RUSH: Here’s Marcy Kaptur yesterday in Toledo, and a portion of her remarks where she is advocating a Second Bill of Rights.
KAPTUR: The Toledo Blade had it right. The other day they printed what they call the Second Bill of Rights. [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt talked about the right to a useful, remunerative job, to provide a decent living. He talked about the right of every business owner to trade with freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. Sound familiar? That’s really why we’re here. We’re here in that legacy. We’re here to say, ‘We are all together in wanting an America that is job rich with health and retirement benefits that are earned and belong to all and are secure!’
RUSH: All right, that’s Marcy Kaptur, calling for the Second Bill of Rights. FDR called for this in 1944. The resemblance to Obama is striking.
ROOSEVELT: We have come to a clearer realization of the fact, however, that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry, people who are out of a job, are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic proofs have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a Second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all, regardless of station or race or creed.
RUSH: This is how long they’ve been fighting for this. They never go away. They never stop. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ For those of you in Rio Linda, ‘necessitous men’ are people that are in of need things. ‘People that are in need are not free.’ Yes, they are! This is setting the stage. The government can eliminate your needs. The government can free you from worry; the government can solve all your problems. This is why I always said FDR — the New Deal, Social Security — was set up precisely to establish the Democrat Party as a majority party for the so-called downtrodden forever, by them wards of the state and then securing their votes because the Democrats are their sole means of support! Here’s another bite from FDR. This is January 11th, 1944.
ROOSEVELT: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industry — our shops, our farms, our mines of the nation. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. The right of every family to a decent home. The right to adequate medical care. The opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. The right to adequate protection from economic fear, from old age and sickness and accident and unemployment. Finally, the right to a good education.
RUSH: This is just an incredible thing, ladies and gentlemen, as you hear FDR basically spell out what the Obama agenda is today: Second Bill of Rights: the right to earn of enough, the right of every family to a decent home, the right to adequate medical care, opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
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RUSH: January 11th, 1944, Franklin Roosevelt. This is a fireside chat, a radio fireside chat, by the way.
ROOSEVELT: America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world. If history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called ‘normalcy’ of the 1920’s — then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of fascism here at home.
RUSH: Folks, are you hearing this? This is just fascinating, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the icon to the left — and by the way, they never say the era of FDR is over, do they? No, we only have numskulls on our side saying the era of Reagan is over. But we never hear FDR is over, and here’s why. They emulate FDR is the guiding light here for Obama. America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens? Well, once again, the world views America, we have to comport ourselves and structure ourselves in such a way that the world views us in a favorable light? For unless there is security here at home, there can’t be lasting peace in the world. If history were to repeat itself, we were to return to the so-called normalcy of the twenties, which he called fascism, the Second Bill of Rights. And, by the way, this concept of the right to earn enough, the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation, what is the right to earn enough? Who’s going to sit there and determine that? It cannot be determined by anyplace other than the market.
Folks, do you understand what the money you earn is? It’s not a welfare payment. It’s not a business owner or manager or corporation deciding to provide you enough income to provide this or that. What we all earn is nothing more than our value. What we earn represents the value of what we have done for somebody else, or for ourselves. You don’t have a right to what that someone else thinks your work is good for, meaning a third party. So here we have Second Bill of Rights, Marcy Kaptur yesterday openly advocating it. We go back and we find FDR from 1944 at a fireside chat, January 11th, basically spelling out the Obama campaign today, and I listen to this, and I realize how consistent these people are. They never stop. They just keep plugging away, and what they’re plugging away for is the single largest oppressive government they can build. When FDR talks about individual liberty, he, like Obama, is simply lying through his teeth. ‘Necessitous men are not free men. Individual freedom cannot not exist without economic security and independence,’ and what he means by that is, of course, if the government doesn’t provide economic security and independence, then there is no individual freedom. That is the biggest crock I have ever heard.
