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RUSH: When you build from the middle-out, you get Detroit. That is exactly what the unions did to Detroit. They took a city that was built by manufacturing giants, they took control for the past 50 years, they had a better way, unions and the Democrats would begin to grow Detroit from the middle out, and look what happened. By the way, I’ve gotta tell you something. I talked about Zev Chafets’ book about Detroit yesterday, what really explains Detroit’s bankruptcy. Zev Chafets published a book in 1990 called “Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit” And I reviewed some of the book. “

I skimmed it, a little book report for you yesterday, and the book focuses on the Mayor Coleman Young as the real culprit in what happened to Detroit, and the fact that, yeah, you can’t deny that liberalism played a large role in Detroit’s failure, unchecked Democrat power, unions as well, the decline of the auto industry, all those are factors, but Zev Chafets’ point in his book is that it was Coleman Young, the mayoralty of Coleman Young single-handedly is responsible — well, nothing is single-handedly, but largely responsible for what happened to Detroit.

Now, the title of Zev’s book, “Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit” — when I mentioned this, Zev’s book was at about one million, ranked one million at Amazon. I mean, it’s 1990, 23 years old. Today Zev’s book is at number 300, after just talking about it yesterday. And they’re thinking they might want to reissue it. Let me just review, for those of you who missed it, because it’s a fascinating take, especially we have just learned that the Detroit city council has demanded, they have passed a proclamation or an ordinance, they’ve unanimously agreed that George Zimmerman must be investigated by the federal government.

The city council of a bankrupt city took the time to debate whether or not the city ought to demand a federal investigation of George Zimmerman.

Oh, and speaking of Zimmerman, the UK Daily Mail has an interesting story. “The family rescued by George Zimmerman after a rollover crash in Florida are terrified they will become targets for hate mobs.” They are not afraid of the Tea Party. They are afraid of Democrat Party and Twitter hate mobs. This has not been reported in the US media that I have seen.

The family name is Gerstel. “Mark and Dana Michelle Gerstle said they do not want to talk publicly about Zimmerman for fear they will be accused of portraying him as a hero Zimmerman pulled the couple and their two children from their car after a terrifying crash on July 17. It was the first time Zimmerman was seen since being acquitted,” in the trial Trayvon Martin’s murder, or death. “Went into hiding after he, his family and attorneys received death threats and thousands protested the verdict. Gerstle family are frightened Zimmerman haters will target them too. ‘They are very grateful to Zimmerman for what he did, but they do not want to get involved.'”


The only reason that they came forward to the extent that they have is because, as predicted, it was all over the Twitterverse and everywhere that this was a staged event. It didn’t really happen. It wasn’t a genuine event, that it was staged to make Zimmerman look good, and it wasn’t. The family has surfaced, but they don’t want to talk publicly about it because they’re afraid they’re gonna be targeted. Amazing. Literally amazing. It’s in the UK Daily Mail.

Now, there’s Obama. Is he being heckled — no, he’s not being heckled. He’s pointing to somebody in the audience. He’s in Galesburg, Illinois. This is the Limbaugh Theorem. What Obama is now doing is he’s going outside Washington. He’s on the campaign trail. He’s talking about the economy as though he’s got nothing to do with it. He’s talking about what we’ve gotta do to get this economy going. We’re into year five of his presidency. His policies have had a horrible impact on the US economy. And he’s out trying to make sure that his base and the low-information voters do not figure that out. He’s now campaigning against what he did and he’s trying to make look like other people are responsible.

He’s now aligned with everybody who’s hurting, and he’s just like they are. He’s trying to fix it. He’s working hard. He’s got these uncooperative Republicans in Washington who don’t care about you, and they’re content to let this economy squander because they think that’s how they can have political victory over Obama. So he’s out on the campaign trail for the next two months. And the purpose of these optics is to make it appear like he has no attachment whatsoever. It’s the Limbaugh Theorem live and in person. And as I say, the media is not falling for it.

Anyway, let me finish this business about Zev’s book, the Devil’s Night and Other True Tales, ’cause I read this — somebody had told me, “Rush, you need to look at this because it’s not just liberalism that did Detroit in; race did Detroit in.” It was race. And you need to understand what really happened. So they directed me or steered me to Zev’s book. And according to the book “Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit,” Detroit was the most racist city in the north for decades, and it wasn’t accidental. The police department in Detroit, by virtue of policy, hired lawmen, police officers and so forth from the south, southern accents and all that, and they gave these guys orders to kick ass. And they did.

