RUSH: The pope, Pope Francis, took off from Cuba within the last, what was it, half hour. He departed Santiago de Cuba, out there on the eastern side of the island, and he’s arriving at Joint Base Andrews. Back in the old days it used to be called Andrews Air Force Base, but now it’s Joint Base Andrews ’cause a lot of joint stuff going on there, not just an Air Force base now. And what’s really remarkable is that Obama and Moochelle are going to be there to greet the pope as he descends the stairs.

You know, Reagan didn’t even go to Joint Base Andrews to meet Gorbachev. It just isn’t done. It is very, very rare that a sitting president heads out to a concrete tarmac to greet an arriving anybody. I think he might have done it for Bill Ayers once over at Reagan National. I’m just kidding. I gotta be careful, some dingbats actually think I meant it. I mean, if it happened, I wouldn’t be surprised. But I mean Obama can barely contain himself here.

We had the news yesterday. Here comes a guy he’s gonna be able to hide behind in order to advance his agenda that nobody voted for, and he’s gonna be hiding behind Pope Francis in order to get this done. So he and Moochelle are driving out there, and they are gonna greet the pope as he gets off. In 1986 when Gorbachev came over to save America from Ronald Reagan, if you remember, fifth year of Reagan’s term and everybody is still worried he’s gonna hit the nuclear button. The arrival of Gorbachev was so exciting for the people in Washington, State Department even, and the media.

But Reagan didn’t go out there to greet Gorbachev. They didn’t even see Gorbachev and his wife Raisa, who basically — you know, this is another thing. I don’t know if you remember this or not. They’re trying to make this Gorbachev wife out to be some fashion leader. What a joke. I mean it was an absolute joke, Raisa. We learned later that she had, as many do, alcohol problems. But they landed at Andrews Air Force Base, and they just immediately went to the Soviet embassy, and Gorbachev and Raisa to the bedroom and stayed there to adjust to time zone for a while, and finally had their meeting at the White House with Reagan.

In this instance, Obama and Moochelle are gonna be out there to greet the pope when he lands. It’s not a long flight up here from Cuba. He’s on an Alitalia jet, which is a capitalist airline. Well, parts of it are. I think it’s an Airbus. It would matter because one’s a capitalist manufacturer and one’s a socialist manufacturer.

Thomas Sowell has a column today about the pope and his arrival, but primary it’s about the pope’s message. I have highlighted three things that Sowell has written here because they’re brilliant. They take issue with the pope and his belief that the objective for all of humanity is to end poverty. And of course the pope believes that we’ve all done a rotten, horrible job of it, and that governments need to get bigger and they need to become populated with more and more compassionate people to find ways to get rid of poverty.

And of course Thomas Sowell points out that there’s one way to get rid of poverty. But let me read to you what he wrote ’cause it’s really, really good, folks.

“Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia,” let’s say from the beginning of time “– Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic.” Poverty is the natural state. I’ll tell you the reason I like this is because it goes right at my definition of American exceptionalism, which is that since the beginning of time the existence for most of the world’s human beings has been bondage, tyranny, poverty, dictatorship. It certainly has not been liberty. It has not been freedom. Not until the United States came along. And that’s not an exaggeration.

The United States of America, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the first — well, Magna Carta. But really in terms of forming a government and country, the first time where the concept of human liberty and human freedom came first and was the defining characteristic and was what was to be preserved, not the creation of government, not the existence of government, not the growth of government, not the sustenance of government. No, no. It was all about acknowledging God’s creation of humanity as yearning for freedom, endowed with certain inalienable, unalienable right rights, among them life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

Never before had that happened. Sowell is right here. The human species began in poverty. Nobody had anything. Prosperity is what needs explaining. It’s like success and failure. Nobody needs to go read a book to know how to fail. Everybody already knows how to do that. People naturally fail. They fail all the time. But success, well, you’ll find all kinds of people got rich writing books on how to succeed, and still do. Same thing with prosperity. The point here is that becoming prosperous is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. Becoming prosperous is the way out of poverty. Common sense, by definition.

So how do you it? How do you become prosperous? That’s what Sowell says needs explaining. And prosperity is directly related to capitalism. Not poverty. Poverty is related to natural existence. There’s that word “natural” again. You know, the Drive-Bys, and the Democrats, the environmentalist wackos, nature, natural this, natural that, is by far the way the best. Natural, nature condemns people. Nature is what needs to be adapted to. Nature is what needs to be overcome, such as building shelter for ourselves, not just living under trees.