If there is no individual freedom, even for poor people in this country, then how in hell’s name do people escape poverty and make something of themselves and it happens every day in this country, people from all walks of life. There are far more middle class and far more poor people than there are rich people, and most of the wealthy people and most of the highly achieved people — I’m not talking about billionaires, I’m talking about most of the people, the millionaires in your neighborhood, they didn’t start out that way. They came from somewhere, and they did it in the country with the single greatest amount of freedom the individual has ever had in the history of human civilization, the United States of America. Even back in 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was doing his best to water down the basics of the founding of this country. It’s just striking stuff. The battle’s never going to be over, the war is never going to be over because battles are going to be fought continually over and over again, because this is who these people are. You might say, ‘Rush, they’re saying such wonderful things for people. They want economic security, and they want freedom, and they want independence, and they want people to not be hungry and so forth.’ We all want that. We all want the same things. It’s just this is not the way to provide it.
Folks, let me ask you again, we’ve been doing FDR’s method here since FDR. FDR gave us Social Security. FDR set the stage for national health care. History has credited FDR for bringing us out of the Great Depression with these programs. These programs of his prolonged it. What got us out of the Great Depression was World War II and ratcheting up an economy to manufacture the armaments and materiel necessary to fight World War II. Everybody in the country was working around the clock, Rosie the Riveter, as an example. Even women went into factories, which was unheard of, en masse, back then. And since then what have we done? We’ve compounded it. We’ve had the Great Society. We’ve had the War on Poverty. We have had numerous social programs built upon social programs. We’ve had Head Start, we’ve had WIC, we’ve had AFDC. All the money, all the transfers of wealth from the producers to nonproducers should have cured all of these ills, should it not? And yet on a percentage basis we still have the same percentage of people in poverty, the same percentage of people in the lower classes, the middle class, the five quintiles. The percentages are pretty much the same.
None of this stuff has been wiped out, despite all these efforts by the government. The people who have escaped the lower socioeconomic realms in our society are those who did not rely on government to do it! This is the key, this is the important thing. They did not rely on an FDR; they didn’t rely on a Barack Obama; they didn’t rely on an LBJ; they didn’t rely on affirmative action; they didn’t rely on all these redundant programs built atop one another in order to escape whatever it was about their lives they didn’t like. They used themselves. They ended up being their best resource, and I say to you again as I said yesterday, you are your best resource for fulfilling whatever need or desire or ambition you have. Your best resource is not somebody else. I don’t care if it’s your parents, I don’t care if it’s your family, I don’t care if it’s your president. You end up having to do it. If you don’t do it for yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you. Nobody is going to come along and decide that a fair wage for you is $150,000 a year, and that’s what you are automatically going to get paid. That will never, ever happen. I don’t care if Obama gets dictatorial control of this country, that is not going to happen, it cannot happen. That’s not what he wants anyway. He wants all of us in as much need and dependence as he can get us. He doesn’t want prosperity for people. He doesn’t want wealth for people. If he did, there would be no limit on who gets a tax cut.
Your American dream ends at whatever the figure is today, it’s waffling now between $250,000 down to $150,000 in terms of annual income over which you get a tax increase and under which you get a tax cut. The evidence, ladies and gentlemen, is scattered across the world, but it is focused right here in the United States of America. Every effort to provide salvation for economically aggrieved, socially aggrieved groups by the Democrats has been applied. We have spent trillions, we have cared, we have used our compassion, and yet they still exist and they’re still angry, and they’re still hopeless, and they’re still enraged. And guess what? They’re still waiting. They’re still waiting for a magic man to come along and finally do it right. There is no right way to do what FDR tried, what the Democrats are trying now, what Obama wants to try. There’s no right way to do it. The evidence is worldwide that it fails. All around us we see people who have exceeded their own expectations. We see people who have exceeded the expectations of their families. We see people constantly who surprise everybody with their ambition, their work ethic, and their success. Those are the people, by the way, under an Obama presidency who will become the target. They become the object of punishment.
