RUSH: Here’s Craig in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s great to have you, sir, on the program.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Dittos from Charlotte.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, I want to commend you for your books, and as you were saying in the last hour how important they are in reeducating our young people. When I go around to elementary and middle schools and teach history well, it’s just amazing how their eyes and minds light up, and your books are just amazing in that regard.
RUSH: Oh, thank you. You know, it’s such a great story. The story of this country and the way it’s maligned and impugned and lied about? If you have a chance to get to them like you do and see ’em, or you tell them the truth about some of the people and what they did and what happened to them and how this country came to be, their eyes do light up. There’s no question.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: It’s a great story.
CALLER: So I actually took a modern-day trip like Liberty does in the book. I went to New York City last Wednesday, April 30th. From your research, you probably already know this. But George Washington was inaugurated in New York City on April 30th, 1789, and last week was the 225th anniversary of Washington’s inauguration there. I just wanted to go there and see if people showed up for it or if there was any interest on the ground.
RUSH: And? (chuckles) Well, I don’t have to ask. What did you find?
CALLER: It was a rainy day, so that was working against us, but there were about 70 people all told, and as I just asked around, it seemed like one or two people may have traveled there from outside of New York City, and it seemed like most of the other folks maybe had just wandered in for the day. The interesting thing in history, though, is this day, April 30th, was when the immediate civil leaders of our federal government, after the founding period, celebrated.
They celebrated July 4th as kind of our birthday of independence. But then they celebrated this April 30th day as the commencement of the Constitution. Because Washington, of course, was inaugurated, but it’s when our whole American constitutional system got put into operation. At the 50-year anniversary, 10,000 people came out to New York City. In Chicago on the hundred-year anniversary, they had 300,000 people celebrate this day in 1889.
RUSH: And now it’s just so long ago and so distant, it has nothing to do with what’s happening in America today anymore. Besides, Craig, as you well know, Washington owned slaves. He was a racist, and so he’s not really legitimate in terms of great American to be taught.
CALLER: Yeah, all those things.
RUSH: He’s not somebody we would want our young people emulating, and that’s what it’s become.
CALLER: Yeah, exactly.
RUSH: You add the Constitution to it, and then you add the fact that the left hates the Constitution —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — particularly the first 10 amendments.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Those are those are big obstacles to the left. There’s no reverence being taught at all.
CALLER: Yeah. You know in 1789, the actual day of Washington’s inauguration, they started the day by firing 13 cannons at daybreak. At nine a.m., the church bells rang in the city, because they wanted the citizens to come out and pray for the new government for an hour. He was inaugurated around midday. And then at three p.m., the whole federal government went to St. Paul’s Chapel.
They actually heard a sermon and attended a church service, and St. Paul’s Cathedral, as you may recall, is the cathedral that was right there on 9/11, where all the rescue workers went. For 18 months, it served as a kind of Ground Zero care and nurture center. So that chapel that Washington went to after his inauguration miraculously survived 9/11 and became the very place that after 9/11 people we notice for solace.
RUSH: And now April 30th is taught as the day Obama got bin Laden.
CALLER: (laughing) Yeah.
RUSH: I kid you not. By the way, I don’t want to give anything away, but the subject of your call will be explored in a further literary effort.
CALLER: Well, and I will love it.
RUSH: It’s amazing the dovetail here.
CALLER: You say we should ask what we want. I’d love to help you with any Washington research on Inauguration Day, if you like.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate the offer. I’ll have Snerdley take your contact data down. I make no guarantee, but I’ll have him take you down, because I appreciate it. We’re fully staffed and all that. We’ve got it covered, but I appreciate it. (interruption) Yeah, the staff may be overrated, but sometimes they come through with various assignments. I appreciate the offer, Craig. Seriously.