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RUSH: Here’s Jack in Cleveland. Jack, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, I’m glad I waited, too. A lot of things to say from the great state of Ohio, home state of Rob Portman. We voted down Issue 3, which was for Obamacare, by 66%. We voted that down back in November. The infatuation with Obama, Rush, is over. You talked about David Axelrod. You ever hear the dangers of hubris? Does that guy come off more arrogant than ever? I can’t stand even watching him on TV. You said about the Constitution, the Preamble, that we’re supposed to “form a more perfect union.” Every politician should know that. I gotta get something else off my chest. You’re doing more for education by giving away free iPads than anyone. I think that’s great. And, come on: Two If By Tea free shipping? Unbelievable! Unbelievable. And last thing I want to say is: You know, against Obama’s health care, you gotta read Rerum Novarum. Pope Leo XIII, he spoke against socialism back there in the 1800s, late 1800s, and he said that the state should never be before the individual. The individual comes first. Obama should hear that: The individual comes first. The state’s not gonna tell us what to do, and we’re not gonna have Obama telling us what to do anymore come November because —

RUSH: He’s heard it.

CALLER: — Mitt Romney is gonna be in.

RUSH: Believe me, Obama knows the opposite of what he believes.

He rejects it.

He’s been raised to think that it’s the problem.

Obama was raised and educated to believe that the founding of the country was immoral and unjust, that free markets are not free, that they’re only free for the people that cheat and steal from others. You understand that Mike Barone column today is really great? Liberals are looking nostalgically at the jobs of the past. You come out of high school, you immediately go get a union job, you work on that assembly line for 30 years and then you quit. Folks, in fact, let me illustrate this with a personal story. My father was this way but not for the same reason Democrats are. Democrats are this way because they have a negative opinion of you. They view average people with contempt.

You’re just not competent. They have to look at you that way, otherwise there’s no need for them to help you. You must be — even if you aren’t, you must be — treated as inept and incompetent. So these monotonous union jobs? “Hey, that’s great! That’s great! That’s what America always was: You work at ’em for a while and then you get your pension, your benefits, and you quit. For the rest of your life, you’re paid. It’s hunky-dory.” Barone points out the dirty little secret is that people that had those jobs hated them. They were redundant. They were boring. There wasn’t any chance for advancement because the union rules saw to that.

You couldn’t stand out.

You were just a dime a dozen.

My dad had a different reason for this thinking. The formative experience in my father’s life was the Great Depression, and then World War II. My father was born in 1918. And the Great Depression for people that lived through it was the most formative thing the rest of their lives, second only to the communist threat vividly made by Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations. I’ll stick with the Great Depression. My father was insistent that I get a college degree because that was the only way you had to avoid the Great Depression. An education, a formal education, was the only chance you had at being hired for something meaningful.

Of course he wanted for me and my brother something meaningful. I remember I started in radio when I was 16 and he didn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense to him; he didn’t see what future there was in playing records to teenagers on the radio, especially as I got older. As I were to get older, he’d say, “Well, where’s this gonna go?” But it was the first thing I had not quit. I quit Boy Scouts. I quit Cub Scouts. I quit tiddlywinks. I quit everything, because everything bored me. Well, except I played baseball. But I wasn’t good enough to go very far in that. But radio was the first thing in my life he’d ever seen me have total passion for. So he bit his tongue and got out of the way.

But it bugged him for the rest of his life, even after I started doing talk shows in Sacramento, ’cause he still didn’t understand it. When I quit radio in 1979, I went to work for the Kansas City Royals for $12,000 a year. I quit. I thought I’d burned out on radio. It was ’79, so I was 28, and that’s too old to really be a top 40 deejay. So I’d given it my best shot and it didn’t work. I thought I’d work for the Royals. When I quit radio I was at $32,000. My first job at the Kansas City Royals was $12,000 a year, and he was never happier. You know why? ‘Cause that was solid. That was a corporation. Plus, it was sports. That was big. But I’ll never forget he said, “If you play your cards right, in 20 or 30 years you’ll be a vice president and you’ll have a company car.”