Those who do not go the proscriptions of a government assistance program of any kind get out of whatever circumstance they’re in that they don’t like, they use themselves as a resource, they become successful and prosperous, they open businesses, they hire other people, they try to grow, they do everything they can, they play by the rules as best they can. They, the ones who actually use the individual freedom this country provides that FDR and Obama are lying about, they who actually use the freedom are those who prosper. They are the ones who overcome. Those who sit around and wait for a resource other than themselves to lift them up are forever going to be waiting. If there’s a recession, you don’t necessarily have to participate. If there is high unemployment, you don’t necessarily have to participate. The United States of America is one country where you can create your own job, if you choose. You don’t have to. You can stay on unemployment or whatever and wait for something to come along that you like. Or you may say, ‘I don’t want to leave town, I don’t want to leave where I am,’ fine and dandy. Just understand the limits that all of us place on ourselves are self-imposed, folks.
We’ve all got shackles around us some way or another, we all have government regulations in front of us, or we all have other things we have to overcome. It’s not a free ride and it’s not an easy road but the simple fact of the matter is that there are people who escape their circumstances each and every day, and it’s happened throughout the history of this country, and it’s interesting, those are the people that the Democrat Party wants to target for your hatred. They want you to envy them; they want you to distrust them; they want you to resent them, and they want you to think they need to be punished, while everybody else that gets praised, everybody but the Democrats and the liberals and Obama sit down and say, ‘These are the people that make the country work,’ they’re the ones that are waiting around for Obama to create magic, to wave a magic wand, to help them out of whatever mire they consider themselves to be in. Yet all around them they see people escaping, and they do resent it.
You remain the single best resource you have, and you full well know, after listening to Obama, that the more you succeed, the greater target you will become. Now, is this the kind of country we want? Is this the kind of president we want to have? Is this the kind of party we want dominating one-party rule, that targets successful people and seeks to punish them? I don’t think so.
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RUSH: Flint, Michigan. This is Don. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call today.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: My real concern about FDR’s remarks are the same as Barack Obama’s, that FDR made those remarks while men were dying in Europe defending that very same constitution. So I guess the Democrats, like you said before, have just remained ever so consistent on their theories. I cannot believe that the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces in 1944 had the nerve to have a fireside chat and say that while men were dying in Europe.
RUSH: Well, it’s a great point, but you don’t want to say that FDR sought defeat of his own country. Obama did. You know, that is a fundamental difference between the two. Obama and the Democrat Party of 2007-2008 actively sought defeat of the United States. FDR did not. FDR, with these fireside chats, he knew we were going to win World War II. He was pretty confident. He’s setting the stage for an expanded, bigger government. This is the guy that packed the Supreme Court, or tried to. This is the guy who was doing all of this. All of this was done for the express purpose of establishing the Democrat Party as a monolith that would never, ever, be defeated. He wanted it. Here’s a guy in 1944 looking at the American people and see, ‘They can’t do things on their own. They’re incompetent. They can’t overcome the obstacles out there unless we, the government, are helping them,’ and, of course, nobody overcomes obstacles when the government’s helping you because the government ends up being your largest obstacle.
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RUSH: Some e-mails in the break say, ‘Well, what’s the big deal about the FDR stuff?’ Come on, folks! What’s the big deal about the FDR stuff? We keep hearing about change and hope and a future? There’s nothing new about liberalism. If you, as a voter, have rejected liberalism once in your life, you have a duty to reject it at every opportunity you have. It is a demonstrable failure. It is an attack on individual liberty. It is a system that creates as much misery as possible under the guise of creating compassion and hope. Now, if you found it within yourself to vote against liberalism in 1980 and 1984, I don’t know how you can vote against liberalism and ever go back to it. You don’t have to be an ideologue about all this like I am. All you have to do is be informed.
All you have to do is have to have a memory. Why would you want to repeat what happened with the Jimmy Carter years? ‘Rush, some of us old people would like to recreate the FDR years.’ Hey, you’re living in them! You’re living in them. How many are happy with your Social Security? How many of you think it’s what you thought it was going to be? Where is that second home down in the Bahamas that Social Security and FDR was going to get for you? Where is all this plentiful retirement and security? Where is all this freedom from economic insecurity that FDR promised you with Social Security? Every time I talk to a Social Security recipient and that’s all they’ve got, they don’t have any security about anything. They’re worried to hell it’s going to be cut.
