think that I’m saying conservatism isn’t natural, it is.
But liberalism is the dominant belief system in our culture today because of the media. Pop culture is populated by people who think that way, and it’s considered to be what’s hip, and that’s what everybody wants to be. Everybody wants to be hip and cool, and most people aren’t hip. Most people aren’t cool. But everybody wants to be. Liberalism offers you the chance.
Liberalism offers you the chance to be in the club of the hip and the cool. And you don’t have to do anything. You don’t even have to be a good person. All you have to do is act like one. All you have to do is see suffering and comment on it and be heartbroken by it, and you’re qualified. It’s the easiest thing, anybody can do that.
But doing that doesn’t advance a single thing. Doing it, expressing sorrow, acting heartbroken, telling other people how heartbroken you are, and then for the cherry on top, blaming other people for the plight of whosever’s suffering you’re witnessing, well, that is even better. If you know who to blame you can be even hipper and you can be even cooler.
And in the midst of all this you actually make things worse because you do not advance the ball in any way. There is no problem solving. There’s no honesty in addressing what’s genuinely wrong because that’s not what liberalism is. Liberalism is about assuaging guilt, blaming other people for problems, and getting credit for recognizing there are problems. And that’s all you have to do.
Conservatism, however, is an applied application. It’s a daily applied process. It’s an intellectually determinant belief system. Even though most people live their lives as conservatives, it’s a phenomenon they don’t vote that way. Well, more and more people are. But this story, I was in Hollywood. This is 1990 and shortly after the radio program began. Hollywood’s always looking for the next big thing, and I was a big thing on radio, so, well, let’s see, I forget who — I mean, I know the guy’s first name is Bruno, but I don’t remember the studio or the producer, any of that.
He called me up to talk to me and discuss concepts and ideas. And it’s all new to me. I’ve never been to Hollywood. I’ve never met anybody in Hollywood. I don’t know anything about how it works. And I simply acknowledged that invitation to go. To me, it was a learning opportunity. I remember at the time Arsenio Hall had a show and it was big. So I’m sitting across a table at lunch, some famous Hollywood restaurant with this Bruno guy, and I look at him and say, “Can you tell me what it is about the Arsenio Hall show that works, what is it that makes it big?”
And the guy lost it. He looked at me, raised his voice, started pounding the table and said, “What do you mean, why does it work? What’s your problem with it working? You got a problem with a skinny black kid being a success? Is that your problem?” And I am totally taken aback. This guy met me for the first time moments earlier. “You got a problem with a skinny black kid? That’s why the program — because this country has been so evil. This country has been so discriminatory. Here comes a young, skinny, funny black kid taking over the country, and you got a problem.”
I said, “Then why are you talking to me, Bruno, if that’s what we need to do to have a successful TV show? Because I’m not skinny, and I’m not black. And if that’s all it takes to be successful on TV, then why are you talking to me?” And then he apologized, ’cause, I mean, he really lost it for about a minute. And then he became apologetic, asked me to forgive him. What it boiled down to was he knew I was conservative and that’s all he needed to know.
All I had to do was ask, “Why does the Arsenio Hall show work?” And to him I was a racist. That’s how easy being a liberal is. Just call me a racist, assume I’m a racist, defend Arsenio, but don’t give Arsenio any credit for talent. No, no, no, no. He never told me production-wise, talent-wise, why the Arsenio show worked. In his world, the Arsenio show worked because America’d been so unfair, so discriminatory, slavery, that we owed Arsenio Hall success. And that’s what I mean. That’s how easy this stuff is. It was substance-less.