RUSH: It is also 9/11, the anniversary of 9/11, and I’ve been watching it on television today. I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but be stirred and profoundly moved. I think like everybody, I was remembering where I was, which happened to be in the air. I had taken off around eight o’clock for Omaha. It was the last Warren Buffett Charity Golf Tournament. It was my second or third year to be invited to play in it.

I was, at the time, experiencing very severe hearing loss, and I had not yet lost enough hearing that would permit me to qualify for cochlear implant surgery, so I was getting by with hearing aids. They just weren’t doing the trick. I was able to hear noise, but I wasn’t able to comprehend speech very well. So I guess about an hour, hour and a half into the flight, the pilot comes back and says, “The World Trade Center has been hit, and we have to set down.

“Air traffic control’s ordered every aircraft in the sky to be down in 45 minutes.” At the time, I didn’t have satellite TV on the airplane, so I had no idea what any of this meant, and the details were scant. “The World Trade Center has been hit.” I didn’t know once or twice. I didn’t know the details. All I know is that we had to set down, and 45 minutes didn’t give us enough time to get back home. The nearest airport to home that we could get to in that 45 minutes was a small airport about an hour from here up in north Florida.

So we landed, rented a car, and drove back, and I can’t understand what’s being said on the radio as we’re driving. I’m heading back here to the studio. I’ve got people trying to tell me, but I can’t hear it. I could understand nothing on the radio, and the people with me in the car were trying to explain it to me, but it was just really tough. I was able to understand enough that was really bad.

The fact that we were ordered down out of the sky and everybody else was, too, indicated it was very, very bad. We finally rolled in here at around 2:30, 2:30, 2:45, with maybe a half hour, 20 minutes left in the program, and that is the first time, when I got in here, I had seen pictures. So it was, I don’t know, five hours after it happened. I was… I mean, I was shocked. I had every emotion: Anger, sorrow, sadness, disbelief, curiosity, everything. All these emotions were firing off instantly.

I sat down here and I was trying to make sense of it. I did the last 20 minutes of the program from the guest host that day — and that, by the way, was the day I decided to go ahead and spring for satellite TV on the aircraft on EIB One in 2001 — 9/11, 2001. So got home and was able turn on television, see, and then able to start reading what all had happened. They kept showing video of the planes (as it became available) hitting the tower.

The plane that hit the Pentagon, you couldn’t even see it. You just saw a flash and then an explosion. But even at super slow mo, you couldn’t see the plane that hit the Pentagon. But you could certainly see the planes hit the World Trade Center, and then the towers came down. All of that. I’m sure you remember it, too. The next morning, I’m driving in to work here, and I’m driving on the Ocean Coast Road with the Atlantic Ocean on the left, just after dawn.

I couldn’t sleep much, so I was driving in here, and it’s just an absolutely beautiful dawn here. It’s just the kind of day it was in New York that day. It was a little warmer, but in terms of blue sky, sunshine, it was a clear, beautiful day. The ocean was calm driving in, and it was serene. I was one of the few driving around. I remember looking out over the ocean, out the car window driving in, trying to imagine why anybody would want to do what they did. I know that sounds na??ve, because I know the answer.

I mean, when I asked myself questions about why would people do that things, I knew the answers, and why various people think the way they do. I know the answers. Still, however, I have a capacity to be shocked and surprised by it. The look of that day, the day after down there where we were, there was no indication no matter where you looked that anything that had happened in New York had happened, obviously.

But you couldn’t escape the fact that it did. The pictures were in your mind, in my mind as I’m driving out looking out over this beautiful sea, the sun coming up. And as details kept pouring in, we started learning more and more about who these people were and what happened and how it happened and what could have maybe prevented it, and all different sets of emotions start taking over.

In the course of the next few weeks, I learned that I knew people who had lost people, family members and friends at the World Trade Center. They are still not the same. Marriages broke up because of it, families were never the same, and I remember there’s Mayor Giuliani and Bernard Kerik and everybody standing there on TV giving the latest updates, saying, “We’re never gonna allow the terrorists to shut this country down,” and so forth.

