RUSH: It would be the easiest thing in the world to come here one day and do what liberals do. You would be driven crazy. You would think about leaving this program. You would think I’d been co-opted. It would be the easiest thing in the world. The thing about liberalism I’ve always said is it’s the most easiest, it’s the most gutless thing you can do. It’s so easy. You don’t ever really have to do anything. You just have to act a certain way and say the right things and after that you can live any way you want.
You can be rich. You can mistreat people. You can fire your employees. You can deny them health care, but if you say the proper liberal things, you are inoculated. It’s so easy. Victor Davis Hanson, you know, one of my favorite writers, National Review Online, has a very long piece that he published six days ago and I just found it. It was just brought to my attention over the weekend. None of this is gonna be new to you. You all know it. I just want to share with you the way Victor Davis Hanson says it. He’s written about this before. He chronicles what he considers to be the eventual collapse of the left.
That’s why I disagree with it. I don’t see them collapsing. I see them living. I see liberalism expanding. I see it growing. I see it dominating more and more of our culture. I don’t see it in decline at all. The country is, but liberalism isn’t. But he believes that at some point it’s all gonna collapse on itself, just like Reagan believed that the Soviet Union would collapse eventually of its own immorality. And what Reagan meant by that was that it was entirely possible the Soviet Union would cease to exist without having to fire a shot against it because it couldn’t sustain itself.
Now, as a nation, he turned out to be right, but it required specific policy directions from this country to force that to happen. We just couldn’t sit idly by and let it happen. Unfortunately now in our battle with the left, our elected leaders are just sitting around waiting for what they think will be the collapse of the left, either because of its own immorality or it can’t sustain itself or what have you. But you have to force that. If you wait around for it to happen on its own… how long did it take for Rome to fall?
The Soviet Union would still be around if there hadn’t been a Reagan doing what he had done with Star Wars, number of other things, and the pope, and Margaret Thatcher. It took a lot of effort to bring down the Soviet Union. It didn’t take any shots being fired, but it took a lot of effort.
“Liberals: Exempt from Scrutiny.” The piece is right on. And it ties in to much of what we have been discussing in the past couple of weeks of what liberals really believe. In fact, this was all started, the recent incarnation of this discussion was started by a very perceptive caller. I forget who. It was a young woman who made the point, and she went further than just pointing out they’re hypocrites, ’cause of course they’re hypocrites, but she said, you know, they do not live by their own — her point was they don’t really believe it. They don’t really believe it, because they don’t live it.
Now, their rank-and-file tries to live it, their nimrods, their bumpkins try to live it and force it on everybody else, but the powerful leftists do not live one shred of what they preach, was her point. And her point was they don’t believe it. And I remember in talking with her, I said it was a little risky to say they don’t believe it. I understood her point, and it’s valid. And this is what Victor Davis Hanson addresses, exempting yourself from scrutiny by being liberal.
Here’s some pull quotes: “Liberalism professes a leftwing ideology, but these days it has absolutely no effect on the lives of those who most vehemently embrace it. In other words, being liberal is professionally useful and psychologically better than Xanax, but we need not assume any more that it is a serious belief.
If I didn’t know better I’d say Victor heard this woman on this program and got to thinking about it because it dovetails with her point. They don’t really believe it. They just say it to inoculate themselves. And I think that’s risky to think they don’t really believe it.
“That rank-and-file liberals follow con men and women like Al Gore, Elizabeth Warren and Paul Krugman, turning a blind eye to their own extravagant, wasteful, high carbon living standards, while criticizing conservatives who live much more frugally has turned them from useful idiots to just plain idiots.” Then he gets into the lie of the NAALCP because most of the abortions in this country are minority abortions, and yet some of the biggest pro-abortion supporters are African-American leftists.
But let’s go back to this one paragraph. “The rank-and-file liberals follow con men and women like Al Gore, Elizabeth Warren and Paul Krugman, turning a blind eye to their own extravagant, wasteful, high carbon living standards while criticizing conservatives who live much more frugally has turned them from useful idiots to just plain idiots.”
Well, they’ve always been idiots, useful or otherwise. The rank-and-file — these nameless, faceless people that live on left-wing websites or these nameless, faceless people that are demanding that Condi Rice not be allowed to speak at Rutgers — those are the people that he’s talking about here. They’re the blind-bat followers.
