RUSH: Andrew in Amarillo, Texas. Hello, sir. It’s great to have you with us.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thanks for the line. Like I said, I’m from Amarillo. I just have a quick question for you. I mean, I am all for people protesting. I mean, it’s their constitutional right. But as a young registered Democrat, what I do not get — and I was hoping you could explain this to me — is why people are protesting our president, and a policy, more importantly, that it seems to have already have positive effects on the middle class. I mean, why are people so outraged with what he’s doing right now when it seemed to be for the good of Americans?
RUSH: Okay, I’ll be willing to answer this. If you really want the answer, I’ll be glad to.
CALLER: Yes, sir. I mean…
RUSH: Okay. In the first place, the middle class is the one that is been devastated. Six hundred thousand Americans a month are losing their jobs. The Obama administration itself says that whatever has been done, they say that will improve this, but it won’t happen this year. We’re looking at an unemployment rate of 10% by the end of the year, according to government projections. That’s number one. The middle class is not being helped. Nobody is being helped here. This is… What you have here is people who are trying to hold onto individual liberty that is being lost because of an expansion of the federal government that has never happened in this country before, and they are scared. The foundation of this country was the individual: individual freedom and liberty, allowing people to pursue their own self-interests to become whatever they wanted to become — nothing or anything — based on whatever their ambition and desire and so forth. And that opportunity is shrinking because more and more of the private sector where all those opportunities are, is being taken over by the federal government. These people are also protesting the fact, Andrew, that we are printing and borrowing money to the point that people who are not even born yet are already in debt to the tune of $36,000 to $46,000 to the government. That’s how much is being spent on their behalf and they’re not even born yet, two generations down the line. This is based on a genuine anger that the Constitution as the building block of this country is being slowly chipped away and replaced by an ever-expanding government whose objective is to direct and be in control of as much life as possible.
CALLER: I understand that, sir. You know, the point of whether, you know, Republicans, Democrats, you know… Republicans, you want smaller government. I understand that. But what who don’t get is how people… I can understand people protesting.
RUSH: Okay, hang on. I’ve gotta take a break. Hang on through the break, because this today really isn’t about Republicans and Democrats. It’s about freedom and liberty.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We rejoin Andrew in Amarillo. I didn’t mean to interrupt you there, Andrew, but I had to go to a commercial break. You started to ask me about… You understood the first thing I said, then you started talking about Republicans and Democrats, and you don’t quite understand what the protests are about. Is that right?
CALLER: Yes, sir. That’s right.
RUSH: Well, when I said it’s not really about Republicans and Democrats, the issue that these people are upset about is not really about Republicans and Democrats. But the reason they’re out there may have something to do with the Republican Party. I think a lot of these people at the tea parties are wandering around without any leaders. The Republican Party has right now — and this is just the vagaries of politics — there’s no single Republican who would either seek elective office or is in elective office that is providing a national leadership around which people can rally and who’s carrying the torch for them. So these people were simply saying, ‘Nobody is standing up for us in Washington. We’re going to stand up for ourselves.’ They’re doing it peacefully, and they’re very, very upset. You know, the old… You sound like a nice young guy. How old are you, Andrew?
CALLER: I’m 19 years old.
RUSH: Nineteen. Well, every generation of parents has wanted a better life for their kids: more opportunity and more freedom, more economic opportunity and so forth. Today’s parents think it’s going to be tough the way this government is spending money and piling debt on future generations, taking over operations of the private sector like the automobile business and the bank business, when they don’t know how to do it. Nobody in government has the slightest idea about running a car company — building cars, designing them — or, you know, running banks. And these people are a little frightened, and they’re alarmed that nobody is standing up for their interests. There are 55 million of them.
They’re not all going to show up at the tea parties, but 55 million people voted against what’s happening here with the Obama administration, because what’s happening here — and you’re only 19 — what’s happening is that the foundation of the country is the Constitution of the United States, which… Well, the Declaration, the founding document: We are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights — among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These people see the Obama administration as assaulting all three of those things: life, liberty, people’s freedom is being impinged upon. When you impinge upon their economic activity and you impinge upon their ability to produce, examine, provide income for themselves and their family, you are infringing on freedom — and the pursuit of happiness? There’s not a whole lot happiness in America today, have you noticed, no longer where you look?
CALLER: I’d agree with that.
RUSH: Now, let me ask you a test question. There’s no wrong answer.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Do you believe that it is proper that people should sacrifice for their government?
CALLER: It is proper that people should sacrifice…?
RUSH: Yeah. Like this is tax day. It’s April 15th. Should we look at April 15th, we all pay our taxes, as a day we are sacrificing for our government?
CALLER: I’d like to think it’s a day that we’re helping our government. I don’t know if that would be the same as what you’re saying. I think paying your taxes —
RUSH: Well, it was a little bit of a trick question. Every American will sacrifice for his country. But sacrificing for the government? What is so omnipotent and all-wonderful about government? Does government never make a mistake? Has government replaced God in many people’s lives, whatever God you have? Andrew, if you look, starting in 1964, Lyndon Johnson with the Great Society and the War on Poverty, we have spent close to $11 trillion to eradicate poverty in this country — and the people in poverty, expressed as a percentage, are still the same as in 1964. The ideas that are being tried by Obama today are not new. They failed in the thirties and FDR tried to get us out of the Great Depression. It was World War II that did that, not the New Deal. People know this doesn’t work.
