RUSH: This is Eric in Des Moines, Iowa. Great to have you, Eric. I appreciate your patience. Thank you for waiting.

CALLER: Rush!

RUSH: Yes!

CALLER: I wanted to call and I wanted to thank you because 24 years ago the first time I heard you was right after the Dukakis campaign which I was working for ’cause that was my mindset. I was a card-carrying liberal Democrat. And when I listened to you, I was angered and shocked, but it was funny. You were so funny. And I couldn’t stop listening. And eventually I began to get it. Conservatism, as I understood it, I’d never been exposed to any of these ideas of conservatism, individual liberty, until I listened to you. And I’ve been wanting to say —

RUSH: Now, wait, wait, wait. This is important. How old were you at the time that this was all happening?

CALLER: Twenty-four, 25.

RUSH: At 24, 25, the concept of self-reliance and individualism is something you don’t think you had been exposed to?

CALLER: Nope. No way.

RUSH: How is that possible?

CALLER: I grew up in the Northeast, publicly educated.

RUSH: Okay. But if you weren’t taught that you had to do things yourself, if you weren’t taught that there was joy in accomplishment, what were you taught?

CALLER: You were taught the collective. That the government should solve the problems. That there’s an agency that will solve a problem. That there’s a think group that will solve a problem. And it’s very lonely. And it’s very frustrating, until you get it, you have the power within. But I didn’t know that.

RUSH: That is an eye-opener for me. See, I thought everybody — I thought maybe, if you’re not taught this, you at least have to realize it. I mean, you get yourself out of bed every day, you get yourself dressed, you maybe get yourself to where you want to go, maybe a school bus is involved. See, this was something front and center for us growing up as breathing was, self-reliance, accomplishing things yourself, that nobody can do it better than you can because nobody cares as much for yourself and you as you do. This is stuff that was part of just the natural growing up and maturation process. And that you never were exposed to it, that’s just —

CALLER: No. In fact, Rush, when I graduated high school, I really didn’t have much going on, and I talked about going into the military. And my mother told me that only people of color and poor people did that.

RUSH: Well, that’s what a lot of liberals think of the military, that it’s a place to go for the hopeless. It’s a place for people that don’t have any education, don’t have any future, don’t have much smarts, minorities, it’s where they go, that’s what it’s for.

CALLER: That’s so terrible.

RUSH: Well, it is. I mean, that I understand. To this day they talk about the military that way.

CALLER: Yeah. Yeah.

RUSH: As a repository for the hopeless. They use people that volunteer to the military as examples of how America is a failure. “These people’s only hope, Mr. Limbaugh, is going into the military, it’s the only way they’re gonna get a fair shake. America sucks. Capitalism’s unfair.” That’s what the left still teaches today! Well, Eric, I appreciate the call.

Yeah, the Dukakis days were funny. We had more fun — hell, he was the one funny, wearing the Beetle Bailey helmet sitting in the tank trying to prove that he wasn’t a military wuss. Yeah. Our nickname for him was The Loser. Michael Dukakis. This is the guy in a debate, the old CNN info anchor guy was Bernard Shaw. And he asks a hypothetical question to Dukakis. “If your wife was raped, da-da-da-da-da-da, what would you do?”

And Dukakis gives a professorial answer about being open and fair to rapists and making sure we don’t prejudge ’em. And even the liberal media couldn’t believe that he didn’t have one additional ounce of energy answering the question, what would you do if your wife was raped? Then we found out his poor wife was drinking lighter fluid when she couldn’t find any scotch in the house, his wife’s name was Kitty, and then we said, ah, that was horrible to find that kind of stuff out.

But it made sense, your husband hears that you just got raped and you get into a professorial think tank faculty lounge discussion about the future of rapists and fairness in the criminal justice system. So, you know, the humor was kind of handed to me by the Dukakis campaign. Eric, I really appreciate your honesty there.

Folks, this is what I mean. I’m 68 and I still learn things. You might think, “Rush, everybody should know this.” I just assume that self-reliance, whether you like it or not, you at least are aware of it. How do you get out of bed every day if you don’t do it yourself? I mean, even if you live in a welfare state, you sometimes still have to make the transaction. The idea that you can reach age 24 and not learn or be exposed to self-reliance?

I’m not talking about rugged individualism. I’m simply talking about doing things for yourself. Now, today I understand it because self-reliance is criticized as selfishness, unfairness, because some are better than others. One of the greatest atrocities to happen to American culture is the elimination of competition. And we’ve been doing that in kindergarten, grade school, high school for 30 years. And the reason that the left wants to breed competition out is because they want to get rid of the notion that there are losers. In competition somebody’s gonna lose. It’s not fair. Not fair. Everybody wants to be a winner.

So now everybody gets a trophy for participating. And they’re so ill-equipped for life outside the bubble that they become snowflakes and start using things like political correctness to shield them from ever having to really grow up. But self-reliance, I mean, that was taught right along with you don’t lie, here’s some good manners, you say, “Yes, sir. No, sir. Thank you.” You take care of yourself. It was just part of it. It was part of the equation. I can’t imagine not having that emphasized and spoken about growing up. But apparently it happened to a lot of people. It explains a lot too.

And yet again we have run out of time, and I failed to get to the Trump sound bites. It’s okay. It’s okay. We still have plenty of time to try to get to the Trump sound bites.