RUSH: Open Line Friday on Tuesday. This is Louisa in Chicago. You’re next, hello.
CALLER: Hello. Rush?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I was just wondering — I mean, I know you just talked about alternative fuel in the form of corn, but, you know, I was thinking — just alternative fuel in general, why are you so against it? I mean, these people are trying to, you know, do things, make things, you know, new inventions, whatever —
RUSH: (Groans.)
CALLER: — and I think isn’t that part of America, the way that they just try to do things? And, you know, I’ve heard you talk about, like say, for instance, um, solar energy, and the reason why you don’t like solar energy is because you don’t like panels on your roof. But, you know, this sounds like just for esthetic reasons.
RUSH: I’ve never said that! Where are you picking this stuff up that I’ve said?
CALLER: Oh, this was a couple years ago, I remember you saying that, and I was like, “Why on earth is he saying that?” because…
RUSH: What I said was —
CALLER: Yes?
RUSH: — when I bought a house in Sacramento, it had solar panels on it.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: They were mandated.
CALLER: Oh!
RUSH: They had to be there, and I was told it was going to save on all the electricity bills, and it didn’t.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: It didn’t save anything. It was just a bunch of feel-do-gooderism that never amounted to anything. I’m not against any alternative fuel.
CALLER: Okaaaay.
RUSH: What I’m against is the way the people who present the idea to you are able to seduce you into thinking that there’s some magic formula for an alternative fuel that’s going to enable us to get rid of oil, and that is not the case, Louisa. I’m all for entrepreneurism and ingenuity, creativity, but so far in the alternative fuel sector we haven’t seen anything that will come anywhere near replacing fossil fuels.
CALLER: Okay, but — but wouldn’t you say that instead of, like, mocking them and stuff, you say, “Well, back to the drawing board? You know, let’s just…”
RUSH: No, because —
CALLER: I mean, it’s a good try. Like I remember you saying something about you didn’t like the electric car because it didn’t go fast enough?
RUSH: No, because nobody wanted it, and Algore and Washington were trying to mandate that people buy the thing when nobody wanted it. That is not entrepreneurship!
CALLER: Ooooh.
RUSH: That is big government forcing people to do things that they don’t want to do, to hurt their life. All that’s embodied in global warming.
CALLER: Ooooh.
RUSH: Look, I am not here to praise good intentions.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I am here to praise good works. I am here to praise and support things that actually work. If somebody has the great intention of getting rid of oil and they come up with something like recycled bubble gum and people like you fall for it because they “care” and they’re trying to clean up the earth, I worry about you falling for this kind of stuff. We are a growing, burgeoning economy! We have people who have needs and demands. This country cannot afford anybody telling it that we have no room for growth, that we are too rich, that we are too prosperous. This country leads the world. It protects the world. It feeds the world. We have that as our leadership requirement, as the leaders of the Free World!
We need to make sure that we remain big and strong so that we can defend the rest of the world as well as ourselves. I’m all for alternative fuels, and I am all for clean air, and I am all for clean water. But if somebody’s going to come up with a cockamamie idea that is designed to get unsuspecting people to support higher taxes, big government, and clunky, lawn mower cars that nobody wants to drive, I am not going to praise their intentions! I’m going to try to alert people like you that you are being had. They’re trying to blame you, Louisa, and the way you live for the pollution and the damage and all this, and they want you to change your lifestyle and revise it downward on the basis that you are making some great contribution to fixing all the messes that you, as an American, have created — and I say, bunk!
That’s not happening. That’s not the reality of the way this country is or our people, and if somebody comes up with a genuine alternative fuel — and I’ll tell you when this is going to happen. When somebody finally is able to tell us that we’ve only got, say, 50 years of oil left, that’s when you’re going to see people get cranking, but right now, fossil fuels are the fuel of the engine of freedom and democracy and world economy, and there’s nothing that’s going to change it for 200 or 300 years, if then.
CALLER: Okay, but… Okay, just remember that Thomas Alva Edison tried 150 times to make the perfect lightbulb. So we have to at least give these people a chance —
RUSH: By the way —
CALLER: — to go back to the drawing board and try again.
