RUSH: To Stanton, Michigan, or what’s left of it, anyway. This is Dawn, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. I would like to address the lady who wanted to know what smart is. I consider myself very intelligent. I’m not very smart. The person who walks off the curb into the line of traffic and has to run back to the curb to be safe is smart. The person who looks both ways first before crossing the street is intelligent. I pray that your intelligence sees us through this mess that all of our men fought for in World War II.
RUSH: Now wait, you’re really taking this seriously, and I find this fascinating. William F. Buckley wrote a piece for Playboy back in the eighties and it was entitled, ‘Redefining Smart,’ and his premise was, he calculated at what point during the course of human civilization was it possible to know everything man knew, and at what point was it simply impossible to keep up with all of the new knowledge that was charted and published, at what point did it become impossible for somebody to know everything that was known. Well, that happened long ago, many, many centuries ago. It is impossible to know everything, so the question, ‘Who’s smart?’ Would you go through that again? Because you said somebody that dashes into traffic, sees a car coming, and comes back is smart.
CALLER: Right. But the person who stands on the curb and looks both ways to see what traffic is moving is intelligent. That doesn’t mean stand there for an hour.
RUSH: No, I understand. But what’s smart about dashing into traffic? Oh, you mean without looking?
CALLER: Yeah, exactly.
RUSH: Oh. Well, that’s dumb.
CALLER: Of course it is. Smart people are pretty dumb.
RUSH: I see what you’re saying.
CALLER: I hope so.
RUSH: Right. Well, see, I think groupthink is the absolute antithesis to smartness and intelligence, and that’s what Ivy Leaguers come out with. They are groupthinkers, liberals are groupthinkers, they come out thinking the same way, they have the same worldview. It’s astounding how identical they all are. Isn’t it astounding how identical all liberals are in what they think, what they say and how they say it, and how they arrive at what they believe and how they refute what they don’t believe? It’s identical, no matter who it is. It could be Obama, it could be Bill Ayers, it could be Jeremiah Wright, it could be some toad on a blog. They are identical in what they believe, cause they feel it, they’re identical in how they say it. Well, they’re not all college graduates, but it is what college is for. It’s to conform. It’s to take all these budding young individualists and bend ’em and shape ’em and flake ’em and form ’em. Here, let me play a couple sound bites for you. This is fascinating. Last night on Larry King Live, Penn Jillette who is a renowned magician, and he’s also a Libertarian, he was on with Terry Holt, a Republican consultant, or was, and the intriguing, struggling very hard mightily against formidable odds, Stephanie Miller, who is said to be a liberal radio talk show host but one must have an audience, and it’s debatable.
I was on instant message last night, and somebody sent me a note incredulous that MSNBC had hired another full-fledged liberal. The note said, ‘They’re going to have trouble. If this administration steps in it, if there’s a Lewinsky-type thing, their audience is gonna vanish ’cause they’re not going to be able to defend it.’ And I said, ‘Their audience is so small at MSNBC that if they lost it all it wouldn’t make that big a difference.’ So, anyway, these are the guests. Stephanie Miller, who always has the kindest and most insightful warm things to say about me, Larry King, ditto, and Penn Jillette. This is a couple sound bites here about individualism, interestingly enough. Larry King, every one of his guests who he thinks is not liberal, he asks, ‘Penn, do you want Obama to succeed?’
JILLETTE: Well, the nice thing about hoping is that it doesn’t work, so that you don’t have to worry very much about what you’re hoping. If what succeeding means is taking away — giving too much of a safety net so that we can’t live like Vegas, there’s no reason to gamble if you can’t lose, and I think it’s really important that people have a chance to win and to fail, and I think too much of a safety net, it’s just less fun to live.
RUSH: And he’s exactly right. Obama is trying to tell people he’s going to have a warranty for them, a lifetime warranty against failure. It’s like promising you’re going to go to Vegas and you won’t lose. Nobody else is going to win, either. Your feelings won’t be hurt because nobody else is going to win, but you aren’t gonna lose. And Penn Jillette is saying we can’t do that, can’t do that. So this brought the following question from Larry King, ‘Stephanie, do you want him to succeed no matter what the success brings?’
MILLER: Rush Limbaugh said if Obama fails, America wins. How does that make sense to any rational person? You know —
JILLETTE: Depends on what you want.
KING: If his programs brought about health insurance that pleased all, taxes that pleased most, a better way of life for a lot of people, then that’s the kind of success you would think you’d like.
JILLETTE: If you please everybody on anything you’re doing something wrong. But luckily there’s no chance of that. I just think that individuals are more important than a whole kind of groupthink and that individuals can do more than a top down kind of thinking. I don’t think the government can solve all our problems or should try.
HOLT: Amen.
KING: We do have 300 million people. You can be individuals as much as you like —
MILLER: We do.
KING: — but somebody’s gotta think for the masses.
