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Our Country Is in Serious Decline

by Rush Limbaugh - Aug 9,2016

RUSH: Do you know what The Root is?  You probably do, Mr. Snerdley.  Have you heard of The Root?  The Root is Skip Gates’ magazine.  Skip Gates is a professor at Harvard. 

He’s the guy that was arrested trying to break into his own home near Boston, and the president said that the cops were stupid, obviously, and it resulted in a “beer summit” at the White House between Obama and Skip Gates (really Henry Louis Gates) and the police officer.  So Skip Gates has a magazine called The Root, and the latest issue of the magazine has an article entitled “How To Survive, Be Safe, And Thrive, at a Predominantly White Institution.” 

Now, that’s all well and good; it’s expected.

But guess how we know about it? 

The White House yesterday touted it.  The Obama administration effectively called attention to this article, touted this article in Skip Gates’ magazine. They tweeted “How To Survive, Be Safe, and Thrive at a Predominantly White Institution — How does a black student circumnavigate a hotbed of white supremacy that is a contemporary college campus populated by white bodies? How can a student of color thrive at an institution that merely tolerates one’s presence? Put simply, what must a black student do to survive at a PWI,” predominantly white institution?

So here we have an article rooted in divisiveness, highly touted by the administration and tweeted out from the White House, which wants to be known as a unity administration, right?  “‘It is important for students of color to remember that predominantly white colleges and universities are still historically white,’ says Elon Dancy, professor of education and associate dean for community engagement and academic inclusion at the University of Oklahoma and author of The Brother Code: Manhood and Masculinity Among African American Males in College.”

Is it any wonder that this country is just totally confused and wandering aimlessly in the primordial soup trying to figure out who it is, where it is, and where it’s going?  For crying out loud, Black Lives Matter is practically taking over… You know who Black Lives Matter is?  Black Lives Matter is simply the effort to keep Occupy Wall Street alive.  Occupy Wall Street was a fake, drummed-up organization in response to the Tea Party — and, because it was fake, because it was not organic (meaning not rooted in reality), because it was manufactured and created, it lost its steam. 

Black Lives Matter has come along, interjecting the racial component into Occupy Wall Street to keep it alive, and if you look at their agenda… They put out a list of demands last week, and, if you look, it includes reparations, and that’s not even the half of it.  They are dead serious, and they have the full support of the Democrat Party, and they are about total social upheaval.  It’s… What is it? Cloward-Piven. Yeah, Cloward-Piven. 

It’s about the total upheaval of the American society, the American social structure, just flooding it with complaints and demands for money and just overwhelming it to the point that it can’t survive, requiring a “reset.” And, in their dreams, the reset is of a socialist utopia officially. Not a dream, but an actual switch and transformation of the United States from entrepreneurial liberty and freedom base to total socialism. 

That’s their objective, and they have a list of demands that they’re placing on universities and other organizations, including reparations and any number of other things.  But it’s just an extension of the failed Occupy Wall Street, and they’re taking over college campuses.  So what is this, “How to Survive, Be Safe, and Thrive at a Predominantly White Institution”?  So this guy — this “professor of education and associate dean for community engagement and academic inclusion at the University of Oklahoma” — Elon Dancy, says:

“We continue to see this in campus culture and climate data…” (pause) “We continue to see this in campus culture and climate data in which whites are overrepresented in university leadership, faculty and in the student body. Furthermore, for every overt racist incident we think of as long gone, there are thousands of contemporary violent acts often referred to as ‘microaggressions’ that seek to keep students of color ‘in their place[.]’

“Until these institutions address these realities with deep, truly culturally responsive policies, the campuses will always be places to be survived,” for African-Americans. The Root: “So what must one do to circumnavigate the hotbed of white supremacy that is a contemporary college campus populated by white bodies? How can a student of color thrive at an institution that merely tolerates one’s presence? Put simply, what must a black student do to survive at a [predominantly white institution]?

“1. Love yourself. Black Americans are reared in a culture that discounts black brilliance. When we excel, we are exceptional; if we fail, we are proof of inferiority. College campuses oftentimes reinforce these cultural messages. Black contributions to intellectual thought are usually not reflected in the curriculum, and black faculty is sometimes rare. Socially, black students are usually treated like second-class citizens when they try to hold events that express their cultural identity or raise awareness of issues they face on college campuses.”