Adapting to nature and doing so with prosperity, that’s the lesson of life, that’s what everybody wants to know, that’s what everybody wants, that’s how you do it. It’s not the message of this pope. The message of this pope and every other leftist in the world is that prosperity is causing poverty. Prosperity and success do not cause poverty. Prosperity and success do not leave people out, by definition. Not everybody’s gonna be prosperous. Nobody ever has. Everybody can be poverty stricken. It’s the way the human species began, and the thing that has always fascinated people is wealth and how it’s acquired and how it’s held. Whether you like the sound of that or not, it happens to be true.

But what’s happened over the course of the years, it is the quest for prosperity has become the reason they say people are in poverty. And that’s why liberalism, socialism, communism, seeks to punish achievement, because achievement is deemed to be the reason people are the poverty. Therefore, we need to take from those people that succeeded because they really are just lucky winners of life’s poverty. So we must take from them what is not fairly theirs and give it to some big entity over here, either the government or now Bono and let him distribute it and make things fair.

Another pull quote from the Thomas Sowell piece. “Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty.” And again it’s prosperity that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic. “As distinguished economic historian David S. Landes put it, ‘The world has never been a level playing field.'” Of course, right there the left would stop and scream, “That’s right, that’s right, and that’s why nothing has ever been fair, and that’s why we must make sure that everybody has a equal chance of a fair playing field.” That’s the excuse for liberalism, that it somehow is social justice, that it equalizes everybody. False premise, can’t be done.

But here’s the question, folks. “But which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate — fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie?” Let me ask that question again, ’cause I think it and its answer are profound. Which has a better track record of helping the poor: fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie or producing a bigger pie, growing the pie, or keeping a finite-size pie and have everybody fighting for a bigger piece of it, zero-sum game?

Yep, the pie is only so big. It’s never gonna get any bigger. What we need is a referee to make sure that the pieces of the pie are parceled out fairly. That’s why we need a great compassionate person like Obama or the pope to make sure that the pieces of the pie are not extraordinarily large for the undeserving and microscopically small for the truly deserving. And this also includes the idea that there is virtue in poverty and sin in success, and that’s dangerous. That is really, really dangerous if you ask me, but that’s where we are in the evolution of things today.

Get this. Some statistics. “In 1900, only 3 percent of American homes had electric lights but more than 99 percent had them before the end of the century.” What made that possible? A big government collecting revenue and spreading it around fairly and then calling on people to invent electricity? How did it happen? Did it happen because of prosperity? Who was responsible for the prosperity?

Another stat. Infant mortality rates in 1900 were 165 per thousand. You know what that means? For those of you in Rio Linda, what that means is for every thousand people born, 165 died. Infant mortality rates. In 1997, 97 years later, the infant mortality rate was seven per thousand. It’s quite a reduction, from 165 per thousand in 1900 to 7% by 1997. By 2001 most Americans living below the official poverty line had central air-conditioning, had a car, had cable TV, with multiple TV sets, and other amenities. Poverty in the United States isn’t even close to what real poverty is around the world, and remember poverty is how the species began.

It is not poverty that needs explaining. We don’t need any experts to come along and tell us what poverty is. What needs to be explained is prosperity. Poverty’s automatic. Prosperity requires many things, none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society. Prosperity does not have equal distribution. Never has. And this is why it’s such a juicy target. Prosperity is deemed to be ultimately unfair because it isn’t for everybody. But it is part of a growing pie. You can be prosperous for five years and lose it all, be back in poverty. It’s up to you. Prosperity requires a lot of things. Prosperity does not require equal distribution around the world or even within a given society because it isn’t possible.

I just wanted to share that with you because for the next five days you are going to hear nothing anywhere remotely like that. You’re going to be hearing, you’re gonna be deluged with how unfair your country is, how unfeeling. You’re going to be told how your country isn’t doing enough, hasn’t done enough, you aren’t doing enough. You might hear how your country and you are selfish. You might even hear how your country has taken things that it does not deserve and are not its own from other parts around the world. You’re gonna hear all kinds of things the next four or five days to try to convince you how unjust, socially unjust your country is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Oh, man, this is why. Yeah, yeah, I know, this is why I reached the limits of my ability to absorb garbage. You know, I was just watching the White House press spokesman, Josh Earnest, describe the upcoming meeting between the pope and Obama. (imitating Earnest) “Oh, no, no, no, this is not two politicians getting together. No, no, no, no. There are no agendas here. Who could possibly think that? No, these are just two wonderful people who have similar personal issue beliefs, chatting together, attempting to find common –” just pabulum puke blah, blah, is what the White House press secretary — By the way, greetings. It’s great to have you here on the Rush Limbaugh program and the EIB Network. 800-282-2882.

