RUSH: We go to Atlanta. John, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you very much for taking my call. I was listening to your show from the start, I listen most days, and the letter you read out from your subscriber really hit a chord with me. I actually don’t live in America, I’m Irish and I’m on a publicity tour trying to speak out about illegal immigration in the bill in the Senate. And the one thing I’ve noticed —

RUSH: Hey, John, I need you to slow down a little bit so that I, with my hearing disability, can understand what you’re saying. I got you’re from Ireland and you’re here on a publicity tour. You’re trying to speak out about illegal immigration?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: And I’m speaking to a lot of people, and the one thing I’ve noticed is something similar to what that person e-mailed you in. And it’s greatly upsetting to me because as someone who loves this country so much and admirers everything you’ve done, the founding principles, the first three words in your Constitution are “we, the people.” And the fact the people are saying that what can you do, we can’t do anything, they seem to be almost paralyzed. The one question I get asked all the time is what difference can one man make, and I always say there’s loads you can do.

You can inspire people. You can talk to your fellow workers. You can break down the issues, be a voice for freedom, because what I see in America today is something similar to the way the Cold War was treated in the sixties. No one thought this issue could be won. Reagan changed that. He inspired the American people. He spoke up about the American people. He believed in freedom. I believe if Americans take that mantra and speak to their coworkers, to their friends, to their families, to people in the church, and stop looking down on your country or feeling bad that you’ve been so successful and speak it up with pride and be proud of your history, I think you can recover everything that you’ve lost and start off —

RUSH: You know, you’re singing my song in one sense, in the sense that I have constantly told people they have much more influence over people just by living their lives than they possibly will ever even know. But you’re hitting on something, and I want to ask you if maybe I’m interpreting you incorrectly, but you said you’re responding to the guy that sent me the e-mail, and it sounds to me like what you’re saying is, “Hey, guys, stop waiting on somebody else to do it and join the crowd and try to help make change yourself.”

CALLER: Exactly. Because this is what American was founded on: individualism. You know, you have to get rid of this collective mind-set that, you know, ’cause Barack Obama is (unintelligible), you know, you have to fit into a certain criteria, and you can only do things together and for the common good. You know what, even look at people because I heard you talk about Apple. If Steve Jobs thought when he was setting up back in the seventies, “I could never do the iPad or the iPod as an individual,” he would never have been successful, but he didn’t. He kept on pushing forward and with the free market, he achieved so many great things. Everybody can do it. This country put a man on the moon.

Are you telling me that individuals, by speaking out — obviously the average American has other stuff. I’m involved in politics 24/7. They can’t do that. They work and they have family and friends, but if they can talk about freedom and just forget about — like I was watching C-SPAN this weekend and everybody was defending the wiretaps thing when George Bush started it. It doesn’t matter who started it or who continued. It’s about whether it’s right or wrong. It’s not about Democrats, Republicans, or conservative. It’s about the American people. They’re first and foremost. And that’s what needs to be discussed. And also, America is short on ideas. Those ideas will come from the people. If you leave it up to Washington to come up with the ideas for the future you’re gonna be in a shortage.

RUSH: John, you’re hitting on a number of things here. One of the themes that you’re talking about is individualism, rugged individualism I call it. This is one of the aspects of life in America today that has so many people frustrated. People are willing to throw away their individuality in exchange for being accepted by some community, whatever community it is, not just the town, but a group of people, like-minded thinkers, conformists. Americans, way too many of ’em, are way too interested in conformity and what people think of them and getting along and letting Washington make decisions for them. You know the old adage about trading a little freedom for security here, trading some there. The individual is under assault in this country as a selfish, mean-spirited, you fill in the blank. And so ignorance is rewarded, conformity is rewarded, and I think that’s a great point of frustration that many people that you’re talking about sense and think in this country that way too many others are just blindly accepting of what’s happening without being concerned about it in any way, shape, manner, or form.

CALLER: I agree, but also there’s a fact that, you know, like, when you say people who are on benefits, you know, a lot of it has to do with the Republican Party and there’s a lack of ideas, but they’ve lost the message of freedom. They lost belief in it somewhere along the line. If you look at the Democrats and you go, okay, so you get a certain amount of money off the government for your Obamacare and your Obama phone and whatever other benefits, and that’s a thousand dollars a month, and that’s in your left hand. And the Republicans seem to say, well, you know, we talk about freedom and liberty and individual and free market in our right hand, all of a sudden it’s like, a thousand dollars is tangible and you can touch it you can do things with it, that’s better. We need to compete on that ground. You don’t. Freedom is priceless. It’s not something like —

RUSH: Well, you know what else? Let me tell you what else freedom is. In America today, freedom is a tough sell. And you know why it’s a tough sell? Because part and parcel of it is accepting personal responsibility. We have some real cultural problems. The way you’re speaking, you’re speaking the way people spoke in this country as recently as 30, 40 years ago. Today the way you’re speaking about America gets laughed at by a lot of people in different parts of the country. You’re talking about freedom and the Founders and liberty. Nobody thinks their freedom’s up for grabs. Nobody thinks their liberty is being lost. Not nobody. A lot of people don’t think any of this is at risk.

They think people trying to warn them of it are a bunch of extremist, conspiratorial kooks. That’s what we’re up against. You’re speaking like you have roots to our Founders. You have a greater attachment to the founding of this country than I can’t tell you how many millions of people who were born here who don’t know half as much about it as you do. But you’re right, I’m just observing for you. I’m trying to tell you what people like you and the rest of us are up against in trying to reestablish this country as the constitutional republic it was founded, because it is up for grabs right now. You’re great, John, I’m glad that you got through. Thanks so much.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ron Paul said it in his so-called farewell address to the House of Representatives. One of the things that surprises him the most is how difficult it is to sell freedom to people, how hard it is, that freedom is a burden that people don’t want. You have to take care of yourself. You have to work. You have to stay informed. You have to be an individual. It’s tough. Sadly, it is a tough sell.