RUSH: At any rate, it wasn’t too long ago on this program that I posited that I believe we certainly can go back to normal. We can go back to the way it was before this all hit. We can go back to the way it was last December. Why not? We can go back to the way it was in January. What is this notion that it’ll never be the same? (interruption) Why?
Who wouldn’t want it to be? I mean, granted you always want things to be improving, getting better. But the people who are advocating, “Oh, it’ll never go back to normal,” are people that don’t want it to be as good as it was in this country. That’s what you have to understand. They’re given cover by being either “health experts” or some other kind of “experts.”
They’re telling us (sniveling), “Because of the prevalence now of viruses and diseases, we’re never going to be as free as we were. We’re always going to have to be taking steps to protect the innocent and the citizens and so forth,” and I’m just telling you that whenever I hear… This is no different than the Obama administration telling us that America’s best days are behind us and that there was a new norm now, when they took over.
And that was essentially America in decline, that it took a certain level of expertise to manage this decline, and that’s what the Obama administration was. If you don’t believe me, please do, because it was one of the many things I opposed. They were constantly talking about how America’s best days might be behind us.
Furthermore, that some of those best days that were behind us might not have been legitimate. “You know, America has stolen a lot of what we have and we’ve harmed a lot of people on our way to becoming a superpower.” You say, “Well, why would anybody want America to be in decline?” Well, if you have an agenda that requires that.
“Well, what kind of agenda would that be, Rush?” See, you gotta stop thinking like I used to think — and this is a big mistake. I used to think that every American loved America, that every America wanted the best for America. I used to believe that patriotism was in the DNA. It isn’t. You’ve got a lot of people that don’t like this country who were born here.
You’ve got a lot of people who ideologically are communists and socialists. We have a lot of people that hate capitalism. But I didn’t grow up surrounded by any of them. I grew up in a little town, 25,000 people, where everybody loved the country. Everybody wanted the best and better for their kids and their grandkids. It was all new to me to encounter people that were different like that, and I was really naive.
It took me a long time — I mean, probably into my thirties — to intellectually understand it. So by the time Obama came along and was talking about (impression), “Those jobs? They’re not coming back. There no way. America has lost manufacturing jobs, and they’re not come back. I don’t know what Trump’s gonna do. What? Wave a magic wand? How’s he gonna make it happen? It ain’t gonna happen.”
Obama was proven wrong. The jobs came back. The economy (chuckles) became what the Obama people told us it never could become again. We had a roaring economy three years ago into the Trump administration that in a period of six weeks, we finally… We did it to ourselves. We shut it down. We locked it down. It took us only six weeks to take us back to the economic high point of the Obama administration.
Now we’ve gone way, way below that. Now we’ve got 22 million people out of work, and still there are people saying, “That’s not enough. We need to keep it locked down. We need to keep it shut down!” The thing you’ve gotta understand is that there are people — and many of them are prominent politically in the Democrat Party — who see this as an opportunity.
And if you believe that America must be in decline for some other agenda to happen, then what would that agenda be? Well, it clearly is not a pro-America agenda, whatever agenda it is. It happens to be globalism. But it doesn’t matter what it is. All you need to know is that it’s not a pro-America agenda. Now we have people suggesting that, “Oh, we can never go back to the way it was.”
They say it happily, and they tell you, “Yep. Yep. Can’t go back to the way it was. Never can go back to the way it was.” Why not? We always have, in circumstances like this. Not even the Civil War ultimately destroyed civil liberties, basic human rights and freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. Not even the Civil War did. Why would this? Why would a virus?
So I came across a story here in the Federalist by David Marcus that happens to be right up my alley today. “Our Goal Must Be a Total Return to Normal — Americans must reject a dehumanizing ‘new normal’ in the wake of the Chinese Virus.” Let me give you some pull quotes from the piece rather than read the whole thing.
“President Trump made some waves last week when he rejected the idea that the United States would enter some kind of ‘new normal’ once the [ChiCom] virus has run its course. Asked about the possibility that in this cowardly new world, would social distancing would remain, Trump had this to say: ‘Oh, that’s not going to be normal.'”
Social distancing is not gonna be normal. “There’s not going to be a new normal where somebody has been having for 25 years 158 seats in a restaurant and now he’s got 30 or he’s got 60 because that wouldn’t work. That’s not normal.'” A 200-seat restaurant, 158-seat restaurant cannot survive on 60. We’re not going to that. “‘No, normal will be if he has the 158 or 68 seats, and that’s going to happen and it’s going to happen relatively quickly, we hope.'” We’re gonna get back to normal relatively quickly.
“He went on to [say] that if Alabama football games had 100,000 fans in attendance before, they will have 100,000 fans in attendance again. It’s the right tone and the right policy.” That shouldn’t be thought of as stupid and idiotic. It ought to be thought of as the objective! It ought to be recognized for what it is.
It is optimistic and it’s inspiring. Damn straight! If they have a stadium that seats 100,000 people that want to watch Alabama football, then we’re gonna fill it! We can go back to that. It’s the right tone, it’s the right policy, it’s the right attitude. We’re now almost two months through this, folks, “social purgatory, a kind of fatalism has set in among the right” people.
You know, that’s the thing. This new fatalism. (sobbing) “We can’t go back to the way it was. We can never assume that again.” These are pessimists. These are fatalists, and they all happen to be the “smart” people. They all happen to be the Madeleine Albrights and the John Kerrys and the best and brightest types. The administrative state-types in Washington.
They’re out there saying this, as though it’s the only intelligent thing to say, “Of course things can never go back to the way they were. To hell with that!” Not only can they, they should. Another pull quote. Again, this is David Marcus of The Federalist: “Death will play its sinister trick on all of us one day,” meaning it happens to everybody.
“But death is not undefeated.” Jesus Christ conquered death. I realize that might be offensive to some of you, but Jesus Christ did. The resurrection. Jesus Christ conquered death with the message that we all can, that our souls all can. But that’s not my point. Death “is not undefeated. Death has never conquered humanity.” Everybody dies, but humanity still lives. Humanity still is.
“Even in the darkness of death’s most ominous shadows human beings take strength in each other. Together we preserve all that is” desirable, all that we think is “wonderful. We must not surrender to a dehumanizing ‘new normal,’ but bravely go forward” bravely and courageously, defiantly, “and claim our lives and society back. Why in the world should we just automatically agree with the assertion?
“We can’t go back to normal. Oh, no, we can’t go back to way it.” Why not? I sure as hell want to! It’s the most natural desire in the world, to go back to the way it was before this and to be told, “Oh, no, no, no, you can’t do that.” It’s being said by people that don’t want to return to normal because they have another plan. They have other ideas.