The American Dream Is No Myth and Our Cure-A-Thon Numbers Prove It

RUSH: This is the 15th year, our 15th anniversary, of hosting the Cure-A-Thon for Leukemia and Lymphoma, the Leukemia Lymphoma Society of America. We do this once a year. We do this in less than three hours a year. In our 15 years, we’ve raised over $14 million, and I have to tell you, I am so proud of you people. I was really not expecting this to be a banner year because of all of the Drive-By Media doom and gloom that’s out there, particularly on the economy and this latest rise in the gasoline price. I know it’s put a crimp in a lot of people’s budgets, and the fact is that in our first hour — I’ll get the numbers here shortly — it may track even ahead of last year, which was a record year.
I think that the efforts that you’re making here deserve some acclaim, and I want to do it in this way. By the way, let me give you the ways that you can donate today: 877-379-8888. That’s the phone number. Or you can simply go to RushLimbaugh.com. You can see the fantastic premiums we’re offering with certain levels of contributions, and you can donate there online. Click on “Donate Now.” Click on it. It’s a yellow button, and it’s easy, and I’ve been told that online hits and donations this year are up 20% over last year.
I think if I read it right, it’s 20% higher than phone donations. Your credit card information will be kept totally secret. NSA will not find out about it. CIA will not find out about it. Dana Priest of the Washington Post will not know your credit card information. There will be no leaks. But here we are. We find ourselves in the midst of an intense Drive-By Media-, Democratic Party-inspired doom and gloom, if you allow yourself to live in that media bubble, if you allow yourself to have your day shaped and formed by the news every day.
It’s gotten to the point that a Democrat liberal think tank — get this. It’s called The Center for American Progress. They released a new study recently, “Understanding Mobility in America.” Let me give you the gist of this. “America may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world.” Now, that, folks, is patently ridiculous! It is patently ridiculous! We do not see Americans dying to leave this country to go to elsewhere to find prosperity and economic opportunity. This is absurd. This, frankly, cannot even have a pretense of accuracy, however they derive this data in their silly report.

Now this study claims that “99% of American kids born to poor families will never make it to the wealthiest 5%.” Minorities, of course, are hardest hit. “Only 32% of white families will remain in poverty, compared to 63% of black families.” Now, I don’t want to analyze this paragraph by paragraph today, as time is of the essence today, but that’s a hanging curve ball waiting to be knocked out of the ballpark. If that’s true — and for the purposes of analyzing it, I’ll stipulate it’s true; we’ll do this next week — but if that’s true there’s a simple reason for it.
But they conclude here that the American dream as a myth! But in order to believe that, folks, you have to buy into the liberal mind-set. America in decline is liberalism’s central tenet! In war, they see us defeated. They see our institutions and traditions are inherent discriminatory and oppressive and corrupt and that’s why they have no problem trying to tear them down. Now, President Bush calls this “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” and believe me, that’s pretty accurate in a sense. The soft bigotry of low expectations.
You go out and tell people, “You have no chance. We don’t expect anything from you,” and what are you going to get from them? Zilch, which is exactly what liberals want. They want victims. That’s why they like illegal immigrants. They want victims. The American economy, contrary to this silly, stupid survey is producing success story after success story after success story. In all sectors of life, this country continues to rise and achieve and set records, and it remains that shining city on a hill; it remains that beacon of light and hope all over this planet, and yet the Democrats, the liberals, can’t put up with that because they need victims in order to remain in power.
Let me tell you what this survey is. It’s not the soft bigotry of low expectations. This is the hard bigotry of liberalism, folks. For generations now, liberals have wiped out achievement ideals. They accept low school standards. They disdain the competitive drive. They attack and tax and punish individual achievement and accomplishment. They preach victimhood. They torpedo aspiration. They tell you you have nothing to aspire to, and they are doing it again with this silly report — and yet somehow, despite all of this, America survives. It not only survives, it prospers. Now they’re trying to convince a prosperous nation that we’re all a bunch of losers, that we just don’t know it yet but we’re all a bunch of losers.
Well, let me tell you something, folks. They are the losers, and I for one am sick of their stupid studies trying to convince our kids that they have no chance, when their parents are hoping just the opposite. Liberals, once again, working at odds with parents. Everybody knows that parents want a better life for their kids than they had for themselves regardless the nature of that life, and here come a bunch of pointy-headed intellectual elites dousing cold water on hopes and on dreams — actually telling people in the United States of America they don’t have a prayer, and if they want to have a prayer they’ve got to go somewhere else in the world.

People outside America, as we see daily, are risking their lives to access (even illegally) the very real rags-to-riches American dream. Now, there’s no question if you want to fail here, you can, and you don’t need to go to a library to find a book called “How to Fail,” because we all know how to do it. Everybody fails at something (or three) now and then during the course of their lives. You can fail if you want to. But if you want to achieve, you can do that, too. You can achieve whether you’re black; you can achieve whether you’re white, yellow or purple 00 and the evidence is all around us. It’s all over the place.
Now, the reason I wanted to talk about this is because what you’re doing today by running ahead of last year’s donations, is putting the lie to this myth that there is no opportunity, that there’s no chance for rags-to-riches success in this country. I don’t get emotional very much here on this program, but I cannot tell you how proud I am, because I didn’t know what to expect going into this today. With all this doom and gloom out there, I had no idea what to expect with all the Drive-By Media hits on the economy which they’re saying it’s not as good as everybody says it is; they’re trying to make people think we’ve got soup lines, gas prices. But here you are on our 15th anniversary of the Leukemia Lymphoma Society Cure-A-Thon you are running ahead of last year which was a record year, when, yeah, we had the Drive-By Media doing negative hits, but we didn’t have such pointed assaults on the pocketbook as the spike in gasoline prices and so forth. So you all are doing the Lord’s work out there and I just wanted to thank you and I wanted to tell you how proud I am of you, and as always, I’ve made my own contribution today. I’ll tell you what it is, just so you’ll know. A running tally does not count mine. We don’t count mine until later.
I gave two months ago. I got started early, and I gave the Leukemia Lymphoma Society $250,000, which is about the same amount as last year and the year before. Because I don’t ask anybody to do something that I haven’t done, and I believe in this organization. I love the people that I’ve gotten to know who have committed their lives to it. I’ve met a lot of people and known a lot of people who have had various blood cancers, and the success rate that researchers are having in prolonging life, cure rates, is profound. I’ll share some of that with you during the course of the program today.
But I just wanted to thank you because you, in this audience, by your daily virtue and existence here, put the lie to this silly notion that the opportunities in this country are finished and over. You’re the people that make the country work, not these pointy head intellectuals at the Center for American Progress, or not a bunch of think tank people anywhere else, or not a bunch of elected officials. It’s you who make the country work; it’s you who are the economy; it’s you trying to pursue excellence — however you define it, with whatever degree of ambition you’re willing to apply — you who make the country work. Thank you, and I’m honored beyond my ability to express it to have you in this audience.

END TRANSCRIPT

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.