So what we’re looking at here is the further division of America along racial lines, not promoting integration, not promoting healing, not promoting one together nation, nothing of that stuff.  No, no, no! We are purposely now engaging in the racial divide.  People are promoting it and creating it by trying to whip up fervor and anger over it.  It’s just — and who’s doing this?  There’s a reason all of this is happening. 

Do you think the country’s headed in the wrong direction, folks?  If you do, you are right.  If you don’t think the country’s headed in the wrong direction, you’re wrong yourself.  We are headed in the wrong direction.  Our country is in serious decline.  Seventy percent of Americans now think that our country is headed in the wrong direction.  They’re right, but they don’t know why.  They sense it.  Some of them have some idea, but there’s this overall feeling of dread. 

People know something just is not right.  It doesn’t feel right.  Things aren’t right.  Wages haven’t gone up in 15 years.  People are angrier than ever before.  None of this is normal!  None of this is cyclical.  This is not the result of cycles that repeat throughout history, either economic or cultural.  Our country right now is in the middle of a purposeful transformation that is the result of specific policy decisions that have been made and implemented in recent years. 

It is the objective of this program to illustrate exactly how and why all of this is happening, because too many people just think it is what “is.”  They just think they happen to have been born or happen to be alive at a time when America’s best days are behind it.  But they have no clue how it’s happened, and those that do think they know how it’s happened have been lied to. 

They run around thinking it’s George Bush’s fault or it’s Reagan’s fault or it’s talk radio’s fault or it’s Fox News’ fault or it’s conservatism’s fault, when none of that is true.  There’s a reason why all of these things going in the wrong direction are going in the wrong direction!  Somebody — a series of people and institutions — have steered this country in this wrong direction on purpose for their own reasons.  There’s a reason the richer are getting richer, and it’s not because they’re stealing from the poor. 

There’s a reason 94 million Americans are not working.  There’s a reason why race relations are worse today than at any time since the Civil War.  There’s a reason why our country is headed in a direction many people thought it would never shrink to, and it’s the objective of this program to once again spell out these reasons so that as many people as possible understand — and it’s stories like this: “How to Survive, Be Safe, and Thrive at a Predominantly White Institution.”  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

So we’ve heard about all this great economic activity that we have going on in the country.  The unemployment rate came down.  We had all these new jobs created in the last month, right?  The unemployment rate came down. 

The economic growth remains anemic.  Obama still can’t get above one and a half percent, and his is going to be the first Regime never to have even one quarter of 3% economic growth, the first in the post-war era.  It’s never been done before.  No president has ever produced economic policies this pathetic.  But we have all these new jobs created, right?  The unemployment rate came down.  We got this recovery going on, right? 

“Productivity, a sore spot for the U.S. economy over the past few years, has now declined in three straight quarters, according to data released Tuesday. Productivity in the second quarter unexpectedly fell 0.5%, well below expectations, the Labor Department said. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 0.3% gain in productivity in the quarter.”

They were almost a full percentage point off.  “Productivity is down 0.4% from a year earlier, the first year-over-year decline since the second quarter of 2013. Output of goods and services increased at a 1.2% clip in the second quarter. Hours worked rose 1.8%. Productivity measures how much an employee produces in an hour of work. Higher productivity is regarded as the key to a rising standard of living over time.”

This is written for a six-year-old, a sixth grader.  “Productivity measures how much an employee produces in an hour of work. Higher productivity is regarded as the key to a rising standard of living over time because it tends to lead to higher pay for workers and larger profits for companies.”

Well, how come that isn’t happening?  Well, because there isn’t any increase in productivity.  We don’t have any economic growth.  There’s none that you can pinpoint.  Wages haven’t increased in 15 years.  There’s a reason for this.  It’s not cyclical.  It’s not just that we have economic cycles and we happen to be in the middle of a down one. 

What is happening to the US economy is the direct result of policy decisions, policy implementation signed into law by President Obama.  And most of the jobs created in the most recent reporting period are part time.  And I guess those part-time jobs are not producing all that much, not all that much productivity. 