Individual prosperity and a growing economy is not the result of a bigger government. It’s the result of people like you. You’re going to be either in the workforce or soon entering the workforce using whatever desire, ambition, and talent you have to be whatever you want to be and to do it as well or as best as you want. And the idea that after you’ve invested in yourself and your education and your time and your passion, and after all of that, that somehow you automatically owe people who are not working a portion of your income because that’s how ‘fairness’ is defined, is not how a great country progresses. Rather than take from you — which is going to happen all of your life if Obama gets everything he wants. You’re going to be paying taxes like you can’t believe, in order to pay for what has already been spent here and is on the books to be spent. What we look at is people who are perhaps not doing as well as they should.
We look at those who are capable as opposed to those who genuinely aren’t, who are all willing to help. Those who are capable but aren’t need to be inspired somehow. They don’t need to be made victims of. We don’t need to look at them with pity. We need to look at them as potential, as people who have not been inspired somehow to find the best in America and to be the best they can be. They don’t know how good they are! Those of us on the right, conservatives, we love everybody, and we want everybody to experience the marvelous wonders of the freedom this country provides. And the bigger government gets, the tougher it is to achieve, and the more people government wants to make victims that they’ll take care of because they’re not capable, is destroying those people’s lives. Everybody who… All things being equal.
We’re not talking about people who have genuine mental disabilities or some other things that limit them. Those people — we’re a compassionate country — we’ll take care of all of them. But if you’re genuinely able and a government or a politician or some political belief looks at you and says, ‘You know, you’re just not capable. You’re a victim because there are either racists out there or bigots or sexists. We’re going to take care of you.’ The government can’t take care of you and make you prosperous. They can keep you dependent, but they can’t make you prosperous, and we look at that as destroying people’s lives. So these people, rather than inspiring them to be the best they can be… We want a great country. Great country’s made up of great people. A great government does not make a great country. Government is not the country. We are the country. We, the people, we’re the country. We just want the best for everybody.
CALLER: Yeah, I agree with that.
RUSH: So this is about people who agree with what I said, to one degree or another, who are genuinely outraged that the obstacles being placed in front of them are becoming larger and larger and larger, and they don’t want what President Obama’s trying to do to succeed.
CALLER: All right. Well… (laughs)
RUSH: So protests. Do you ask why ACT UP protests the Catholic Church on condoms? Do you ask why Code Pink protests the US military? Do you ask why anti-globalists will protest world — what is it? — world trade, world court, whatever it is, the arbiter of NAFTA? There are all kinds of them. The left owns the public protest as an operational bullet point. Do you ever ask why they’re protesting?
CALLER: Well, no. No.
RUSH: Why not?
CALLER: Because those are… All the things that you said are issues that are issues that I’m not… I can’t speak about because I’m not fully aware of them, and I haven’t seen them. I have seen people protesting out in front of our post office. I have seen them protesting out in front of the courthouse, things that I know about. These things that you’re saying, I haven’t seen.
RUSH: Wait, wait. You’re talking about, you’re seeing people today? You’re talking about the tea parties, protesting in front of the post office?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Okay. But you have not seen, you have not seen like the Cindy Sheehan-led protests against George W. Bush over the Iraq war? You’ve not seen…?
CALLER: I have seen that, I have seen that, sir. Yes, I have.
RUSH: Why don’t…? But you don’t question that but you do question these people today who probably many of them for the first time in their lives, Andrew, are protesting? The left-wing, Democrats, liberals and so forth, whatever you call them, they own the public protest as a means of advancing their agenda. The people protesting today, this is a first for most of them.
CALLER: Well… (silence)
RUSH: So it’s not unfair that they should protest. I mean, they’ve got a genuine grievance just like the other people protesting think they do.
CALLER: Well, yeah. Like I said in the beginning, I mean, I am — I am all for people protesting. It’s a constitutional right. I just want to know — and you’ve helped clear some things up for me, Rush, and I thank you for that. But I just want to know why some of these people who are… I’m driving by and they look so angry, so disappointed, in something that’s a hundred days in — or a little bit over, I’m assuming; a hundred days in — for a policy that in my mind it seemed to be working. We’re hearing things on the news about President Obama meeting with different people who have already seen the positive effects of his policies.
RUSH: Ah.
CALLER: Then you have these.
RUSH: Ah. Okay, so you’re watching the mainstream media, which are stenographers for the Obama administration. They have cast journalism aside. It isn’t working. Andrew, now, honestly. How can you say his plan to rebuild the middle class is working when 600,000 Americans a month lose their jobs? When businesses left and right are closing? When the automobile industry, domestic, is about to shut down? How can you say it’s working? Is it working in your personal life? Is your life better off because of the last 70 days?
CALLER: Past 70…? My personal life, no. I’m assuming my parents’ life, my grandparents’… I haven’t seen any change, really, in my personal life, however, in the past 70 days.
RUSH: Well, I have. (laughing) I have, but I don’t want to focus on me, because everybody always does. The answer to this question, ‘Why are these people protesting, it’s only been less than a hundred days,’ because in their minds if it’s this bad after 70 days, ‘What’s it going to be after four years? What’s it going to be after a year,’ and they want to try to slow it down. They know they can’t stop it, Andrew, because there aren’t enough Republican votes in Washington to stop anything President Obama wants to do.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: They’re trying to slow it down. These people are patriots. They love the country. They love the country as it was founded. Anger and so forth? Hell, I’ve been angry most of the day here —
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: — over just things that have happened in the news. But anger, by the way, for the past six years has been the exclusive attitude of the American left. Look, I appreciate your call. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you. You’re 19, and if there’s no stop to this, if it’s not deterred, you are going to grow up and start working in an America unlike this country has seen since the thirties. The life that your grandparents or parents live is going to be much, much tougher for you to achieve, and that’s by design. Anyway, I must take a quick time-out here. I’m glad you called, Andrew. Thanks. Call back anytime. We will be glad to talk to you.