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We’re Witnessing the Massive Failure of Liberalism

by Rush Limbaugh - Jun 5,2020

RUSH: There also, ladies and gentlemen, you know, one of the themes that I have been on for a long time, but I’ve been intensely trying to drive home a point for the last two weeks, three weeks, and that is the utter failure of the Democrat Party to come through for its constituents. You’ve heard me say this I don’t know how many times. Maybe you’re a little tired of hearing me say it. The Democrat Party has been promising utopia. And yet where is all this police brutality happening? In Democrat blue states.

It’s so bad that they’re now seriously gonna defund police departments in Minneapolis, in New York, and in California. Liberalism is on record here as a total failure, folks. Socialism on record, on display, is a total failure. The Democrat Party, which is the home of all of that, on display as a public massive failure. Everything they have been promising their constituents are things for 50 years their constituents still have grievances about, their constituents are still complaining.

Look at civil rights. You have the Civil Rights Act 1964, 1965, LBJ and the Democrats going nuts, massively passing all this legislation to end inequality, to end discrimination, and yet what? It’s worse now than ever. It is worse than ever. The Democrat Party and liberalism and their prescriptions are worse than ever. It is an abject, total failure.

And so what have they had to do? Well, now they give back. They can’t blame themselves, obviously, which we all should. They are ultimately responsible. The Democrat Party (liberalism, leftism, communism, socialism, whatever) is an abject, total failure for the people who’ve been promised all of these wonderful benefits and utopian-type lifestyles.

So now what do they do to cover up their failure, which is a failure of over 50 years? Why, we gotta go back 400 years and we gotta blame America. We gotta blame America’s founding. America’s founding is itself unjust and immoral, and that’s where the real problem lies. America is irredeemable! America’s original sins, whatever they are — slavery, leaving other people out — can’t be fixed.

Why? Well, because the Democrat Party has been trying to fix ’em for 50 years and they failed, so obviously it can’t be fixed, and this is where we are. This is how they’re covering their own butts with their own people, their own voters. They can’t admit that what they believe in is a failure. They can’t admit that their ideas don’t work and haven’t worked.

So it’s the old fallback: Blame America and blame Republicans. Well, the reason I bring all this up is because I missed something yesterday that people called my attention to. It’s a Wall Street Journal column by Daniel Henninger, and the headline is: “Liberalism Has Failed, 50 years…” No, no. No. No, wait. That’s the headline I wrote. “America’s New Nihilism” is the headline.

You know what nihilism is, right? These intellectuals use these terms. Nihilism — nihilism, however you pronounce it — is a rejection of all religious and moral principles, and that’s what the left believes in. The left doesn’t believe in religion. They don’t believe in God, and they don’t want you believing in religion or God, and they certainly don’t believe in morality.

Morality, to them, is however each individual defines it. You don’t have the right to define morality! You… Nobody has the right to tell them what’s right and wrong. They get to do that. Well, that’s nihilism or nihilism, and this is also part of the way they’re covering up for their massive failure. Anyway, Henninger writes about this massive failure, and he traces it back…

You can go further than this, but he traces it back to 1968 and the protests in Chicago by the anti-war left against the Democrat Party, the convention, the DNC and all that. But it is really good. It’s really good, and I’m sorry I missed it, because I would have touted it yesterday, had I seen it. His column runs on Thursday. You may remember me talking when it came out.

Do you remember the Wall Street Journal headline or op-ed…? Actually, it was an editorial, meaning it wasn’t signed, and it was about how we’ve lost our guardrails? Henninger wrote that. Henninger wrote it. It’s rare for an unsigned editorial to have a life span like that one has. The guardrails are, you know, the things that keep us in the lanes: Morality and decency and right and wrong.

His piece was about the guardrails are plummeting, the guardrails are failing — the guardrails are falling, they’re disappearing — all because of liberalism and the Democrat Party. But, folks, it is so true, and it makes what’s happening now all the more hurtful and incredible because they have convinced all these young Millennial kids.

A lot of wealthy, white Millennials have joined Antifa. So they’ve convinced all these people of things that are not true, and they’ve convinced them to be angry at people they have no reason to be angry at — such as me, you and me. But it’s a mean trick to keep people — it’s a pretty good trick to keep people — fired up and wired up over something that has never worked.

But the point is that the Democrat Party, as it is constituted and as it is functioning today, all of this that’s happening that’s in relationship to the George Floyd murder, it’s all a failure. The fact that George Floyd was murdered is a testament to the failure of liberal Democrat politics. Where did it happen?

This kind of racism and bigotry and ugly behavior by the cops, the Democrats are supposed to have fixed that, right? I mean, that’s what the Democrat Party promises. There isn’t gonna be any of that stuff anymore. There isn’t gonna be any meanness. There isn’t gonna be any extremism where Democrats run the show, where Democrats rule the roost because that’s where there’s gonna be fairness, and equality, and sameness and all that.