I said, “I hope that’s true. I hope every 9/11 anniversary we don’t shut this country down in remembrance, because that’s what they tried to do.” But I’m watching TV today, and there was something I didn’t see. I saw all the memorials. I saw all the people. I saw the prayers. I saw the laying of wreaths. I saw all that. I didn’t see one second of videotape of what happened on that day. Not one. I guess it’s the powers that be. They think it’s too traumatic, and the American people can’t deal with it even yet, which I think is a grave mistake.

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RUSH: And then, as I was saying, it wasn’t long after 9/11 that the State Department convened a symposium, a forum of learned scholars from all over America, and the subject, or the title of the forum — I’m paraphrasing — is, “Why do they hate us?” They had a symposium on what it was that we, the United States, did that caused the 9/11 hijackers to take out the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and their other presumed targets: The White House and the Capitol. “What did we do? Why did they hate us? Why was it maybe our fault?” Even in the midst of something like 9/11, the blame-America-first crowd tried to dominate the post-event policy making and everything else.

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RUSH: Why do you suppose, ladies and gentlemen, that there have been — and there never are, really. It’s not just this anniversary; any anniversary since 9/11, the networks do not replay video footage of the World Trade Center being hit? (interruption) They did? (interruption) MSNBC did? (interruption) Oh, the Today show did. Okay, then I stand corrected. The Today show did. But it’s an exception to the rule — and you know why they don’t do it, theoretically, supposedly?

“Well, it’s still so traumatic. There’s no reason to subject the American people this reminder.” I disagree with that profoundly. You know, you’ve heard the phrase “never forget.” I think it applies here. I don’t think people should ever be allowed to forget what happened and who did it. By the way, I’ll go so far as to say that in some circles in our media the decision not to play videotape of that day is precisely to — I don’t want to say “protect;” that’s not the word, but to downplay who did it.

It’s not that they seek to blame America. I’m not saying that. They seek to downplay who did it. They might even consider it racist to do so. Anybody who is a person of color — if you’re white, if you’re a liberal — you can be accused of racism if you just speak honestly about certain things. They might not wish to go there. They might obviously be leftists and don’t want it concluded by a majority of people that the United States was not to blame.

I kid you not about that.

Not only do I think that we should not shut down the country on 9/11, which is what the terrorists were trying to do, I think everybody ought to go to work. Have memorials all you want, but don’t shut down the country. That’s they what were trying to do. Don’t stop elections, which they did in New York on that day. I think people need to be reminded lest they forget. Clearly there are some people who wouldn’t mind if people forgot.

Now, there’s a rally in Washington today of two million bikers. Two million bikers. “A large rally to commemorate 9/11 is roaring through the Washington, DC, area. Thousands of bikers with the group ‘Two Million Bikers to DC’ are snarling traffic on the Beltway with a ride honoring the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the members of the military called to serve after the attacks. On their Facebook page, in all caps, the group said they will stand by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, adding that they’re ‘against any fundamental transformation of America.'”

Well, I must ask: Who has talked about a fundamental transformation of America? Oh, wait. We know that. That would be Barack Obama, five days before his election to the presidency back in 2008. Barack Obama told America, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Now, most low-information people heard that, and they were clueless.

They didn’t have the slightest understanding what he was talking about.

They thought he meant get us out of Iraq and make sure there was no pyramid building in prisons in Iraq and closing Club Gitmo and making the world love us and getting rid of Bush and all of that other stuff. They had no idea that “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” meant turning the Constitution of the United States on its head. They had no idea that “transforming the United States of America” meant getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with socialism.

They had no idea that it meant co-opting one-sixth of the US economy by the government, the health care business. They had no idea what Obama was promising. They thought they knew, but they didn’t. Some of them may now not even know, but the bikers in DC know and knew. They tried to get a last-minute permit to close some intersections near monuments on Capitol Hill, but the National Park Service denied that request. There is another rally that’s been planned, of course, that this appears to be attempt to counter.

So I don’t know what your memories of 9/11 are. It varies from person to person. In a lot of people, there’s a general apathy. “Yeah, it happened. Okay. It’s over with. In the past. It’s not gonna happen again. It was a one-off. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not a harbinger, it wasn’t a harbinger, and doesn’t portend anything else.” Other people look at it as just, at the time, the latest in a series of attacks by the same people.

