RUSH: Joseph in Akron, Ohio, let’s start on the phones with you today. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi. Thanks for having me, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Just had a couple quick points. I listened to your interview with the young lady the other day, the young college student, and I gotta say, you have inspired me. I wouldn’t say I’m a long-time listener. I’ve been listening for four or five years now, if you consider that a long time. I’m a 24-year-old college student. When I first started listening to you, I was just kinda coming out of high school. I can’t say I was the brightest person in the world, 2.3 GPA. A lot of what you’ve said as far as going above and beyond and being more than you could be, so to speak, it has kind of helped me drive myself through college. I’m 24 working on my second masters now. You’ve really helped me — and also I wanted to mention, you mentioned that the liberal media keeps saying, you know, you interviewed (vice) president and whatnot, and that’s, you know, going out to your base, so to speak. And I don’t think they realize that your base are people like me, a former liberal college student that’s really going to drive the elections of the tomorrow.
RUSH: You know, it’s an excellent point. I don’t know about the college age demographic, but they do believe — well, the Drive-Bys believe that this audience is a one-note samba, and that I’m sort of like a pied piper and the audience is mind-numbed robots so whatever I tell them to do, they do; whatever I tell them to think, they think. But Tom Daschle knows the truth about this. After the 2002 elections, I will never forget, Tom Daschle at a press conference said he’d gone out and found experts (I don’t know who they were) to analyze the listening audience of this program, and Daschle was trying to warn Democrats. He was shocked. He said not only do conservatives listen to Limbaugh, but a lot of our people do, too, and they are changing their minds. But you’re right. Most everybody thinks that this audience is a select, core group of like-minded and similarly thinking people, when it’s not. You are evidence of that, and there’s countless other audience research that we have to illustrate this, too. I want to congratulate you. I appreciate your crediting me but the bottom line was you did the work, once you got inspired, once you were motivated. I just wish those kinds of things were happening to people like you earlier in your life.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, if you look at it. I look at a lot of my friends and things of that nature and it seems with the way the media is nowadays — you know, I grew up, I watched CNN. I watched programs like that with my father. He’s a hundred percent, hard-core union guy. I grew up a liberal, and pretty much that was the only side of the coin I saw —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — for 18 years. Without the proper guidance from places like you or other media outlets as far as talk radio goes, I don’t think people like me, until Fox News really came onto the scene, we weren’t seeing the other side of the coin. It was pretty much a doom and gloom atmosphere throughout.
RUSH: Well, it wasn’t just that. Not only were you not seeing it, you were told that the other side of the coin was whatever it was: a bunch of wackos, kooks, racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, or what have you.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Of course then you couple that with something that we can’t escape — this is human nature more than anything else. You’re 24.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: At the time you’re growing up, in your teen years watching CNN with your dad, a big union guy, you’re getting a double dose of all that thinking, and I’m sure what you heard was constant chaos and doom and gloom about the future of the country and where we were and, ‘Oh, woe! We’ve got so much discrimination, so much unfairness, so much poverty, so many poor people,’ and you’re thinking your country sucks because —
CALLER: Oh, yeah.
RUSH: — your historical perspective began the day you were born. And the history education you got when you were growing up was so inept that you didn’t hear about how really rotten it’s been in this country when we were founded and what all was necessary to get us to this point, what kind of progress has been made. Furthermore, you weren’t told what the true reasons for the greatness of this country are, in comparison to every other civilization of human beings that has lived on this planet. So you grew up with a totally perverted and distorted view of your own country, in addition to whatever you were learning on CNN and hanging round your parents, and the fact —
CALLER: Oh, yeah.
RUSH: — that you have overcome that…
CALLER: Well, part of that. I mean if you look at our public education system, as far as American history and the way things were, the Constitution, we learned absolutely nothing. We barely brushed the surface, and in a home environment, I don’t know if I’m the typical American, so to speak, but I mean if a conservative got elected president, my mom would cry. That’s how far-left liberal they were.
RUSH: Well, I know, and this is the frustrating thing. We all know this. You’re in the middle of it, and you don’t, but you learned it.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: We’re in the process of the ongoing education system — that’s what the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies is all about. We here, are thrilled we reached you.
CALLER: You know, I just want to thank you for paving the road to enlightenment, so to speak, and like I said it’s hard to find resources out there to really combat the — I won’t really call it ignorance, but — misinformation that’s out there.
RUSH: No, it’s not. It’s not anymore. It used to be. It’s not anymore. There are all kinds of resources. What do you mean by ‘resources’? Sometimes people mean money when they mention ‘resources.’
CALLER: Not so much resources, enlightenment resources, like you say your Limbaugh Letter is a good place to look and read to really combat liberal media bias.
RUSH: There’s all kinds of things out there. You’re just not directed to them, or if they are referenced they’re always lampooned or made fun of. But, look, since this has happened to you, you now carry the weight on your shoulders of helping spread the movement, and you’re going to be under assault.
CALLER: I hope someday I can run for office and carry the movement into Washington.
RUSH: That would be great, but even before you do that you’ve got friends. You have people in your immediate circle. You’re going to be influencing people you have no idea. Some of them are going to be mad. Some of them will ignore you, but you’re going to be influencing people. It’s up to you to hang tough. Because you’re going to be under a lot of pressure from people once you go public with all this stuff, as you have, and I’m sure you’ve discovered that already, but hang in there, because you’ve been set free here, and this is not something to take lightly. Do not go back to the bondage and shackles of liberalism.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, thank you for carrying the torch, Rush, and I’ll let you go here.
RUSH: Joseph, thanks much, and nice to have you on the program.