Religion, Morality, and Cell Phones?

RUSH: Dick in Macedonia, Ohio, I’m glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Rush, an honor and a privilege. I’m willing to take a stab at explaining why it’s absolutely essential in a constitutional republic to have either a Judeo-Christian ethic restraining our behavior or something very like it. The framers of the Constitution had a very decided Christian worldview. Part of that worldview is recognition of the fact that we are flawed from the garden, we have a basic tendency toward evil. With the freedom that we enjoy in a constitutional republic, and especially now with all the wealth that we have, we have the opportunity and the means to indulge our dark sides. And without the voluntary self-imposition of some type of behavioral restraint, we become and do evil. And that’s why it’s essential.

RUSH: Even with those, some of us do evil.

CALLER: Absolutely. But without it, and it certainly is —

RUSH: What you’re saying is something I’ve said before. If I’m interpreting you correctly, what you’re saying is something I have gotten tarred and feather over every time I’ve said it in the 20-year history of this program, and that is that morality, life’s guardrails, whatever, derive, descend from religion.

CALLER: It’s the only source.

RUSH: Well, just be thankful you are not the host. If you were, you would get e-mails, hateful e-mails telling you you don’t know what you’re talking about, you haven’t the slightest understanding of religion or morality, and, besides, who are you to be defining anybody’s morality for them anyway?

CALLER: It explains why now we have to have surveillance cameras every two-to-300 feet in the major cities because our behavior has deteriorated to the point that we must keep each other under surveillance in order to achieve any level of order.

RUSH: Now, I understand that, but, you know, I read a piece and I just interviewed one of the authors of the piece, Pete Wehner and Yuval Levin have written a piece, they’ve looked at the data over the last 15 years, crime statistics are improving, all kinds of things are getting better. Test scores for high schools in math and science are getting better. They’re not improving against the rest of the world but they’re improving against our own benchmark. All these cultural indicators are getting better. A lot of people think these surveillance cameras are just the natural evolution toward large government and Big Brotherism.

CALLER: Well, absolutely. Absolutely. But then let’s take them down, if all these behavioral indicators are improving.

RUSH: Well, it ain’t going to happen. Once they go up, once those cameras are up — hell, I spotted ’em here in our little town the other day at one of the intersections. The primary thing, well, we’re going to make sure that we catch everybody that makes a traffic infraction, or runs a red light or whatever. But, you know, let me throw another theory out at you. For you conspiracy theorists out there will eat this up. There’s another report — this time I think it’s from Israel — that cell phone use, regular cell phone use will lead to brain tumors. All right? Now, I have a question. This comes up at least twice a year. You get research, no, it doesn’t, yes, it does. No, it doesn’t, yes, it does. We’ve got evidence. Cell phones used by mice have led to brain tumors in mice. People go, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that.’ We test everything on mice. Now, here’s the question. I’ll ask you this, Dick, since you’re on the phone here.

CALLER: All right.

RUSH: Does it seem to you that somebody’s hell-bent on getting us to stop using cell phones? You can’t use ’em in the car now. I gotta have hands-free use of the cell phone, and people getting mad when they ring in the opera; when they ring in church; so do you get the impression that there’s some people trying to get us not to use them?

CALLER: It would appear that way.

RUSH: Now, why would that be? Why would it be?

CALLER: I’m not sure. Perhaps they are opposed to us having the level of communication ability that we do.

RUSH: I think you may be on to something. I think you may be on to something. For example, just posit this thought. This is just a teachable, thinkable moment. One of the things — and my theory about liberalism is that they’re all about control. In order for liberalism to thrive, they have to be able to, A, control the government, be in charge of it, and control as much of life as possible. With so many millions of Americans, the hundreds of millions of Americans referred to by some Democrat yesterday, Hillary Clinton, hundreds of millions of Americans, so easily able to access all kinds of information, do you know how hard it is to control a population that has all kinds of access and communication ability to get information from anywhere? The Internet’s a big enough threat as it is. Are they going to shut that down?

CALLER: That I don’t know. I’m not a computer guy.

RUSH: Well, they can’t. They can’t. All they could do is find a way to make it expensive to use it. I’m not suggesting — this cell phone business, I’m starting to ask, ‘Why are they so eager to get us to stop using them?’ I refuse to believe it’s actually because they think we’re going to get brain cancer. I just don’t think that’s it. Now, I know you got a bunch of mealy-mouthed scientists and researchers out there desperate for grants and all the ingredients that go into this stuff, and I know that there are probably some people that are not in the cell phone business that would love to damage it. I know about corporate competition and all that, but something about this, how long has it been postulated that cell phone usage causes cancer? Way too long. There’s a reason they’re trying to scare people right now into not using them. Ain’t going to work. People are never going to shut up, except me, I hate talking when the show is over. I don’t say another ten words the rest of the day.