And yet the worst examples of Americans’ depravity, the worst examples of America’s economic failing, the worst examples of America’s lack of morality are to be found right smack-dab in the middle of Democrat Party institutions, platforms, and existence.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, back to the Daniel Henninger piece — and, folks, this is a hugely important thing. You know, this program is about the way people vote. This program is about changing minds and hearts. This program is about being in the arena of ideas and having a chance to reach people who both agree and disagree, but primarily among those who disagree, to reach them in a way to cause them to question what they think.

Not by lying to them. Not by tricking them. Not by using them or humiliating them. Simply giving them a truth that they have not been exposed to, or series of them. The failure of liberalism is what’s on parade here! The failure of the Democrat Party — the failure of the Civil Rights acts and the civil rights coalition, the failure of liberalism and socialism and communism — is on display with every riot, every protest march, every burned cop car, every torn-down building, every building set afire.

Every bit of evidence you see is a testament to the failure of liberalism, not to its success. It isn’t working. Its people are not happy. Its voters are not satisfied. They are not content. They’re not even close to content, much less happy. They are perennially enraged. They are constantly angry. And it makes perfect sense because every promise that’s been made has been broken. Every promise that’s been made has not been kept. And the promises are big.

I mean, you can’t promise much more than utopia. They have promised to eliminate cops killing black people. They have promised to eliminate racial discrimination against African-Americans and minorities. They have promised to eliminate people laughing at you and making fun of you. They have promised to get even with people who are mean-spirited and angry. They’ve promised to get even with all these people who have more money than you. They have promised they’re gonna get even with all these corporations, these multinationals that don’t hire you, and they overcharge you, and they cause you to lose your health care. They’re gonna get even with all of it.

And they don’t get even with anybody. And they don’t fix anything. And the people that vote for ’em know it. There’s a witness. They got witnesses. Fifty years of abject, total failure. The mystery is why they keep voting for ’em. We know the answer. Because they have convinced them that we are whatever, the worst examples of whatever can be. The popular comparison today is Nazis. We’re the modern incarnation of Nazis and Trump in Charlottesville, he said there are good people everywhere, including in the neo-Nazis, good things in the Klan. The Ku Klux Klan is a Democrat Party operation, folks. It always has been.

The Ku Klux Klan was the military wing of the Democrat Party back during the worst of the segregation days, and it was Democrat senators who led the segregation movement. And the Klan was their violence organization. Robert “Sheets” Byrd, a Grand Kleagle or Grand Cloogle or Grand Wizard, or whatever, now he’s a U.S. senator. Well, he’s not; he’s dead. But he was a United States senator from West Virginia, Robert “Sheets” Byrd. That somehow never did attach itself to the Democrats. He could go on TV and use the N-word. He did it on Meet the Press. He used the N-word. Well, everybody understood that he was reformed.

So, these protests, I don’t care, peaceful or otherwise, they are demonstrations against failed Democrat blue state governors. They are demonstrations against failed blue state mayors and city managers. We’re being told that all these protests are aimed at us, us Republicans and us conservatives, but we didn’t do anything that’s made them mad. That stuff’s all happening in blue states. Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul, liberal blue states, liberal blue cities running the police department. This is not supposed to be possible with Democrats running things. But, look, it is. And it hasn’t changed in 50 years.

All of these protests from sea to shining sea, coast to coast, are in response to deplorable and failed Democrat, liberal leadership. And you need to take note of this. It should result in these people getting fewer and fewer and many fewer people voting for them because they’re failures. Donald Trump is not responsible for whatever grievances these people are marching against. Donald Trump wasn’t there when George Floyd died. Donald Trump wasn’t anywhere near when that went down.

Daniel Henninger’s piece. “This is not 1968. It’s worse. The late 1960s were the heyday of modern American liberalism, which was then an ideology of hope. A bipartisan Congress passed landmark civil-rights legislation in 1964 and 1965. The precipitating event of the urban riots in 1968 was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. New York, Trenton, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, and Washington were on fire. Arguably back then, despite passage of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, not enough time had passed for liberal policies,” to actually take hold. So, he’s being charitable here. So, ’64, ’65, LBJ passes the civil rights legislation. The Great Society is what it was called. Massive welfare state creation. And by 1968, it still hadn’t had time to plant roots and sprout trees and whatever, so it was still questionable.

Okay. “Last week, George Floyd died after rough treatment from arresting Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin, who was arrested and charged with murder. Since then, there have been daily protests accompanied by riot and pillage in multiple U.S cities. A primary claim made repeatedly this week is that the U.S., which means the American people, are guilty of perpetual ‘systemic racism.'”

