RUSH: Christine in Scottsdale. You must be a former radical, right?
CALLER: Yes. If I can take just a moment, I want to illustrate my background for your listeners so they have a point of reference.
RUSH: Right, right, right, go ahead.
CALLER: I was raised predominantly by my mother, who was a hippie. We lived on a commune in Washington. It was a very, very, very lax, nontraditional lifestyle, open use of drugs, you know, everything you basically think of when you think of a very liberal lifestyle. That?s how I was raised by my mother. My father, conversely, he is a religious-right conservative, he just retired with two pensions as a school teacher.
RUSH: Let me ask you a question about the commune, did it have a collective in there where you go buy your beans and soy and all that?
CALLER: Well, sir, what we did was we harvested cherries from our orchard and I used the money to buy resources to make our own pottery and clothing and so forth.
RUSH: Sort of raping the countryside in order to have a living. Okay.
CALLER: (Laughing.) Okay, like I say, conversely, my father was my other example. He was, like I said, he has two pensions, he was a lifelong school teacher, and he was an honorable man serving his country in the National Guard and a very good person all around. That’s my background. I grew up with most of my mother’s influences. I ended up being very active in the number one environmental organization, of course Greenpeace and PETA — I hope I can say those names on the air — and so this is where I began, and I have gone from there to the point where I just finished now in the last year or so in helping to try and reelect J. D. Hayworth. So this is the span of where I have been to where I am now. What I want to explain to your listeners, who seem to have a genuine interest in this, when I became involved — you have to remember two things. Number one, I was very surrounded by a lot of people in a community that were each extolling the virtues of a very tolerant, nonjudgmental society. This was my foundation. The people that I’m seeing all seemed very compassionate, you know, looking out for the welfare of their fellow man, all of which are very admirable qualities. The problem was is that they did not incorporate both sides of any argument. They would not listen to oppositional points of view.
RUSH: Right. So they weren’t tolerant?
CALLER: Correct. Well, they were tolerant of intolerant, which is sort of a juxtapos?, as it were, yes. How this happens, so your listeners understand, how this actually happens inside someone’s head or your mind or your heart, is liberalism attracts a lot of idealists. They want to see change, they have a sense of compassion about them, and the conclusion that you come to is that the world has problems, and that if the majority of people assume a conventional lifestyle, then how they look at it is that conventionalism must be the cause of the suffering. And so from there you look to nonconventionalism or new or pioneering methods to see whether you can actually assert a kinder, gentler world, state of being, as it were. That’s what I did — that was my platform. Also you have to remember that a lot of people that are attracted to the left, liberal people themselves live unconventional lifestyles and they’re the focus of a lot of hatred and intolerance, and so they already have a lot of anger and resentment they’ve suffered on behalf of, you know, if they’re gay or whatever makes them different than the large part of the bell curve, so to speak. So your foundation is a lot of people which are actually very nice people, trying to institute a better change. And then also a lot of people who have these inbuilt seeds of resentment against society because they are not accepted. Does that make sense so far?
RUSH: All of it makes sense.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: It sounds like they’re lost, they’re shunned, they don’t fit in, they don’t want to be judged, and they know they already don’t fit in, they’re a little odd.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: At the same time, those in the commune who do live the conventional lifestyle that they criticize, think, well, they are capable of it because they understand it, they’re not —
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: — being seduced by it —
CALLER: Exactly —
RUSH: — but most people don’t understand it so they have to live the commune style —
CALLER: Exactly. And if I could have just a moment or two more, I want to explain an evolution here. Essentially there’s a —
RUSH: I got one minute.
CALLER: Okay. What happens is, is that you get to the point where this hatred surmounts your ability to listen reasonably to the opposite argument, and I got to the point where — I was very unconventional when it came to being a liberal to an extent because my father being a veteran, I have always understood where the gift of our freedom comes from and how it is perpetuated. And I was the only person in Greenpeace who carried around a Glock 23 10-millimeter. I have always questioned, and I was able to come to the point where when I began to question what they were saying, I saw these inbuilt hypocrisies about what the Democrats are saying versus what they were actually doing in Congress and Senate about laws and civil rights and things, and it was almost like an awakening, like one becomes out of a hope or something, an incredible sense of disillusionment that follows, where you wake up and you have to face your own pride, you have to step out of that, and out of this loathing that —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — you have for yourself —
RUSH: I’ve gotta stop you because we gotta go to a break here, but the self-loathing and the hatred, all of the reasons that you gave, is a good explanation. Thanks so much for the call, Christine.