Cultural Rot and Political Correctness

RUSH: I’m doing this now to make sure that I get this done, ’cause if I don’t, I’ll keep putting it off until the next day, ’cause it really doesn’t have anything to do with the politics of the day.  However, folks, I have a belief: I think the cultural rot that has infested our country… It’s been going on for a long time; it’s nothing recent.  It just seems to have really begun to plunge to never-seen depths of depravity and perversion just in the last, it seem like, four to seven years. 

We’ve been on a downward plane on this for the longest time, and I think it’s actually what everything’s all about.  I think the coarsening of the culture, the debasement and the erasure of morality is actually what provides the foundation for the destruction of the political process. The idea that there isn’t any morality anymore, for example. The idea that there is nobody permitted to define it, that if you happen to believe in morality you are nothing more than a bigot discriminating against people. 

And so the lines of right and right or wrong are being blurred and people who dare to pronounce something wrong are savagely attacked.  And I think when we talk about the culture wars, everybody thinks that this is it, but I think this is really the root of so many other problems.  If behavioral standards and moral codes and moral authority vanish, what is it that gives the political system its weight anyway? 

So if that’s the foundation on which everything is built — and I believe it is — and that starts to fritter away, everything on top of it’s gonna plunge, too. Politics is just one thing.  And I think that we are in the depths of a cultural… It’s no more complicated than good manners and decency and having a full-fledged, unquestionable knowledge of what’s right and what’s wrong.  These are seminally important. The virtues? Virtues are taboo.  Virtues are old-fashioned.  We make fun of people of virtue. 

People of honor and integrity? There are people that get away with faking it now that don’t really have it, because if you have honor and integrity, you’re an old fuddy-duddy. You’re old-fashioned and you’re not really relevant to what’s happening now.  And we see evidence of this everywhere.  This is how all of these great institutions and traditions have become corrupted.  People think they’ve been corrupted by politics — and they have been, ’cause everything is being politicized.  Take the global warming movement, for example. 

The whole thing is a hoax! The idea that Western civilization’s progressive technological, entrepreneurial advancement lifestyle is responsible for destroying the planet? How do you get there?  What must you believe first in order to fall for that?  A, that human beings can control the climate.  The fact that we can’t fix it means we don’t control it.  The fact that after being warned since the 1980s that we’re destroying the planet… They’ve been telling us this!

I mean, if that were true, that’d be pretty serious.  If we have actually been destroying the planet by steps taken that result from advancing lifestyles, then it would have been easy to fix it, right?  Why can’t we?  Well, we can’t because we didn’t cause it. We’re not responsible. We don’t have that kind of power.  The climate does change constantly.  But how do people end up believing this in the first place?  Well, it’s politicized, and the whole notion of science has now been corrupted. 

And you corrupt science by turning it into just an extension of so-called democratic process.  Sorry.  If the democratic process is involved, it isn’t science.  If there’s a consensus of scientists and they are voting, then what we’re talking about is not science.  We’re talking politics.  What permits this?  What permits people to stand up…? People in the business of science, people in the scientific field, why don’t they stand up and oppose this?  ‘Cause they’ve been corrupted, too. 

They’ve been corrupted by virtue of this is how they earn their money.  Government grants.  Everybody’s feeding off the gigantic, swollen federal teat, and they just keep sucking and sucking — and the way they do it is report and say what whoever’s in charge of the teat wants said (i.e., corruption, pure and simple).  Political correctness is the most outwardly visible manifestation of this rot.  Political correctness is censorship. It is control. It has become dangerous and mean-spirited. 

But it only succeeds because other virtues designed to stop this kind of insanity have already evaporated and flittered away.  I’ll give you an example here of what I’m talking about.  First off: “The vice president of the University of Houston Student Government Association (SGA) … Rohini Sethi received a 55-day suspension along with other disciplinary actions from the student government board after she made a Facebook post that said, ‘Forget #BlackLivesMatter; more like #AllLivesMatter.’

