RUSH: Folks, even though out of necessity on the program we often chronicle things that could be defined as unpleasant, not good, bad, what have you — for example, when I say, “your guiding light through time of trouble, confusion, tumult, chaos,” let’s face it. We find ourselves surrounded by a nation in decline, and every day there’s another seemingly inexplicable bit of evidence for it.

The latest is just this whole thing with caving to a bunch of unknown hackers now said to be, by the FBI, the North Koreans with the assistance of the ChiComs. Some people are out saying this is the equivalent of our cyber Pearl Harbor and that we’ve lost the first cyber attack, major cyber attack launched against us. And if you take the time to get immersed in this stuff, like I got a note from a friend the other night, said, “Look, I just spent a half hour on the Drudge Report, and I don’t think I should even go on living. I don’t know how I can get up the next day, just 30 minutes with the Drudge Report, my God, it’s over.”

But it isn’t, folks. And there are a lot of people doing a lot of things, in some cases the most they can do, to try to reverse this and stop this in the best ways they know how. And I must throw myself into that category. The Rush Revere book series is an effort to reach young people before their minds get corrupted by other people and other places to teach them, in a fun way, taking them to the events that made this country possible, American history.

It’s three books so far, more on the way, Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans, and we are building an entire mission-based movement here. It is really beginning to take off. And one of the things that we are featuring here is day-to-day interactivity with the readers of these books. We set up the Rush Revere website, the Rush Revere Web page, and these young kids are sending us videos and pictures and e-mails and reactions, and we are responding to as many of them as we can. We hope all of them.

It’s a huge endeavor, but it’s well worth it. You don’t see it, unless you happen to visit our Facebook page or the Rush Revere page or RushLimbaugh.com, you don’t really see it. We do. It encourages us. But you don’t really see it. If you’re immersed in all the bad things, it can’t help but have an impact on you, can’t help but depress you, which is one of the objectives, by the way, of the people on the left. We’re trying to counter this and having some success at it is encouraging.

So bringing all this up now and then is an effort to share with you what we all think is some really good stuff happening in our little mission here, our little effort to reach young skulls full of mush and to get hold of them before the corrupting influences do. We want ’em to love America and respect it. We want them to be in awe of what happened, that made this country possible, that made their lives as free human beings possible. So it’s not just writing the books, and it’s not just getting the books into the hands of as many people as possible. It’s then having an ongoing relationship with as many of those readers, their parents, grandparents, whatever.

One of the things that we have done recently, we did a little contest. And I just want to diverge from Open Line Friday for just a moment to tell you about some amazingly talented exceptional young Americans. What we did, we recently hosted three challenges at the Adventures of Rush Revere website. We asked kids who are reading the books from across the country to either — on video — to recite a portion of the Constitution in a creative way and to send their video to us, or to create a unique book report on video. And then the third thing was, ask the author a great question. “If you could ask Rush Limbaugh anything you want, what would it be?”

We asked for the readers at our website to submit entries on video. And I’m telling you, you would be stunned. You’d be hard-pressed to remain pessimistic if you saw what we see. And you can, if you go to the Rush Revere Facebook page or the Rush Revere website. The Facebook page is where we post most of the stuff for now. But I tell you, folks, we received some of the most superb, engaging, uplifting videos that we’ve ever seen. And none of this was part of the original plan, by the way. All of this just evolved.

Kathryn and I, over the last week — by the way, it’s Kathryn’s birthday today, folks. So December 19th is always a big day, but even bigger because it’s her birthday, so everybody wishes her a happy birthday today. And she’s working. I mean, you would not believe just how committed and devoted to this entire project that she is. It’s her baby. We have sat down over the past week or so and watched all of these videos that were submitted. And we laugh and we stare open mouthed at some of these things.

These are young — in some cases four years old, six years old, 10 years old.

Something I never, ever dreamed, a radio talk show would be actually focusing on people of that age group. I always hoped it would happen. I knew Rush Babies, kids, listen — or hear this program because their parents are listening. But these are people we wanted to actually reach. They’re not gonna listen to talk radio, but the books provides us an entree to them. So they’re producing the videos, sending them in, entering the contest. We had to select winners from all of these, and that was tough because we’re faced with one of these things, like we don’t want to humiliate any of them by having losers. We had to really grab ourselves, “Hey, don’t be liberals like this. We said there are gonna be winners, first, second, third place, we’re gonna stick to it.”

