Rush had an excellent monologue yesterday.
Root of Divide Is Not Us
November 3, 2004
Listen to Rush…
(...point out the truth of who divides and refuses to unite in the United States)
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Hey, anybody seen the youth vote? MTV? P. Diddy? Who else is out there registering all these yutes? What happened to the youth vote? You know, it's one of the age-old myths. "This year the Democrats are going to get out the youth vote!" This is something they can't get over since the 60s and the anti-war crowd. Oh, and speaking of that, by the way, I'm getting away ahead of myself here. Greetings and welcome back, folks. Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network, and we are here from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. The telephone number. If you want to be on the program, we'll talk to you at 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address is Rush@eibnet.com. I want to tell you this before the youth vote business, because this reminds me of this. I was talking to a really good liberal friend last night. I do have good liberal friends, and this person was depressed, and this person was really depressed because this person's issues were resoundingly defeated.
Gay marriage matters to this person a lot, and it went down to defeat everywhere it was on the ballot, including Oregon, you know, which is San Francisco north, Seattle south, and it went down to defeat there. But there were a lot of other things, and when this person saw the exit polls showed that the #1 issue on people's minds is morality. That person said to me, "You know, I just don't feel like this is my country. I mean, Bush may have won by all these three million votes, but there are a lot of people that don't believe any of this and just don't think that this is their country. They don't know where to go in the world," and I said, "Well, Larry Flynt says he's going to leave." Larry Flynt, he said yesterday -- I had this in the stack couple days ago -- Flynt said he was going to leave. Let him leave! A lot of people have threatened to leave over the years and haven't. Let 'em. Let 'em.
If there's somewhere better to go, let 'em go, if they're going to threaten to do that. But what I was said was this. I said, "Let me tell you what's happening, here." The baby boom generation is a fascinating generation to study. I'm a member of the baby boom generation, so I feel qualified to talk about this. The baby boom generation is, I think, noted for a couple of unique aspects. One: it's the most self-absorbed generation in the history of the world, and the reason we baby boomers -- and I will say "we," even though I'm not self absorbed as those of you who listen daily know. But the reason we are self-absorbed...(talking to staff) Even Dawn is finally laughing. The reason we are self-absorbed is because we had all the time in the world and all the prosperity in the world to be self-absorbed. It was our parents and grandparents who didn't have time for that. They learned in their teenage years that there were things much larger than themselves. The Great Depression, World War II, Korea, the Cold War.
But we, their children, grew up with prosperity that the world had never known before and it has only increased. We had to invent our stresses. We had to invent our syndromes, because we had time to. We had to invent the things that bother us. We had to invent the hard, tough aspect of our lives. We had to invent them because they really weren't there -- and we've, over the course of our maturation from teenager to adult, we've got ourselves convinced that our lives have been pretty damn bad, pretty damn hard, some of us. It's gotten to the point where, to a lot of baby boomers, George Bush represents the single greatest evil in the world. Now, tell me just how out of literal phase and reality is that, but they believe it.
We also have an element of our generation that grew up believing that America was evil and wrong, and this got started in the Vietnam War. We had a bunch of people who ended up becoming anti-war, anti-America protesters in their youth, and their whole adult lives have been spent validating their youth. Therefore, any war that comes along, America is wrong -- except when one of their party members leads it, like Clinton in Kosovo. There are always exceptions to these rules. But here comes Iraq. Here comes a threat they choose to ignore -- or worse, America caused. If we would just not attack the terrorists, listened to bin Laden, why, we would be safer -- and so Iraq was a big issue to these people only because they put themselves ahead of the country. They put themselves ahead of reality. They didn't want the discomfort of it.
They didn't want the discomfort of going to war but they also saw an opportunity. Here's another war they disagreed with, "America caused it; America is wrong. Our youth was well spent!" It is because of idle time and prosperity that they have the time to devote their self-thoughts to this stuff, and they became obsessed with negativism, and because of all of this, the combination of negative doom and gloom outlook on life, "Oh, woe is us! Oh, how hard is our life!" coupled with the fact that they are so self-absorbed, that they don't understand having to win in the arena of ideas. They think that what they are should automatically be, and so I was telling this person last night: "You've got a lot of problems, not just in the baby boom generation, but liberalism in general. You have the idea in your head that because the country rejected via a popular vote what you believe in, that the country is no longer yours.
"Have you ever thought about fighting for what you believe in? And I don't mean the way you have, but have you ever thought about fighting it in the sense of actually persuading people to try to agree with you? The way you've gone about gay marriage has been guaranteed to defeat it. You have gone and had Supreme Court judges in Massachusetts tell legislators what laws they must pass and by when, laws that the people would not vote for themselves, laws that the people would not approve of. You had a mayor in San Francisco force illegal marriages against the law for a period of time. You think this doesn't have a backlash? This is not how things happen in this country. You think just because you want it -- baby boomers, self-absorbed, selfish generation: Whatever you wanted, you got -- just because you want it, it should be there, and when you don't get it, it's, "Oh, woe is us?'"
