RUSH: Hi, this is Rush Limbaugh, author and narrator of the book Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans.
People have been after me to write another book for over 23 years, and the book market has been crowded. Everybody has written a book. So for me it was, “Been there; done that.” But then my wife, Kathryn, said, “You know, there is a book that you can write and itÂ’s aimed at some people that you really think need to hear the truth about American history: Young people.”
And she was right. I think one of the biggest challenges we have is the deterioration of public education, and I don’t believe that the truth of the founding of this country and its history is being taught. I think it’s been corrupted and politicized, and so this book is the first of what hopefully will be many that are designed to get back to the real roots and the real history without any political bias of any kind about this country, and it really is no more complicated than that.
The moments in this book that I really like — that when I narrated or read it that I really put my soul into — are those conversations between Rush Revere and William Bradford. When Bradford is explaining the troubles they all had when they first founded the colony and how it didn’t work out and they tried to be fair with everybody — and everybody get equal amount in outcome-based educations, everybody get outcome-based results, everybody got the same thing — and it didn’t work. And then at the end of the book, same similar conversation when Bradford is recounting the blessings from God that the first Thanksgiving was really all about.
The misunderstood part of Thanksgiving is that the pilgrims were thanking the Indians for helping them to survive. While that is true and it did happen, the real purpose of Thanksgiving was Bradford and the pilgrims thanking God for the guidance that they had received after all of the trials and tribulations. And the parts of the book where that is made clear in a conversational way, almost a direct quote from Bradford, those to me were the real money aspects of the book where I really wanted to pour everything I could as the narrator because those were exciting. I mean, that was the reason. Those two points there were the real reason for doing the book.
It was a natural for me to narrate the book. The recording process? Now, this to me is a challenge. This book is truth and it has a lot a conversation, a lot a different voices, a lot of different inflections. This wasn’t just reading words on the page and changing inflection or speed. This was a real challenge. It was almost like acting without a camera, and that was something I’ve never done before. I’ve never done something like this before and it was a challenge to do it well and to hopefully meet the expectations of the audience and the people who buy it.
I hope that what is taken away from this is that it’s almost like a little bit of family fun time that’s away from the television set or away from the computer or what have you. Because I think there are a lot of people in America right now really worried about what their kids are learning and really worried about what this country is going to be when their kids get older, and we’re just trying to tap into people and let them know that the countryÂ’s still great. It was founded in goodness, and there’s still a lot of people who think so and there’s every reason in the world to want to remind people of that and be proud of that and build on it.