RUSH: I have to tell you, it is so frustrating sometimes to watch TV. It just is. I’m sure you know. I just decided to turn on the audio on the TV during the commercial break, and a bunch of people are discussing this. It was frustrating to listen to the discussion. Even though their instincts were right, the rationale… Here’s the story: “San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has rebranded the term ‘convicted felon.'” You cannot talk about convicted felons as “convicted felons” in San Francisco. They are “justice-involved people.” And other criminal behavior, the language to describe it is to be “sanitized.”

“Crime-ridden San Francisco has introduced new sanitized language for criminals, getting rid of words such as ‘offender’ and ‘addict’ while changing ‘convicted felon’ to ‘justice-involved person.’ The Board of Supervisors adopted the changes last month even as the city reels from one of the highest crime rates in the country,” and that’s of course why they’re doing it! They’ve lost control of civility in San Francisco! They’ve lost control of civilization. It’s a crime-ridden, infested swamp, with piles of human feces on public sidewalks, homeless, tent cities everywhere! So the way to fix it is don’t accurately describe it.

To listen to people discuss this and to be right about it but not get the reasons why is kind of frustrating.

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Let me go back to this business in San Francisco. Look, I don’t want to appear to be — what’s the word – mean-spirited to the people I heard talking. I’m not gonna name any names. I’m even gonna name the show. Clearly, this is outrageous. And one of the people on the show said, “You know what? It’s even happening in our schools. My kids go to school and you can’t call a woman, a little girl, she or her. You have to be careful not to identify a correct gender preference. It’s just silly.”

It’s not silly. It’s destructive! We are losing the language. Words mean things. We are having language structured so that perverted criminal leftists are not described as such, pure and simple. We’re having the language changed on us so that we cannot properly identify those who are of the criminal element and those who are trying to subvert the American culture with whatever perversion or oddity they are attempting to normalize.

And the solution to it, I heard somebody, “We need to focus on the policies.” You don’t have to focus on the policy! The policy is what we are being overrun with! “But, Rush, it’s San Francisco and they can do whatever they want with their words.” Okay, fine. If you want to look at it. You’re just gonna acquiesce to all of this. But this is exactly my point. There needs to be pushback.

Now, Trump is not pushing back against this, but Trump is pushing back against everything like this. This is why these people on the left are so mad and so out of sorts, because nobody ever does push back against them. Nobody ever does tell them what they really mean. Nobody ever does call them absurd and crazy.

In San Francisco, in case you missed this in the last half hour, the San Francisco board of supervisors adopted changes to language. You cannot call a convicted felon a convicted felon. A convicted felon in San Francisco is now a “justice-involved person.” And other criminal behavior, the description, the actual verbiage to accurately describe other criminal behavior is also being sanitized.

Now, there’s a lot going on here, what with political correctness and all that. But the real objective here — forget the objective for a minute. What is the route? R-o-u-t-e. What’s the route here? The route descends from “The Offended.” We have been allowing “The Offended,” quote, unquote, “The Offended” in our culture for longer than I’ve been doing this show to determine what everybody else can say or do. If one person is offended by something, then that something must stop, whether that one person is alone or is still part of a minority.

We have allowed “The Offended” to basically take control of the language. We’ve allowed “The Offended” to take control of permitted and allowed behavior. We have allowed a bunch of people devoted to political correctness who cannot deal with the truth about things, we have allowed them to change the language so that the language does not accurately describe the people we’re talking about because it’s offensive or it’s hurtful or whatever.

A convicted felon is a convicted felon. What if there’s a law that says convicted felons cannot vote? Well, the Democrats will change the law since there are a lot of convicted felons that are Democrat, but what if you don’t have to change the law? What if you can’t say convicted felon? There’s nothing in the law that says justice involved people can’t vote. “Come on Rush, that’s an exaggeration.” No, it’s not an exaggeration.

This is where this stuff goes. But the route of this is that it’s offensive. A transgender is offended being called a he or she. Well, I’m sorry. If you look at somebody that looks like a woman, you call her her, you call her she. But she identifies as a man. How do I know this? It’s not offensive! And I’m not trying to be offensive. I see a woman, there’s a woman. It’s a he or a she. It’s a she. It’s a her.

But, no, no, no, no, now it’s them, they, what have you, because they don’t want to be offended. And all of this has been going on, this kind of language corruption and behavioral corruption and alteration has been going on for far, far too long. And there are a lot of people willing to talk about how wrong and how odd it is, but nobody’s willing to push back. Nobody’s willing to tell a board of supervisors in San Francisco to go pound sand.

