RUSH: This is Reuben in Lafayette, California. Hi, Reuben. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Hey. I’m just an average guy. I’m so frustrated with this immigration bill, and I’m just lost, and I’m just looking for direction, something that you can do to give me hope, ’cause right now they don’t listen to me, and hopefully you can lead us and show us where we have to go.

RUSH: Reuben, we haven’t yet got to the, quote, unquote, immigration section of the program today, but it’s coming up in the next hour, and I just —

CALLER: I apologize.

RUSH: No, no. No, no, no, no. I’m just telling you there’s some news to pass on that we haven’t touched on yet. As far as your — look, man, in the first place, nobody listening to this program is average.

CALLER: True.

RUSH: I know what you mean. What you mean is, hey, you’re just a nameless, faceless the guy out there, what can I do. I know what you mean.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: But nobody in this audience is average, by definition, you can’t possibly be and listen.

CALLER: Fair enough.

RUSH: Now, the second thing is we had Senator Cruz on this program last week who said, “Just burn up the phone lines.” I said, “Does that still work in 2013?” He said, “Yeah, it does.” Senator Cruz is continuing to oppose this and try to alert everybody to what’s happening here. His suggestion was for as many millions of Americans as possible, to let people in Washington know how they feel about it.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Look, Reuben, man, I know exactly how you feel. Here’s the thing about this. This is what I think bothers you and bothers me and bothers everybody else. We have in this country some assumptions that we make. We assume that there are rules that govern the powerful. We assume that the Constitution limits the powerful in this country, that the rules are something that they will pay attention to. That the limitations on them are something that they will respect. And when that breaks down and when that isn’t happening, you feel powerless and you feel like every institution that’s in place to protect you and to protect the country is worthless and falling apart. And you wonder what in the world can you do about it.

I’m sure that your unease increases. You get more uneasy every news story that reports that the government’s doing this or that on your behalf. They say, for example, this immigration bill that you’re talking about, they say that the amnesty bill’s gonna make your life better, the economy better, the country better, but that isn’t rational. It isn’t logical based on what’s known about it. They say that Benghazi, nothing to worry about. Some obscure filmmaker remains in jail without bail for having absolutely no role in this. They say they’re not spying on us, they’re spying on the media. But that’s not what their own warrants say. And they say that the IRS scandal was a one time deal, it’s been fixed and it wasn’t that big a deal anyway.

When you get down to this immigration business, it just seems like none of the protections are working. The law doesn’t matter. The Constitution doesn’t matter. And so you’re wondering, what can you do? And what you have to realize is that it’s not about you anymore. This is about what Washington wants. It isn’t about what you want. And that, again, is a little disquieting and unnerving because people have always believed that we have a representative democracy or a constitutional republic where the will of the people is respected and followed in expressions of majorities, with due protection for people in the minority, and this just doesn’t seem to be the case whatsoever. And so you’re wondering, what can you do? You feel helpless.

Well, you’re in the middle here of what Angelo Codevilla wrote about a couple of years ago, the ruling class versus the country class, and you and me, we are the country class. And the ruling class right now wants this, and the ruling class is the elites in Washington, and it doesn’t matter what party they’re in. And so the reason you’re panicked or unsettled is that the normal limitations, such as the Constitution or other law, doesn’t seem to matter. They’re just ignoring it or rewriting it without your consent. And that’s frightening. That’s not how we’ve always done things in this country, at least as far as people’s perceptions are concerned. Now we’ve got Senator Schumer talking about riots if we don’t pass this. There are gonna be riots if we do! He’s out there saying there will be unrest — he means riots — if this isn’t passed. Schumer is threatening this unless we give illegal aliens their civil right to live in the US.

So I think… Reuben, you just keep saying “no.” It’s the same word in English and Spanish. You don’t need to know English or Spanish exclusively to understand the word “no.” National Journal just did a random act of polling. They found that Republicans are against amnesty, as are independents. The conservative base is especially opposed to amnesty. Only 35% of the country is in favor of Obamacare, and it’s not much higher on this.

But we’ve got Obamacare, don’t we? There wasn’t a whole of debate. All you can do is just continue to say “no,” Reuben, to the right people. It isn’t over. Another thing to keep in mind, Reuben, is that all the news stories — every damn one of them — have an aura of inevitability about them, and if it were inevitable, it would have already happened. If they had the votes for this they would have already taken them. So there’s still time for your “no” to be heard. That’s what Senator Cruz said, and we have to believe that.