“Sethi made the post on the evening five Dallas-area police officers were assassinated during a Black Lives Matter protest rally. She, like many others, was upset with what she saw unfolding before her [eyes] as some police officers lay dead on the streets while others continued to risk their lives to protect those who were there to protest against them.” Now, how many…? Folks, seriously.  Seriously, now.  Over the course of your life, how many times have you either expressed it yourself or have you heard people express incredulity or great curiosity over:

“How in the world were the Nazis able to talk a whole country into not stopping them, into not opposing what the government was doing?  How in the world did it happen?” “It could never happen again, Rush! It’ll never happen again. That was so outrageous, so unspeakable, it will never happen again.” Well, it is.  Historically people have always wondered how the Nazis were able to — easily, it seemed — take over the hearts and minds of others sensible citizens.  This is how you do it.  This is exactly how they did it. 

Here you have a young college woman, an SGA vice president… I don’t know what SGA is.  You know, I wish these people that write these stories would stop using these acronyms like we all know what they mean. (interruption) Student Government Association? Well, how do people that didn’t go to college like me know what the hell one of those is?  Thank you.  Why couldn’t they just say Student Government Association? 

I’m gonna start speaking in acronyms and see how many people know what the heck I’m talking about. Anyway, okay. University of Houston Student Government Association vice president Rohini Sethi posted on her Facebook. The night that an African-American was assassinating policemen in Dallas, she simply said, All Lives Matter. She was harassed, but she stood firm for a while — and she eventually even apologized.

But she didn’t apologize properly, and she didn’t apologize well enough.  She, as a member of the Student Government Association, obviously holds an elected position on campus. She refused to resign, so the student government stepped in and handed out the punishment for this egregious behavior: A 55-day suspension “along with other disciplinary actions,” for simply posting “All Lives Matter.”  And it’s not the first time this has happened.  

Bernie Sanders actually had his microphone commandeered at a campaign appearance. Activists actually stormed the stage, took over his microphone.  He had to run around and apologize.  Everybody who says “All Lives Matter” is attacked and has to apologize.  And even after they apologize, they are still humiliated and punished, and the university goes right along with it.  The university student government association goes right along with it because it’s just easier.  It’s just easier than to stand up to these people. Just take it and they’ll go away. 

But they don’t go away.  They keep coming back for more.  Her 55-day suspension begins yesterday.  She also must attend a Libra Project diversity workshop and attend at least three cultural events per month to get her mind right.  She is required to write a reflection letter and make a public presentation to the September Senate meeting on campus.  Oh, they have humiliated her.  I’m surprised they didn’t put her in the stocks in the center of the campus and start stoning her with eggs and stuff. 

Julianne Moore and her crusade for political correctness manifested itself in the form of her demand that the name of J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia, be changed because she and one of her Hollywood friends believe it represents a history of racism.  Does the name J.E.B. Stuart ring a bell, J-e-b Stewart?  He was a Civil War hero for the Confederacy, but he was much, much more than that.  Who do you think — I know Jeb Bush is John Ellis Bush.  But Jeb, J-e-b Stuart is a renowned figure in American history, on the plus side.  Julianne Moore doesn’t know anything about it. 

In a nutshell, let me tell you what happened.  A Hollywood starlet, a dummkopf, attended a high school named J. E. B. Stuart in Virginia, many, many, many years ago.  I think she’s gotta be in her fifties now.  She’s now offended after she found out that she spent two years at a school named for a Confederate general, and she wants the name removed from the school now. 

Now, J. E. B. Stuart, J.E.B. Stuart never owned slaves.  His only crime is to be remembered in history by absolute ignoramuses who haven’t the slightest idea of American history or know what they’re talking about.  His crime is that he lived in the South and he fought for the South in the Civil War.  This grandstanding by Julianne Moore personifies the axiom that Hollywood is Washington for the stupid and that politics is showbiz for the ugly. 

She is clueless.  She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  What’s to stop her from now demanding that maybe Virginia be kicked out of the union, maybe Mississippi get kicked out of the union?  I mean, they fought for the Confederacy.  If we can’t have a school named for J. E. B. Stuart, then how can we have states that fought in the civil war?  Why can we still have Alabama and Mississippi, you know they had slaves there, you know that?  We have a Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.  When does this stuff end?  Are we gonna take down the Washington Monument and rename it because George Washington had — what are we gonna do here? 