I’m gonna keep calling ’em convicted felons. What are you gonna do to me if I don’t? Well, probably not something good. And this ends up normalizing things that are not normal. It ends up masking and clouding behavior that common decency has already decided is wrong. Not allowed to know it now. Not allowed to call it out. Not allowed to be properly informed about it because you can’t accurately describe it. Why?

“Because it’s offensive, Mr. Limbaugh. It offends convicted felons to be called convicted felons.” Well, then don’t do a felony is the way it used to be. If you don’t like being a felon, don’t be one. If you don’t like being convicted as a felon, then don’t be a felon that gets convicted. That used to be the way it works.

Now you’re allowed to go do anything that’s in violation of law or societal norms or morality. And the way you get away with it is you simply can’t be described as having done any of that or whatever it is. So this kind of stuff just irritates me. You listen to people talk about it and just add other examples to it, and then, you know, rub our hands together, “Oh, my, it’s horrible where we’re headed. Really horrible. We need to focus on the policy solutions.”

Policy? We need to focus on silencing these people. We need to focus on stopping letting these leftists get away with this! But when you push back against it, they are not just gonna sit by idly and quietly. They’re gonna come after you and they’re gonna try to destroy you. They’re gonna try to boycott you. They’re gonna try to get you fired. And a lot of people just don’t have the guts to put up with any of that.

This is essentially what Donald Trump is facing every day. Donald Trump’s not embattled because of his policies. He’s embattled because he has the audacity to be a straight talker and that he won. He violates every tenet of so-called political correctness, diplomacy, approved behavior among Washington establishment members and so forth. But basically he gets the treatment he gets because he pushes back at ’em.

He basically tells ’em to go pound sand. He’s not going to be governed by their silly, childish, immature demands. He’s simply pushing back at all of the children on the left and all of the children in the media refusing to allow them to get away with defining things, including words and behavior, the way they want to, which does extend to policies and so forth.

So he is called a flip-flopper or he’s call a racist or white supremacist. Everybody in their right mind knows that Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic, that he does not hate Jewish people. Anybody in their right mind knows that Donald Trump is not a racist and doesn’t hate black people. Anybody in their right mind knows that Laurence Tribe couldn’t be more wrong when he says that what Trump’s real objective here is to reverse the outcome of the Civil War. That’s the latest thing we’re dealing with today.

Laurence Tribe, professor of law emeritus at Harvard, is out saying that what Trump really wants to do is reverse the outcome of the Civil War, which would mean what? That slavery is reinstituted. Has anybody, anybody ever made a proclamation, proposal that we reinstitute slavery? No! Nobody’s even gotten close! Nobody would! And yet that is what Donald Trump is accused of. By who?

These people need to be laughed at, ignored, or what have you. Certainly what they’re saying does not deserve to be treated with any substance or respect because it’s crazy! And so is this. “San Francisco Rebrands ‘Convicted Felon’ as ‘Justice-Involved Person.'” And you know this is just a trend. This is by no means the first.

But all of this that emanates from “The Offended” has been a big bugaboo of mine for I don’t know how long because it’s been politicized. To say you’re offended by something is a way to shut down the words or the behavior of a political opponent. But you get away with not looking political. “That offends me, I don’t think I should have to hear that. I don’t think I should have to see that. That offends me.”

Notice that none of the perversions and the lawbreaking or any of that ever offend any of these people! The opposition to it offends people!

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RUSH: And we go to Houston. Jimmy, I’m glad you waited, sir. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I’ve just been listening to your comments about being offended and it’s something that’s been bugging me the last couple of months and how, you know, I’m 50 years old this year and I’ve been a Christian all my life. I grew up in church, went to Christian schools.

And, man, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been offended by something, whether it’s a movie or portrayal of a Christian in a movie in a negative way, or foul language or just on and on, abortion, there’s all kinds of things that Christians can be offended by every day.

But if I’ve ever expressed an offense by it, I’m told, “Oh, keep that to yourself, nobody needs to hear that. Just don’t watch it.” But certainly my expressed offense in things that are offensive to me, boy, the whole world sure doesn’t get on the side to fix it for me. So I’m wondering, it just seems like being a Christian is really the only group that it’s okay to offend.

RUSH: Well, it’s one of the big ones. It’s not the only. Christianity is a subgroup. Maybe conservatism is a subgroup of current, but it’s really all nonleftists, nonliberals. You’re not allowed to be offended. You are doing the offending by believing. You’re offending people with your Christian beliefs. Don’t you get it? You’re offending people by believing that somebody was actually resurrected from the grave, that’s offensive to people. You’re scaring people. You have to shut up. This is the way it works. It’s a one-way street.

But there’s another aspect of this. It’s not just about watering down the language. It’s about making people afraid to say anything. How many people do you know, Jimmy, in your day-to-day life who are afraid to say what they really think about something for fear that it’s gonna really make somebody mad or really offend them and some damage is gonna come to them?