“Earlier this summer, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen gingerly pressed Congress to focus on ways to boost ‘very low’ labor productivity.” What can Congress do about it?  Congress is where the shackles came from.  Democrat economic policy is where all of this is rooted.  What can the Federal Reserve do about this?  If the Federal Reserve could wave a magic wand, if there were some policy to stimulate economic growth and to stimulate rising wages and to stimulate employment, we wouldn’t ever have recessions. We wouldn’t ever have economic slowdowns or downturns if there were some magic way that we could automatically increase economic output. 

We can’t.  Markets are markets, and they are real, and they are affected by interference.  When they are not allowed to function using the free flow of resources and prices and everything that makes up the market, when there is interruption all that artificially imposed, then you can’t count on anything happening as it’s supposed to, or as theory would suggest.  

“Janet Yellen gingerly pressed Congress to focus on ways to boost “very low” labor productivity. ‘I am not going to give you detailed instruction, this is up to Congress to decide.”

We are in heap big doo-doo if the productivity of American workers is a matter of congressional action and not individual effort.  If this isn’t rooted in education, individual effort, ambition, desire, pursuit of excellence, that’s what creates economic growth.  That’s what creates growing markets, not government policy.  The only government policy that creates growing economic markets is a government policy that gets government out of the way. 

This administration has written and attached more regulations on individuals and businesses than the three previous administrations combined.  It’s out of control. They can’t even all be tabulated.  And these are all regulations with a know-it-all government, smarter than you, better than you, better intentioned than you, limiting your freedom and your ability to follow your dreams and your desires because your dreams and desires are not nearly as competent as the government central planners want for you. 

But the real secret is that people from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton don’t want you independently productive because then there’s no need for you to depend on a Big Government for whatever you don’t have.  They want to keep you permanently dependent.  They want to keep you permanently underemployed, underpaid.  That is the policy.  Those are the policies that have been implemented.  For some of you, it may be hard to believe.  But it is the explanation. 

There is an explanation for all of this mess that’s happening.  There is an explanation for almost all of it.  And almost every explanation is political, because everything in our country has become politicized.  And as everything has become politicized, it has become more and more corrupted and so people have to work even harder to overcome the obstacles and the barriers that all of these regulations and all of these punitive taxes and other penalties that are put in their way. 

Some people don’t want to, 94 million Americans not even in the workforce, for whatever number of reasons.  Can’t find a job, have given up trying, can’t find a job they want to do, can’t find a job that pays them what they think they should earn. Whatever the reasons are, 94 million Americans are not working, but they’re all eating, they’ve all got cell phones, they’ve all got TVs, many of them have cars, and they’re able to get through the day as though they actually do have jobs, except they do not get rewarded with the self-satisfaction of achievement. 

They never experience that.  They never experience accomplishment, achievement, and, as such, personal self-esteem is languishing where people feel more and more useless, more and more irrelevant, desperate to matter, which makes them ripe for Democrat policies that will supposedly rescue them and save them and give them life’s meaning, such as accepting blame for climate change and then being told, “But you can redeem yourself.  You can correct the sinful mistakes you have made in destroying the climate by implementing the following behavioral items into your lifestyle.” 

And that’s how they lasso a bunch of unsuspecting people into their causes, create meaningless circumstances, deprive people of their identity and their sense of accomplishment and self-achievement and so forth, and then offer a substitute.  Bottom line is, no matter what the Democrats do, no matter what their policies are, no matter how flowery they sound, no matter how wonderful they may look, the result is always the same.  Bigger government, more inefficient and more ineffective government, a smaller overall United States economy, growing at a slower and slower rate, which means fewer jobs being created, fewer careers are being created, wages and compensation are not increasing because the pie is shrinking.  And in the American dream, the pie doesn’t shrink.  The pie is always growing, the pie has always grown, and your opportunity for your piece of that pie, whatever size you can slice, is yours for the taking. 

That’s been the American dream.  But the pie is shrinking; and as it shrinks, you’re told to expect less, you’re told to have lower expectations.  You’re told to understand that we are a nation in decline and that our best days are behind us and that those best days were illegitimate in the first place because they were the result of our thievery and pilferage of other countries’ resources and work. 

