RUSH: Joe in Memphis, really appreciate your patience. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, I love you. I was calling about your books.
RUSH: My books!
CALLER: Yeah. I had a comment. I think there’s a certain edginess to the book that I don’t know that I’ve heard anybody mention yet. My 17-year-old son and I both read your first book and we’re just starting on the second, and we were talking about something. You know, today a lot of the popular young adult novels, they take place in like a dystopian society. You know, it’s Hunger Games and things like that. And in each of these stories there’s this part where the hero kind of pulls back the curtain and discovers there’s something very wrong with their society, and in a way my son experienced that in reality when he was reading your book. He was asking us why he’s not learning these things about the Pilgrims in school. It makes it nice, too, because you back it up with actual historical references, and it’s made him be able to open up to his friends. My son’s very conservative but, you know, he has friends who kind of buy into the whole Obama stuff and everything. But it makes it very easy to persuade because there’s actual historical references. It’s not a matter of just, you know, taking Rush’s word for it or whatever, just look what he —
RUSH: That’s wonderful.
CALLER: I wanted to thank you for that ’cause it’s a real powerful weapon, and I think there’s something kind of cool about it, too.
RUSH: Well, how old is your son?
CALLER: He’s 17.
RUSH: Seventeen.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Seventeen! All right. And the book — you know, it’s interesting that you mention the popular reading material in this day and age for young people is dystopian stuff. It’s the opposite of utopian, which is perfection, ideal, idyllic, also impossible. Dystopian is end-of-the-world disaster type stuff. And you’re right. Young people are hit with that day in and day out in the media.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: In movies, in books and stuff that they’re reading. So the edginess — you’re calling it edginess in my books. What is the edginess?
CALLER: I think the edginess is that in real life your experience — I mean, we’re, you could say, I don’t know how far into the Hunger Games or something we are, but there is a certain downhill trend. In reality you read a book and you’re like, “Well, why have I never learned this in school?” And the edginess, I think, is that you’re uncovering something that almost seems like a secret, but it’s a positive secret.
RUSH: It is fascinating. It isn’t taught. It happens to be the truth. That’s the point of —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — these books is the truth of the founding of the country, various elements of American history. Pilgrims was first, Brave Patriots is second, and the focal event there is the Boston Tea Party, but learning about —
CALLER: There’s one other edgy element.
RUSH: — key figures as well.
CALLER: I think teenagers have a natural impulse towards rebellion and in this case it leads them to a very positive rebellion. Who knows. Maybe this generation will be conservative. If you’re gonna rebel against our society, it’s very, you know —
RUSH: I ought to have you do a commercial for these books.
CALLER: Wow.
RUSH: Because that’s quite shrewd, because there is rebellion in these books, but if you’ll note, there is a word in these books, two words, that are used a lot. One of them is “freedom,” and another one is “liberty.”
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: And that is what everybody in these books are seeking.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: They’re seeking an escape from tyranny and they are willing to give their lives for it. And you’re right. This stuff just isn’t taught anymore. The people in the books that I write are portrayed as mean, bad, horrible people in the school system today.
CALLER: Right. Yeah, it’s very powerful and I wonder if everyone really realizes what a powerful message. I hope there will be many more books. And I hope that there’s that kind of a consciousness when you’re putting them together, because I think you’re really hitting people that maybe you don’t even realize you’re getting, so it’s cool.
RUSH: Well, I did not think we’d be hitting 17-year-olds, I’ll be honest with you about that. And I also am pleasantly surprised that a lot of adults are saying, parents are saying that there things in these books that they weren’t taught, either. For me, this is simply the recounting of what I was taught, with some further research. There’s some things in here that I wasn’t taught, too. I never was taught the real story of Thanksgiving. I got close, but I was never taught that the original Plymouth colony practically didn’t make it ’cause they tried socialism. I was never taught that.
Most of the stuff are things I know to be true and the things I was taught, and the greatness and the things about this country I love with further historical research and to take the reader right to each event via the time-travel vehicle and put the reader, as it happened, in part of the event. That’s a fun thing to do. Well, look, Joe, do you have the audio versions of these books?
CALLER: Well, actually, yeah, I have the first one. I don’t have the second one.
RUSH: I’ll send you the audio version of the second book. It’s the least I can do. So hang on while Mr. Snerdley gets your mailing address, shipping address, what have you. I really appreciate it, Joe. Thank you very much. That’s a great, great review, and we really appreciate it.