RUSH: This is earth-shattering news. Can I share this headline with you? “NFL Commissioner: Fans Attend Games to Be ‘Entertained,’ Not ‘Protested to.’” Duh. The commissioner says this as though he just figured this out.

“‘People come to our stadiums to be entertained and have fun,’ the commissioner noted, ‘not to be protested to.’ The remarks came as part of Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead Summit and reflect a recognition of a ratings decline and criticism from some sponsors. Though Goodell held that he hoped to learn from the concerns of players, he reiterated his desire that they stand for the national anthem. ‘I think that’s one of the things I think when we have a platform the way we do, people seek to find that division and I think that’s something we try to resist,’ Goodell explained of the protests. ‘And, in this case, I’ve been very clear about this — the anthem, the respect for our flag is very important. So, I want to see our players stand.'”

Now, I know he said that. He said that a couple of times, but he’s also talked about the need for us to get into our communities and to go into our communities and to solve the problems in our communities, which is pure left-wing lingo. The Wall Street Journal had an editorial last week essentially accusing the NFL management, not the owners, the management of purposely steering the NFL politically and to the left.

Now, look. Again, I want to ask a question. These are rhetorical questions but I still want to ask it. Why would somebody purposely want to steer something as large and, up until now perceived as apolitical, to the left? What is the left known for? What is the left proud of? What does the left want you to know about? They don’t like this country. They think this country has deep flaws. They think this country is racist. They think this country has a bunch of racist cops that are just wantonly murdering innocent black men. This is what the left thinks, among many other perverted and screwball things.

Why would you purposely want to steer your league toward that identity, when you know that it’s going to alienate statistically half of your fans? Why would you want to do this? On the other hand, I could understand why you would want people to think that your league is patriotic, that it believes in the time-honored American principles of hard work and discipline and teamwork.

You know, there are several identifying characteristics of conservatism that I would fully expect a sports league and its executives to want to identify with. I could understand if a sports league chose not to actively appear to be moving in that direction because liberals — some of them — go to games. Some of them watch, and some of them buy sponsored products.

Up ’til now, the NFL, other than a couple players and their endorsements of presidents, and until recently the owners even stayed out of it. The owners were involved, but you never knew about it. Dan Rooney of the Steelers openly came out for Obama. Others, like Bob Kraft in New England, came out for Trump. But aside from that, this league pretty much had an apolitical identity.

And then when this protest stuff started, it became clear that the executive leadership of the NFL was in fact siding with the players. They had no desire, despite I think everybody should stand for the anthem, they took not one step to make that happen. They continued to let the people playing the game inflict damage on it. Why would you do that? You have a business to run here.

Well, the answer to the question is found in what is liberalism. And if you are dyed-in-the-wool liberal, everything must be. And if you have a powerful executive position or any other kind of position and you’re liberal, you’ve got to use it to advance it, to spread it, and if that means taking your league in that direction because you believe in it, that’s what you do, whether it inflicts damage or not.

Bob Costas was on a panel at some — was it in Baltimore? Was it Johns Hopkins? It was a panel of sports journalists and other experts talking about the NFL and I think sports in general, and Costas said — and this is the kind of thing I knew was gonna happen, by the way, and when it starts happening there’s no reversing this. Costas said that football damages people’s brains, and that if he had a 12- or 13-year-old that he would not let the kid play football.

I’m sorry, folks. Ever since this concussion stuff hit and all that, you know as well as I do that the days of the NFL, as you and I knew it, were numbered. We don’t know how many days remaining there are, but I think a lot of people realize that this game is winding down and slithering away faster than anybody thought it would. And now it’s not just the brain business and the concussions. Now all this other stuff is happening.

And you simply cannot watch an NFL game today and see only the football. When you turn on the NFL today on TV you’re gonna hear announcers talk about whether or not there were protests before the game. They may not televise it live anymore, but there will be videotape of it, and the announcers will talk about it. You can’t escape it. And it’s not why people tune in. They don’t want to hear it.

There’s something else that’s happening. You turn on any NFL show, and you know half of the news is? Whether player X’s suspension is gonna be held up by the second U.S. Court of Appeals or whether the appeals process will go over to the Supreme Court. This is the NFL. We’re talking about sports, but now we’re talking about the lead news item is whether some player’s suspension is gonna be upheld or whether the arbitrator is gonna force it on up to the next highest court in the land and then there’s some other player that comes along that has the same kind of thing happen.

The news about the NFL is about player suspensions, about wife beating, spousal abuse, what kind of penalties there are for it, and the media seems to eat this up, the sports media seems to relish reporting this stuff. You can watch them, you can see how excited they get talking about all this other stuff. And because they’re media and because the NFL is a big corporate entity, the fact the NFL might be being harmed by this is exciting because that’s one of the objectives of liberalism is to damage corporations ’cause they’re not people. They’re all suspects. But these media people are the ones living off of the success of the NFL, and there they are openly participating in what many people think is the downfall.

So now all of a sudden the commissioner comes out and says, “Fans attend our games to be entertained, not be protested to.” Where was this two months ago? Where was this a year and a half ago when Kaepernick got all this started? Where’s this been? Why now? Is it ’cause of Papa John’s leaving or threatening to? Some of this stuff, just from the standpoint of proper management, business thinking and decision-making, just flummoxes me.

And the answer is this is what liberalism is. It is a destructive force, and the people who believe in it and practice it believe that it must be forced on everybody, primarily because most people would not choose it. They have to be indoctrinated with it from very young age in school, they have to be propagandized about it, but if left to an open choice with a decent education, people will not choose it.

I take that back. Some will because you don’t have to do much to be a liberal. You just have to convince people you care about suffering. You don’t have to do anything about it. All you have to know is who to blame for it. And you can end up being a great liberal.