Yes, the United States is the focus of evil in the modern world in the minds of many people, and our greatness in the past was never deserved.  It was always fake or artificial or ill-gotten, and, as such, this is what the new normal is.  And you’d better get used to it.  You had better get used to whatever you get from government being what you end up having.  And they’ve persuaded a considerable number of people to the vote on that basis. 

Hey, it’s easier than hard work.  If the Democrat Party is gonna give you a built-in excuse for constant failure, which is what they’re doing when they tell you the best days are behind us, that the America that you’ve read about, you heard about, it was never real in the first place. It was always artificial and we’re now really just having to come to grips with that, pay the bill for all that fake and phony economic activity in the past. This is the new America. This is the new norm. This is the new fairness. This is the new reality. 

Well, if that’s the message, then what you can hear is an automatic excuse to fail, ’cause everybody else is, and success isn’t that possible anymore.  So why even try?  And so only those born with a natural inclination to compete, only those naturally gifted, born with a desire to succeed, will try to do so.  People who used to be the benefit of motivation, inspiration, either in their families or at school, a teacher kick-starting them, those things are not happening now. 

Those old influences are being said to not exist any longer because this is the new reality, this is the new America. All the while you hear about how we need to rebuild our roads and we need to rebuild our bridges, and we need to rebuild our schools.  Been hearing that for eight years.  When are they gonna start?  They’ve been taxing people enough for it. 

The bottom line, there’s a reason all this is happening.  This need not be the case for the United States of America.  This current economy, our current cultural circumstances, the decline, the rot, the overwhelming corruption, it is not necessary.  It does not have to happen.  It does not need to continue.  It is not the new norm.  It should not be the new norm.  It doesn’t have to be.  And you can change the direction this country is going.  You can be instrumentally involved in changing the direction of this country because the country is nothing more than the product of its people. 

And if its people have been beaten down, if its people are constantly beaten down and told that the best is behind them, I guarantee you one thing is not happening:  inspiration is not happening.  Motivation is not happening.  Instead, what’s replacing motivation and inspiration is a top-down excuse or reason for just being average.  Because that’s you all you can be anymore.  It’s what they want you to believe. 

But it’s never been the case in this country.  And if it does become the everlasting case in this country, the finger of blame is gonna point one place, and history will document that it is the modern incarnation of the Democrat Party that sought to and succeeded in transforming this country away from the exceptional miraculous place it was founded to be.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Bob in Quincy, Illinois.  Great to have you on the program, sir.  Hello.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  I would like to make two quick comments about Professor Gates, where I think he’s just about 180 degrees wrong on two things.  First of all, obviously, from a white supremacy standpoint in the college campuses, certainly is not talking about the students, because white students are underrepresented significantly by Asian students, Hispanic students.  But more importantly, he’s attacking a white institution for sure, but it is a white institution of liberal professors, ex-hippies and their trainees who are probably 95% liberal.  And if he’s calling them racists, I think they’re gonna be calling him out on the carpet.

RUSH:  I’m glad that you called, and I’m glad that you had this observation.  What he’s talking about, we had a story in the opening segment of the program.  Skip Gates, professor at Harvard, friend of Obama, has a magazine called The Root, and there’s an article in the latest issue called “How to Survive, Be Safe, and Thrive at a Predominantly White Institution.”  And he’s talking primarily about colleges and universities. 

So Bob here is pointing out that there’s no white supremacy at any of these universities.  It’s arguable that there ever has been.  This is all part of the Black Lives Matter movement that is meant to take the place of Occupy Wall Street and just subsume every leftists cause there is and bring it under that umbrella and advance it, part of leftist activism and adding the racial component to it, which freezes people. 

But you’re exactly right.  White supremacy on campus?  You think there’s white supremacists acting at Duke where the lacrosse team was nearly thrown out of school on a bogus charge, and all the false, fake charges of rape?  White males are not even going to college anymore because the places are so screwed up and have become so feminized and so liberalized.  And Gates knows this. 

He’s just throwing gasoline on the racial fire, or his magazine is, whoever wrote this piece.  White supremacy is code word.  It’s not meant to accurately describe what’s going on because it can’t be.  


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