They believe it all.
Yet when they find out that Algore has three homes, two jets, and does not live one moment of his life in the way he prescribes, it doesn’t matter. Algore is never held to the scrutiny. He’s inoculated himself. He doesn’t live what he believes. He lives quite the opposite. Elizabeth Warren is another case in point. She’s not just in the 1%; she is in the top one-tenth of 1% in terms of wealth and income in this country.
She does not live the stuff she preaches. She’s famous for the saying, “You didn’t build that.” But they don’t live lives of austerity. They don’t live lives saving the planet. They don’t. I mean, they might have a Prius that they drive around in public on the way to the airport to get on the private jet. They might do things like that, but they don’t live it.
They don’t live in small, little houses using one roll of toilet paper a week. They don’t have solar panels all over the place and only solar panels generating their utilities. But they’re out there talking about it left and right. Now, he’s got countless examples of this kind of thing. The point is that as long as you say the right things, you are inoculated. Inoculated by who?
Who has this power to inoculate people?
If liberalism is losing, like some people believe, where does the power come from to do away with Donald Sterling?
Where does the power come from to get rid of Condi Rice at Rutgers, if liberals are losing? Where does the power come from to get rid of Dr. Benjamin Carson as commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins of all places, the medical school graduating class? If liberalism is fading — and if it’s just these rank-and-file idiots who do not realize what their beloved leaders are doing — where does this power come from?
Who are these idiots that are able to corrupt American culture?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, that caller was Jennifer in Lancaster, Ohio. I remember who it was. She was the one that got all this started, that they don’t really believe all of this, but their rank-and-file do. The only reason Obama’s talking about global warming today… It matters to like 8% of the country. Obama’s talking about it because this big donor threatened to withhold $100 million.
His name is Steyer, S-t-e-y-e-r, Tom Steyer. He’s a big Hollywood, hedge fund, movie, whatever, billionaire. Another pull quote from Victor Davis Hanson: “Both the Steyers and the Gores of our human comedy know that it is lucrative business to appear green, and that by doing so one can keep one?’s personal life largely exempt from scrutiny in general and charges of hypocrisy in particular.
“For them, 21st-Century liberalism is a useful badge, a fashion not unlike wearing good shades or having the right sort of cell phone. … Liberalism offers a wise investment for a politician, a celebrity, an academic, or a journalist, by letting him take out inexpensive insurance against a politically incorrect slip of the tongue.
“Donald Sterling almost achieved exemption by his donations to Democratic candidates and the NAACP and his trial-lawyer billions; he lost it by keeping his ossified Republican registration while being an old, sick white guy who said the sort of reprehensible racist things that one hears sometimes in bits and pieces from some NBA players.”
So Sterling gets away with it for all that time. We’ve talked about that, but the question survives: Okay, well, who is it that’s exempting these people? Okay, so Algore and Tom Steyer and whoever, all the rest of them, are buying insurance by saying liberal things. They are exempting themselves from scrutiny. Scrutiny from who?
Media? Okay, but who else?
Government? All right, but who else?
The government didn’t get Condi Rice banned, or her invitation rescinded. Fifty irrelevant students at Rutgers made that happen, along with a compliant and probably frightened administration there. Now, my only point here again is that Victor Davis Hanson believes that all of this is so phony and so abnormal and dishonest that it is going to eventually collapse, and I wish that were true.
I’ve been waiting for that my whole life. I’ve been waiting for that for 25, 30 years. It doesn’t seem to be happening. Liberalism seems to be winning. Every time you open your eyes, there is more cultural rot taking place. That’s approved of, apparently, by these nameless, faceless, useful idiots who buy into all this. Be they low-information voters. Be they people that live on social media. I mean, who are these people?
Who started the Sterling thing, for example? I know TMZ played the video, but who was it that got mad about it? Really, I don’t know. I’m asking, honestly. Did some individual do it? Where does the inertia for this stuff begin? And did Sterling step in it again with his interview with Anderson Cooper? They’re not talking about this much.
