RUSH: Nancy Pelosi was on Bloomberg television’s Balance of Power show. It’s hosted by a guy named David Westin. Does the name ring a bell? David Westin used to be the president of ABC News. Now he’s got a show. You know, I have never seen anything like this. There used to be lines of demarcation. Management was on one side, and people on the air or talent were on the other side. And they never crossed over.
But now these guys, David Westin, president of ABC News, now has his own show on Bloomberg? It’s probably not a big deal to any of you, but to those of us in the business it is a classic sign of the deterioration of the news business and the whole idea of journalism.
Anyway, it’s an irrelevant point to the bite. He’s got Nancy Pelosi on. He says, “Today, Madam Pelosi, we got news about the GDP number, United States. Thirty-three percent growth. Does that make you think that we may not need another stimulus as much as we thought we did?”
PELOSI: No. In fact, it is proof that we need the stimulus even more so. The reason we had a good — a better third quarter is because what we did in the CARES Act and the subsequent legislation for PPP that put money into the economy. That’s gonna wear off, and we need another infusion.
RUSH: What you just heard was Nancy Pelosi trying to take credit for the GDP number. She’s trying to take credit for it on the basis that it was her that infused money into the economy. So what she’s trying to tell everybody here is that the economy only grew because government stimulated it. And in this way she puts forth the argument to the great unwashed that the only way to get economic growth is to have the government running things. This is a hideous example that she’s offering here, but it’s made to order for her purposes.
You have 33% economic growth, and she’s telling the great unwashed it’s only because of the stimulus we put into the economy in Congress. It has nothing to do with you. It’s got nothing to do with you opening back up. It’s got nothing to do with Trump policies. It’s got nothing to do with tax policy. It’s got nothing to do with people wanting to get their lives back. No. It’s all because we in government stimulated the economy. Then she, I think, makes a mistake. “We need another infusion,” she says. Well, where is it? You’re standing in the way of it, Ms. Pelosi. You’re doing everything you can to make sure there isn’t another infusion. Because you don’t want Trump getting any kind of credit for it whatsoever.
Anyway, this is a very, very dangerous — yeah, to me it is ’cause of what she’s gonna be able to make people believe here is the reason for the GDP explosion. Government. We’re so dangerously close with this election, the whole argument that we’ve had, philosophical argument we’ve had during the course of the 30 plus years I’ve hosted this program, how do you have prosperity? How do you create prosperity for the largest numbers of people? It’s been a worldwide argument.
On one side we have the Marxists and the communists. And you know what they believe. They believe that only government can do it because only government can make it fair and that there shouldn’t be billionaires. There shouldn’t be people with so much more than everyone else. And so government will create the prosperity, and government will make sure that it’s equally and equitably distributed. It never works, by the way. It never does.
Then there are those of us on the capitalist side who believe in the essence of individual freedom and liberty, ambition and desire, preparation, hard work, that these are the human values that are used and which determine a person’s station and position in life. Now, for those who are in any way deficient mentally or whatever, that’s where welfare steps in. That’s where society’s compassion comes in, to help those who cannot help themselves.
But we don’t believe in destroying the ethic, the work ethic by telling everybody that it’s not up to them. And this answer of Pelosi’s is made to order for the leftists and the communists who want people to believe that the only way to have success and prosperity is for the government to be behind it, for the government to be pushing it, for the government to be responsible for it. Anything else is unfair and unequal and so forth. So keep a sharp eye.
And folks, here’s the thing. I used the phrase “JFK Democrats.” Back in 1960 JFK during his inaugural address said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” That is a philosophy and a statement today that does not fly in the Democrat Party. That statement JFK made directly implies that you have a duty to support your country. The country does not have a responsibility to take care of you. It’s the other way around. You take care of yourself. You take care of the country. You invest in the country by investing in yourself.
So it used to be, folks, Republicans and Democrats, that there were overlaps in objectives. We all wanted prosperity. We all wanted a decent future for kids and grandkids. We all wanted kids and grandkids to have a good education. These were things that we held in common. These were values that we held in common. The differences, the arguments that we had — and they were knock-down-drag-out — were over how to achieve it.
And to the Democrats of those days, the only way to achieve all of that was through government. Government had to be responsible for education. Government had to be responsible for economic prosperity. Because only government could make it fair. Only government would be compassionate. We, of course, believed in the individual. We believed in rugged individualism. We believed in the value of work and what it says about someone. We believed in the idea that you can be whatever you want to be. You can dream whatever you want to be and you can be it. The only thing holding you back is you.
The left never did buy into that. They thought it was unfair, ’cause it’s true for some people, but it isn’t true for everybody. If it isn’t true for everybody, then it cannot be allowed to take place. Well, today, folks, we don’t even have that little bit of overlap. And that’s why we’re in this major knock-down-drag-out era in the history of our country. We don’t have, even when it comes to the idea of family prosperity, individual prosperity, just doing well in life, doing well economically, we do not have anything in common on how to do it, how to achieve it.
Because the left has totally devolved into identity politics and the belief that this nation is unfair, immoral, unjust, and needs to be basically erased and reconstituted. So the arguments that we’re having are knock-down-drag-out with no commonality. We used to share at least some similar objectives. We don’t even share those anymore. Today’s American left does not believe they are possible and doesn’t want them to be possible.
We, on the other hand, don’t want to give it up. We do not want to give up on the concept of individual freedom and liberty and let that take you wherever it takes you in life. We don’t want to give up on the concept of individual responsibility. We don’t want to give up on the notion that you are in charge of your life and that nobody better than you is out there to live it. Nobody is gonna care as much about your life as you do no matter what these people that say government’s the only fair entity out there. They don’t care about how you end up in life. They only tell you they do. But they don’t. Nobody’s gonna ever care about you as much as you do.
I’m watering it down and diluting it some, but these are basically the times in which we live. That’s what this argument and this election is, in large part, not solely, but, in large part, about. What kind of country are we gonna be? Are we gonna be a country where you have some say-so in your future? Are we gonna believe a country where you’ll be able to choose what you want to do in life without being punished for making the wrong decisions by your government?
Or are we gonna live in a country where government’s gonna be in charge of everything, including what you drive, what you eat, where you can travel, how you can get there because of economic policy, because of environmental policy? Because what they want to do is totally control as much of life as they can. And you’re watching it.
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