RUSH: This is Kim in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Great to have you. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos. Thank you for 30 years of education and enlightenment. We are praying for you.

RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

CALLER: I wanted to bring up a point about the high number of COVID cases in New York City. If people with pre-existing health issues linked to obesity are some of the most susceptible to the virus, then why is New York City’s numbers so high given Bloomberg’s war on sugar, trans fat, and sodium?

RUSH: (laughing) In other words, why are there so many obese people there after the mayor, Doomberg, tried to make everybody healthy?

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: Yeah, I wonder why that didn’t work out. Michael Doomberg limiting the size of your soft drink, telling you that you’re too stupid to know how much sugar you’re having, you shouldn’t have that much. Anyway, thank you, Kim. Appreciate it.

Elliott in Wilmette, Illinois. Great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Always an honor to hear you on again. I’m tired of the antisocial distancing, but, more importantly I think the term weaponizing compassion is what the left has been doing, that is making the best that humans have, their compassion, and turning it into a tool to control people. Such moralizing is tiresome.

RUSH: Yeah. There’s a — was it Roger Kimball, Roger Simon? Somebody had a piece yesterday, very extensive piece. I had it in The Stack and didn’t have a chance to get to it. And he coined a term for this, “moral narcissism.” It’s exactly what you are talking about. They are claiming that their intentions make them better people than you. They don’t have to do diddly-squat. They’re just good people. And they are shaming everybody who doesn’t think like they do. And I can give you an example of it when we come back from the break here. The governor of the state of Washington, Jay Inslee, I’ll give you the classic example of what Simon was talking about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The piece I was referring to is actually at the website called American Greatness, and it’s a piece by Cindy Simpson, and she is quoting from a book written by Roger Simon. He wrote the book four years ago, in 2016. “I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.” This is four years ago now.

She remembered having read it, so she wrote this piece about it, because it applies to the self-righteous people encouraging the shutdown. These are the people that want to tattle on their neighbors for violating social distancing rules and all of that, and here’s Roger Simon’s description of moral narcissism as he writes about it:

“What you believe, or claim to believe or say you believe — not what you do or how you act or what the results of your actions may be — defines you as a person and makes you ‘good.'” I have my own theory. It’s the same thing. I’ve said it in different ways, or a different way than this. Liberalism is the most gutless choice you can make. It doesn’t require any action.

All you have to do is see suffering and point it out and you’re a good person. “Oh, look at those homeless. Oh, that’s so horrible! We need to do something,” and you automatically are a great person because you care, ’cause you have compassion. You haven’t done diddly-squat to help any of the people you’ve just pointed out as suffering.

You don’t have to.

You’re automatically a good person because you noticed it and you pointed it out and you made people think you care about it. But you really don’t, because you don’t do jack, and then when some people come along and actually want to solve a problem, they get ripped to shreds for not caring — exactly what’s happening to Trump and all of us who want to open the economy, who want to open back up, who want to get rid of this idiotic shutdown.

We’re portrayed as the problems. We’re portrayed as people who want to kill people — we’re portrayed as people that don’t care — by a bunch of busybody nobodies not doing anything but pointing how superior they are! “If your intentions are good, if they conform to the general received values of your friends, family…”

In other words: If you can articulate conventional wisdom, and if you can go along with conformity, then everything is fine. You are that good person. “You are ratified. You can do anything you wish. It doesn’t matter in the slightest what” your ideas actually would accomplish, because it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you have acknowledged that you care, and you are superior because of it.

“It doesn’t matter that [your ideas] misfire completely, cause terror attacks,” prolong a pandemic and make people sicker, cause “riots in the inner city, or national bankruptcy. You will be applauded and approved of,” because you cared. You see, “We’re supposed to think that the continued shutdowns over the coronavirus are good. Those who dare to ask about the science and models behind lockdown orders,” people like you and me who continue to point out “the increasing collateral damage” being done to our country, “or the difference between dying with or dying of the virus…”?

Why, we are judged swiftly, and we are assessed as heartless and cold and cruel and mean-spirited — and we don’t care if people die. All we care about is money and greed and getting the economy up and running! When in truth, it has nothing to do with greed for me. I want the economy up and running because I damn well do care about people! Now I see…

You know, there’s a little news blurb up here, and this scares the hell out of me. The Democrats are preparing a wish list, Pelosi and her buddies are proposing a wish list of new policies. One of the items is a $2,000-a-month payment to every American. If that do that, if that actually ever became American policy or law, you can kiss the economy coming back good-bye.

If you can give every American $24,000 a year — and it’s only gonna increase once you start this. If you can give them $2,000 in addition to everything else they’re already getting, why work? The socialists are gonna have their dream that much closer to coming true. They’ll be able to prove that we can keep people fed, we can keep ’em occupied, we can keep ’em interested without them having to work.

The government can do that all of that — and the more people they convince of that, the fewer people who are gonna care about making the most of themselves. The fewer people are gonna care about finding a career, finding a job. There are always gonna be people that will, don’t misunderstand. But you start giving away $2,000 and all you have to do is sit at home to get it, what are you gonna do?