But she gets to grandstand. She gets to have a parade based on her total ignorance of who this man is and what he did, and she gets to grandstand, and the entertainment media gets to celebrate her and present her as almost a goddess of compassion and understanding and caring when, in truth, she is completely ignorant, a space cadet concerned only with superficialities and trying to grandstand and score points and buttress her brand or her image. And furthermore she’s demanding that everybody else accede to her wish that the school be renamed because somehow, living in California, it still almost offends her now that she finally learned who this man is. 

She attended this school from 1975 to 1977.  She started complaining about the school’s name last summer.  She said no one should have to apologize for the name of public high school you attend.  So apparently when people ask her where she went to high school, she’s ashamed to admit, she’s offended, and she’s embarrassed to admit she went to a school named J. E. B. Stuart. 

My guess is that in the crowd she hangs and with the entertainment media asking her these questions, they don’t know who he is, haven’t the slightest idea.  You want to know what J.E.B. Stuart was?  Nineteenth century patriot.  His great-grandfather fought the British, the American Revolution.  His father fought the British again in the War of 1812.  He followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. 

At the age of 15 he enlisted in the army.  They said, “No, you’re too young.”  At 17 he entered the military academy at West Point.  He graduated in 1854, served in the Army for seven years.  When the war broke out in 1861, the native Virginian went to fight with his home state.  That’s the man Julianne Moore demands name be removed from her high school so she doesn’t have to suffer embarrassment. 

This is out-of-control stuff.  And because our moral authority’s been evaporated, nobody’s gonna stand up and tell her no.  They’re gonna seriously consider this and find a way to deal with it.  You watch and see what happens on this.  Just watch.

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RUSH:  By the way, J.E.B. Stuart, Democrat, as were most of the segregationists, as were most of the racists, as were all of the slaveholders in the South, they were Democrats.  J.E.B. Stuart’s family was Democrat.  But get this.  To mollify Julianne Moore, the school board at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia, voted last week to form a committee to study the ramifications of changing the school’s name.  They’re going to form a committee to study the ramifications, what’s gonna happen to us if we do this. 

This effort has already cost $750,000 that you know this district doesn’t have. So $750,000 to mollify a dingbat from Hollywood on a crusade that is utterly meaningless.  She is personally embarrassed and offended.  A soldid majority of people, residents in the school district, oppose this.  That’s not gonna matter.  You wait and see.  

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RUSH: Going back to the PC Stack, this from Nick Gillespie, Reason magazine.  “The scene is Albuquerque’s Cleveland Middle School, where a 13-year-old class clown is disrupting things by constantly burping during teaching time. So the teacher bounces him to the vice principal’s office, who has a sneaking suspicion that the kid is involved in selling pot on school grounds. The boy is made to take his jeans and shoes off but no drugs are found.” They don’t find any pot.

The kid, as Gillespie said, is probably a pain in the butt in all likelihood, typical 13-year-old rabble-rouser, just for burping in the classroom has been “suspended for the rest of the school year. As over-the-top as that seems, there’s worse yet to come. He’s also criminally charged under an impossibly vague statute that reads in part: No person shall willfully interfere with the educational process of any public or private school by committing, threatening to commit or inciting others to commit any act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or functions of a public or private school.”

The upshot is that this case ended up at the Tenth United States Circuit Court of Appeals which said that “Albuquerque school officials and police were justified in ordering the arrest of 13-year-old boy who was burping in class,” to be suspended for the rest of the year, criminal charges, the Tenth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals. 

They even took the case, “ruled that the school officials and police officer were entitled to immunity for their excessive response to what was at worst a class clown.”  Those were the words written by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. 

So here again, folks, PC has reared its ugly head.  This is the corruption and the designation of an institution that a lot of people have placed 100 percent trust and faith in, and that’s the public school system in this country. 

Now, I know that trust has been eroding a lot recently, and with justifiable reasons.  But when something like this happens, you can’t control a kid burping, you file criminal charges and you suspend him for the rest of the school year?  And some vague statute here that they have to drag out of the cobwebs to find?  The Tenth Circuit ordered the police were justified in arresting the kid for burping in class. We should have seen this coming when little kids use their thumb and their index finger to make the shape of a gun and they get sent home. 