No. No. Just because things are all askew and broken in blue states does not mean America has a systemic racism problem. What it means is that liberalism and the Democrat Party have failed. But it doesn’t mean America is bad. It doesn’t mean that America has any explaining. America didn’t do anything. There is no systemic racism that explains what happened to George Floyd. What happened to George Floyd took place because liberal Democrat policies and liberal Democrat power do not solve the problems they promise to solve.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’ll go to Philadelphia. This is Robert. I’m glad you called, sir.

CALLER: Rush, you need to get it together, man, because this country needs you, you know what I’m saying? I mean, you gotta hang in there, you know what I mean? We need you. We need you right now. So just hang in there. You know what I’m saying?

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Yep. Yep. Yep. I hear you. I hear you. I need to double down and work even harder. I got it.

CALLER: That’s it. I don’t believe that — this is my own personal opinion. I think this moved on to another section. It isn’t about the shutdown. It isn’t about the protests. It isn’t about the looting and the violence, which I’ve seen plenty living here in Philadelphia. I’m gonna walk outside my house and hear the ATMs blow up —

RUSH: What’s it about, then?

CALLER: It’s about the Democrats sabotaging this country. They lost on the Russian thing —

RUSH: That’s exactly — (crosstalk)

CALLER: — the Kavanaugh thing. Yeah. They lost on other things, and what do they got left? Sabotage. That’s it.

RUSH: Well, obviously they are sabotaging — although sabotage, in some people’s minds, carries with it secrecy, that sabotage occurs when people aren’t aware of it. This is happening right in front of our faces. That’s my point today. The Democrat Party is an abject failure. American liberalism is an abject failure, and they are attempting to sabotage the country despite that. The failure is so embarrassing that the people that run this party and this movement have created an alternative universe of explanations like systemic racism. That’s just one example.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, I want to continue with this. To me, this is a huge, huge thing. It is such a teachable moment. It’s a golden opportunity. I know that many of you have kids that are Millennials, and they’re buying into all of this because they’ve been made to feel guilty over being white, and so they suffer “white privilege.”

They’re “white supremacists,” and they’re being made to feel guilty that all the problems in this country stem from the fact that white people founded it and created it, and that they’re now then — your kids — open to the concept of ripping the country apart and starting over. I’m sure it frustrates you, but some of you are falling for it.

Some of you, your parents, your kids are coming home from school and they’re telling you things. “Yeah, yeah.” You’re proud of your kids. You want your kids to be, oh, properly educated and so forth. This is dangerous stuff. These kids — and they’re kids. They’re learning the exact wrong things from this. They’re learning the exact opposite. What they ought to be learning is this stuff they’re supporting cannot possibly ever work.

It never has, and the Democrat Party — which personifies these beliefs — has failed since 1968. Actually, before that, but ’68 is a good starting point because it’s the last time we had massive riots and protests like this, which were also aimed at Democrats in 1968, just as these are. The difference here is in 1968, everybody knew. They’re in Chicago; they’re protesting the Democrat Party convention.

Now, here and now, the media is getting away with convincing a bunch of people that don’t know what they’re thinking about or talking about that all this is aimed at Donald Trump, that all of this is Donald Trump’s fault, all of this is the Republican Party’s fault. There are no Republican fingerprints on this. Have you ever wondered what the politics of that cop in Minneapolis are?

Why haven’t you wondered?

See? It’s exactly my point. I’ll guarantee-damn-tee you, if this guy were MAGA, if this guy were a Trump donor, it’s all you would have heard about. Guess he’s not. I guess these cops are not Donald Trump supporters or we would have heard about that. I’m just illustrating a point here. Donald Trump, nor you or I, have anything to do with this. “But, Rush! But, Rush! There’s systemic racism!”

Folks, there is Democrat Party failure. I ask African-Americans every time I talk to ’em, “Why do you keep voting Democrat? Everything they promised you, you’re still complaining about. Everything they’ve told you they’re gonna fix, you still are whining and moaning about how unfair it is, or you’re discriminated against, or the cops mistreat you, or whatever.

“Why haven’t they fixed it? You have elected them to fix it! You have donated money to them to fix it. They have promised you they’re gonna fix it. They have promised you they’re gonna get even with the people that are mistreating you. Why doesn’t it happen? They are a visible, walking, never-ending example of evidence of failure — and so they come up with these things.

(impression) “Well, you know, the real problem is systemic racism dating back 400 years.” What an absolute crock! So they create this 1619 Project to say that America is flawed and irredeemable. Irredeemable means, “America cannot be fixed. The only solution is to rip America apart and start over — and this time, no white people get to play.” That, my friends, is the objective.

So they come up with things like systemic racism to explain their failures. “Well, the reason why you’re not happy — the reason why we haven’t been able to live up to our promises — is systemic racism.” No, no, no, no! You have promised to get rid of racism. You have promised to punish racists. You have promised to make life hell for people who mistreat African-Americans, and yet, the complaints keep rolling in.

