RUSH: I’m getting lots of e-mail. People are frustrated as they can be over the slobbering media coverage today over the passing of Senator Kennedy. Folks, you’re going to have to put up with it for a week. It’s just the way it is. It shouldn’t surprise any of you. But I think we need to look at Senator Kennedy in a number of ways. I think Senator Kennedy… It would serve us well to remember that Senator Kennedy is a perfect example of the redeeming aspect of liberalism. If a politician is liberal, and if the politician uses the government to take money from people who work and gives it to people who don’t work, they are redeemed for every bad act on earth they commit.
It’s no more complicated than that. ‘Why is Kennedy being so lionized after what he said about Bork and these other things?’ It’s because he took money from people who worked, used the governor to do it, and gave the money to people who don’t work, and that simple action is the redemption that all liberal politicians get — on earth anyway. It’s sort of like a chit for any bad behavior that they engage in. That’s how they are designed as compassionate and caring and saintly, virtuous. It’s all because they support liberal policies. They take money, use the government to take money from people that work, give it to people who don’t. It’s that simple. Now, when you look at Ted Kennedy, I think particularly where we are as a nation today, I think that Kennedy’s struggle to live is what should be lionized, not his politics, and not his work in the Senate, but his struggle to live.
Will there be a single liberal come forward and embrace Senator Kennedy’s example of seeking and securing the best medical care available? For those who truly respect and admire Ted Kennedy the man, I ask you to put politics aside today. Forget the words. Embrace the actions of Ted Kennedy. Learn from the way he chose to live and die. Why support the rationing of health care when Ted Kennedy, the lion of the Senate, did not? Why not look at the example Ted Kennedy set and learn from that? Liberals will do Ted Kennedy, a man they love, a great disservice, if they turn his death into a metaphor for hypocrisy. It’s not too late to make Senator Kennedy a symbol for life. Chappaquiddick and rationed health care are not how Ted Kennedy should be remembered. His own struggle to live is what should be lionized.
How in the world can people who support rationed health care and everything that’s in that monstrosity of a bill in the House of Representatives dare put Ted Kennedy’s name on it? Ted Kennedy did not use any aspect of that health care legislation to try to survive. It would be an insult to the memory of Ted Kennedy to put his name on a bill that has rationed health care based on someone’s age and the extent of their illness. Ted Kennedy didn’t let any of that stand in his way, in his effort to live. His spirit was for life, and I think it would be a tremendous disservice. I’m being dead serious here. I think it would be a tremendous disservice to come up with a health care bill that we have now in the House and that’s floating around the Senate, the one that Obama’s talking about, where the government is going to decide whether people like Ted Kennedy get to go through every aspect of survival that he did.
Exercise their spirit! He had a spirit, he wanted to live, he did not want to die. Now, Obama has said, well, we can’t look at that because costs just are too high. Looking at somebody’s spirit and will to live… Well, Ted Kennedy’s spirit was to live and he chose to exercise as many options as were available to him to prolong his life. And to put his name on a health care bill that denies that to other people and say, ‘We’re doing this in his memory’ is hypocrisy, and it would be insulting to his memory. I am dead serious about this. The United States government was never a ‘partner’ in Ted Kennedy’s death. Remember what Obama said. Obama said this week, ‘We are partners with God in decisions of life and death.’ Remember him saying that? Well, I’ll tell you this: The United States government was never a partner in Ted Kennedy’s death.
Ted Kennedy’s life, if it stood for anything, was a thundering rejection of President Obama’s statement to hundreds of rabbis in trying to recruit them to sell his public option: ‘We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.’ The US government was not a partner in Ted Kennedy’s death and it should not be a partner in anybody else’s death. As they say, you know, actions speak louder than words. The lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, never invited any bureaucrats into the decision-making process regarding the medical care he received in his desperate and human and wholly admirable struggle to remain alive. Ted Kennedy’s spirit was to live. And he didn’t bring any bureaucrats in. And he didn’t have any end-of-life counseling with people — at least, mandated by the government. You see, my friends, there are lessons to be learned on life, lessons to be learned in death.
Senator Kennedy’s last days and his death were a powerful manifestation of the survival instinct, the will and the spirit to live. God bestowed on each of us the miracle of life. It is a gift that is personal and it is priceless, and no government of ours should ever become a partner in snuffing out a life. Slavery was a sin because governments approved the imposition of a monetary value on a human being’s life and they seized the right of individuals to be in charge of their own destiny. Rationing health care I think is a comparable sin because it imposes a value on human beings’ life and it allows a human beings’ life to become nothing more than a mere budget item, and in the process it denies the individual the right to determine their own destiny. We’re not the property of the state. One of the great lessons of the United States of America is that the state is not God’s partner in anything, much less matters of life and death.
We are servants of God. The suggestion that such a partnership exists — ‘partnership with God in matters of life and death,’ said President Obama. The suggestion that such a partnership exists is vulgar. It is a debasement of life, and it is itself un-American. The state’s right to permit a value to be placed on a human being’s life was the central issue of the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of lives, 500,000 lives, were lost to ensure forever the rejection of that inhumane practice, a practice in which states were a partner. One of God’s many gifts is the miracle of life. The government does not have the right to take what God has gifted, and Ted Kennedy’s passing reinforces that simple, self-evident and larger-than-life fact. Ted Kennedy’s passing is a powerful reminder of the respect and dignity of the intensely personal will to live that we all possess.
Ted Kennedy didn’t have a death book. Ted Kennedy wasn’t asked to say, ‘Is my life worth living?’ His life was worth living, to him and his family. He did everything he could to survive it. The state was excluded from that part of Ted Kennedy’s life, and it speaks well of the country and government Ted Kennedy was elected to serve that the state had nothing to do with his end. So placing his name on a health care bill in memoriam or using his name as a sympathy ploy to advance a health care bill that would deny Americans the choices Senator Kennedy had, is an insult and is supreme hypocrisy. I doubt that any of this will have any effect on anybody because passing the bill is what’s first and foremost on the president’s mind and on the Democrats’ mind.
And sadly, Senator Kennedy now becomes a pawn. His death becomes something they can use to facilitate a political aim. And they will be saying things and doing things, claiming, ‘This is what he wanted. This is what he inspired.’ Well, he did not inspire a health care plan to deny people their own right to die, and seek to live, in their own way by their own choice. He didn’t. He was not limited in any way. ‘But, Rush! But, Rush! We can’t afford it for everybody. We can’t afford it.’ Ah! So we’re going to have elites get one way of being treated and the rest of us another way? I thought it was a right. The point is: God’s gift of life is priceless. We are not partners. No government is a partner with God in matters of life and death, and no government was a partner with God in Ted Kennedy’s death. To put his name on this current health care bill would be to insult what he stood for.