RUSH: Tony in Little Rock, Arkansas, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Great to speak with you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Just got a comment about the pope. I don’t think you’re gonna hear a lot about abortion from him. I think it’s all about climate change. He’s the perfect guy for Barack Obama to cozy up next to to further that message. Brings together a lot of different demographics and dynamics, and I’ve even heard a lot of environmental types talk about this is their religion, and so meld those two worlds together as well.
RUSH: I didn’t understand 20% of what you said. Again, it’s a bad cell line.
CALLER: Can you hear me now?
RUSH: Well, yeah, but were you answering why you think the pope will not address abortion? Is that what you were doing?
CALLER: No, I was saying I don’t think you’re gonna hear him say anything about it. I think Obama’s relationship with him is purely climate change related. It brings so many different voting blocs together and power groups together, and it’s global —
RUSH: Oh, so you think there’s no question that there’s a political arrangement between the two here for this week?
CALLER: Oh, of course. Nothing just happens. There are no coincidences. They probably have it written down somewhere what they’re gonna be talking about.
RUSH: But we’ve got all these analysts on TV, I just heard one on Fox say, “No, no, no, there’s no politics here. The pope is simply being Catholic here.”
CALLER: Come on, man. Well, maybe he is, maybe he is, but Obama is gonna take advantage of it in any way he can and use —
RUSH: Well, I don’t doubt that.
CALLER: Absolutely. And for Obama, he’s in the fourth quarter of his presidency, he talked about the waters receding when he was elected. This is the time you enact the climate change agenda. You’ve already seen the Volkswagen CEO, a crime against the planet he is now committing, and I’m seeing stories —
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I totally agree, but I tell you, it’s quite instructive to look at how many in the media are just totally outraged by it. I can tell you in my little tech blogs, they want this guy crucified. They think it’s the worst crime they can think of in the last 20 years what Volkswagen did, falsifying emissions data. I’m just kidding. There’s some nutcases out there, folks, I’m telling you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I have a question, maybe a couple of questions here, and I ask these questions simply because I would like the answers. And these questions derive from what I have heard on television today during our obscene profit time-outs here. I very rarely do this, but I turned the audio up, I actually listened, and I’ve caught a couple of guests on Fox and they’ve been asked, “Are you aware that people like Rush Limbaugh are calling the pope Marxist?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, we’re aware of that, and the pope is clearly aware of it, too, but like the pope said on the plane yesterday, he’s not a leftist. It’s just a misinterpretation.” And this one guest said, “There’s nothing liberal about the pope. He’s just a good Catholic.” He started rattling off charity and concern and all these other things that define Christianity and said that’s all the pope is.
Okay, so I have a question, because this seems to be a major point of contention. I have long maintained that whenever it happened in our welfare state, and we could probably find this with enough deep research. When welfare became or started to become categorized as charity is when liberalism began to be attractive to churches. Churches quite naturally are big on charity both as recipients for distribution and donors. They do both sides. And so welfare, the percentage of our annual budget spent on welfare is over half now. Social Security, if you count that as well. Social Security and all the other social services, over half of our budget. It’s transfer payments from people working to not working. I’m not trying to insult Social Security recipients by lumping you, don’t misunderstand. Just a strict budget number.
So along comes this pope now and his not apologists, but the people translating for him or explaining, interpreting, “Oh, no, no, no, this ideological, pope is not liberal, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t be so silly. Don’t be so foolish. Don’t be so small-minded. He’s simply a Catholic, simply Christian, this is what Christians and Catholics do.” And then, “It’s what Jesus did, simply what Jesus did.” So my question is this. I need some legitimate help on this. I know that Jesus preached charity. Did Jesus tell people to give their money to the Romans so that the Romans could then distribute it?
In other words, did Jesus tell people to give their money to whatever governing entity there was, or entities there were at the time, or did he preach charity as an individual thing? In other words, was Jesus a big-government charitable advocate? It seems to me that it might have been the opposite, that Jesus had some problems with governments. Why are you shaking your head in there, Mr. Snerdley? These are just open-ended questions to which I’m asking if people have the answer.
These are not rhetorical questions. I know you’re thinking, “Why can’t you just let this go?” Right? You’re in there, “Why can’t you –” (interruption) Well, I don’t think there’s anything offensive about these questions. One, I’m trying to understand, because it’s come up today. One of the undeniable truths in our culture is that the modern day Democrat Party does not like religion. They don’t like Christianity. That’s not even arguable. (interruption) Well, certain big government didn’t like Jesus, but my point is when it comes to chair, the pope seems to be advocating that governments need to do all of these big things, and our interpreters on TV are saying, “Yep, that’s what Jesus did.”
Is that right? I am not a theologian. I have never used this program to preach or proselytize. As you well know, I don’t go into any of these arguments. Faith is a deeply personal, private thing. That’s why I don’t even condone arguments about it on this program, so I’m just asking here. (interruption) No, I’m not asking if… (interruption) When Jesus told people to be charitable, was he telling them to pay higher taxes and let the Romans take care of it? (interruption) He wasn’t, right? The Romans ran the show.
I mean, the Romans were the government then. They were the federal government. There might have been some local pretenders and so forth, but that’s all I’m asking. He said render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but he also then had a qualifier after that which made it clear that Caesar was not entitled to everything. I mean, you can interpret it, “Yeah, pay your fair tax and get the hell out of Dodge.” But this is why I’m asking the question, because it’s being interpreted today. The left — I find this fascinating. The left, which does not hold any really great love for the Catholic Church or organized religion at all is now all of a sudden trying to portray themselves as Christ-like.
And it’s all in the name of big government, all in the name of trying to portray now what the Democrat Party’s doing, the American left is doing as Christ-like, taking advantage of the visit of the pope in order to create that impression with people. (interruption) What, food stamps? No, no, no. There weren’t. I know they didn’t use food stamps to feed the poor. That’s right. The Romans… (interruption) This is why they don’t have microphones. They always ask, “Why can’t we hear the people you’re talking to?” This is exactly why. “Hey, hey, Rush, you should say the Romans didn’t have food stamps.” We know.