This one was just the largest, but there have been similar attacks, one on the World Trade Center in 1993, attacks on American institutions all over the world. It was just one year ago. We have to distinguish between two years, 9/11/2001 and 9/11/2012, and that was Benghazi. We still don’t know what happened there, and we’re still in the process, some are, some trying to cover-up what really happened in Benghazi. Can you believe that it’s been a year?

When did Benghazi happen? Did it happen in 2012 or 2011? Yeah, yeah, just one year. I mean, I can’t believe it. It seems like Romney and all the rest of us were demanding that Romney talk about this in the debates. It seems like two years ago then. This year, parts of it seem to have just skated by and other parts of it seem to be dragging by. It seems like Benghazi was two years ago, and it’s just now the one-year anniversary of Benghazi today. It’s been a year.

No suspects have been arrested.

No suspects have even been questioned.

Reportedly, Obama and the Libyan government don’t want to risk angering the local terrorists in the area, especially when he’s on the brink of going to war to help their allies in Syria. Yes, I exactly mean that. It’s part and parcel of the way the left deals with thugs, criminals, bad guys. “We don’t wanna make ’em madder than they already are. Don’t want to do that.” Obama, and the Libyan government as well, didn’t want to risk angering local terrorists.

They might cause more trouble if we tried to pursue them and make the case for those who had committed the atrocities a year ago.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Anyway. Anyway, I’m not through. I thought I was through, but I’m not through sharing with you reminiscing about post-9/11. You know, I raise the question, “Why do the networks no longer show the video of what happened that day,” and there are political reasons, folks. Some people don’t want to hear that. I’m sorry, but when you’re talking about today’s media, the Democrats, everything they do or every decision they make is political. Go back and look at the aftermath of 9/11.

Let me see if I can remind you of some things. I found myself in LA not long after it. Every car I saw had an American flag waving on it. Everywhere you went in the immediate aftermath, you saw American flags on automobiles. You couldn’t buy them. They were sold out. Jewelry featuring the American flag was made. There were bumper stickers that were slapped on people’s cars. That atrocity caused a huge outpouring of patriotism all over this country.

Do you remember how unified this country was in the aftermath of 9/11? I will never forget, folks. I could go back to the archives and I could find it. I remember predicting on this program how long it would be before the Democrat Party started taking issue with Bush over not retaliating. The one thing that was happening was the country was unified. There was this outpouring of patriotism.

Remember, now, at the time this happened Bush was hated. This wasn’t that long after the Florida recount aftermath. They were just livid. They thought the election had been stolen from them, the presidency had been stolen, and here comes this attack, and Bush’s handling of it afterwards was masterful, and they saw this massive unity, massive outpouring of patriotism, which frightens Democrats.

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RUSH: US News & World Report, July 20th, 2011, headline: “Shock Study: US Flag Only Boosts GOP.”

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RUSH: Just one more series of thoughts on the anniversary here of 911. As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by the end of the first hour, it wasn’t long after 911 that no matter where you went, every automobile had and was proudly flying an American flag, somewhere. A bumper sticker, whatever. Jewelry. You couldn’t find American flag bumper stickers anywhere. Bumper stickers were left and right. There was a renewed patriotism that we hadn’t seen in the country a long, long time.

Remember, this was right after the Florida aftermath recount.

Bush is not yet hated and despised because of Iraq.

The media, the Democrats have not created hatred for Bush over the economy or any of the other things that were to come later. As far as the Democrats were concerned, they were livid, they were outraged, ’cause they thought they had an election stolen from ’em by the US Supreme Court. They thought Bush was illegitimate. But 9/11 came along, and they tried to make fun of him for the way he acted in the classroom when he was informed while reading book to a classroom of kids.

But in the aftermath, Bush handled this masterfully and with great leadership and toughness and resolve — and the country was unified. There was patriotism. Patriotism had broken out everywhere, and it was being displayed. You didn’t have to hear anybody talk to know it existed. They were flying flags. They were using any symbol they could to express their pride. Everybody in this country was.

