RUSH: Bernie in Elkhorn, Nebraska. Great to have you with us today, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. My wife and I are 30-year-long listeners of yours. And we recently took some time to compile a list of the top-ten things we learned from you, and within the top ten we have a top three. Number one is what we learned from you about the true meaning of Thanksgiving and how William Bradford dumped socialism in favor of incentives and letting the Pilgrims all work their own land instead of working for the community.
Number two, we learned from you about the American dream. You pointed out there’s no French dream, there’s no Iranian dream, no British dream, there’s only an American dream. And number three, which could very easily and perhaps should be number one, we’ve heard you all these decades making reference to your talent on loan from God. We believe and we’ve observed that you should say instead that you’ve been touched by God to play a role in saving this country.
RUSH: Well, now, I have enough trouble with talent on loan from God, people think I’m saying I am God. You’d be amazed the number of people that don’t understand that. They have a knee-jerk reaction to it, Bernie, and they think, this guy, he really thinks he’s God. And of course I don’t. It’s the ultimate statement of humility. “Touched by God” would be — I like that. I like that.
CALLER: You play a role in saving this country, Rush.
RUSH: Well, I don’t know about that. This country’s gonna be around. The people of this country are gonna be the ones that save it and have constantly saved it. That is the greatest unstated aspect of this country. Despite all the brilliant bureaucrats and all the brilliant here and there and the think tanks, media people, it’s the people of this country who make it work every day. And most of them do so in anonymity. Most of them are not seeking fame. They wouldn’t mind a taste of it to find out what it’s like, but they’re not seeking it. They just get up and do what they do every day.
And they, in the process, make all this work. And they use everything God-given that they have that is fueled by their freedom. And that’s what sets this country apart. It’s what’s always set this country apart. It’s the route of American exceptionalism. So that’s very kind of you, Bernie, you and your wife sitting around thinking about it. You said top ten, you reduced it to three. There are seven others. I don’t want to put you on the spot here, but can you mention a couple of additional ones?
CALLER: Well, yeah, I can tell you number ten. It’s a George Brett story. I used to go to all the games when he was Omaha AAA and he was a solid player, but I never understood what changed when he went to Kansas City and he became a superstar. You explained it. You explained that his work ethic was outstanding, and that’s what turned him into the player that he was.
RUSH: People never saw it, but they never see the work that a lot of people put in at what they do, particularly people like athletes. It is assumed that great athleticism is a gift, that you’re born with it and that you can get up every day, go hit .350 if you play Major League Baseball without thinking about it, and there’s nothing further from the truth.
I can’t tell you the number of days when I worked for the Royals, 120 degrees, August, there’s George Brett at 2 o’clock in the afternoon for a 7:30 night game out taking batting practice. Nobody ever saw it. He never talked about it. It’s just what he did. He loved it. He also said he loved the sun, got all kinds of energy from the sun, so the heat didn’t bother him at all. But he worked at it like every successful person you’ve ever known has to work as hard as possible at it to get there and then to stay there. What’s one more?
CALLER: You talked about how the Democrats measure success. They measure success by counting the increases of the numbers of people sucking on the federal breast. You and I and the Republicans we measure success in just the opposite way, by counting the number of people that don’t have to depend on the government anymore.
RUSH: Any longer. Exactly right. The number of people who have, with great compassion, been removed from needing government assistance because they’ve learned to be self-sufficient. Boy, you know what, Bernie? I owe you a lot. And that’s only half of ’em. There’s still five more to go.
But especially in light of the Democrat primary campaign where they are promising people everything and then some, they’re basically assuming nobody can take care of themselves, they don’t have any high expectations of anybody, and they don’t want you to be able to take care of yourself because everybody who can does not need Bernie Sanders, Fauxcahontas, any of the others, Biden.