It’s not going to be enough next year, what have you. There’s no security with liberalism. There’s no security to anything they offer. There’s no security in their foreign policy, national security, there’s nothing but chaos! There’s nothing but crisis. There’s nothing but tumult with liberalism. How anybody can vote against it once and keep voting for it after that mystifies me. There’s no change. There’s nothing new here with Barack Obama. It’s rehash. It’s just couched in rhetoric that is somewhat hypnotic. It makes you think that somebody’s new, that we’ve never had a figure trod the ground, the political ground that has this messianic-type aura. It’s a crock. All of this is a crock.
You know, you are either for the concept of individual liberty, prosperity, security, and freedom; or you’re not! And if you don’t want individual liberty, if you don’t want the opportunities that this country provides for yourself and your family economically and socially — if you don’t want your country to be as safe and protected as it could be — then by all means vote Obama, by all means vote for every Democrat you can find. If you really think that economic security is some politician who’s going to make things right, is going to get even with these people who have more than they should, you go ahead and vote liberalism — and you’re going to stay exactly where you are economically, may even get worse, you’re going to be miserable.
Unless of course you’re some Hollywood leftist liberal in a high-earning business where you can afford to stupidly vote to keep other people who are not nearly as fortunate as you are imprisoned in the shackles of mediocrity and misery, because that’s what liberalism produces. I guess this gets to the nub of it for me. You know, I get frustrated sometimes and laugh and am amazed at all this hullabaloo, this rigmarole that’s all around us: ‘Change! Hope!’ as though this country is finished. This country has become a joke; this country has betrayed its people. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the one country that does not betray its people, unless the liberals get unchecked, unfettered control of it. If you want to see what liberals do to populations, go to wherever they have run states or cities, unchecked for years.
I love Detroit, but, folks, you wouldn’t want to move there. You wouldn’t want to move to New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, certainly not afterwards. Some people are, but… The governor of New York is now saying he needs a federal bailout because the drops on Wall Street have affected the salaries of the rich, the salaries of the rich. A lot of people are not doing as well. Bonuses aren’t there. The New York state tax base, the New York City tax base is plummeting. They are going to have a huge budget shortfall and deficit simply because Wall Street — the home of evil, by the way, the home of evil, greedy Wall Street guys — because they’re having a down year, it’s bad news for New York state and New York City.
So while we’re in the midst of a campaign with the very people who have sustained via their taxes the state and city of New York are being demonized and raked over the coals, we now have the governor of that state saying, ‘Hey, I need my hand in that $700 billion bailout stash! New York State, we need to be bailed out here. We’re in serious trouble.’ Well, what the hell you expect, Governor Paterson, when you spend a career and life running around ripping the very people who provide you the money necessary to run that welfare state you call New York? See, folks, this is the irony. The very people that Democrats run against and try to get you as angry at as possible, are the ones supporting all of this; and when they’re unable to for whatever reason, then all of a sudden the federal government’s gotta bail out New York now. The federal government has gotta bail out that bank. The federal government has gotta bail out this business. The federal government has gotta give money to airlines so they can merge, what have you — all the while demonizing the John Galts of the world. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand.
So I don’t understand intellectually and emotionally. I don’t understand how you can vote against liberalism once and not keep voting against it forever. Because once you’ve voted against it, if you’re voting against liberalism, you understand it. ‘But, Rush! Rush, Obama doesn’t sound like a liberal.’ He doesn’t? ‘No, Rush, he’s talking about tax cuts.’ Oh. Good point. Obama, in order to win this thing, has to tack to the right. He has to sound what? He has to make you think he’s a centrist. He has to try to make you think he’s conservative. So, ladies and gentlemen… (sigh) I don’t understand how you can be fooled over and over and over. Not you all specifically.