Even on the freeways of California, you’d see American flag after American flag. It was a beautiful site, by the way. We were united as a country, and it was patriotism everywhere. I mean, even amid all the sorrow, there was a great comfort in that. Bush’s approval numbers were sky-high, and the Democrat Party was not enjoying any aspect of that. ‘Cause, remember, everything to them is politics.

Every event is first judged in its relationship to their agenda. Every event. “Is it gonna be bad? Is it gonna be good? If it’s bad, how can we convert it and make it good? How can we use this to advance our agenda or what do we have to do to make sure this doesn’t slow down our agenda?” That’s all they are. They are the most partisan, they are the most political people. Even in that time in the immediate aftermath of 9/11/2001, when everybody was just totally absorbed, and unified. This is unacceptable.

Folks, you don’t have to take my word for it. Hillary Clinton, from her speech in response to 9/11, final paragraph. “We will also stand united behind our president as he and his advisors plan the necessary actions to demonstrate America’s resolve and commitment. Not only to seek out and exact punishment on the perpetrators, but to make very clear that not only those who harbor terrorists, but those who in any way aid or comfort them whatsoever will now face the wrath of our country.

“And I hope that that message has gotten through to everywhere it needs to be heard. You are either with America in our time of need or you are not.” I mean, the Democrats, they were all-in on this at the start. They wanted in on this. Then they saw Bush’s high approval numbers and it wasn’t long that they then started… I made a prediction on this program and to Snerdley.

He asked, “How long you think it’s gonna be before they start distancing themselves from Bush, separating themselves, and start ripping him for a poor response or no response?” In fact, the way that happened… Do you remember the attack on Tora Bora, where a number of people thought that we had killed bin Laden? In the Tora Bora range in Afghanistan, the weekend prior to that, the Democrats were all over television demanding that Bush do something.

They were calling Bush names. They were claiming Bush was unqualified and incompetent. He hadn’t done anything to avenge what had happened to us, or to answer it, and they were humiliated because the next day the attack in Tora Bora happened, and they just looked silly. There was a memo from James Carville and Stan Greenberg that Bush favorability was too high and had to be brought down, in the midst of the 9/11 aftermath. The memo described how they needed to make Bush out to be a liar.

This was an internal memo intended for Democrat leaders and party members and so forth all over the country, primarily in Washington. They were very worried that Bush’s numbers were too high. So they began distancing themselves from anything Bush. Bush was the epitome of the patriotism, and he was talking tough about the terrorists, saying things like, “You’re either with us or against us,” and the Democrats said, “You can’t talk that way. That’s embarrassing.” They started calling him a cowboy, and as I said before the break, patriotism is something that makes them nervous.

I know some of you, like if you’re a 24-year-old woman — I mean, I don’t even have to shout that — say, “What do you mean? This is what makes me mad, Rush. Patriotism…” Look, I wish it weren’t true, but it is. US News & World Report, July 20th, 2011: “Shock Study: US Flag Only Boosts GOP — Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don’t believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science.”

They found that “exposure” to the American flag changed behavior to pro-Republican or pro-conservative.

“What’s more, according to three authors from the University Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, the impact had staying power. ‘A single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs …'” The study “found that a single exposure to a small American flag during deliberation about voting intentions prior to a general election led to significant and robust changes in participants’ voting intentions…'”

How many times have you heard famous, retired evening news anchors refuse to wear the American flag? Brokaw refused, Peter Jennings refused, Dan Rather, because they couldn’t show their patriotism. That would be compromising their sacred principles as journalists. So you may not want to believe me, but the Democrat Party and the American left has a problem with patriotism because they know it steers people away from them. Democrats have a problem with people who love America.

The liberal ideology is based on America is at fault, America is to blame, America is unjust, America is immoral from its founding. This is what animates Obama. You know it as well as I do, folks — and you 24-year-old women who think this is above and beyond the pale, you know it, too, if you just sit down and admit it to yourself. Who is the blame-America-first crowd? Who is it is that mocks the flag?

Who is it that mocks patriotism? Who is it that makes fun of it and tries to slight it? Remember Howard Dean in his campaign for the presidency in the primaries of 2004. “This flag doesn’t just belong to Rush Limbaugh! This flag belongs to me, too, and it belongs to all…” (interruption) We have that bite? Is that what you said? This is 2004, Howard Dean running for the presidency. Listen to this.

