RUSH: You know, folks, time for a little philosophy here. Government’s role… You look at the Constitution; you read the Constitution. Government’s role is to secure liberty, not seize it. As is stated in the Declaration of Independence, in fact, Americans are ‘endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.’ We all know that phrase. But what follows is just as important. Here’s the whole thing. ‘Americans are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,’ da da da. To secure the right to life, to secure the right to liberty, to secure the pursuit of happiness. ‘To secure these rights governments are instituted….’ The United States government’s purpose is to secure our unalienable rights, not seize them, as socialized medicine certainly does.
That’s self-evident to a majority of Americans and because of that we’re being force-fed a diet of lies from the alleged guardians of our freedom. The object of nationalizing the relationship between a doctor and patient and putting the government in the middle of it does not bring the object of government, securing our rights, any nearer. Obama’s attempt to seize control of the healthcare industry will put our rights at a greater distance. Barack Obama feels that is the power of the office of the president. He feels it. He forgets the rights of the people. Our liberties are sacred yet we find them being treated with all the concern of the swatting of a fly by our own president and his political party. The cost of healthcare is a concern to people, but it’s a red herring as it relates to the relationship of the US government to those who have granted them the privilege as guardians of present and future liberties; i.e., our elected officials.
The president and this Congress are behaving as captors and oppressors. Not only in healthcare, but this whole cap and trade BS, and this must not stand. Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address that the president was to lead, quote, ‘a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government and this is necessary to close the circle of our happiness.’ Now, most of these are felicities, but happiness? Most Americans are not happy with the state of affairs in Washington. In fact, most are outraged and are frightened. Under this administration, our pursuit of happiness has grounded to a complete halt and it’s been replaced with a pursuit of survival.
James Madison, the speech delivered in 1788 in favor of the federal constitution, said: ‘Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgments of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent or sudden usurpations.’ It’s amazing. Every time you go back and consult Founding Fathers, you find that their wisdom was timeless. Their ability to foresee the future was incomparable. Liberty is the birthright of every American. The usurpation of liberty — whether it be by nationalized healthcare or taxing the energy we need to live — that’s a seizure of liberty. That’s a usurpation of liberty under the false pretense of providing security or ‘saving the planet.’
Economic security is the role of the private sector. Economic security is the role of the individual. Economic security is the role of a person born with liberty exercising that liberty to secure whatever he can for himself and his family in life. The safety and defense of the country is the role of federal government. Economic security is not. Barack Obama is on a relentless march to weaken the private sector, to deplete it of money and capital, to seize control of our lives. His words may not convey that. His actions, however, establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I am the foreman of this jury and the verdict is guilty as charged. Barack Obama and the Democrat Party are usurping the liberty of American citizens. See, I think that there are millions of Americans who know in their hearts and minds what Barack Obama and Democrats are doing is wrong.
I know it. The revulsion that most Americans feel when it comes to socialized medicine comes from the instinctive feeling and understanding in a concept of liberty. We know the difference between securing liberty and seizing it. So the answer is, ‘No, we won’t.’ Our personal liberty is not for sale and it’s not up for a vote. It’s our birthright. We’ve made the mistake of electing somebody who thinks his job as president is to secure his power by seizing our liberty. Members of his party agree with this, and this is the foundational building block of virtually everything that you hear them talking about. I don’t care if it’s immigration reform, cap and trade, nationalized healthcare, the stimulus bill. All of this stuff is designed to… Look, folks, it’s very simple.
Look at the cap-and-trade bill. All it’s going to do is take away more of your disposable income by raising the cost of energy. Energy is something that everybody needs. It’s like food. When you raise the cost exorbitantly on a need like energy, you are going to rob people of disposable income. When you rob people of their disposable income, you’re robbing them of their liberty. You’re making them more and more dependent on something other than themselves to just get by. And if we have a nation of people who are just trying to get by, we are going to cease being America and there will be no such thing as American exceptionalism. I’m not even going to talk about Obama’s motives. They’re not important to me. I know what they are. But I can just tell you that Obama looks out across this country as a giant pot of gold.
He can go get it — from here, there — and he thinks that somehow it’s going to be magically replaced once he grabs it, because his policies are smarter than anybody in the private sector. You know, he’s never run a damn thing in his life. All he’s done is agitate people. He’s never ever run anything. So he can seize little bits of the private sector here, a large chunk of it there. Transfer the power of that particular entity to the federal government where everybody is a brilliant individual, can make it work better than anybody in the private sector. Of course it never works. And to him the private sector is never going to be depleted. There’s always going to be some more of it to grab and put under his control. It really doesn’t matter why. All you have to do is come to grips and admit that is what’s happening. And it’s time to say, ‘No, he won’t,’ when he starts to gin up this whole little chant, ‘Yes, we can.’