RUSH: This is Darrell in Nashville. He’s been holding for a while and we got time squeeze you in now. Glad you waited.
CALLER: I am, too, Maha.
RUSH: Welcome, sir.
CALLER: Twenty-three-year dittos, and I love the fact that you are willing to engage that last guy from Chicago. By the way, I know you don’t need any help from me, but let me tell you something. Junior in Chicago, I’ve been listening to Rush Limbaugh for 23 years. I’ve listened to over 2,000 hours of programming, and I’m not aware of a single instance where he called for the resignation of a Democrat who engaged in some kind of extramarital affair or any kind of other sexual dalliance. In fact, most of the time he encourages those people to continue running because they are such an embarrassment. So before you try to trap Rush, get your facts together. So, a swing and a miss. Call back when you have your facts in order.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. You know, that doesn’t happen here very much. I appreciate that. Other than the sycophantic staff (they back me up), that doesn’t happen. I appreciate that.
CALLER: Well, they need to work harder, the staff.
RUSH: No. The staff’s being plenty good sycophants.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: No, no. That’s… (interruption) Oh, they yell in the other room all the time when I’m treated unfairly, but I appreciate that. Being serious for a minute, it’s really nice. I appreciate it.
CALLER: Rush, I am a 23-year listener. I’ve kind of grown up with you. I’m 10 years younger than you and I kind of feel like you’re a brother figure to me, and I honestly mean that. You know, being a 23-year-listener, I have come to know that you are the reporter of facts that the mainstream media will not give us. You’ve been pointing out hypocrisy in the media for 25 years. The fact that we no longer have a media with any skepticism among liberals and Democrats, I think will lead to the ultimate destruction of our country.
RUSH: I agree. The thing is, there never really have been skeptical. They’ve always been partisans. It’s just they used to act as though they were objective, but ever since this program started and conservative media got going, they’ve thrown all pretenses aside, and now they’re just full-fledged partisans attempting to achieve the advancement of Democrat agenda every day. That’s what they’ve become. They’re not even media. There’s not even any reporting of any kind. The daily news rundown is whatever’s important to Democrat Party, and that’s it.
CALLER: Well, and the problem really is that they have chosen sides. So as a listener — after 23 years of knowing from your information that they have chosen sides, and there is a double standard — what now? What do we do? What active thing can Americans do to take back our country from not only liberals and Democrats? If it were just strictly political, it could have been accomplished by now. But the power of the media in this country is massive. I’m sick of being a passive bystander watching my country being destroyed.
RUSH: Amen. Amen. I’m as frustrated by that as you are. That’s why I keep working, and it’s why I’m writing these books for children. But I understand your frustration. It’s hard to figure. You know, you ask yourself and I ask myself, “Okay, if the Republicans got in the game advertising-wise, could they help expose some of this? Would it work?” I don’t know. Depending on how well it was done, I think it could, but they don’t seem up for that.
CALLER: No, they’re not up for that. Frankly, I think that the people who run the Republican Party don’t necessarily think this is all that bad of a thing. You know, I think they look around at it, look around at themselves, and they look at the transfer of wealth that has transferred from future generations to the enrichment of the four counties surrounding Washington, DC.
There have been literally trillions of dollars transferred, stolen from future generations that are being given now to the people who live, work and surround the government. Only because of their position. Not because of any skill set, not because of any knowledge base but because of who they are and where they are. It’s totally undeserved. Like I said, the media is complicit in this transfer of wealth. This money’s being stolen, literally stolen from future generations. I’ve got a 19-year-old kid in college who, thank God, was able to get great scholarships. I’ve got a 15-year-old in high school, and I fear deeply for their future.
RUSH: You are not alone.
CALLER: Absolutely. I fear enough for my own future. For theirs, I fear deeply.
RUSH: Let me ask you, though. What would you like to see? I mean, here’s a short version of what ultimately I think would be best, and that’s an awakening on the part of the American people, an awakening of knowledge and understanding. Now, take a look at something like Obamacare. Here’s something that, at some point, is going to affect everybody.
Now, I know people say, “Wait, Rush, a lot of them are subsidized, and it’s not gonna affect everybody economically as strongly as you think,” but it’s still going to. I think even now, to the extent that it has impacted a lot of people, there are a lot of young people who really thought Obama walked on water who don’t anymore. But the problem is, because of what we discussed yesterday, people are not blaming Obama.
His approval numbers are down and all that, but I think they’re losing faith in the country. I really do. I’ve always thought that the answer to this is an increasingly informed public. “How do you do that?” is the question, and then the media enters the fray again. You’ve got the pop culture media, you’ve got academia, and you’ve got elementary school curriculum, which is working against everything you want to see happen.
CALLER: Well, having listened to you for 23 years, I know you’re not going to like this. We are feeding the beast that would destroy us. Whenever we watch the Super Bowl, when we watch the Final Four, when we watch Dancing With the Stars, we have to remember that the networks don’t derive their primary form of revenue and profitability from the their news divisions.
CBS doesn’t make money on the CBS News division. They make money on entertainment and sports, and ABC does it through that — look at ESPN — and they do it through their own profit programs. And yet we consume it every single day. Personally I haven’t watched a single sports program. When I was a kid, there was not a bigger sports fan.
I haven’t watched sports programming in probably two years. But that’s just a very small portion of it. If 30 or 40 million conservative Americans would do to the major media what a few gay activists did to Mozilla, it could rock their world. But yet I think people are so addicted to entertainment, so addicted to celebrity, that they really don’t have the gall to do it.