But one of the things that Sterling said — I don’t know if you heard this — was Magic Johnson is not a good example for children. While saying that he’s not a racist, and while saying that all he wanted was some sex from this girl, he said, “Magic Johnson isn’t a good example for children.” Well, somebody is gonna get hold of that, a delayed reaction, and that’s gonna offend somebody.
“What do you mean by that?”
Anyway, I gotta take a break here, folks. We are at the end of another sterling — no pun intended — broadcast session.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: H.R. just shouted at me here in the IFB, “How do you do that? How do you just go out there and lie?” Well, ask Obama! How does he do it? How does he get away with it
Three years in a row, how many different times, “You like your doctor, you get to keep your doctor! You like your health care plan, you get to keep your plan! You like your insurance, you get to keep it!” You tell me how they get away with this. That’s not a mistake; it’s a flat-out lie. We, who do not lie, are called on the carpet and they attempt to ruin and destroy us for simply saying what we believe.
These people get away with lying, and the whole point of Victor Davis Hanson’s piece is how does this happen? Look, I’m really interested in this. I’m fascinated. I think the cure for what ails us resides here in everybody understanding this, ’cause I think this covers every liberal politician. We could talk here about Pelosi or Obama or Gore or any of them, but talking about the system that permits them to get away with their lying on their hypocrisy or whatever worse things
To me, the fix for what ails us is found here and somehow conveying it to as many people as possible. Since you asked, let me go back. I wasn’t gonna go back to it ’cause I don’t want to bore people with this, although I tell you, this fascinates me, folks. This whole subject of fascistic political correctness? Who are these nameless, faceless people that are wielding all of this power?
Who is it that is able to get Brendan Eich thrown out of the entire technology industry, not just canned at CEO as Mozilla? Who is able, and how? All he did was get a thousand dollars to a proposition that won. It was Prop 8 in California, a proposition which affirmed that marriage is that between a man and a woman, a union between a man and a woman only. That is now called hatred and bigotry, and it cost him his career!
Well, who makes this happen?
Who has the power to pull that off?
Yeah, they say it was this website OkCupid. Well, who are they? Well, Barry Diller owns it, or owns a part of it. Did Diller get behind it, or does he even know? Who are these people that are able to make this happen? Who are these people putting pressure on the spineless person that ran Mozilla, who wrote that absolutely insane, incomprehensible explanation for why they got rid of the guy?
Who are these nameless, faceless people putting all of this pressure on everybody? Who are these people everybody’s so afraid of? Where does this mass inertia begin? Here’s Victor Davis Hanson on Algore. “As for Gore, he cannot really believe in big green government or he would not have tried to beat the capital-gains tax hike when he peddled his failed cable network to a petrodollar-rich Al Jazeera, whose cash comes from the very sources of energy that Gore claims he hates.”
Well, let’s relive that for a second. So Algore creates this TV network, the Current TV network, which was a social network on cable TV. It didn’t work. It bombed big time. He sells it, and he sold it timed in a way to beat an Obama increase in the capital gains tax. Now, if Gore really believed in Obamaism, he would wait and sell the network and pay the taxes. If he really believed.
He supports the increase in capital gains, but just not for himself. So after he does that, it then is revealed that he sells his network to people he supposedly despises: Oil-rich Middle Eastern petrodollar zillionaires! He sells to Al Jazeera, which is Qatar. Their money comes from oil. Algore supposedly hates it. What’s he doing in bed with them? Why is he not called on the carpet for it?
Why does he not lose credibility with people? Why do people who think that Algore is the guru on global warming not look at that hypocrisy? And why are those of us who point it out all of a sudden the bad guys, and Gore skates? “Do you make millions, and then in eleventh-century fashion repent so that you can enjoy them all the more?
“Gore certainly in the past has not lived modestly; the carbon footprint of keeping Al Gore going — housing, travel, and tastes — is quite stunning. Both the Steyers and the Gores of our human comedy know that it is lucrative business to appear green, and that by doing so one can keep one?’s personal life largely exempt.”
It’s the same thing as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates constantly talking about the need and their support for raising taxes on the rich. Well, they’re inoculated. The hordes are not gonna be coming for their money. The two richest people in the country support raising taxes on themselves, but you don’t see them making tracks to the Treasury department to give up the money. What do they do? They shelter as much of it as they can. Trusts, charities, what have you.