It’s a serious question: Why do you keep voting for them? “Well, Republicans are worse. They’re actual racists!” I know that’s how you think. I know that’s what they’ve told you, but you ever really stop to think? How do you explain record African-American employment in the first three years the Trump administration? See, that’s the kind of thing, to me, that could be … unifying.

Dare I say the word? So the failure of the liberal model is so embarrassing that the current leaders of the Democrat Party and the American left have created an entire alternative universe of explanations. Blaming it on American settlers in the early seventeenth century, some flawed definition of the lack of justice, systemic racism that simply cannot be wiped out.

Mr. Henninger writes, “This is worse than 1968,” for this reason, “because the political system is now engaged in a systemic act of forgetting. Let’s forget that this policy failure has happened or why. Let’s forget, for instance, that the people living in New York’s public housing are overrun with rats, unlit hallways and no heat in the winter” just like it was in 1968. But let’s forget that.

“Let’s forget that many blacks have indeed been left behind — by a well-documented migration since 1990 of black Americans out of northern cities and Los Angeles into the South, where they have gone in search of economic opportunity.” But let’s just forget that a lot of African-Americans have already fled the Democrat Party where it lives.

If they haven’t fled them in the ballot box, they still have fled being governed by them when they can. “Let’s forget, despite a massive [annual] outlay on Medicaid … that black Americans still have a higher incidence of chronic disease.” We’ve spent $593 billion alone in 2018 on Medicaid, which is Medicare for the poor, and “black Americans still have a higher incidence of chronic disease.”

Let’s forget that. Yeah! We can’t… Can’t mention that! No, gotta forget that.

See all the things you have to forget, all of the failures that you have to just ignore and instead, blame the Republicans. Blame Trump — and before Trump, blame George W. Bush, and then blame George H. W. Bush, and then blame Fox News, and then blame Rush Limbaugh, and then blame talk radio. “This new progressive nihilism says the answer to inner-city crime is decriminalization.”

The ultimate “defining deviancy down.” You know that phrase. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat senator from New York, invented the phrase “defining deviancy down” to acknowledge how America just throws up its hands in defeat. “Okay, we can’t stop that crime, so we’ll stop calling it crime. We can’t stop that kind of criminal behavior, so we’ll just say it isn’t criminal behavior anymore.”

What do you think “defunding the police” is about?

The answer to inner city crime is: Why, let’s get rid of the cops!

If we get rid of the cops there won’t be any arrests and therefore there won’t be any crime. And so we’ll get rid of crime and we’ll have our utopia, and we’ll get rid of all these people that our citizens hate, we’re gonna get rid of the cops. And this is actually happening. It’s going to happen in California, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York.

These idiots are actually serious about this. Yeah, we’ll just decriminalize all this stuff the cops chase people for and therefore there won’t be any more crime. This is how liberals think. But it is nothing more than an acknowledgment of the failure of liberalism and the failure of the Democrat Party to deliver on its panacea.

“The new nihilism minimizes this week’s ideologically driven assaults on private property because it is ‘replaceable.'” Have you heard that? It doesn’t matter, they may be destroying that building but we can rebuild that. They may have torn down that restaurant, but that’s not a big deal, we can rebuild the restaurant, we can replace it. Well, guess what?

“it is well-established that many of 1968’s burned-down neighborhoods,” have not come back, have not been replaced. And people living in New York public housing, rats, unlit hallways, no heat in the winter. “The new nihilism says no matter how many reform police commissioners are appointed or black mayors elected, ‘nothing has changed.'”

How can that be? No matter how many Martin Luther King Boulevards you name, no matter how many African-American police chief or commissioners or mayors you elect, nothing changes. How can that be? And, by the way, is that not a definition of hopeless or hopelessness? For crying out loud, for all of these years African Americans have been told they’ve been frozen out of the power structure, they’ve been denied access to power. Well, not for the longest time. African-Americans are now mayors, they are governors, they are police chiefs, they are police commissioners. And guess what?

The same crimes, the same degree of crime, the same complaints, the same stuff continues to happen, despite every liberal solution and promise being implemented in these blue states by these blue state leaders. How in the world this is not seen for exactly what it is is a testament to the propagandized power of the Drive-By Media. Because, my friends, the Democrat Party is broadcasting, is chronicling, is demonstrating its abject failure to deliver, the failure of its ideas, the failure of its promises every day, and their voters are a testament to it by how angry they are and ripping the country apart.

And I would be mad too if I’d given these people 50 years of my money and 50 years of my vote in exchange for a promise of access to power, an end to racism, no more cops harassing me. I’d be livid too. But somehow they have convinced African-American voters that their problems somehow magically have become Donald Trump, who’s been president for three years of the 50-plus years these problems have existed. Anyway, I’m a little long in this segment, but it was worth it. I’m sure you will agree.


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