You know what I find fascinating about all this? Here you have the president of the United States, an avowed Christian, who has done everything he can to mock the Catholic Church, particularly when it comes to Obamacare. He does not hold a single belief when it comes to such things as contraception, abortion, you name it, with the Catholic Church or with the pope. Well, previous popes. We still don’t know where this guy is gonna shake out.

Journalists love this term “irony.” That’s, to them, what makes good news, irony. Well, you want some irony? Here you have the avowed leader of the American Democrat Party, and maybe the worldwide left, which has made its bones in part on its utter despisal of religion. Liberalism exists as a counter to religion, particularly Christianity, not just Catholicism, but Christianity in general.

Liberalism exists in many ways as a force of nature or whatever political power aligned against the religious teachings and views of morality, virtue, discipline, temperance, you name it. The American left abhors these aspects of organized religion. And it comes under the umbrella of judgment. They just can’t stand being judged, particularly by a bunch of religious fanatics. They don’t want anything that they engage in, no matter what it is, ever proclaimed as wrong or immoral, and the things that they advocate are I think, in part, not because they really believe them, but because they’re so excited about the in-your-face nature of, for example, gay marriage.

I think the thing they really love about gay marriage is how they get to ram it down the throats of the Christians. That’s what I think, how they just get to smack ’em upside the head, gay marriage, supporting LGBT, normalizing this and that. I think it’s a direct assault on organized religion. As much, if not more so, than actually believing in all of this.

I’m not saying they’re phonies about it. I’m saying I think what really inspires ’em and motivates ’em, I think they’re just consumed with hatred for anybody that in their minds would dare judge them, particularly in the areas of morality. “Who are you to judge me? Oh, it’s in your book, your Bible? Well, I don’t accept your Bible. Your Bible is fiction. Why should I accept it?”

It’s just a total act of rebellion against any organized religion that talks about discipline, morality, the concepts of right and wrong. And yet, given all of that, who are they embracing this week? They’re embracing a man known as the vicar of you Christ, who, as far as anybody else knows or is concerned, believes in all of this stuff they despise. I mean, these are the people that make sure every possible abortion takes place. These are the people that make sure that if a woman is walking anywhere near an abortion clinic and she’s pregnant and there’s an adoption center right next door, they got people out making sure she does not go to the adoption center.

It’s a political thing. It’s rooted in political power. It’s rooted in money. They have this utter contempt, the American left. What do you think the reasons they object to Southern culture really is about? It’s those pro-lifers and gun nuts and those Bible thumpers, people that drive old pickups. They get to the church parking lot Saturday night to get a good spot for the sermon the next day. They speak with utter contempt of all this. And who are they embracing?

So why are they embracing a man more powerful than they are who stands for everything they supposedly oppose. They must think something is different about this guy. We’ve already read that Obama plans to hide the advancement of his agenda behind the pope. We know that’s gonna happen. That’s why what Josh Earnest just said insults my intelligence.

You know, I don’t have any patience for that. Just lie to me, just tell me, look at my face and tell me you’re gonna lie to me instead of trying to get me to believe your lie, because it just insults my intelligence. (imitating Earnest) “Oh, no, these are not two political figures meeting. No, no, no. These are two men who hold similar views about life and are simply meeting to try to find common ground.” Right. That’s why Obama is making sure that we’ve got a nun that’s pro-abortion, that we’ve got lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered Catholics showing up.

By the way, apparently the Vatican let it be known that they were not happy with this guest lest. I don’t know what’s become of it. My guess is Obama doesn’t give a rear end what the Vatican thinks. You talk about hypocrites or irony. But what it shows is they’ll sidle up to anybody if it’ll help ’em disguise their agenda in order to advance it. I mean, what could be better for them? Here you have these anti-religion zealots known as your modern-day Democrats, and here comes Pope Francis, first ever trip to America, and because he has said a couple of things that arouses them — and make no mistake, when the pope starts talking about anti-capitalism, they get all hot and bothered, excited.

