RUSH: Janice, Shiloh, Illinois, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Last Man Standing. It’s wonderful to talk to you again. And ask your wife to give you a really big kiss from me for what you’ve been through since you’ve taken the president on.
RUSH: All right, will do.
CALLER: I wanted to talk about Hilary Rosen because she said the truth, too, Rush. She was correct when she says her words were poorly chosen. The mistake she made was she made that comment about Ann Romney. If you would take the whole thing that she said and remove that one line, she was going after the white single mother vote of fish town in Charles Murray’s new book.
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: Because the thing is stay-at-home moms are not unionized. They can speak out, and that’s why the left has been so gob smacked.
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you, there’s another thing, too. You have a good point here, but there’s another reason, too, why stay-at-home moms — and I shared this earlier — there’s a reason why stay-at-home moms are a threat and that is they’re the essence of independence, the essence of rugged individualism. They do not need the state. They’re not asking the state for anything. They’re not asking the government to pay for this or pay for that. They’re not putting any stress on the federal budget, for example. And as such they’re not controllable, and they’re not dependent. And that, to any statist, is a huge threat.
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RUSH: There’s another reason why stay-at-home moms, I think, actually are a threat to women like Hilary Rosen and other leftist pundits who want the state paying for school lunch, school breakfast, school dinner, food stamps, contraception, you name it. Every aspect of life, they want the state involved in, and a stay-at-home mother doesn’t involve the government. Married, stay-at-home moms: That’s who were attacked. Ann Romney, married, stay-at-home mother. “She never had to work a day in her life!” You know what reeeally irritates them? In addition to stay-at-home moms being the flip side of a welfare mom, a stay-at-home mom…
Look at me. I’m talking to you now. Instead of having the government, stay-at-home moms have a husband to support them — and you don’t think that irritates some of these leftist women? Remember the early days of feminism. Women were to ignore, put aside relationships as one of the reasons for happiness in life. Now, I realize some of you are new to the program. Some of you may be too young to remember what was going on in the late sixties and seventies. I lived it. Don’t doubt me on this. In the dawning era of this age of feminism, women were told all kinds of things. A relationship, a man were shackles.
That was holding you back. It was denying you your full potential. Being a mother, staying at home? You’re letting the sisterhood down, but you’re letting yourself down, too. It was a full-court press to throw away as many traditions in male-female relationships, both at home and at work, as possible. I kid you not on this. It was not hidden. There was nothing subliminal about this message. It was dead on, right between the eyes. There were books, lectures. The feminists went on TV, made remarks about it. Having a life that depended on a man for any amount of your happiness was a sin. And if you don’t like it that way, depending on a relationship for any part of your happiness, you were missing the boat.
You were falling prey to the old traps that had been set by the patriarchal-dominated society from the get-go. Because all it was was slave work. It was vacuuming and ironing and cleaning up the messes of the kids and all that. This was the “liberation” of “women’s lib.” It was liberating women from all of these traditions. And you cannot have women’s lib without also requiring liberation from men and relationships and marriage and so forth. The feminists would say back then, for you young ladies in the audience… Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and Molly Yard and Eleanor Smeal and a whole bunch of them, would constantly say, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
That was one of the statements, and it was militant. This was not advice that they were giving. These were demands. Now, the reason I remember this stuff, for those of you young ladies (and young men in the audience, too) is because I was just turning 20 and 21. In 1971, I was just turning 20 and 21. I’d moved out of the house. I’d moved to Pittsburgh. I was on my own. It was new, fresh, exciting times. Then this feminism stuff hit, and it was a mess, ’cause it turned women angry. Pshew! Even if you went out and had a date, there was no fun to it. And it wasn’t every woman, of course. They all didn’t fall into it. But a whole lot did.
See, the women are not supposed to depend on that. It was okay if the government ended up providing for you — that was cool — but not a husband, not a man. You’re supposed to do that yourself. And if you couldn’t do it yourself, then you turn to government programs. Now, today’s Ann Romney’s birthday. Did you know that? It’s Ann Romney’s birthday. The Democrats were actually couple days early with their gifts last week. It’s probably a happy birthday. I’m just telling you. I’m not sure making these statements to be provocative. I’m not trying to make anybody mad. I’m just telling you what “is.” I lived it. I grew up in an era where more women than you can count were told, “The worst thing that can happen to you is to have your happiness derive from a relationship or a man.”