RUSH: Not only that, a lot of ’em do not believe that that branch of the media, the entertainment media, is politicized.
CALLER: They are intertwined at the hip. If they aren’t intertwined, we need to intertwine them. We need to make that connection. And, you know, as a guy out here by himself, does CBS care that I didn’t watch the Final Four? Probably not. But if 40 million conservative Americans start speaking with their pocketbooks, and refuse to consume and refuse to feed the beast that would destroy them, it could definitely make a mark that I don’t think most people really have had the gumption to do.
RUSH: Okay, at least that’s one thing you’d like to see. I mean, it may be unreachable, but at least it’s an idea.
CALLER: It’s a positive action.
RUSH: It’s a positive action. You’d probably also like to see the Republican Party actually act as an opposition party, and there’s a lot of things an opposition party could do in push-back that would serve to inform and educate. We had a great suggestion from a young caller yesterday who said, “Rush, we gotta face some reality, and the reality is that almost half the country expects to get something now from government.
“That’s what government is to them. So we’ve gotta approach ’em that way and say, ‘We can give you more,’ or, ‘You can have more if you elect us,’ and then we tell ’em how.” I thought that was well thought out. I thought it was some really good thinking, because it does get to the one issue that doesn’t cause us to compromise what we believe. It doesn’t cause us to be for amnesty.
It just requires to simply tell the truth. You are gonna end up much better off with us, if somebody can come along and articulate it that actually runs for office and so forth and then could implement it and inspire people. People are down in the dumps in this country. There’s a malaise over there.
This is not talked about in the media, but there’s a malaise and a depression and a, “Is this all there is?” attitude on the part of a lot of people right now. I think it’s ripe. I think it’s just a gold mine waiting to be tapped. But we do not have, apparently, a Republican Party right now that wants to go in that direction. They’re too frightened.
CALLER: Rush, the alternative to this is very dark and it’s very bleak, because if we continue down this road we face certain destruction. I’ve been to a lot of different countries, and when people lose respect for the rule of law, that’s when they stop everything. They stop paying their taxes. They do everything they can to illegally get around whatever government regulations there are.
RUSH: I went through last week what this is gonna look like if it’s unchecked. It’s gonna look like the Great Depression.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: It’s gonna look like a breakdown of orderly society. It’s gonna look like that, and it can happen. Anyway, you’re like many people. You’ve identified the number one obstacle as the media in all of its parts. I don’t disagree with you on that. You know, this didn’t happen overnight. The left has been plodding along for 50 years on this course, the propagandizing and the indoctrination of young people in school, then with the popular culture.
We’ve thinking, “Okay, we’re here at a crisis point, almost a tipping point! We’ve gotta reverse it overnight.” Well, they didn’t get us here overnight. It’s not gonna be reversed overnight. One election is not gonna fix this, is the point. One presidential election, and even the Republicans winning the Senate is not gonna fix it. It’s a first step. But then it depends: Okay, who are the Republicans that are gonna be in office after this win?
What are they gonna be made of?
Are they gonna want to use their locale in Washington to enrich themselves like everybody else in that town does? Because, boy, did you nail that. You nailed that. The people that are able to find and wield influence in that town are the ones getting richer. It doesn’t matter what college they went to or whatever, other than network connections and so forth. But that’s where all the money flows. Trillions of dollars are collected in Washington every year, and everybody there wants the power over how it’s distributed. I appreciate the call, Darrell. Thanks much. That’s Darrell in Nashville.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna say something one more time, and I know it’s met with some disbelief by some of you out there. I firmly believe that there are still a lot more people who agree, for example, with our last caller than who don’t. I also believe they are afraid to say so. Many of them are afraid to say so.
Some of them are afraid to even act in ways that people would see they agree. There is a lot of intimidation and bullying by the left that’s resulted in a lot of fear. The president’s race is a factor in this, and so is the fascism of the left and media. But I think that there are more people still appalled, frightened, angry, scared, who just don’t know how to do anything about it or what to say and who to.
But they will be rallied at some point.
I’m gonna tell you, it just stands to reason that here are more people than not — and I believe by a strong number — who do not want to accept the idea that this country’s better days are behind us and that this country is finished. Something is going to happen at some point to wake ’em up. I don’t know what it is or when it will be, but I have full-fledged, total faith.
Now, I know it’d be really great if we could somehow get through to low-information voters and let them know something just as simple as media bias. You think everybody understands that? Everybody doesn’t, particularly when they’re watching TMZ or E! Entertainment News or the NFL. They read the sports pages, and they don’t see the bias there, but it’s dripping.
Liberal media bias is everywhere there is media, but some places it’s not seen or even assumed to exist. It’s why I may be spitting in the wind. I really have always believed that the more people who could be effectively taught about liberalism and who they are and what happens and we’re living it, the better off we would be. Now, we had two decades — or two presidential terms — of Ronald Reagan.
That should have taught a lot of people a lot of things just on economic prosperity and the effect of low taxes on employment. A lot of things. But the minute Reagan left office, it was done. While he was in office, the media was doing their best to, well, destroy Reagan, impugn Reagan, make things up about Reagan. It was relentless. The hatred for Reagan was as bad, if not worse, than the hatred for George W. Bush.
And when Reagan left office, the revisionism began. — and, of course, the Republican Party joined it, don’t forget. But it can be done. I firmly believe it.