RUSH: Here’s Rachel, Noblesville, Indiana as we head to the phones. I’m really glad you waited. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh, first I want to start and say that I’ve listened to your show since I was really little and I love it. But I was just calling because I’m really frustrated with people who are my age and actually people in general, but a lot of the college students who open their mouths about the election, about the candidates without doing any kind of research at all.
Like I ask people who they support, and I find students my age saying Bernie Sanders and the only thing they can say is free college. And my response is there’s no such thing as free college, that I’m not gonna go to college for four years and then pay for other people to go to college. And with Donald Trump and Cruz — and I’m a Cruz supporter — people just don’t do research and look into their past and it’s just really frustrating.
RUSH: Well, you know, I ran across a phrase the other day that actually helps me understand a lot of things, and it’s this. People very rarely remember what you say, but they never forget how you make them feel. It’s especially important — what it is, it’s an axiom for actors, if you want to know the truth. And in the case of politics here, Bernie and Trump are making their supporters feel really good. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying.
When it comes to free college, now, of course college debt is so high, tuition is so high, young people, they’re not stopping to think that nothing is free. They actually want to believe that Bernie means it. They want to believe that it isn’t gonna cost them anything. But of course it will cost them, and what value is if ultimately if it doesn’t cost anything? What’s the value? Why even bother having an education if it doesn’t matter enough to pay for it? Can you hang on, Rachel? I’ve got a break. I want to continue exploring this with you if you can wait.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Good, cool. Back in a second here, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And we’re back to Rachel in Noblesville, Indiana. Thank you for waiting. I want to ask you what you meant when you said you wish these college aged kids your age realized there’s no free education. You then said you don’t want to pay for other people’s education. What did you mean by that?
CALLER: Well, there’s no such thing as free, as I had mentioned before, but someone’s gotta pay for college. Like I have a little brother, if he goes to college for free, where’s that money coming from? The college has to make money somehow, so our taxes are gonna increase. And so when our taxes increase, I have to pay for it. So it becomes very socialist, that’s what Bernie Sanders is, and —
RUSH: And you’re frustrated that these kids don’t understand that the money has to come from somewhere.
CALLER: Yes. Like they aren’t even trying to figure it out. They just hear “free.”
RUSH: I join you. I totally understand where you’re coming from. And if you let it get hold of you it will frustrate you ’til the end of the day until you figure it out.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: So here you have Bernie — and Hillary, by the way, has picked it up now. Hillary’s talking the same thing. I heard her in her thing last night talking about, she didn’t use the actual words that Bernie used, but she made it clear that college is gonna be free. So you hear that, and the frustrating thing is why don’t people who applaud, why don’t they ask, “How are you gonna pay the teachers? How are you gonna pay the light bill? Who’s gonna pay for the upkeep of the buildings? Who’s gonna pay?” And then they say, “The football program!”
No, not entirely. That’s a good answer in many ways, but the point is the frustration is real when you hear the targets of demagoguery get away with it. Let me ask you people a question. Does anybody really believe — I know the Democrats say it, but do any of you in this audience believe that if Hillary Clinton’s elected president or if Bernie happened to be, do you really believe that we would get to the day where admission to every college and university is free, including doctoral programs, including postgrad? And if not, oh, no, we can’t — it’s like the minimum wage. I think it should be 15. Fine, why not 20? Good point. How about let’s make it 25. No, we can’t go 25. Why? Wait a minute, now.
So we finally found a cutoff point where you think the minimum wage is too high. Why? That’s when you’ve won the argument. Okay, when you’re talking about making college free, at some point people say, “No, no, no, no, you can’t make postgrad free.” Why not? If all the rest of it’s gonna be free? Why can’t you make medical school free? “We’re just talking about four-year undergrad.” Why? Why not all of it? My question,, does anybody really think it’s gonna happen? I don’t see it. I don’t doubt they want to try and I don’t doubt they’d lie their teeth off trying to get votes on it, but it’s never gonna happen.