The city was completely segregated, and urban renewal, which was a feature of many big cities in the country at the time, urban renewal had the effect of crowding the black population into very small neighborhoods in the city, and the racial tension mounted. In 1967, it boiled over and the black population of Detroit rioted. They burned down and looted entire neighborhoods. This caused the white population of Detroit to flee the city. They got out of there so fast, according to this book, Devil’s Night, they moved into unfinished houses in the suburbs. Some of the houses didn’t even have electricity run to ’em yet. Some didn’t have water lines and so forth, much less furniture and this kind of thing. But it didn’t matter. The riots and the chaos were such that the white population just skedaddled.

This resulted in a depopulation of the city, which actually had started with the building of freeways in the fifties, making it easier to get out of the city. These riots accelerated the exodus and it became a full-fledged exodus from the city. So in 1973 the majority black population of Detroit elected Coleman Young. He was the first black mayor. And Coleman Young — this was something I didn’t know, I mean, I hadn’t even thought about it, but Coleman Young did not come from the civil rights movement. He was not like an Andrew Young in Atlanta or any of the other newly elected black mayors in the seventies.

He didn’t come out of the Martin Luther King movement. He didn’t come out of Selma or any of that. He was a radical of a very, very leftist organization. He’s a tough guy. He was charismatic. He was funny, but he did not turn the other cheek. I mean, he was loaded for bear every day. Every day was a battle. He was not happy unless he was battling somebody. He invented battles. He invented reasons to be at war. That was his mentality. And he was at war with the white population, who he accused of abandoning the city. But he accused them not only of abandoning the city, but then he accused them of trying to run the city from outside the city.

They had fled to the burbs.

So he declared war on what he called the hostile suburbs of Detroit. There were calls after the riots for gun control. He said no way, we’re not having any. I want my people fully armed in this city. So he nixed any gun control on the grounds that it would be dangerous to disarm his people in the face of this white KKK lurking beyond Eight Mile Road. So this ended up discouraging any type of investment in the city, and that investment which did happen had to go through his office. Any investment, growth, whatever, in the city did not happen unless it first went through his office. He turned the police force into his militia. And what he did was set out to create a black city state south of Eight Mile Road. And he called what he was doing the rebellion.

He called the former white administrations occupying powers. The black population of Detroit’s eating this up, folks. Gotta understand, they loved it. They absolutely loved Coleman Young. This was a guy who was at war with the former white leadership of Detroit that had fled the city after the riots and went to the suburbs and he is calling them the KKK lurking beyond Eight Mile occupying powers. He even erected a statue in honor of Joe Louis, which a giant black fist right at the freeway entrance to downtown Detroit.

Anyway, this went on for 20 years. There were 20 years of municipal black nationalism and ideological separatism. And by the time he left, the city was in a shambles. And the book, I mean, this is just a surface report. I didn’t have a chance to read the entire thing. I skimmed it, checked things that looked interesting to me and came up for you with this little book report here, but Detroit’s just the first of many cities that are on this path. They do have things in common: liberalism, control of the city by unions, but the point that this book makes in analyzing what’s wrong with Detroit is that you cannot leave race out of the equation, and in fact it may be the number one reason that Detroit is in the mess that it is in.

So, you know, Detroit, the legacy of Coleman Young, I mean, he got rich, and he was happy. As far as he was concerned, this was the pinnacle of his career, but he left a city with no tax base, no budget, no funds, no services, no schools, hardly any employment, a fleeing middle class where people were just running as fast as they could to get out of town. And a city, now bankrupt, is being run by Republican governor by virtue of all this, which is a great irony. Anyway, “Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit,” by Zev Chafets.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, don’t misunderstand, folks. I’m not trying to deemphasize liberalism as a cause for what happened in Detroit, because racial tension is liberalism. Race wars are liberalism. Race wars happen because of liberalism, and if they’re not caused by, they certainly are encouraged. The flames of race wars are fanned by liberals. The two are inseparable. But the point of Zev’s book is it would be to miss the point just to chalk it all up to liberalism. You have a card-carrying communist as a mayor who wanted a black nationalist, separatist city that was really done in by his leadership, and that was all brought about by the riots in 1967.

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