DEAN: (hoarse voice) [T]he flag of this country does not belong to Rush Limbaugh. You have the power to take back the flag so it does no longer belong solely to Rush Limbaugh. AAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGH!

RUSH: So don’t get mad at me. These are the people who know that instinctively. They get defensive when this kind of thing comes up. From that same article: “‘It is important to note that political ideology and party affiliation did not moderate these effects. That is, both liberal and conservative participants were influenced by the flag prime, and in the same direction,’ said the study,” and that would be toward conservative movement.

Now, here we are, 12 years later after 9/11, and think about it. Twelve years later, we are supporting Muslim terrorists in Syria. Muslim terrorists who are threatening to kill Syrian Christians if they don’t convert to Islam, that’s who our allies are. Those are the “rebels” that Bashar Assad is supposedly gassing. So we’re aligned with ’em, because we’re aligned against Assad. They’re threatening to kill Syrian Christians if they don’t convert to Islam. Obama refused to wear the US flag until he was shamed into it.

My point in all of this is, we were united as a country after 9/11. Bush’s approval ratings were through the roof. He gave two of the best speeches ever made by a president. He went to the site at 9/11, stood next to the firemen and comforted people and promised we’d get whoever did it. Everybody was fired up. He threw out the first pitch at the first game after 9/11 at Yankee Stadium — and, by the way, he wasn’t wearing mom jeans and he didn’t look like a girl, 24 years old or otherwise, when he threw the first pitch.

Well, I remember Obama’s first pitch at a Washington Nationals game. It wasn’t a particularly good throw. Bush was wearing full body armor while he tossed that first pitch. My point is that while all this is going on, the liberals are convening a forum, a symposium at the State Department asking, “What did we do to make ’em so mad? Why do they, the militant Islamists, hate us?”

The unbridled displays of love of country and patriotism makes liberals nervous. These unscripted, uncensored displays of love and pride in our country make ’em nervous, because it’s the one thing they can’t fake. They try, and you know they just don’t feel it. So they have to do something about it. So they set about, as their strategy, based on the Greenberg-Carville memo, to essentially destroy Bush. They succeeded, as we all know, and we’re feeling the repercussions of it today.

They’re not big fans of the military. They’re not comfortable with millions of people turning to God. They’re not comfortable with public displays of religion. They have tried to erase the real meaning of Thanksgiving from the history books. So a campaign was silently begun beside the Drive-Bys and liberals to remove the images from TV that created all of this. That’s where I’m going with this.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get there, but that’s why we’re not watching, that’s why we don’t see the video, what happened on 9/11. That’s why. That’s why we don’t see the video. We don’t want to run the risk of having that aftermath replicated — and they run the media, so they’re in charge of whether or not that video is shown. And to this day, they make fun of people who are patriots. They make fun of religious people. It’s never stopped.

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RUSH: To Detroit and Katherine. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi there. Thank you.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Well, I’ve been thinking much like you today about patriotism, and I guess my question is based on your insight into the liberal condition. More than the outward signs of what they do, I want to know what do they think and feel when they say they are patriotic? I know what I feel. You know, it’s a profound love of our country. But what do you think they feel? What is it to them if they say, “I feel patriotic”? How is it different from what we feel?

RUSH: Well, Hillary has defined it. Patriotism is having the guts to admit your country’s wrong. Patriotism is the guts to realize when your country has made mistakes. Patriotism is the right to dissent against your own country. Patriotism is understanding where your country needs to improve. Their patriotism is rooted in guilt. They give themselves gold stars for being honest about what’s wrong with this country, and yet that is the patriotism, admitting what’s wrong and admitting it’s flawed and then claiming to want to fix it.

CALLER: Well, that’s clearly a different feeling of patriotism than I have, and I think it’s clearly not based on love of country. It makes me wonder, is that a dead issue for a future conservative presidential candidate? Is patriotism off the table because Obama has transformed our country and patriotism no longer matters?