You’re gonna sit at home and make sure you’re there when the deposit comes in. Give every American $2,000? Why not three? Why not $3,000? Why just $2,000? Give every American $5,000! (interruption) Too expensive? No, no, no, no. I tell you, let’s give every American $100,000 and be done with it. That way, we don’t have to worry about the economy coming back.

We don’t have worry about anybody’s stores reopening, don’t have to worry about whether hair salon owners go to jail or not.

Just give everybody hundred grand and we’re done with it! Let Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats run the country, and there is our utopia. Think they could sell it? Certainly! Damn well they could. Damn straight they could. I could sell it. I just did to a lot of people, probably — inadvertently, of course. You see, ladies and gentlemen, we are supposed to think that the continued shutdowns over the virus are good.

If you question them, you are bad. You’re heartless. You’re mean! You don’t care if people die. “Do you want more people to die? Is the economy more important to you than people’s lives? Is that what you’re saying? The economy means more to you than whether or not people live or die?” This is how they do it. This is moral narcissism. They’re better people.

They don’t do jack anything. The country couldn’t depend on ’em to survive one day. They’re the pajama-clad bloggers sitting around in their basements of their mother examine father’s homes trashing everybody on Twitter and Facebook and wherever else. They’re a bunch of incompetent boobs who couldn’t do anything on their own.

So they sit there in moral judgment of everybody else. They go out there and attack the doers. They attack the fixers. They attack the risk-takers, and they impugn their integrity. “These moral narcissists don’t trouble themselves with facts, such as the reality that everyone dies, eventually, or that even before COVID-19 most people who died were elderly…”

Did you know that? Do you know that the greatest number of people, that most people who die every day are old? That’s a strange thing to try to comprehend, but it actually happens to be true. Have you ever asked yourself why? Most people who die every day happen to be old. What explains this? To many in the American left, it’s a very confusing question. They think there’s gotta be some unfairness in it. There has to be some bias.

There has to be some mean-spirited ’cause it’s not fair that the elderly should be dying more than anybody else. And this is how they look at it. I’ll give you some examples. One of them I just shared with you. Chuck Schumer. Here is moral narcissism on steroids. “President Trump doesn’t care about you.” This is his tweet after the DOJ dropped the Flynn case. “President Trump doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your health. He doesn’t care about your family. He doesn’t care about testing. He just cares that his cronies are taken care of.” He doesn’t care if you die. He just wants to make sure his cronies are taken care of.

Now, to me, that’s libel, slander, actionable. It is the exact opposite. And not just about President Trump. Anybody else who wants to get the American economy going is doing it because they do care you, and they do care about your health, and they do care about your family because they are compassionate people. They care about testing.

Donald Trump is single-handedly fighting forces arrayed against him to make this the worst it can be. And the people who are advocating for no change, a continued shutdown and the harm that it brings, both physically and mentally and psychologically, these are the good people?

Here’s the governor of Washington, Jay Inslee. “At a press briefing Monday afternoon, Inslee was asked about a lawsuit leveled against him by a group of Republican lawmakers. They contend the stay-at-home order is too restrictive and that,” in the state of Washington people can safely and responsibly go back to work in certain parts of the economy.

“Rather than tell us why he thinks public health data makes a stronger case to keep the economy shut down, Inslee attacks his critics as heartless. He argues they want to see people die.”

These Republicans just want to see people die. They just want to see people get killed. Now, this tactic, it’s not just dismissive of the Republicans and the people who want to go back to work. It’s sleazy. Yeah. So reopen the economy during the coronavirus? Why, you’re a monster. So that’s moral narcissism and they’re all over the place. And I’ll guarantee you another damn thing, they’re all Democrats, they’re all liberals, they’re all quasi-socialists and communists to boot.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This Brian in Wichita, Kansas. Great to have you, Brian. Hi.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Mega trucker dittos.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Great to have you on the program here today.

CALLER: Mega prayers for you as well.

RUSH: Appreciate that.

CALLER: I just wanted to call up and see what you thought about comparing the restrictions we have with this virus with what they’ve done with the smokers. I’m not a smoker, but I just see them whittling away. They used to have their own section in a restaurant or on an airplane. Then you couldn’t smoke. Then you couldn’t even have a business that allowed smoking. And then I think if I recall they were trying to even make it illegal for you to smoke in your own home in some areas.

RUSH: Well, some of the moral narcissists, yeah, still to this day try that on the basis that if you’re in an apartment, say, 300 feet away, a football field away, they claim to be able to smell your secondhand smoke in their closed-up apartments. And they go and they complain to the people running the apartment complex, guess what happens? The apartment complex people go down to where the smoking is taking place, “You can’t do that, you’re offending people a football field away.” So that has been attempted.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: So you’re thinking that the attack on smokers is similar to what they’re doing with the lockdowns?

CALLER: Yeah. I think they saw how it worked there, and they think, hey, we can restrict smoking because secondhand smoke is a weapon or a virus. Gives you lung cancer. Why not do this with, you know, coronavirus? You could have it on your hands or in your breath. You know, just walking around you’re being a weapon.

RUSH: Well, you know, the smoking thing, I don’t think they learned anything from the smoking bans other than they are just gonna try to restrict any behavior they don’t approve of. And this coronavirus, once again, it’s a gold mine in terms of helping people understand the kind of people we’re up against.