When you come out of the Great Depression, that was a big deal.

That was something to aspire to.

Now, my father was a lawyer. That meant he was a self-employed entrepreneur, and those were rare things even back then. In his mind, everybody worked for somebody. And you had to thank the person that hired you every day, and you had to express gratitude to ’em every day. You had to kiss their feet every day and whatever they wanted you to do, you did. ‘Cause the Great Depression, that’s what you did to keep your job or get a job. You couldn’t afford to get fired. Nobody could. It was horrible. So after five years with the Royals I was making $17,000. I got a thousand-dollar-a-year raise, and I never got the car. But I had found out that it wasn’t cut out for me.

The corporate structure was way too limiting. I went back to radio, and he considered himself a failure. I was passing up the chance to eventually be a VP and get a company car. I got back into radio — and spoken word, news, talk, controversy — my dad didn’t understand it. He was also hard-of-hearing and couldn’t hear me on the radio. He never was able to hear me do my show. Never. Even until he died, he was never about to hear it. He always had to hear “about” it. The only time he was able to hear me was when I was on Nightline or something, which blew him away. He didn’t think I knew enough, ’cause I had quit college — and that’s another reason he thought I was a failure.


So people of a certain age… He was born in 1918, coming out of the Great Depression. My father would not believe my life, is what I’m trying to tell you. He would not believe it. Even though there was no greater patriot, there was no greater believer in free markets and prosperity, he just would not believe it because I didn’t follow the formula that was established by the Great Depression. And he loved airplanes. He flew P-51s in World War II in the China-Burma Theater. He flew B-25s and B-17s and he taught others to fly them. He was in the Army Air Force and he taught others to fly ’em. He just loved that stuff. He would not believe my life.

He would not believe it possible, not because the country wouldn’t make it possible but because of the route that I took.

Now, the way this correlates with the Democrats is the Democrats look at people and see hopelessness because the country is unjust. My father never thought that. My father thought I was not meeting my potential by not going to college, by not hanging in there for 30 years at the baseball team and getting a company car and a vice presidency. That, to him, was nirvana. The Democrats look at these union jobs, as Michael Barone points out, as nirvana. Because that’s all you’re capable of in this country! Because the real successful people are stealing it all from everybody else, and they’re cheating.

So that’s why we’ve gotta give you a job that’s gonna pay you a pension and health care for the rest of your life ’cause the rich are gonna deny it to you otherwise. So there is this contempt for people that the Democrats have, and a lack of confidence and a lack of faith. We, of course, are the exact opposite. My father never doubted the country and the way it was founded and the abilities that people had if they wanted to exercise them. He just thought I saw taking advantage of the opportunities the country provided. He just didn’t understand radio, didn’t understand the passion I had for it. Well, he understood the passion I had for it but he grew to regret it because he thought I would burn out of that and eventually grow up and become a vice president with a company car.

But the whole point here is that Barack Obama has been raised to believe that this country does not provide opportunity for everybody, that the game’s rigged by the rich starting with the Founders. And the only way to make it fair is to make sure that people do get lifetime health care and pensions without having to work, or only after 30 years of work. That’s their nirvana, and that’s the past that they’re trying to re-create. That’s what’s frustrating for all of us because we see the potential of the country and we see the potential of the people who live here if they’re just turned loose! But the Democrats don’t see that in your future, and they don’t want you to see it.

They want you to have these menial stuff where you need them. That’s the whole point of the way they derive their power. So my father, in one way, saw things the way Obama did. But specifically in my case, only because I wasn’t taking advantage of the greatness of the country, he thought, and I was not listening to his great advice (which he took personally) by not following the formula. Obama and the Democrats think the country is what stands in your way. And that’s our problem, folks. The country does not stand in your way. Ironically, what’s standing in your way is Obama and the Democrats. You get them out of office, get them out of the way and let the private sector work — where greatness, creativity, genius, and entrepreneurism exists — and we’re back.

Isn’t gonna happen with these people running the show.

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