RUSH: Here’s Matt in Freeland, Pennsylvania, as we get to the phones in the first hour. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hello Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: I just wanted to say that, you know, I think the president might have somewhat of a point because of my experience. I worked for the state of Pennsylvania taking care of intellectual disabled individuals for 26 years. One of the guys that I took care of, his mom and dad ran a family restaurant. A very successful restaurant. And, you know, they told me many times that if it wasn’t for the state and for people like me that helped take care of their son, they wouldn’t be able to work 14-16 hours a day in a restaurant business. And, you know, I don’t think it’s right to minimize public employees and the vital services that we provide. You know, I… You know, I was told by these people —

RUSH: Nobody’s minimizing what you do. What we’re not gonna do is give you credit for what you didn’t do. Now, you can sit out there and say all you want that you helped these two restaurant owners focus on their business by taking care of whatever. You got paid for it. That wasn’t sweat labor. You got paid for it. You chose to do what you did. Nobody made you do it, unless your parents thought you weren’t going anywhere and made you do something and you had to take it.

But for all intents and purposes, you chose to do what you did; the restaurant people chose to do what they did. Everybody goes into this knowing full well what’s involved. You didn’t run the restaurant. You didn’t invest in the restaurant! You didn’t have anything to do with running the restaurant. You might have gone there and eaten, but that was it. You do not get credit for that. You get credit for what you did, your own choice. But nothing more.

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RUSH: Okay. I checked the e-mail. And a couple of people said, “Rush, I understand what you’re trying to say to the poor guy from Pennsylvania, but why did you have to sound so mean?” Folks, I coulda sounded a lot meaner. I’m just kidding. I didn’t intend to sound mean. I was being passionate. I guess I will elaborate.

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RUSH: Would you back up the transcription there to the call we had from Pennsylvania? Because I got e-mails, as I mentioned, of people who thought that I was mean. Can you back it up or not? There we go. They thought I was mean to the guy, and I want to read to you exactly what he said. He said, “I think the president might have somewhat of a point because of my experience. I worked for the state of Pennsylvania taking care of intellectually disabled individuals for 26 years.

“And one of the guys that I took care of, his mom and dad ran a family restaurant — a very successful restaurant. You know, they told me many times that if it wasn’t for the state and for many people like me that helped take care of their son, they wouldn’t be able to work 14-16 hours a day in their restaurant. And, you know, I don’t think it’s right to minimize public employees and the vital services that we provide. You know, I was told by these people…”

So people thought I was being mean when I reacted. This is the problem: I was passionate. I didn’t have a whole lot of time. I had to say a lot quickly before we went into a hard break. But the call really kind of makes the point. Now, this guy, all I did was spell out exactly what happened. This guy worked for the state. He babysat intellectually disabled people. He was paid for it, I presume. Why else was he there? I think what happened was that the restaurant owners were simply appreciative.

They were thanking him. They were just expressing gratitude, which is fine and dandy. But that’s as far as it goes. Who paid his salary? His salary is paid for by taxes, including the taxes of the people that owned the restaurant, unless for some reason the restaurant owners were excused from paying taxes. So they helped pay his salary with their taxes from the restaurant. But the point is, nobody made him do what he was doing. He chose to go into that business. He did not run the restaurant.

He didn’t invest in the restaurant. He didn’t take a risk in the restaurant. He didn’t have anything to do with the restaurant! What Obama is coming along and telling people like him is (impression), “See those restaurants owners over there? They couldn’t have done it without you, and what did you get out of it? Well, you sat around with their intellectually disabled kid while they were out there making millions! While they’re out there using the roads and bridges and everything!

“And, by the way, these business owners probably don’t offer health care.” (I don’t want to get sidetracked with that.) The point is that Obama is out there trying to make these guys think that they are responsible for a successful restaurant! Now, nobody can deny we’re all in this together. And nobody — at least I’m not — is trying to say anything different than that. But you also don’t start assigning credit where it’s not deserved. This guy, the guy who babysat the intellectually disabled kid?

I’m sure there are other people in society, in business who enabled him to do what he did. Taxpayers, everybody going to work paid his salary via taxes. He worked for the state! Where does this stuff stop? If you want to start crediting people for things they didn’t do, where does it stop? You have to realize what the objective here is. Obama is not trying to make people feel appreciated. Obama is not trying to say that you deserve more what you have. He wants you to conclude that, but what Obama is pushing for is the notion that there is no individual anywhere.

