- Teach the Fundamentals
September 23, 2005
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got an e-mail last night, and I get a few of these but there's so much e-mail, I don't have a systemized response. But something about this e-mail I got yesterday compelled me to reply. It was an e-mail for a college student out in Oregon, and he had been given an assignment by his liberal professor. It's a big essay question related to a theory in some journalist's book, and he asked me for some help -- and I went back and forth with this, because, if I help this guy, am I really helping him? If I essentially write the guy's paper, how much help am I actually giving him? So I said, "I'm not going to write what I would in a paper but I'll just give him a few little ideas to hopefully spur his mind." Well, I got going and I kept going, and when I finished with it, I said, "You know something? This reminds me of something that is sadly missing throughout the conservative movement, and that's a return to fundamentals. I've been doing this program, we're into our 18th year, and for a whole host of reasons we can't go back and do the first year all over again. We can't go back and do the first day. We have to keep moving forward. This is why I've always said, "It takes six weeks of steady listening to have this program really understood by a new audience member because it takes that long or longer for the context of this all to come into place."
We have new people tuning in all the time. We have new readers to the website. We have readers to The Limbaugh Letter all the time who are just now getting interested in this, and our discussion of conservatism here may be over their heads on a learning curve basis. So last night I sent my reply to the editrix of the Limbaugh Letter, Diana Schneider. I said, "Diana, I want to run this in the next issue, and I want to start a new section in the newsletter. We're going to get rid of something in there that's tired. I don't know what yet, but I want to replace it with a fundamentals section. Every week or every month in the newsletter, we're going to go back to the roots of conservatism issue by issue by issue and explain it," sort of along the lines How to Defeat a Liberal, only better. It will be an ongoing series, and I'm going to read to you what I wrote this college student, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Because what Harry Belafonte said here is -- he doesn't even know it. He doesn't even know how right he is. He said, "This poverty that our country is witnessing has never gone away. Most of the politicians I know have visited these places of poverty. They make it their business." His point is, they do all these things but it never gets fixed. Well, there is a reason that he doesn't understand, and that formed the basis of my reply to the college student last night.
RUSH: Here's the essence of the e-mail I got from the young college student in Oregon:
"I know how busy you are, but have you read the book by Thomas Frank, 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' [Rush comments on the book] Well, I'm being made to read the book in an ethics class and write an essay response to a question that my professor is asking. Here is the question: 'Economic quality has long been a major theme in American political discourse, especially with the populist policies associated with the Democratic Party. According to Thomas Frank, how is this theme connected with the backlash phenomenon in American culture? How has the backlash led to a change in class definitions and traditional political alignments?' I know you don't have time for this, Rush, but I just thought I would try. It's getting hard to these campuses anymore. Thanks for everything you do."
So I had the time and this is what I wrote back. I said, "This is easy. First, your professor's premise is flawed. Economic equality has not 'long been a major theme in American political discourse.' American economic opportunity is the real theme. The premise of economic equality has long been a theme of liberals who blanch at the sight of any inequality they perceive, which is fine as far as it goes, but it is their attempt at solutions to this problem that have wrought even more inequality. When liberals see haves and have-nots, they attempt to equalize or make fair these imbalances, and they do so by punishing those at the top of the ladder, so to speak, in order to bring them down to be more on par with the have-nots. They never attempt to educate or inspire the have-nots to do better and move up or prosper, and that's because they don't believe it's possible. Their faith in the individual is dwarfed by their belief in and love of government, as the great equalizer -- with themselves in charge of it, of course. The backlash Thomas Frank refers to, I believe, results from the have-nots getting frustrated now because years and years of promises by liberal politicians have failed to improve their lot," and let's hearken back to Harry Belafonte at this point. "The liberal authors of these schemes, which promise to rectify this inequality and poverty are wont to accept the blame themselves for the failure of their own policies. They shift the blame back to the haves. They accuse them of being greedy and unwilling to share.
"That's why we constantly hear liberals demand more tax increases on the wealthy. Somehow that will magically improve the lot of the have-nots but it never works because it can't. Redistributionist policies have never succeeded in all of human civilization in equalizing a society economically. Our own Great Society and war on poverty have transferred over $6 trillion from the haves to the have-nots since 1964, and yet the Thomas Franks of the world still complain. It's time to seriously examine the failure of these policies and your professor's premise. We have the proof it doesn't work. The problem is that liberals refuse to have their results examined. They insist their intentions being credited, which in their minds makes them nicer and more compassionate than people who would rather educate the have-nots to become self-reliant and less dependent on governments. Now, the problem you're going to encounter with this in class is this. Liberals, and maybe your professor, believe that capitalism, the basic economic foundation and architecture of America is flawed precisely because they believe it is to blame for this economic inequality, that capitalism by design is unfair, and so it must be regulated, policed, monitored, eventually punished. This is why the enemies of liberals are small and large businesses. Wal-Mart's the latest example along with Big Oil right now and along with wealthy people, the rich, and the successful. These are the enemies of liberals.
"Liberals think that they're just lucky. They've 'won life's lottery.' They have a duty to give back via high taxes and any other scheme that they can dream up. Now this plays well with the have-nots, because they've been made to believe all these years to resent the successful via the liberals' use of class envy language, and end up feeling satisfied not when they do better because they don't do better. They feel satisfied because they think the rich, who are stealing from them and not sharing with them, are harmed economically and then the cycle conditions as it has for 70 years since the days of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Thomas Frank in his book now wonders why all of a sudden these have-nots are starting to vote for Republicans because he thinks that these have-nots are voting for the people who have kept them poor, which is absurd. These people are beginning to see that much of America continues to prosper beyond anyone's wildest dreams while they continue to await the fulfillment of all those liberal promises (Hello, Harry Belafonte) and they're also figuring out that 60 years of failed promises just mean more failed promises. They want in on the action as do people who are members of labor unions. This country used to be 35% organized labor. Today it's less than 12%." Now, I told the student, "I believe it's a tragedy that the left in this country has literally destroyed so many of their own voters' futures by lying to them, by telling them they have no chance because the deck is stacked against them, by telling them things will be made more fair if liberals are made in charge so they can punish the rich.
"Capitalism has its problems, and it does require certain regulations, as all societies require laws, but there's no question that liberalism and socialism fail each time they are tried, whereas the capitalist system of this country has produced the richest country in the history of civilization -- and this is not to say that government can't help. It can, and it should. There are lots of people who for one reason or another simply cannot get by without our compassionate assistance, and that compassion has always been there. You could cite the war on poverty and the Great Society and other ongoing, similar programs as evidence. The shame is when liberals control the government and attempt to make as many Americans as possible dependent on them and the government for the sake of cementing their power. That results in millions of people not given the chance to reach their own potential, to be the best they can be but according to own ambitions and desires. To this liberals and maybe your professor will say something that will reflect their belief that many people really have no potential because of the unfairness -- the structural institutional unfairness of American society -- and the cycle will repeat." So, I don't know what this kid is going to write, or what he's going to say, but I can imagine (laughing) when he challenges the premise of the professor (laughing) I would loooove to be there.
Rush's Remarks on "What's the Matter with Kansas," During Campaign 2004...