The universities require income above and beyond. There has to be a value attached. If a college education is free, it becomes worthless, folks. But when I hear all this talk go on, another thing that hits me is how successfully powers that be have succeeded, how well they’ve succeeded in convincing everybody that, if they don’t have a college education, they don’t have a life. That’s part of a racket. That’s part of the whole scam, part of the whole racket.
No, I’m not anti-education, but let’s face it, it’s a left-wing racket. And the idea of free — you know what I think they would do more than make college free, this is something they would do. And this would happen in a campaign, and that’s forgive student loan debt. Now, if you want to worry about the Democrats actually doing something, plan for your reaction to that. They already, under Obama, they administer the student loan program. They actually administer the loans now. Obama took it over. They run it through a couple banks, but it’s no longer an individual financial institution program. The government essentially runs it.
So don’t be surprised if Hillary proposes forgiving student loan debt. That’s as close as they’ll come to free college. If you forgive the student loan debt of everybody who has any, then what do you do about people just now starting? Do you also forgive their debt that they haven’t yet incurred? How do you do that? It’s too much. They can’t get away with it. It’s demagoguery, plain and simple. But they depend on these universities and the people in them too much to devalue it by making it free. They might make it at certain places, like junior colleges, community colleges, somewhere to start just to say that they’re doing it, but it’s gonna be like most every other promise the left makes, empty and a lie.
Oh, you doubt me? Well, grab your average African-American and ask him what he believes he’s been promised the last 50 years and ask him how much of it he’s actually gotten, including they’re gonna end racism, they’re gonna end discrimination, they’re gonna end bigotry, they’re gonna end all that. They’re gonna punish all the bigots, gonna punish all the racists. You ask people who’ve been waiting for 50 years for the Democrats to come through with their promises, what they’ve got. The answer is a big, fat zero. Isn’t that why we all wonder why they continue to vote for ’em? And what we have learned is they continue to vote for them because their greater fear is what the Democrats have convinced them the Republicans will do to ’em. It’s a greater fear than realizing the Democrats don’t mean their promises.
You want to really get down to it, Rachel, here’s the battle. Stop and look at it this way. Capitalism must be perfect. There cannot be a single error. There cannot be a single thing that goes wrong with it, otherwise everybody jumps on board and claims it’s fraud, it’s unfair, it’s discriminatory, and yet socialism and government can destroy lives and there’s no such review. There’s no demand placed on government. There’s no demand placed on socialism, but every demand you can think of for fairness and equality and everything else is placed on capitalism, and it’s not allowed one failure, it’s not loud one discretionary bad move.
Socialism is allowed to ruin everything. Why? Because of the good intentions. That’s why the Democrats always want to be judged on their good intentions and never the results. War on Poverty. The War on Poverty dates back to 1964. Percentage-wise the same number of people are in poverty today as then. Same people complaining about it, it’s the same issue, it hasn’t gone away. We have spent $10 trillion on it, and it hasn’t gone away. It is a demonstrable failure in any way you analyze things. It is a boondoggle. It’s a total failure. And yet it survives, and the people behind it continually are applauded and given credit.
Why? ‘Cause they care. Because they have good intentions. The Republicans, they don’t care if people are poor. They just want to deny them benefits and so forth. It’s a branding thing. It’s the way the Democrats have succeeded in defining their enemy and defining their opponents, as a way to cover up for their abject failure of everything they promise people.
Ask the feminazis, are you happy? After 50 years of the feminist era, what are we faced with? An uncontrollable rape crisis on campus. How can that be when the feminists and the Democrat Party have been running universities for all these years with all the love and all the tolerance and all the compassion and all the openness, why have universities become cultures of rape? And why is there no analytical savagery of these universities? Why is there no critique? Why is there no properly affixing blame here? Because of the good intentions. At least they’re trying. “Bernie Sanders, well, maybe he can’t give away college.”