RUSH: Wait a second!
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: You are not listening to me, because if you were you would have already agreed with me. You would have apologized and said that you now see the world in the right light, but you keep arguing with me.
CALLER: I don’t want government mandates, that’s for sure.
RUSH: Well, you may not want ’em but you’re going to get ’em with this kind of head in the sand attitude.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I’m trying to help you here! Look, Thomas Edison, 150 times to make the lightbulb, right?
CALLER: Something like that.
RUSH: Guess what they’re doing now? Thomas Edison is a villain! Thomas Edison’s lightbulbs only burn 5% of the energy they use. They’re terribly inefficient. You’ve gotta go get these new fluorescent lightbulbs and put ’em in your house so that you don’t pollute the planet, Louisa. Are you going to do that? Are you going to say, “Edison sucks! Edison was disaster for this planet!” Are you going to say that, because that’s what they want you to say next!
CALLER: No, I call them curlicue lightbulbs. I think they’re kind of cute. It’s just weird because they tell me that it’s going to save $45, and I’m sitting there saying, “$45 over what amount of time?” They don’t specify that.
RUSH: Hang on. Hang on. You are a reclamation project worth sticking with.
CALLER: (Giggles.)
RUSH: Don’t go away.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We now rejoin Louisa in Chicago. You are being unusually contentious with me despite the fact that I’m taking valuable broadcast time to teach you that I am not what you think; I haven’t said what you’ve been told.
CALLER: Ooooh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be contentious. I hope that’s not a bad thing.
RUSH: Well, mildly contentious. I’ve given you, wisdom, brilliance here and you, “But, but, but,” you keep arguing, like we’re married.
CALLER: Oh, no, no, no. I’m just thinking. I mean, I’m with you on the fact that I don’t want government to tell me to buy an electric car. I’m absolutely with you on that, but by the same token, I don’t want to discourage the people that are making the electric car because maybe sometime in the future they might come out with something better, you know, that will go fast and that people will like.
RUSH: The only thing that’s going to discourage the people from making the electric car is people not buying the electric car, and people aren’t and didn’t buy the electric car, and so they were discouraged from making them. But, you know what? That’s called the market.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: There are people that make products all the time that the country rejects, and they might have had the greatest intentions in the world.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: There are just some realities that we face here in this country. We are such an affluent country, and we are so prosperous. We have so much economic opportunity here that a record number of people are trying to access their piece of it and in the process the whole economic pie is growing, and the people that are talking about reducing various aspects of American life, particularly in energy, are really trying to limit that growth. It’s like conservation. I’ve had calls from people saying, “Why are you against conserving energy?” I’m not. Not at all! But don’t substitute conservation for growth. We’re not going to have the energy needs we need in ten years or 15 by simply conserving what we use today. We’re going to have to find new sources of energy. Look, you’ve got people who claim that we need to end our dependence on foreign oil. They are the same people that will not let us drill for oil within our own borders or right off our own borders in the Gulf of Mexico or off California or in Alaska.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: They are hypocrites, and they are statists. They are interested in having you feel as guilty as you can over your contribution to all this pollution and global warming and destruction or whatever, so that you’ll go along with these newfangled ideas that don’t work and then go along with higher taxes and bigger government to put limits on your lifestyle (i.e., your freedom) all premised on the notion that this will make the world a better place.
CALLER: It might. It might — and then as far as the corn is concerned and stuff like that, hopefully next year there will be more corn growers so that the price will go down, you know?
RUSH: You know, the US government controls this.
CALLER: Oh, they control it?
RUSH: They pay farmers not to grow crops! It’s called subsidies.
CALLER: Oh, God. I hope they make —
RUSH: I hope we grow more corn, and you know what? I hope we discover more oil, and you know what? I hope you become a millionaire! Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful? And I hope the world loves each other someday. I hope we all get along.
CALLER: Okay. Well, I’m not an environmentalist wacko. I’m just trying to figure out…
RUSH: I know you’re not, but they’re roping you in.
CALLER: Okay. (Giggles.)