But they were all qualified. They all, one way or another, could have easily been winners. But speaking personally, these things give me such pride and hope. People ask me, “How do you remain optimistic?” Well, this is one of the reasons why. So Kathryn and I and our panel of judges selected winners in these categories, and it was hard. We watched numerous videos over and over trying to select the first place winners, and I just want to announce ’em here because it’s part of the deal that we promised. I mean, there were hundreds and hundreds of entries. You would not believe it.

So here we want to congratulate Gabriella from Pennsylvania, Eden from North Carolina, and Ian from South Carolina.

Those were the first place winners in the three categories that we had. You can see the videos that they submitted. Gabriella had just a beautiful poem on freedom, a combination of freedom and the character Freedom in the books, Gabriella from Pennsylvania, beautiful poem on freedom, and these are at the Facebook page. It’s Facebook.com/RushRevere, and the others are at the RushRevere.com website under “featured videos.” They’re a must-see, and they’ll give you a little hope for the future because they’re so heartwarming, and you know that their parents are right in there participating. Their parents have the same mind-set is the point.

It’s a little beacon of hope that shows you and illustrates that not everybody is falling under the spell of what I referred to yesterday as naive hope, that everything is just going to be fine and this and that and the other thing. These are really worthwhile and inspiring for what they are videos. And I promised all these people, we promised them when they entered that we would mention the winners’ names. And they get prizes. They get all kinds of great stuff.

I just wanted to make time. Open Line Friday is the perfect day to do it. As we head now into the official holiday season, Christmas season, it’s the perfect time to do it and to express thanks to everybody who submitted an entry, ’cause it was really hard to select these. So thanks once again to all of the people, all you kids who entered, and to Gabriella, Eden, and Ian, congratulations for winning. There are first place, second place, third place winners. Not everybody won, but there were enough to spread it around.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Eric in Wichita. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Happy birthday to your wife.

RUSH: Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m sure she appreciates that.

CALLER: I want to tell you, I really like your Rush Revere books. I think they’re great and hilarious.

RUSH: That’s super. They make you laugh, huh?

CALLER: Yeah. My little sister, she listened to the first book on the radio —

RUSH: Wait a minute. How old are you, Eric?

CALLER: I am 14.

RUSH: How old is your sister?

CALLER: Ten.

RUSH: She’s 10. Okay, so she listened to the audio of the first book, you said?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yeah, okay.

CALLER: And when she heard the part about the French word “la poupee,” she’d burst out laughing every time I’d say it.

RUSH: (laughing) Yeah, a lot of our readers love that, la poupee! (laughing) Oh yeay. the poop deck, you should have seen what we started getting. They didn’t know what the poop deck was, and they thought they did. It was funny.

CALLER: Yeah. And also I liked the history in them. I’ve read history books, but I think these are great examples of them.

RUSH: Well, I have to tell you something. Everything that you’ve said is something that I greatly appreciate. We go to great lengths to make sure that the history in the books is right on the money and accurate. Now, we’re writing for people your age, 10 to 13, 14, 15, so these are not college level textbook dissertations on history. But it’s not history-lite, either. We want to make sure that we touch on the important aspects, like the Boston Tea Party. I mean, you could write three novels on the Boston Tea Party. We try to synthesize it down to the bare essence, keeping in mind the attention span of young people and all that, and just bore in on what really was important about the event, the lead-up to the event and the aftermath.

The fact that you get that is music to my ears, because that was one of the things I was really concerned about was the abridged nature of some of the history. In the latest book, American Revolution, we’ve condensed a couple, three wars into one book for the purposes of making a point. Not a political point. It’s about the greatness of the country and things that happen. But on these three wars we could write 10 books, for example, if we wanted to get into every detail. We can’t do that. So to hear that you are a student of history and you are validating what’s in my books, I can’t tell you how I appreciate that. That is so great, and I thank you for it.

CALLER: You’re welcome. And also I think Liberty is hilarious.

RUSH: Liberty is hilarious?

CALLER: Yes. Like, all the things he’s done in all three of the books are hilarious.

RUSH: Well, you’re just making my day. Because you’re validating everything that we try to do. Have you read all three, do you have all three?

CALLER: Yes, I have. I have all three books and all three CD sets.

RUSH: Wow. Holy smokes. Well, I’ll tell you what. Let me get your shipping address and sometime soon I want to send you some autographed versions so that you can share the books that you have with others, and you could keep the ones that I’ve signed as your official copies. It’s the least I could do.

CALLER: Thank you.

RUSH: And we’ll put together a whole little package here for you. But Eric, it’s really great, and I really can’t thank you enough for your astute observations and your deep level and your ability to perceive and appreciate what’s in the books and what we’re trying to accomplish. It really made my day. I thank you and don’t hang up, hold on, and we’ll be back and continue with much more right after this, folks.