They’re not making a mad dash to pay taxes. They want everybody else’s taxes to go up. That’s what they say. That’s the investment they make. They just say that there needs to be an adjustment to tax code, that the gap between the rich and the poor is just way too wide, but they don’t do a damn thing to narrow the gap. Yet they get all the credit in the world for caring and being on the right side of the issue.
“The 1 percent fetish is also not really ideological.” Victor Davis Hanson’s point here, same as our caller a couple weeks ago, his point, they really don’t believe it. Elizabeth Warren, one of the greatest supporters of the radical left, “is not just a 1 percent but a 0.1 percent grandee. Her house, habits, household income, past corporate consulting, and net worth all reflect a desire for profits,” and she really likes living a lifestyle that most Americans can’t. “Her life is about as much a part of the 99.9 percent as she is Native American. She is not worried about welders getting some work on the Keystone Pipeline or farmworkers put out of their jobs in Mendota, Calif., over a baitfish.”
Again, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller phonies through and through. But look at how they inoculate themselves. Obama is the same way. He’s out talking about income inequality, but this guy is living the life of Riley on other people’s dollars like there is no end to them. None of these people actually live lives they say are necessary to save the planet, not just be good people.
Paul Krugman, New York Times, “eloquent about inequality and about the sort of insider privileges that give so much to so few.” He’s really upset about that. “But nothing about his own circumstances suggests that he lives the life he professes, as opposed to professing abstractions that psychologically make the quite different life he lives more palatable. Certainly, Krugman?’s liberalism means that few care that he once worked in the Reagan administration, that he was a paid adviser to Enron, or that he has just taken a part-time $225,000 post-retirement job at City University of New York — one that, at least initially, requires no teaching.”
They’re just gonna give him 225 grand to get his name on the list of the faculty. He doesn’t have to teach. He doesn’t have to show up. Just like a Michelle Obama no-show job at the hospital in Chicago.
“Given what CUNY is said to pay its exploited part-timers, the university could have offered 75 courses with the salary it will be paying Krugman,” to do nothing. “Or, put another way, Professor Krugman will make the same as do 75 part-timers who each teach one class — and thus one class more than Krugman will teach. Bravo for Professor Krugman to have marketed himself so well and to have earned all the compensation that the market will bear — and too bad for the part-timers, who don?’t understand market-based economics.”
In other words, here’s a guy, Paul Krugman, same thing with Elizabeth Warren, they’re out there chasing personal profits as fast as they can rake ’em in. They are living grandiose lifestyles based on those personal profits, all the while writing and talking, condemning everybody else and getting grand credit for it, being thought to relate to average people. I’m sure that most of these numskulls think that Paul Krugman and Elizabeth Warren care about people like them. Nothing could be further from the truth. They’re looked at with contempt, snobbery.
“Does the NAACP stand as our watchdog over racism? In theory, yes; in fact, not so much.” The LA branch is cited here by Victor Davis Hanson and all the awards they gave Sterling simply for money. “Al Sharpton receiving a ‘person of the year’ award from the same branch of the NAACP is no less absurd than Donald Sterling?’s ‘lifetime-achievement award’ — given that Sharpton is on record as an anti-Semite, homophobe, inciter of riot, former FBI informant, tax delinquent, and convicted defamer of a district attorney.” And yet he’s beyond criticism.
None of these people is ever held accountable for anything they do or anything they say. Nothing, folks, nothing. And yet they are allowed, encouraged, supported, permitted, what have you, to go after people they don’t like and try to literally destroy their lives and careers if they want to. Nobody says anything about it. Again, it is thought by some that this is going to collapse on itself because of its own immorality and just the fact that it’s so devoid of truth and it’s so corrupt that it can’t go on. And that’s where I part ways with ’em.
I see it expanding, becoming more powerful. I don’t see anybody willing to stand up against it. They tell Condi Rice, “You can’t speak.” She says, “Okay, fine. I don’t want to make anybody miserable.” It’s all very problematic for me and now it’s become predictable. And even that doesn’t matter. Even though you know what’s gonna happen, even though you can predict their insanity and their lunacy, it still happens.