RUSH: Bethesda, Maryland, this is Bob. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, it’s a pleasure talking to you, sir.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Thank God for you and thank God for George W. Bush. I’m a long-time listener of yours, and I was a member of the 82nd Airborne back in the Korean War, and I’m recovering from a stroke. (laughs) It’s pretty difficult watching this TV with how they treated General Petraeus. I remember as a young kid when I was in the 82nd and went through that, and I looked up to these veteran officers that fought in all the major airborne drops in World War II, and you just admired them, you know, because they were such great men. To see what happened in Washington this week really saddens me as an American. I love this country, and to see it going downhill like this, it’s just… It’s really hard on me.
RUSH: Well, you’re joined by millions of Americans, but you have a unique perspective, having been in the 82nd Airborne in Korea.
CALLER: Yeah, it was a fun time, but, you know, it was a time that… It had its rough days. The kids over in Iraq right now are going through hell.
RUSH: Let me ask you a historical question about that.
CALLER: Yes, sir?
RUSH: Because I was not — I’m too young to remember. The Korean War, I don’t know anything about it, except the history books and what my dad said about it, but what I’m reading about it, that Harry Truman was treated pretty much like George W. Bush is being treated today, that he was incompetent for the way this was going, and it was a lost cause, and so forth. Do you remember it that way?
CALLER: Oh, sure. Yeah. Truman, you know, will go down as one of our great presidents, and he was lambasted like George W. is, and they’re both great leaders, you know?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Truman had more courage than people give him credit for.
RUSH: Well, Truman’s legacy was not established ’til long after he died.
CALLER: Darn right.
RUSH: When the people who wrote his history were not even born when he was going through his problems, and that’s what I’ve always said was going to happen to Bush.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: The true history of the Bush administration will be written by people who have yet to even be conceived.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But I agree with you. This was a low point for me in my life. I’m sure worse has happened in this country, the Civil War period, but it was a low point for me in my life to see of a decorated four-star general in full military dress uniform, duty, honor, country, all the things that you military people swear to.
CALLER: Just everything this country stands for. You know, he’s such a great soldier, and he devoted his whole life to this country.
RUSH: He’s a Ph.D. He’s a brilliant.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: He has written the book, the American operations manual on defeating counterinsurgencies. To have a bunch of arrogant blowhards insult him by saying he’s come up there to lie to them, and they’re not going to buy anything he says, that is a low point for me.
CALLER: Well, Rush, you know, we came to Washington. We moved from California, and we came to be with my wife’s… She just turned a hundred years old, and her husband was a bird colonel and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was buried at Arlington with full military honors, and going through that, I just marveled. It was just awesome, you know? And to think of these people sitting in those chairs and talking that way to one of our best, it really tore me up.
RUSH: Well, it should. It should. And they sit there and talk as though they are military experts. They know more than Petraeus. This is what bothers me about them, Bob, when they start talking about how they need to be the ones who manage the health care system. Really? Their experience in it is…? There are health care professionals out there and they don’t know diddly-squat about what they’re doing, so we need people like John Edwards in charge of it? As angry and as many jokes people make about the inefficiency of government and so forth, why in the world would hire anybody in government to take on something really serious and important? What are the résumé qualifications? What is it that just because someone gets elected, it makes ’em an expert in the American health care system or the American energy program? I know they write legislation and so forth, but you remember when Cheney had meetings early on in the Bush administration with energy executives, Democrats suspected a crime was taking place. The meetings were private because there’s separation of powers: legislative branch, executive branch, judicial branch. The separation of powers. They sued Cheney to find out what was going on in the meetings. They got nowhere because the case had no merit, but they suspected a crime going on. If you take a look at liberal Democrats’ enemies lists, you will find the backbone of America on it.
You’ll find the American corporate structure, the people and companies and organizations that provide the jobs that create the wealth that produce the products, food and services that run rings around anybody else in the world, and those are the people the Democrats are aiming for. Now, why? They’re aiming for them because they want to control all those industries, ultimately, and tell them what to do. You doubt me? They’re already telling Detroit what kind of cars they can and can’t make with these stupid mileage standards. Now they’re going into the restaurant food business. I had this for you yesterday. The city council of LA has put a moratorium in south Los Angeles on new fast food restaurants because in their view there’s already too many there, and the people that live there have no choices because all they have is fast food. So they go there and they get fat, and they get sick, and they die, and so forth, and the city council is going to protect them. If you think these people are not about total control, you’re going to have to come to grips with it. That’s their agenda. If they were to ever pull it off, folks, it’s going to take years to happen, but it’s been going on for quite a while, and health care is a great example. They have convinced people that health care is a constitutional right that ought not cost anything, because we’re human beings, and health is something that ought to be as God-given as our Creation. They’ve got people thinking that: health care is not their responsibility, their personal responsibility, when it should be. That’s the way to bring market forces into it and bring prices down to something more that’s reasonable. We can’t have that because that would mean independence for the American people, and Democrats want to control ’em.