RUSH: No, it’s not. The majority of this country are just the exact opposite. The problem is, as I was just saying, outward displays patriotism are made fun of. They’re mocked. Late-night comedians or whoever in the pop culture, if anybody acts really patriotic or says something patriotic, they make fun of it as though it’s —

CALLER: Corny?

RUSH: It’s corny, and they say, “Look, we all feel that. There’s nothing special. You don’t have anything on us. We love our country. We love America.” But they make fun of it. It is corny, it’s not cool, it’s not hip.

CALLER: But the basis of patriotism would be the decision that any leader would make on behalf of our country.

RUSH: Precisely.

CALLER: Yeah. That’s what I don’t get.

RUSH: That’s exactly right. You know, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think America is perfect. But I also don’t believe that imperfection is an ideological flaw that needs to be… Let me put it this way: Liberals think they can perfect everything. They can perfect what’s wrong with, say, racists, what’s wrong with bigots, or they can fix what’s wrong with America. If it isn’t perfect, there’s something wrong with it, and then they are needed. That’s their call to action is when there isn’t perfection. It’s all part of their utopian fantasy, that there is perfection out there, and that only they are capable of finding it, discovering it, and maintaining it.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: It’s rooted in the flaws and the things that are wrong, and in having the guts to admit it. Whereas they look at us, our patriotism, and they see us as blindly accepting whatever is wrong in this country and saying it’s good, saying it’s great. They don’t look at us as having the ability to discriminate or discern good or bad. They think it is a mistake to think just because it’s America, it’s good, and just because it’s American, it’s great.

That, to them, is flawed thinking because the country is flawed. It was ill-founded, if you will. It was unjustly, unfairly constructed in their view. So that’s why one of these Obama runs around apologizing for America for. Bill Clinton did the same thing. Why do you think they do that? They really think the United States is the problem in the world, not the solution.

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RUSH: Back to the phones in Dayton, Ohio, this is Julie. I’m really glad you waited. Thank you for your patience. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. Thank you, Rush. I’m proud to be an American patriot.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: Yes. Unlike Michelle Obama, my whole life I have been proud of this country.

RUSH: There you go. There you go. There’s another example right there. Exactly. Well said.

CALLER: Thank you. Thank you. You know, this morning I woke up and there were a couple things I thought of as I was getting ready for work. I thought about George Bush, another true American patriot who did not care about polling numbers. I wondered what he was thinking of on this day. I had the news on, and I kept wanting to see some of the past footage, and I think it is so important to show that footage to the American people of what we endured on that day, and there is a song called — I can’t remember the country artist — “Have You Forgotten?” If you could play that on your show today, it’s such a great song, because in the song, it says they should show that footage every day because people need to remember.

RUSH: I know. We’ve talked about how they should show it; we’ve been through the reasons that they don’t. One of the reasons is ’cause it would revitalize, possibly, patriotism, which is something they just… They’re made uncomfortable by it, folks. They just are. The left is made uncomfortable by outward displays of patriotism and the flying of the flag and all that.

You know, there’s something that I don’t think very many people have seen ever. They’ve shown video footage. But do you ever recall seeing footage of people jumping out of the World Trade Center towers to avoid dying by fire? They don’t show that, and there is footage of that. Now, that brings you back to life real fast when you see people plunging from 50, 70, 80 stories to escape flames. I mean, it was horrible.

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RUSH: But I want to close the loop on this patriotism, ’cause I know that a lot of people… It’s very important thing, and when you start talking about it, it’s tough. You know, I’m not challenging the left’s patriotism. What I’m trying to do is tell you that it’s not yours and mine. We had a caller ask, “What is their patriotism?” Their patriotism… These are their words, folks; I’m not making it up. Their patriotism is having the guts to criticize the country.

Their patriotism is recognizing what’s wrong with this country and saying so. Their patriotism is dissenting when Republican presidents are in power. That, to them, is honorable. Patriotism is not about the greatness of America. It’s about the flaws that they think exist and the willingness to speak up about them and apologize for ’em. That’s really big. That makes you a big person, when you could admit your mistakes.