RUSH: Somebody’s gotta think for the masses. Larry King. Stephanie, what is so difficult to understand? It’s entirely rational if Obama fails, America wins. ‘Limbaugh said it, it’s gotta be extremely outrageous and obscene, forget it.’ Why don’t you stop and think about it for just a second, instead of having a knee-jerk reaction. What does it actually mean for Obama, if Obama is going to run the automobile business? It’s ridiculous to have to waste time running through this. If Obama is going to sincerely dent the engine of productivity that made this country great, what in the world is successful about that? (impersonating King) ‘Well, somebody’s gotta think for the masses. We got 300 million people, you can be an individual all you want.’ No, we can’t, Larry, that’s the whole point. We can’t be individual all we want. For crying out loud, Larry, we got people feeling guilty that they have jobs, who the hell do you think is enforcing that kind of thing? Guilty if we have a job, ‘I feel so bad, whaaa! I can’t talk about it, whaaa!’
Anyway, Penn Jillette, a lone voice of reason on Larry King Alive. (impersonating King) ‘We have 300 million people, somebody’s gotta think for the masses.’ Amen. There you have it. Need somebody to think for you, you idiots, you dumb rear ends, you are too stupid to think for yourselves, you are too dense to come up with the right answers. We have to think for the masses. I want to know at what point in American history that happened. When did that start, Lar? Take me from the Constitution forward, when did somebody think for the masses? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, you might be able to say FDR did. Boy, those are miserable times for people that were alive. We don’t want to say that, of course, because that’s not politically correct. By the way, Dawn was calling from — (interruption) what’s the matter? What did I do now? Okay, okay, okay. She gets looks on her face, I say, ‘Oh, no, what did I do now?’ It wasn’t me. Snerdley said something in there. Dawn, the caller was calling from Michigan, right, Stanton, Michigan? She didn’t catch that. I said, what’s left of Stanton, Michigan. There’s a reason for that.
This is from the Detroit News. Headline says it all: ‘Leaving Michigan Behind: Eight-Year Population Exodus Staggers State’ — Outflow of skilled, educated workers crimps Michigan’s recovery. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving — young, well-educated high-income earners — are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.’ Why are they leaving? Snerdley, where are they leaving? Jennifer Granholm. In the last two to three decades, could somebody name for me what party governed Michigan for the vast majority of the past 20, 30 years? What party governed Detroit for as long back as anybody can remember? Democrats. A teachable moment here. In this whole story there’s not one mention of high taxes. There’s not one mention of high taxes here. Crumbling education, crumbling infrastructure, crime, and now the government taking over General Motors — so more Democrats running that industry.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, folks, I normally don’t do this. Those of you who listen regularly to this program know this, but I’m going to make a brief departure. I’m going to address again both Stephanie Miller and Larry King. Normally people talk about me and I just leave them alone, because everybody does — and if all I did was respond to people who talk about me, that’s all we would do here, and we still couldn’t squeeze it all in in three hours. But Stephanie Miller on Larry King Alive last night said, ‘Rush Limbaugh said, ‘If Obama fails, America wins.’ How does that make any sense to any rational person, y’know?’
Stephanie, let me explain it so that you might understand it. Remember all those times, Stephanie, that you said that you wanted Bush to succeed? Do you remember, Stephanie, all those times you said you wanted Bush to get his tax cuts passed and you wanted his tax cuts to succeed? Do you remember, Stephanie, all of his Supreme Court nominations? Do you remember how you advocated for his Supreme Court nominations to succeed, Stephanie? Stephanie, I remember you were one of the most prominent supporters of the war in Iraq. You were hoping President Bush succeeded! You wanted President Bush’s war in Iraq to succeed. I remember that, Stephanie. Didn’t you say all of this, Stephanie? It’s axiomatic presidents, whatever they do, must succeed? It’s irrational…?
That’s what we say about kings, Stephanie. We want kings to succeed. We want our slave masters to succeed. But we’re a representative republic, and we have separation of powers. What sane person wouldn’t have wanted Bush to succeed, Stephanie? What sane person wouldn’t? And, Larry, for you, as for somebody ‘thinking for the masses…’ I love this. Larry, we are not masses. We’re individuals! We live in a society governed under a Constitution that protects the individual from the government. Larry, you might want to educate yourself about your country and its history and educate yourself on freedom. But do you know what’s the funniest thing about Larry King saying (doing King impression), ‘Somebody’s gotta think in d’masses’? Larry King doesn’t think he’s the masses. See, he’s an elitist. But the masses are you faceless dorks who can’t fend for yourself.
‘You need the health care, and you need people paying your mortgage!’ But Larry King, he’s not the masses. Larry, let me give you a clue: to Barack Obama, you are no different than anybody else in ‘the masses.’ You are to be controlled; you are to be made subject to the whims of government and the administration. This is what I find most hilarious about this. All these elitists saying, ‘Somebody gotta think for d’masses!’ Larry, you are the masses. With this bunch of… You think you’re exempted ’cause you’re one of them. You think you’re exempt because you’re a good liberal you work in the media you work at CNN. You. Are. The. Masses. You just don’t think so. You don’t sound any different than any other liberal anywhere. There’s nothing to differentiate you from any other liberal. You’re not alone. You are the masses. You’re a robot! I saw the Japanese are going to put some robots up on the moon. So? Obama’s got 300 million robots in America! Who needs them on the moon?