RUSH: Ken in Fort Smith, Arkansas, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Nice to have you with us. CALLER: Thank you, Rush, for taking my call. RUSH: Yes. CALLER: I am calling because my third grade daughter, I’m getting ready to go to a parent-teacher conference here in a few hours after work, and her reading assignments she’s been bringing home have all dealt with global warming. I’m wondering how, I’m asking you, the Maha Rushie, some advice on how I can deal with this teacher to let her know that global warming is not a science. I’ve dealt with this with my 14-year-old daughter, was real easy to get across to her and her teachers, but this teacher seems to be a problem. RUSH: I’m sure many in this audience are saying, hey, welcome to the club out there, Ken. First a question for you. My inference in what you say is that you go to these parent-teacher conferences a lot? CALLER: Yes. RUSH: Why? CALLER: I want to know how my daughters are doing in school. RUSH: So the teacher is not saying, ‘Hey, your daughter’s got a problem, get in here.’ CALLER: No. RUSH: Is your daughter doing well in class? CALLER: My oldest is a presidential education award winner, gold seal. My youngest, she’s not quite so good in school. RUSH: No, no, no, the one you’re going in to have the conference. CALLER: She maintains a B average. RUSH: Okay, so the student, your daughter, is not failing in anything? CALLER: No, no. RUSH: She’s performing above average? CALLER: Yes, sir. RUSH: All right. I’ve never done this. You asked me what I would do. (Laughing.) You’ve gotta take this under advisement because I’ve never gone to a parent — whatever your meeting is. CALLER: A parent-teacher conference. RUSH: Parent-teacher — CALLER: It’s regularly scheduled at the end of the semester — RUSH: Never gone to one of those and as far as I know my parents never did, either. There was no need for one because if the teacher said something the teacher was right. Teachers weren’t teaching politics back then disguised as science. CALLER: They are now. RUSH: That’s right. So what you need to do, what I would do if I were you, which I guess covers me legally, I would simply go in and ask, ‘Why are all of my daughters’ reading assignments political?’ Then let the teacher ask, ‘What do you mean political? Global warming?’ ‘Now, that is a political issue, Miss Teacher.’ She’s going to argue with you about it because I guarantee you she is clueless. She’s just one of the many people following the Algore ball on this. You’re going to tell her, ‘No, it’s a purely political issue. There is no science on this that has been proved.’ She’ll come back and argue whatever it is she believed. She’ll probably use the word consensus, at which time she does, you’ve gotta promise me to say this, if nothing else. CALLER: I know what you want to say. Consensus is not science because science is a hundred percent agreement on the subject. RUSH: Yes. But science is not up to a vote. CALLER: Right. RUSH: If the word consensus appears anywhere in science, there’s no science by definition, it can’t be science. You can say, ‘Look, I appreciate the job you’re doing with my daughter, and I appreciate the time and the effort that you’ve undertaken to be a teacher, and I know that you care about my daughter’s future performance, and for that I’m eternally grateful. But do you realize the time you’re costing me every night to teach her opposite of what you’re teaching her in the daytime with all these reading assignments? Because when she comes home and she tells me all this global warming stuff, do you realize how much time I have to spend telling her, ‘Well, what you’re being asked to read isn’t true.”
CALLER: Deprogramming her, yes. And there are good resources out there on global warming, as I found out with my oldest daughter, but — RUSH: If you get into a technical discussion of global warming, you’re going to be — I mean, you can do it if you’re really confident that you know what to say in it, but if you get into a technical discussion of that, you’re sort of joining her turf, because you’re not discussing what your problem is, you’re discussing the issue. Your problem is that her reading assignments are not varied enough. CALLER: Right. RUSH: Also ask, well, you probably know, you don’t need to ask. ‘Does any reading assignment contain authors or articles that do not agree with the premise of global warming?’ CALLER: I gotta read them once or so. I have to disagree. They’ve all been pro-global warming. RUSH: Okay, then that’s the way you do this. Look, you can tell her, go through the whole mess, ‘Look, it’s not science, this is politics, and it’s not your job to indoctrinate my kid with a political point of view. That’s not why my daughter is here.’ And then just say, ‘I’ve looked at these, teacher. I’ve looked at these reading assignments and there isn’t one that you’ve assigned that disagrees with the political premise, and so my daughter’s coming home and telling me I’m killing polar bears and all this sort of stuff, and I haven’t killed one in my life.’ There’s any number of ways, but if you get into a technical discussion on global warming, then you’re avoiding what your real problem with her is, which is her teaching is one-sided, it’s unbalanced, and it’s politically oriented. CALLER: Okay. RUSH: You’re going to have to discuss the intricacy of it to some extent, but I’m just saying don’t make that the total argument that you have with her, because — CALLER: Don’t make that the premise of my argument, make sure I’m debating with her that it is a political thing and not an educational — RUSH: If it’s going to be political, at least it needs to be well balanced because ‘there are countless thousands of scientists, teacher, who don’t think that this is accurate.’ CALLER: For the longest time I’ve always been taught that if you really want to know what’s going on, you need both sides of a conversation, both sides of the argument to make an informed — and let me just say that your information that you give out is very well balanced. I cannot find — RUSH: Well, one of the things I’ve — liberals will not call here. I have to sometimes articulate the liberal argument in order to nuke it, because libs will not call here and do it. The ones that do are pretty weak, you know, they’re not really all that well versed and so they’re not good adversaries. CALLER: I have to agree. The last caller you had from my area, he was a nut. RUSH: Well, which one? I mean they all are, for the most part. A couple exceptions to it, but just talk about the balance. ‘Look, my daughter is a skull full of mush, and you’re an authority figure to her,’ you tell the teacher, ‘and she’s going to believe all this stuff, and it’s counter to what I believe, and at least present some reading material from people that don’t agree with this. What are we here to do, teacher, educate or indoctrinate?’ Ask her that. CALLER: I really appreciate your time. RUSH: You bet. You bet. CALLER: You’re doing a good job. Thank you. RUSH: I don’t need to have kids. I’m a surrogate father out there are for gazillions as it is.