Except they’re not theirs. They’re the Founders’. I know that this makes people nervous. Let me give you some examples of this. You know, I’ve said that displays of force by the US military, make ’em nervous, they don’t like it. They get very nervous about outward displays of patriotism because they know… We had the story earlier about how when you show people the flag, it moves them away from Democrats, it moves them away from liberalism, and they know it.

I’ve told this story before, but I’m gonna repeat it. The first Super Bowl I attended in person was in San Diego, and it was the Packers against the Broncos. It was at what I think then was Jack Murphy Stadium, the Murph, and I was seated in an end zone with a guy named Ed Tatosian, who was a member of the SWAT team the Sacramento Police Department. We were with guests of some local Sacramento businesspeople, and we had tickets to the tailgate — the NFL tailgate party.

We went and it was a great, great day. We get to the stadium, we get to our seats in the end zone and we’re in the closed section, obviously. The stadium’s at the opposite end zone, and the pregame is going to feature a fly-by of US military jets. I’ve never seen one of those, so I was looking forward to it. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. Herb Alpert is playing the National Anthem with trumpet.

The way this is supposed to happen, at the very moment that Alpert hits the last note of the anthem, the jets are supposed to fly over in formation really low — and the roar the aircraft, that is just uncontained patriotism. So I’m sitting there and I’m scouring the skies while Herb. Well, I’m standing, and I’m scouring the skies while Herb Alpert’s playing the anthem. I’m looking for the jets ’cause somebody’s gotta coordinate this.

I’m looking out there and I finally see them. I see what would be the equivalent of their downwind leg. They’re flying parallel to the stadium. Then they turn, they’re heading right for the stadium, right for the open end of the end zone. Herb Alpert gets to the end of the anthem before they arrive, so he has to hold the note… and he holds the note … and he holds the note… This guy had breath control like I couldn’t believe.

The last note just went on and on — and the crowd, you can’t contain ’em. They’re on their feet already, and they are screaming, and those jets roar over head! Folks, I can’t tell you how I felt when that. I turned to Ed who was sitting on my right, and I started pounding his shoulder, and I started shouting things, “Can you believe that? I don’t believe what I just saw!” I couldn’t wait to get home and see what it sounded like on TV, and it’s nothing on TV.

You don’t get anywhere near the sound on TV of those jets flying. So I’m shouting at Tatosian! I’m shouting at Tatosian, and there’s all kind of people around. I shouted at him and I said, “How in the world can you see that and be a Democrat?” and there were two people sitting in front of me that turned around and were just shooting me daggers, so they musta been Democrats. But that’s the way I felt, even back then.

This is 1985 or ’86, whatever year it was that the Packers played the Broncos in the Super Bowl. And then, if you remember, when Bill Clinton won in 1992, they had a weeklong celebration of festivities on the Washington Mall leading up to Clinton’s inauguration. They had, I think, Aretha Franklin show up one day and she sang, “We Shall Overcome.” They had somebody else show up and they were singing about getting out of jail.

Every song was about how we’re being let out of prison, as though these people had been living tortured lives under Reagan and Bush. Finally a Democrat had been elected, and they’d been turned loose to be whoever they are, and there was a flyover. When the flyover happened, Ron Silver — who, at that time, was Hollywood actor, a Democrat — got mad. So he turned to somebody, and he said, “What the hell are they doing here?” Meaning, “This is a Democrat inauguration. What the hell’s the military doing here?”

Somebody said to him, “Ron, those are our jets now.”

“Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!”

So I’m very comfortable in saying that these patriotic differences are real and that real patriotism, as you and I know it, is mocked and made fun of. Folks, I’m sorry it’s taking me so long in a scattershot way today to convey this. But all of this is to explain why we don’t see anymore full-fledged video of what happened on 9/11/2001, because the left does not want that kind of patriotism brought back to life. It threatens them.

They’re far more comfortable with a patriotism that finds fault and blame with America, not a patriotism that celebrates the greatness of America. They don’t think it’s great, and it won’t be great till they get full control of it and fix the flaws — and that’s all the racism and bigotry and homophobia and environmental wackoism and all that. ‘Til they get in power and fix all of that, there won’t be any reason for real love of country.

Nothing. There’s too much wrong with this country right now to love it, and people that do are dangerous. That’s their patriotism.