RUSH: Here’s Daniel in Long Beach, California. I’m glad you waited, Daniel. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call. I do want to talk about capitalism in the Third World, but I do need to say for the record that Martin Luther King was without a doubt a leftist, and anyone who says differently has not read the man’s words.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Did you say a Leninist?
CALLER: Left. Left.
RUSH: Leftist.
CALLER: Opposite of right.
RUSH: Leftist, all right.
CALLER: Left, like the left-wing, yes.
RUSH: We’re off to a great start on this call.
CALLER: You talked about bringing capitalism to the Third World. You know, I agree with you that endless aid is not what is needed in the developing world. They need their own sustainable economies, but I see three major obstacles to capitalism developing in the Third World the way it has developed here in the west. One is, they don’t have the democratic institutions that we have that allow labor to stand up for itself against oppression. This is why in most of the developing world they’re still working 16-hour days and 18-hour days. And when they try to organize, people are put in jail, people disappear in places like Bangladesh or Indonesia or Guatamala or wherever it is. Number two, they don’t have the ability to colonize other countries, which is what the United States and Europe did in order to get cheap labor and resources to develop their economies. They need Africa and Latin America for that.
RUSH: I thought that’s where this was headed. Great Britain did colonize, but you take a look at the countries that were colonized when they were there versus where they are now and you ask them where they’d rather be. It wasn’t actual colonization, although they called them colonies. They called it the British empire. The British didn’t come in and oppress anybody; capitalism doesn’t exploit people. What are you talking about?
CALLER: Wait a minute, wait a minute, Rush, are you still there?
RUSH: Yeah, I’m here, but capitalism doesn’t exploit anybody.
CALLER: Do you have any idea of the history of Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries, what was done to the African nations, what was done in Latin America by people like United Fruit and Dole, what they did to these people? Came in, took their land, paid off military juntas to back them up, went in and paid people, you know, 25 cents a day to pick fruit on the land that their ancestors had owned for centuries. Do you understand what was done in Africa by taking tribes that had been enemies for centuries and forcing them to participate in government together? Just look at Rwanda, for example, how the Belgians used the Tutsis to rule over the Hutus and then turned over the country to the Hutus when left and washed their hands of the whole thing and look where they are now. I’m not saying it’s all Belgian’s fault, people are responsible for their actions, I’m a left winger who knows that, okay, but what has happened in Africa over the last 200 years, Europe bears a great responsibility for it, and this is the third thing that is holding the Third World back is that they are under so much debt it is impossible for them to work their way out of it, the way that the west —
RUSH: You know something? Ninety percent of this is flat-out BS. They have been forgiven so much debt over the years, and they have been given so much over the years. I don’t know where to begin with you. The whole notion that the United States colonized countries, that capitalism exploits, that the reason these countries over there in the Third World can’t do well even if we export capitalism is because there’s no other country for them to exploit. This is a leftist view of this country, that this country is evil, this country has stolen what it has, this country has taken all of the great resources from all over the world and left the nations of the world in the current circumstances that they’re in, and the case is just the exact opposite. You know, I am stunned at the level of education in this country that produces this kind of thinking. This is pure anti-Americanism. This is pure American hatred. It is the exact opposite of this, in terms of what this country has done for people around the world. It used to be said — I’m having a little bit of a mental block here — it used to be said that oh, I can’t remember specific ones, a conspiracy theory, but a lot of people believed it had to do with ancient black cultures in Africa, that the great cultures of Africa and the great riches were stolen, and that’s why the current African cultures are so backward. I listened to this. How can that possibly be? If these cultures were stolen they could simply be recreated. If the people there were responsible for the creation of great cultures, then why can’t they just — even if it were stolen — just be who they were in the first place that resulted in whatever they had being stolen, do it all over again. This is senseless, and it comes from a position of guilt, comes from the position or an attitude of we’re not worthy, that we’re really not this good, that there’s something inherently evil about us. The whole notion that capitalism exploits is 180 degrees out of phase. Sadly though there are way too many people that believe this, even in this country.
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Ask your average Zimbabwe resident if he would rather be alive today or back when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia. Many in Africa are calling the colonial days “the good old days” these days. But, hey, look, if you want to dump on Europe, I mean, our buddies the French and the Germans, yeah, go ahead and dump on them, but don’t lump America in this colonial business, because we have not and do not colonize, we liberate.
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