CALLER: Yeah. Lots. Lots of people.

RUSH: Damn right. That’s another chilling effect of all this. And it’s exactly what the design is. One of the express purposes — you know, in the old Soviet Union days families went to their bathrooms to tell people what they really thought because they thought that was the only safe place in the house the KGB couldn’t hear ’em.

This is not a joke. This is not an exaggeration. And we are dealing here — the left is not just a bunch of liberals. We’re dealing here with a combination of socialists and communists who are intolerant of anything other than what they believe. And the way they deal with it is to eliminate it one way or the other. And they simply are not going to debate you about anything and they’re not gonna be concerned about what it is that offends you because you by virtue of your existence are the offending agent and what you believe.

And so now we have to be tolerant and understanding, which you can be tolerant and understanding by simply not opposing, you see. And you have been conditioned to be afraid to oppose. Why do you think so many people are afraid to tell pollsters the truth of what they really think? Why have all of these presidential polls, why were they all so wrong in 2016? ‘Cause Trump supporters were scared to death to tell anybody what they really thought, that they were for Trump.

They were seeing what happened. Or some of them were not scared and just wanted to toy with the pollsters and purposely mislead them for the purposes of screwing up their business. But it’s an ongoing and worsening situation. We are letting the inmates run asylum.

We are letting the inmates totally alter and change the fundamental arrangements of our morality and the ways we get along with each other and the definitions of right and wrong and normal and abnormal, all of that is being altered now by virtue of an aggressive bunch of people who know they’re abnormal and are tired of it and are trying to redefine what’s normal to include them.

And the way they do it is to shut you up and intimate you into staying quiet in whatever you think that might affect them, clearing the way for them to have a free rein over whatever they want to do, whatever they want to control. Now, you can call this any number of things. You call it political correctness, you can call it the speech police or what have you. It’s just one more aspect and one more part of the assault on the founding of this country, is essentially at its bare essence what it is. Jimmy, appreciate the call. Thanks much.

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RUSH: Okay. I can tell you virtually everything the left does and says and wants to do offends the hell out of me. But for some reason we’re not allowed to be offended. And we’re not allowed to exact any change. If we tell them that what they’re doing offends us, then what do they do? Blow us off, tell us to go to hell, or try to get you fired or what have you.

I’ve had it. I’m fed up with it. I’m fed up with tolerance of it. I’m fed up with people dancing all around the issue, the edge of it, trying not to be offensive while telling people they’re nuts. We’re sitting around, we’re letting the language be changed! We are letting the language that describes perverted, aberrant, crimiinal behavior be watered down so that that’s not what’s being described.

We’re getting to a point where we’re not gonna be able to know that somebody’s a convicted felon because it would offend them to be called a convicted felon, despite the fact that they are. So they are a justice-involved person. What the hell is a justice-involved person?

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RUSH: In San Francisco… We discussed this. In San Francisco, you can no longer… The board of supervisors, the freaking government, has declared that you cannot call a convicted felon a “convicted felon” anymore. It’s offensive. It stigmatizes the convicted felon to call ’em what they are. Now going forward, they are a “justice-involved person.” So what does that mean Jeffrey Epstein would be in San Francisco? Answer: A role model, obviously. Can you call somebody a “convicted pedophile”? No, no, no, because that’s felonious behavior. No, no, no, no, no. “Justice-involved person.” You can’t even say “pedophile.” A justice-involved what? Role model?

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RUSH: Let me get back to the phones. Here’s our guy in Los Angeles, James, TV crew member with a story about six hours of training to make sure you spoke about transgenders correctly. Is that about right?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: So tell us about this.

CALLER: Well, first, Rush, mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: Thanks for having me on. I’m a first-time caller. So I get hired on a show, I’m a Teamster, and —

RUSH: Is this a local news operation or just a standard TV station?

CALLER: No, it’s a television show. They pull us into a room with lawyer and the executive producer and they have this indoctrination course on how to treat transgenders, how to treat them so that you don’t offend anybody. When I was all done with it, I thought to myself, “Hold on for a second.”

RUSH: James, wait, one question. Was it just a transgender sensitivity seminar or did it cover all kinds of different minorities?

CALLER: Everything.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: Everything. Homosexuality. It covered everything. How to treat people, different pronouns to use.

RUSH: One-armed amputees from skid row, that kind of thing.

CALLER: Exactly, everything. But you didn’t want to offend anybody. That was the biggest problem. “You can’t say this,” ’cause it’ll offend. “You can’t refer…” I couldn’t even refer to someone who I’ve known for years who I talk back and forth with and call him a him. If I was overheard, that was offensive.