You know, Apple yesterday, there’s gonna be hell to pay for this.  Apple yesterday released the fourth beta of their upcoming operating system for the iPhone and the iPad, iOS 10, and there are 100 new emoji characters in this release, and one of them is a plastic, is an emoji of a plastic water gun.  It originally was gonna be a pistol, but Apple caved because it was too suggestive.  You can’t put an emoji character of a gun. It’s too suggestive and might make people want to go out and buy a gun. 

They replaced it.  I used it already. I went in there and looked at it, I found it. It’s a green water pistol.  And you wait, they’ll catch hell for this, even that.  This stuff is out of control, folks.  How in the world are we ever gonna hold presidents accountable for all their lying?  I mean, you look at the things this president has done to our country, to our economy, to our immigration system, to our national security, and you realize we’re suspending kids and arresting them for burping in class.

Is there no other way to deal with this?  There’s no other way to get to the parents?  I realize some of you think, “No, Rush the parents have lost control, the kids have lost control.”  Why has that happened?  Why has that happened?  How do you lose control over a 13-year-old?  You have to let that happen.  That’s not something that evolution would just manifest itself to take place.  I mean, for adults to allow themselves to be subservient.  People are afraid.  They’re afraid to stand up, they’re afraid to enforce, they are afraid to offend, lawsuits. 

I looked at the box.  You know, the staff here, the highly overrated staff, I might add, got me this gorgeous cake for me 28th anniversary yesterday.  And it’s still in there, obviously, the thing is huge.  So I happened to go in there during the break, and I just happened to see the box, and the side facing me was a warning label on a box containing a cake.  And you know what the warnings were?  Well, it’s actually more assurances.  Don’t worry, no peanuts, no way, no gluten. I forget what it said, but it was an assurance that that cake was baked in a facility that didn’t have anything that was gonna kill you. 

And I’m thinking, it’s a cake!  What in the world?  I know the public’s lawyers demand it for liability.  Well, what does that tell you?  That you could go bankrupt because of a cake?  And yes, sadly, the possibility is real.  Whether you bake it or not.  I mean, it’s just ridiculous.  It’s out of control.  And all this time, I think the reason, or one of the reasons it’s out of control is ’cause everybody’s been waiting for somebody else to stand up and say “no more.” 

Everybody’s been waiting for somebody else to stand up and say “stop.”  Every time a parent complains about something going on at school, somebody, “Why didn’t you do something about it?”  Every time somebody complains about whatever, somebody is always waiting for somebody else to stand up and say, “Stop.  That’s enough.”  Like heroes in the old western movies used to do.  The Clinton Eastwoods of the world would ride into town and tell everybody the way it’s not gonna be anymore and the way it was gonna be, everybody would agree, and problem solved.  Been waiting for that to happen, and usually we expect that to happen from our respected and revered political figures.  But, sadly, that’s the last place.  They are the culprits. 

So while everybody’s been waiting for a magic figure to stand up and proclaim all of this stuff as rotgut wrong and out of control, that person hasn’t arrived, hasn’t stood up.  Well, maybe I have on occasion.  Look what happens when you do.  Look what happened when you do stand up.  Boy, do they come after you.  

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RUSH:  People in the email today are asking, “What are you most proud of in your 28 years?” Gee, that’s hard.  That’s hard.  Let me… I’m gonna take a stab at something here.  It’d be hard to say that anything is something I am most proud of, but you know something I really am proud of?  How do I say this without violating what I’m proud of? I am very proud that we’ve held the line here on the inclusion of slang. Vaguely obscene terms have not become part of the daily discourse here.  Do you know what I mean? 

See, you don’t. (interruption) You think you do?  I’m going to have to specific here — and if I get specific then I’m, of course, violating what it is I’m proud of.  But what’s the commonly used word that beginnings with a P that people now use to talk about urination? (interruption) Okay, it’s become common.  Every day, people talk about that. They use it instead of saying somebody’s mad.  Not here.  We don’t do it.  And other such examples as that. 

We have maintained the highest communicative standards here. (interruption) What?  You’re shaking your head “no”? (interruption) Well, I mean, no thanks to you ’cause you’re always using those words in the IFB. I understand this.  It’s incredible. No matter where you go, you hear this — I don’t know what you call it — slang.  Not guttural, it’s… Well, it’s… I’m just glad that we have not fallen prey to the temptation.