So they’ll sacrifice what they really believe, these phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ rollers to hide behind this guy and make it look like his agenda is theirs. And in the process, if anything, make it look like this pope is abandoning his own church in favor of the liberal church. If not abandoning, then what would be the word? Drastically restructuring his own organization to fit with theirs. That’s a definite narrative that they’re going to try to promulgate out there.

But I just think it’s phony as it can be. I mean, this is a party that raises money and gets elected on their outright utter contempt for religious people, now welcoming the man who represents an organization they despise and are trying to undermine. And make no mistake, any time you hear some Democrat or member of the media or some liberal activist just anywhere demand that the church moderate its tone or demand that the church modernize and realize that women today have many more needs than the church is meeting. Women today want abortions, and they want to be able to have access to church sponsored and paid-for contraception, and it’s up to the church to moderate and modernize and modify its beliefs in order to be more in touch and have more in common with average, normal people.

If they think a religious leader is doing that, then of course they will embrace. They’ll embrace anybody they think is willfully, willingly doing damage to an organization they despise. I’m not exaggerating this. They hold the Catholic Church in contempt. Why do you think Catholic charities and so forth are spelled out in Obamacare? The Democrat Party and Obama would love to nullify the Catholic Church and its opposition to things that are doctrinal. Oh, man, if they can get the church to change its doctrine, oh, man, if they could pull that off, that’d be even better to ’em than subverting the Constitution. That would be a big success story to them than subverting the Constitution.

If the pope comes along and all of a sudden supports amnesty, which the pope is going to do. You know why? Well, I gotta be very, very careful. I’ll just tell you, I read that the church needs — it might have been the Washington Post or it might have been the New York Times, I forget the news publication it was, but it said that the church, the pope is interested in immigration and amnesty and immigrants because they need to fill the pews, just like the Democrats need voters.

That is not my opinion. That is something I read earlier this week. That did not end up in the “don’t care about it” Stack, by the way. That ended up in the “care about it a lot” Stack. ‘Cause it’s the same reason the Democrats are supporting amnesty, it’s voters. I’ll find it. I’ll find what I read. It seems like it was the Washington Post. It might have been Breitbart. I forget which it was. But the reason the Catholic Church, the pope is supporting our amnesty, immigration, is a desire to restock, if you will, the pews. For those of you in Rio Linda, that’d be the places you sit in church.

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RUSH: It was the Wall Street Journal, ladies and gentlemen. Headline: “On Eve of Pope FrancisÂ’s Visit, US Catholic Church Grapples With Growth and Decline.” From the article: “The US Catholic Church is expanding quickly in the South and West, largely driven by immigrants from Latin America filling pews in Atlanta, Houston and in Southern California.

“Meanwhile, the church is contracting in the East and upper Midwest, where historic Catholic strongholds like Boston, Detroit and New York City are closing parishes as population or attendance declines. The result: Old-line dioceses are battling to keep their doors open, even as fast-growing ones are scrambling to meet the needs of the growing faithful.”

A New York Times article yesterday says the same thing. “Pope Francis to Find a Church in Upheaval,” and it’s all about supporting immigration and immigrants in order to fill the pews. And of course Josh Earnest said, “No, no, no, no, there’s no agenda here between the president and the pope. No, no, no, nothing to see here.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just want you to hear this. This is the Josh Earnest comment that lit me up at the top of the hour. I heard this in the news break at the top of the hour.

EARNEST: This is not a meeting between politicians, and this is not an effort to advance anybody’s political agenda. But rather it is an opportunity for two respected world leaders with significant influence around the globe to spend some time talking about the values that they hold in common and to do so in an atmosphere of respect, and it is an opportunity for the president to illustrate the deep admiration that the American people have for Pope Francis and his leadership.

RUSH: Right. That’s why you’re inviting all these reprobates to meet him? These representatives of average, everyday America, the Pilgrims, get to meet Il Papa, there at the White House. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not a meeting between politicians, no way, dude, no, no, no. Two respected world leaders with lots of influence. That would be Obama, is the other one. (interruption) You’re wondering who the second guy was? It’s Obama. Politicians. Two respected world leaders. He’s talking about Obama, his boss, and Il Papa. Significant influence around the globe to spend some time talking about the values they hold in common. See, that’s my point. What are they? It’s actually more than we knew, as it’s turns out. Anyhow, that’s what sent me off.