RUSH: You are one and you don’t know it. You’re buying hook, line, and sinker into all this. They’re trying to tug your heart, your emotional heart strings, and they’re succeeding.
CALLER: Sorry about that.
RUSH: You think I’m the bad guy! You think I’m against alternative fuel. There’s nobody more pro-America, pro-growth, pro-opportunity, pro-freedom than I am. There is nobody who wants the best for every American more than I do.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Then tell ’em to go back to the drawing board.
RUSH: All you have to do is listen!
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: They’re not interested in what I just said. They don’t believe most Americans can achieve great things. They look at most people with condescension and contempt! That’s why they think they need big government and benefit programs to help them, because they can’t do it themselves.
CALLER: Ooooh. Well, I’m not for benefit programs.
RUSH: You realize people are not smart enough, Louisa? If people were really smart like the liberals are, we’d all be driving these little Priuses and hybrids, and we’d be driving electric cars. But we’re so stupid we refuse to, so because of our stupidity, they’re going to make sure we end up in them by making sure there’s nothing else to be able to buy.
CALLER: But aren’t the Priuses… I mean, there’s a limited quantity of Priuses, and that’s why, I mean, I heard that there’s waiting lines for the Priuses already.
RUSH: Well, there are a lot of gullible people who want to “do their part to save the world.”
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: They want status, and driving a Prius and “saving the world” and not contributing to pollution makes them feel pretty good about themselves, but there’s nothing realistic about it. It’s a purely emotional purchase and use.
CALLER: I know with the Prius, I was tempted to buy one.
RUSH: Unreal! Incredible! I don’t believe it.
CALLER: The thing is that it’s so expensive, that I don’t think it would counter the cost of the gasoline.
RUSH: No, it doesn’t. Wait until you have to replace the battery, Louisa. You may as well take out a second mortgage.
CALLER: (Giggling.)
RUSH: How old are you?
CALLER: Me? Oh, I don’t like to talk about age. I’m forty-ish, how’s that?
RUSH: Wow. You sound so much younger.
CALLER: (Giggling.) People tell me I have a young voice over the phone, yeah.
RUSH: People tell you you have a young voice on the phone? You talk to a lot of people on the phone?
CALLER: Sometimes. In my job I do, yeah.
RUSH: All right. What color is your hair?
CALLER: (Laughing.) Oh, my goodness! I’m a brunette.
RUSH: I figured that. You sound like you’re a brunette.
CALLER: Oh, okay.
RUSH: 5’6″?
CALLER: Four nine.
RUSH: Four nine?
CALLER: That explains everything! That explains everything, right.
RUSH: That explains all this.
CALLER: Explains what?
RUSH: It just does. It just explains everything.
CALLER: Ooooh.
RUSH: Look, I’ve really enjoyed this. I hope some of this stuck, because I really am trying to help you here.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I was speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I truly believe everything I said to you. I am not opposed to alternative fuels that work, but how about these clods, these clowns that want windmills all over the place, Louisa, except where they live?
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: Do you think this country can survive on windmill power? The Dutch tried it; it didn’t work. Windmills are now something only in portraits.
CALLER: But windmills could be, you know, in addition to —
RUSH: I don’t believe it!
CALLER: “In addition to,” what’s the matter with that?
RUSH: I don’t believe it.
CALLER: As long as they’re trying, let them try. What the hay?
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: What’s it to you whether they’re trying or not?
RUSH: Oh! Oh!
CALLER: I’m sorry.
RUSH: No, you’re not! You know exactly what you’re doing. We love you. We love you. This has been a lot of fun.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: But try not to do too much damage to the country, okay?
CALLER: I’ll try not to do it. I’m just trying to evaluate things for myself, and… Yeah. Just trying to evaluate things.
RUSH: No, you’re past the evaluation stage. Your mind is made up on this. We’ve lost you. You’ve gone over to the dark side.
CALLER: No. I hope not.
RUSH: You have. You don’t even know it, but you have.
CALLER: Nooo.
RUSH: That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You fit the mold! They have reached out and they have grabbed you, and you are substituting good intentions for progress.