Now, they still needed men. They wanted them, but it wasn’t pleasant. It really was true. Compliment her appearance and it was an insult. It was sexist. It was “objectifying” her. You know, you’d open the car door. “I can do that myself! I’m not some weakling!” This stuff really happened, and it was commonplace.
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RUSH: Nancy, Roanoke, Virginia, thank you so much for waiting. Great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I just wanted to say that I believe the real reason that we stay-at-home mothers are seen as a threat is that we’re home every day listening, together with our children, to you.
RUSH: You know, that’s not just a joke. I think that’s part and parcel of what the anger with stay-at-home moms is, homeschooling, all that stuff, listening to talk radio, not giving your life over to the government, to the state, to the Democrat Party. I mean there’s all kinds of reasons that are rolled up into this resentment.
CALLER: My children grew up listening to you and they’re all three conservative adults at this point, so —
RUSH: And they’re fine people so far, right?
CALLER: Very much, yes.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, that’s very sweet of you. How old are they now?
CALLER: Our youngest is getting ready to graduate from college. Our middle is a doctor, and our oldest son is a West Point grad in the Army.
RUSH: Wow. Well, congratulations.
CALLER: They grew up on you, they subscribe to The Limbaugh Letter, and they’re just really grateful for the influence that you played in their life.
RUSH: Well, I can’t thank you enough. You’re making my day here.
CALLER: Thank you for all that you do.
RUSH: I appreciate it. That’s just great. I hear this kind of stuff, and I’m still a little embarrassed. I don’t know quite how to thank people properly for that, but I appreciate it more than you can possibly know. But, yeah, it’s a War on Rush Babies, too, because like she said, her children grew up listening to this program. The resentment and the hostility — why be angry at women who stay home and raise their kids? What is there to be mad at about? It’s none of your business. Okay, you’re a woman, you’re a feminist and you want to go work and so forth, fine. What’s so wrong with a woman who wants to stay home and raise the kids? Well, I’ll tell you what. It’s because there’s a husband there supporting it all, and because that’s a violation of one of the first tenets of feminism, is don’t make a man part of your life. Don’t make a relationship that big a deal in terms of your happiness. It’s just not supposed to happen.
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RUSH: Jim in Reno, Nevada. Glad you called, sir. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Well, thank you! And hello! I just called to add another reason why full-time mothers are despised.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: And I’m hoping you’ll have time for me to add one thing to your list of undeniable truths. But the thing that is not liked about full-time mothers — and, you know, we’ve let the left label them as “stay-at-home moms,” but that implies somebody who never gets their you-know-what out the front door. But they are full-time parents as opposed to ones that split their time and then do not devote all their time to their children. At any rate, they are not only independent, but they raise independent children because there’s no government programming there.
RUSH: Oh, that’s very much true. The children are not introduced to statist programs, either.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: The children end up becoming self-sufficient, self-reliant, and not needing government, and that… No, you’re absolutely right. That’s a great adjunct.
CALLER: That’s the threat.
RUSH: Oh, you’re exactly right. But I’m gonna cut you off before you add to the 35 Undeniable Truths of Life ’cause nobody does that. I’ve always said: “Don’t try this at home.” The 35 Undeniable Truths… In fact, I tried to do it again. I tried to come up with a second 35, and they’re good, but they’re not nearly as powerful as the originals. But there’s more truth to what he said than you think at first blush. Because the children are raised to be self-sufficient and self-reliant because that’s the experience the parents have had. That’s the morals, the values are all taught. Now, you’ve got stragglers. Some of them don’t do it.
You know, nobody’s family ever turns out Beaver Cleaverish. Everybody’s got a couple bad apples in their family, but for the most part the theory holds. That’s how you get Rush Babies. And, by the way, that’s how else you get free thinkers. Stay-at-home moms with a traditional nuclear family, raising kids, teach them to be free thinkers. Which, when you stop and think about it, used to be a liberal thing. Liberals used to be the ones who were open-minded, tolerant, afraid of nothing. And they always ran around saying it was right-wingers that wanted to censor them. And look how things have changed! Every censor around practically is on the left. And they’re dead serious about it. If they don’t want to hear it, it shouldn’t be said.
And if somebody says something they don’t want to hear, they want that person to be punished.
No question about it.
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