There’s no self-made success. There’s no mention of individual success.

Basically, nobody is anything other than a number, and that government makes it all possible.

Folks, this is tyranny!

The dehumanization of a society is tyranny.

What Obama is talking about is the dehumanization of our culture, particularly in the business world. That’s why this matters. That’s why this is important. We can dissect this policy-wise, we can dissect this ideologically, but I’d just as soon look at it in real-world terms. This is about denying that people have anything unique about themselves. We’re all in it together. Nobody’s any different, any better, any worse than anybody else. Government’s the great equalizer. Government’s the great benevolent.

Now, I didn’t mean to sound mean to this guy. When I am attempting to be pervasive… you know what people thought was mean? When I said, “Well, you didn’t have one thing to do with that restaurant.”

“You don’t have to say it that way, Mr. Limbaugh. You don’t have to sound so –“

Well, the truth is the truth. The people that ran the restaurant ran the restaurant. They invested in the restaurant. They had everything in the world to do with it. The idea that they didn’t? Why are we only focusing on businesspeople and trying to discredit what they do? Let’s turn this around. What if I were to say, “All of you people that work in nursing homes, you are meaningless, you are worthless. What makes you feel so special?” That’s what Obama’s doing here to people in the business community. That’s what he wants you to think about people who have been successful in business.

And I just want you to realize, it’s not me, nor is it any conservative I know that seeks to denigrate any work at all. We promote it; we want to reward it; we want to encourage it; we consider it valorous, in fact. It is the Democrats, it’s Obama who is attempting to impugn the work of many people. To discredit it, to deny it, and to get people resentful of it. It’s not us. It’s not us discriminating. In fact, that might be a good word for what’s happening. There is discrimination being practiced by Obama at the highest levels of government against people who succeed.

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RUSH: One more thing about this, folks, and it is very, very important, and it’s getting lost in all this. There is a belief. The left, Obama, are responsible for injecting a premise into this argument that the rich, the business owner, is not paying for the roads and bridges. According to Obama and the way he’s out speaking to people, you have a successful business owner here who has got his factory. Everybody else built the roads leading to his factory and everybody else is babysitting his intellectually disabled kid, and he didn’t pay for any of this. And that is absurd. If it weren’t for, for example, in the call from Pennsylvania, if it weren’t for that restaurant and other businesses like it, we couldn’t afford to pay people to babysit the intellectually disabled. If it weren’t for that restaurant, that guy caring for the intellectually disabled kid wouldn’t have a job.

If it weren’t for that restaurant, and if it weren’t for other businesses, there would not be a road. If it weren’t for the businesses and wealth-producing, income-producing institutions in this country, there would not be a bridge. And yet the premise is that all these successful people, man, they’re just raping us. Not only are we building their roads and bridges, they’re not paying for that. They’re stealing our labor. They’re stealing our brains. They’re stealing everything and they’re not paying us for anything. And all of this, as I say, all of this is by design. This is to eliminate the entire concept of the individual or the self-made man. You wouldn’t have roads and bridges without that restaurant owner and other businesses, and you wouldn’t have a state facility to babysit the intellectually disabled without the restaurant owner, ’cause the government wouldn’t have any money without those businesses. It’s just that simple.

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RUSH: How many welfare recipients have built roads? How many trial lawyers have built roads? How many judges have built roads? How many radio talk show hosts have built roads? You know what’s getting lost in all the talk about building roads is who actually builds them. Folks, we’re gonna have to stay focused, because this is getting perverted now. And I will admit to you, I am surprised — actually, I’m not. I was gonna say I’m surprised it’s lasted this long, but I’m not. And it deserves to last this long and it deserves to last as long as it takes to get rid of these people. Because this is hideous.

This is tyranny. This is the subjugation of the individual, the subordination of the individual to the state, this effort to wipe out this whole concept of self-made man. Remember when that was such a thing to aspire to? And don’t doubt me. It still is. It still is. Obama is nowhere near representing a majority of people in this country. Nowhere near it. I know it’s frightening to think that he does, it’s scary. Things are falling apart, and people don’t want the country to fall apart. It’s not what the people of this country want. It’s not what they elected. They didn’t elect somebody to preside over the country decaying in front of their eyes.