CALLER: Oh, well. I’m sorry. I hope there’s more corn growers next year, though, so…
RUSH: “I hope there’s more corn growers next year…”
CALLER: Yeah, so that they can benefit from the higher prices.
RUSH: I already explained this to you.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: Yeah, well, I hope they print more dollars.
CALLER: Oh, God no! I hope not! I hope they don’t print more dollars. I don’t like that.
RUSH: Why not?
CALLER: No, no. That’s inflation.
RUSH: Well, wouldn’t more corn…
CALLER: We want to keep inflation down.
RUSH: Wouldn’t more corn cause more inflation in corn?
CALLER: Ummm, no, the thing is if there’s more corn, then the price will go down, right, because it’s the economics, right?
RUSH: Well, that’s not happening.
CALLER: Right now it isn’t but in the future, when more people are going to grow corn, you know?
RUSH: Let me tell you what’s going to happen with this corn business. I just told you: half the corn supply is going to be used for automobiles, and there’s going to be riots in the Third World because to those people, corn is like their bread, like their wheat. People in Mexico make four bucks a week and are going to have to pay three bucks for a tortilla? You may as well just open a tortilla stand in Gila Bend, Arizona, Show Low, Arizona, whatever, because they’re coming. They’re coming — and just remember what they’re trying to do to Thomas Edison with these stupid fluorescent lightbulbs.
CALLER: Mmmm.
RUSH: They want you to run around with a placard in downtown Chicago saying, “Edison sucks.” I have to run, Louisa.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Call back any time.
CALLER: Okay, thank you!
RUSH: You bet. (clearing throat) I gave it everything I had. I gave it everything I had! What could I have done better, Mr. Snerdley? Attitude adjustment? Could I have had more patience? (sigh) It was hopeless, right? It was a lost cause? See, these are the things. Stick with this, folks, and you never know. A light will go off — not a fluorescent, an Edison, will go off — in her head six months from now, a year from now and she’ll be out there with a Rush Babe on Board sign in her car and saying, “Gosh, he was right.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mark in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Fine, sir.
CALLER: I’m a charter member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, by the way.
RUSH: Well, you’re talking to the Mister Big.
CALLER: I have one of your mugs.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I had a question. Last night I was at work and I was eating my lunch, minding my own business, and right away a couple liberals start jumping on me, “Well, George Bush is an idiot.”
RUSH: Wait a minute. They just came up? You’re just eating your lunch doing nothing? You’re not even talking to them and just jumped you?
CALLER: Yeah, I’m sitting there reading the newspaper. We started talking about football, and then this guy is an Eagle fan, and I’m a Cowboy fan, and he says, “What do you expect from a Cowboy fan and a George Bush lover?” and I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “I hate Bush.” I said, “Well, give me a reason why. Why do you hate Bush?” I learned this from you, you know? I’m trying to draw him out — and he couldn’t give me nothing, and then we get into Iraq, and the economy, and I’m giving him all the facts on the economy how it worked with JFK and Reagan and Bush here, you know? You cut taxes and stuff, but he can’t give me anything back. So I start getting upset. I get too wound up. I’m too passionate about it. I need to know from you: how do I keep myself calm so I can argue with these people? Because I just want to slap ’em in the head.
RUSH: It doesn’t sound like there was much of an argument if they weren’t saying anything.
CALLER: No, there’s not, but you can’t convince ’em! You know what I mean?
RUSH: Well, don’t expect to convince them. They’re not ever going to say you did. Even if you did convince them, they wouldn’t give you the pleasure of letting you know that you’ve convinced them while you’re there.
CALLER: Well, then do I even waste my time?
RUSH: Yeah, you’re wasting your time. If you want to talk to them — if your objective is to change their mind and persuade them — you’re wasting your time. The old saying: “When you get into an argument with a fool, it’s tough to tell the difference who’s the fool.”
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Because when you get into an argument with idiots, you automatically have to go down to their level! You have to be an idiot to talk to an idiot.
CALLER: Right. Well, I know you talked before about you gotta let them discover it, you know?
RUSH: It’s a long process.