RUSH: Wait. Was he a him?

CALLER: It was a him!

RUSH: It was a guy?

CALLER: Yeah!

RUSH: But you couldn’t call him “him” within earshot of others or you would have been written up?

CALLER: Exactly. After it was all done, I was thinking to myself, “Who are they to define what a man and a woman is to me?” You know, the Bible defines a man and a woman. Not that I’m overly religious, but it seems to me history has defined it, and —

RUSH: Let me ask you this, James.

CALLER: You know what I mean?

RUSH: This has become a trick question in American politics. So I’m gonna ask you the question. How many genders are there?

CALLER: Two. Unless you count hermaphrodites; then there’d be three.

RUSH: No. No, no, no. There are two! You got it right. There are two genders, and it’s not because the Bible says so. It’s because there are two genders!

CALLER: Two genders. (chuckles) Right.

RUSH: There is a male and there is a female. And then if you do some things, you can become neither, but you’re still gonna look like one or the other.

CALLER: Agreed. I completely agree.

RUSH: There are two genders. But, you know, you said something. Because some people think the root of the definitions and the realities happens to be found in the Bible of Christianity, well, that automatically makes it racist, bigoted, disqualifies it, and all kinds of things. That’s… So did you stay employed? Did you get into any trouble?

CALLER: I did. I didn’t get in too much trouble. But it was definitely an experience, and it’s something that I thought to myself, “To support my family, I do what I have to do.” I never paid attention to politics until I was in the Navy and Ronald Reagan was elected. Then all of a sudden, we got a raise that we hadn’t had ever, and it was substantial, and I could actually, you know, take my kids to ice cream and I was living above the poverty line for the first time. And I was in the Navy. I thought to myself, “This guy’s all right.” So I started paying attention to politics, and I have been ever since. It just flabbergasts me that the nitwits out there are able to take a minority and push that (crosstalk).

RUSH: It definitely is a one-way street. You talk about minorities, we’re not even talking about one half of 1% of the population here.

CALLER: Right! And we all have to conform on to their norm —

RUSH: Right. Now what’s the penalty —

CALLER: — and you said it perfectly when you call it “perversion.”

RUSH: Well, what else is it?

CALLER: It is!

RUSH: Look, that’s the abnormality, confusion. See, that’s what the whole argument’s about, really. They just don’t… Nobody that’s abnormal wants to be considered abnormal, but we all know what’s normal and what isn’t. We’re just not allowed to say so anymore. What were the penalties? If you violated what you learned in the six-hour training seminar —

CALLER: Gone.

RUSH: — sensitivity training —

CALLER: Fired.

RUSH: — what were the penalties?

CALLER: Termination-of-employment. That was the penalty. Termination of employment. That was it. That was the whole point of the class. You also signed NDAs and everything. We’re not supposed to talk about it.

RUSH: So what was the practical impact? You just talked to people as little as necessary, right?

CALLER: Absolutely! You didn’t interact, especially with the cast members or people who were basically oversensitive. You didn’t.

RUSH: I hear you.

CALLER: I didn’t. My personality shut down. It was a miserable place to work.

RUSH: Yeah. That’s exactly the way to describe it. It’s miserable. You’re constantly on pins and needles. You don’t know. You know, that… (chuckles) It’s confining, it hems you in, and it has you walking around almost in a constant sense of guilty that you might say something. But it really takes away humor — good-natured humor, sense of humor. Nobody can be funny. Being funny itself can be offensive. Laughing can be said to be offensive if somebody doesn’t think something is funny. Anyway, James, I appreciate your call. Glad you waited. I have to go.

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RUSH: Let me give you another example of this. Sean Spicer. Sean Spicer used to be at the Republican National Committee; he was the first press secretary for President Trump. He was invited to be one of the contestants on the new season of Dancing With the Stars. So the host of the show, who doesn’t do anything but go out there and look like a Ken doll… His name is Tom Bergeron. He doesn’t dance, doesn’t do diddly-squat but read a bunch of cue cards. (sniveling impression) “I don’t think Sean Spicer should be on the show. This show would be devoid of politics and divisiveness. It should be a respite from all of that.

“We’re offended. We’re offended.” How about we might be offended that there are people also chosen to appear on this show that many have run afoul of the law who are being promoted? Where does this stuff stop? Just because he was a Trump press secretary means he’s politically undesirable and divisive and can’t appear on Dancing With the Stars. You watch. The ratings are gonna skyrocket, just like they did when Sarah Palin’s daughter was on. But these people (sniveling), “This is offensive to us to have Sean Spicer!” Well, deal with it, then! Deal with it! Focus on the show instead of being offended by something every day!