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The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Social Engineering

by Rush Limbaugh - Sep 12,2013




RUSH: I have come across something, you talk about something happening underneath the radar? I’ve come across something I want to tell you about that could be the most ambitious and disturbing social engineering project ever undertaken by the federal government, excluding Obamacare. But everybody knows about that. Let me begin by asking you if you remember busing from the 1970s. (interruption)

You don’t? You don’t remember bussing? Okay, you were a baby, but you heard about it? Do you know what it was? This is very helpful. Very helpful. Somebody 60 years old does not know about busing. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. Forced busing in the 1970s was a liberal attempt to integrate the races, and the upshot of it was that white kids were bused in some cases, in Boston — and it really erupted in Boston, by the way.

The white kids were bussed in, in some cases 45 minutes to an hour, to all-black schools, to integrate them, because the liberals thought this was only fair and just, and they thought the civil rights movement wanted integration. Now, Martin Luther King did, but his heirs do not want integration. They want to segregate again after they achieved integration. But again, I’m getting sidetracked. That’s a whole ‘nother thing.

In the 1970s, schools were ordered to bus children into neighborhoods far away in order to achieve racial balance in the schools. Children were roused out of bed an hour before they needed to be in order to ship them off to schools. Now, at the time, it was no different than it is now. Parents moved into neighborhoods because of the schools. Parents wanted to live relatively close to the schools so the kid could walk or whatever, but be close. The school was the center of the kid’s universe nine months out of the year.

So when the forced busing erupted, there was outrage all over the country, including in liberal Boston. But the social architects of the left didn’t listen, and they kept at it, ’cause they knew best, and they were doing what they thought was necessary to achieve racial balance, ’cause they were forcing people to do what people weren’t doing of their own volition. People were choosing neighborhoods where they wanted to live, and leftists didn’t like the choices they were making.

So they basically used the power of the government to force them. If they didn’t want to move, they were gonna take their kids to those neighborhood schools. Well, what was happening was that liberals were denying parents the right to determine where their kids attended school, even after they had chosen the neighborhood to live in because of the school. It was dictated — and it ended up being a miserable failure.

Okay, let’s fast forward to today. Social engineering is on the verge of being imposed on entire neighborhoods, adults and children alike. I want to read a little paragraph here from a document about the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD. “The agency wants the power to dismantle local zoning so communities have what it considers the right mix of economic, racial and ethnic diversity. A finding of discriminatory behavior, or allegations of discrimination, would no longer be necessary.

“HUD will supply ‘nationally uniform data’ of what it thinks 1,200 communities should look like.” Again, HUD ” wants the power to dismantle local zoning so communities have what it considers the right mix…” HUD wants to be able to force people to move into certain neighborhoods so that there is racial, economic, and ethnic diversity in the neighborhood, not just bus kids to schools. This is that times 10. What this is, is nationalizing neighborhoods.

What this is, is central planners imposing their will on where you live, not just where your kids go to school — and it’s all being done, of course, for our own good. We do not choose to live in the right places, and therefore we’re not properly integrated, and we do not have the right diversity neighborhood by neighborhood by neighborhood. (interruption) “The elites will not be touched by it.” Exactly right. The elites will not be touched by this, and this is all part of their ongoing effort to achieve utopia.

Here again, more from HUD. “Local governments will have to ‘take meaningful actions to further the goals identified.’ If they fail to comply, HUD can cut federal funding. Westchester County north of New York City has firsthand experience of what the rest of the nation can expect. … HUD has told Westchester that any limits on the size, type, height and density of buildings are ‘restrictive practices.’ It demands that the county sue its localities over such common zoning regulations, which are not exclusionary by any stretch of the imagination. If HUD can define what constitutes exclusionary practices, then local zoning as it is known today disappears. Apartments, high rises or whatever else the federal government or a developer wants can be built on any block in America.”

They’re going to seek this diversity, again, by obliterating zoning regulations. Zoning regulations, as you know, are one of the many ways that communities define themselves and achieve what they want and don’t want. (interruption) What was the question? It is. It’s neighborhood by government quota. I’ll tell you something else that’s not mentioned in the story. You ever wonder why the regime and the left is so fascinated with mass transit? It’s because mass transit limits your mobility. You can only go where mass transit takes you, and who controls the routes?

The government controls the routes of mass transit: buses, subways, trains, you name it, they control it. Those are all government authority — state, local, or federal, whatever. That’s why when I see stories like we had last week about these supposedly forward-thinking, advanced Millennials who don’t want a car. Yeah, and they’ve hit 16, 20, 22, “I don’t want a car. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” That is exactly what these central planners want. Both of these things, zoning and mass transit, are also a way to destroy the suburbs, which is another thing that is really high on Obama’s list. There’s a guy named Stanley Kurtz that writes for National Review who has written extensively about this.

Folks, this is who they are. And you know it. You in this audience know this is who they are. You will not live in the right place; you will not work in the right place; you will not meet with the right people; you will not be diverse. You will not take action of your own volition that will challenge the Constitution. They’re gonna force that on you, and all the while, they will be exempt. “HUD’s power grab –” and this is real. You just haven’t heard about it. “HUD’s power grab is based on the mistaken belief that zoning and discrimination are the same.”

All of this is Obama and the Democrats. They run these agencies. They look at zoning as disguised discrimination. If you have a zoning regulation on building characteristic, quality, or whatever, they think that you’re trying to keep poor people out. If you have a zoning regulation against high-rises in your community, you don’t want to poor people. If you have a zoning regulation on the kind of restaurants that can and cannot be open in your community, you are trying to keep certain people out. And this is what they want to obliterate.

Do you live in a place that has that kind of zoning? Do you live in a place where the local government can determine whether or not, say, a franchisee can open a restaurant? Well, HUD is looking at that as the local government discriminating against minorities. And so they are going to take steps, they’re gonna try. This has been written about recently in editorials in IBD, Investor’s Business Daily, it used to be known. It’s Investors.com. There was an op-ed last Friday in the Wall Street Journal that offered some disturbing details on how this assault by HUD on local zoning codes has already affected Westchester County. That’s where we’ve got the details for that. And it illustrates what the rest of the country can expect.

Thomas Sowell, a highly regarded, well-respected, nationally syndicated columnist, brilliant economist, he’s at the Hoover Institute in Palo Alto, at Stanford, has even weighed on this. You can check what he’s had to say. It is being commented on and it is being written about ’cause it is advancing. Sowell wrote in part, “Only ideologues could devote themselves to crusading against people’s efforts to live and associate with other people who share their values and habits. Undaunted by a long history of disasters, when third parties try to mix and match people –” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah — only ideologues — this is why I so wish people could learn ideology. Wouldn’t it be great if everybody, if you just say, “He’s a liberal,” that they would know what that meant. ‘Cause it’s the solution. ‘Cause it means something. This is what liberal ideologues do. Crusade against people’s efforts to live and associate with others who share their values and habits.

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