I said, "Try being a conservative for 40 years. Try being on the losing end for 40 years. Try being laughed at, impugned, and made fun of for 40 years. You guys have lost your power here in the last 20 and you're panicking. You're panicking because you don't know how to get it back. You want to try to force it on people because you don't think you can persuade people. So I understand why you're depressed and why you're panicked out there, but you're going to have to understand that the way you're going about trying to make this country like you, or look like you, is being totally counterproductive. It's just not working in any way, and it's not just the election yesterday that indicates this. There are all kinds of indicators out there that foretold the election result yesterday. The unwillingness to admit reality, the utter denial of reality that these people are in continues to hold them back and amaze me at the same time and, frankly, has all of us scratching our heads."
We see a good economy. They see soup lines. We see a terror threat. They see a president who's killing Americans for oil. We see a war in Iraq that's not being fought in America, in which Iraq is the central gathering point for terrorists. They see an opportunity for Bush to enrich Halliburton. We see audiotape from Osama bin Laden as the only thing he can do as an October surprise. The only attack he can launch on America is a tape, a videotape! They see that George W. Bush has failed in the war on terror because bin Laden can send us a tape, and we sit here, we scratch our heads and there seems to be this great divide, and I'm telling you that the root of this division is not us, and there's no need for us to be defensive, and we do not have to run around and listen to them tell us what we have to do because it is we who need to be analyzing them as I am now.
They're the ones who are so far off of reservation -- a little Indian lingo there, Senator Daschle -- so far off reservation that it is up to them to find a way to get back on it, and we're not going to give them casinos this time. You know, it's stunning and amazing. I want to go back to this audio sound bite #6, just to give you a little historical perspective. Let's play audio sound bite #6 again. This is where I am going to start a coup if Kerry wins. This is Bill Moyers. He's reacting to a statement by Mina Bose who is an associate professor of political science at West Point, and she said, "Well, Bill, I'm glad you brought up the election of 1800, because what Jefferson said when he in his inaugural address was: 'We're all Republicans. We're all Federalists,' and I think that will be the challenge for the next president, to be able to make that kind of a statement, to reach out to the opposition party." I'd love to take that apart, but here's Moyers' response.
MOYERS: As Joe said, I don't -- I don't believe that. I think if Kerry were to win this in a tight race, I think there would be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly.
ROSE: What do you mean by a coup?
MOYERS: I mean that the right-wing is not going to accept it.
KLEIN: Except for the fact that they don't control -- they don't control the military, they don't control the intelligence community. What they control is Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and, you know, one side of the table on Crossfire.
RUSH: You know, Joe, I'll tell you: I don't know how many people know who you are anyway, without me telling them who you are. I don't know how many people read TIME Magazine or watch CNN anymore. But I'll tell you, Joe, I think there's a coup that's been going on in here for 15 or 20 years. This is a silent coup. It's been taking place in the media. We don't need the military to take over, Joe. We need the American people. If you want to call the president and conservatism winning elections a coup, go ahead. Tell us who you are. It's a coup, right? This is a coup. We had a coup d'etat yesterday at the ballot box. Imagine that! We had a coup d'etat, but this business about -- I'm going to go back to Mina Bose. Oh, one thing. How about Moyer? "There would be a coup," and how about Walter Cronkite (Uncle Walter impression), "I think Karl Rove is behind the bin Laden tape, frankly."
Folks, do you get the idea here that we're talking about an absolute possible loss of genuine sanity on the part of these people? It may be to the point they are to be pitied. Moyers -- one of the greatest commentators of you all time, we are told -- worried about a coup? And Walter Cronkite claiming that Karl Rove was behind not only the bin Laden tape but the left thought that Karl Rove was behind Dan Rather's using forged documents from Bill Burkett. I'll tell you, this is a party way out; way, way, way out on a limb, and they've got the saw and they're cutting themselves off. We're helping a little bit. We gave them the saw, but they're the ones sawing themselves with this kind of stuff.
But anyway, the question about the 1800s. Her question is, you know, "What Bush needs to do is do what Jefferson did. Jefferson united the country. In his inaugural address in 1800, what Jefferson did, Jefferson went out there and said, 'We're all Federalists now. We're all one party.'"
And so that means Bush ought to go out and reach out to the left. He tried that in the first year of his presidency, and look what it got him? It got him nothing. It was the new tone, it was Ted Kennedy writing the education bill. He's done that. He gave it everything he had. This man has had more excrement thrown at him in the last year alone. A lesser man would have been changed by it, would have become embittered, would have lashed out. Bush has remained who he is: a man of faith, confidence. Steadfast. Decisive. Don't think that didn't matter. But you want to know the truth of 1800 and Jefferson's inaugural address? Forget the inaugural address. What did Jefferson do? These fools don't even understand what happened after the election of 1800, but I do. After his inaugural address where Jefferson said, "We're all Federalists," do you know what he did?
He threw out the Alien and Sedition Acts. He threw outs the Judiciary Act. He refused to appoint Adams' judges to the bench. He got into a big fight with John Marshall who was the last-minute Adams appointment as chief justice of the Supreme Court. The Republicans and the Federalists were at each other's throats for many years because of what Jefferson did. There was no unity after the 1800 election! And here we got a professor at West Point trying to tell people watching Charlie Rose last night -- thankfully it's not that many -- that we had unity because of Thomas Jefferson? You just throw out the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Judiciary Act? You refuse to appoint Adams' judges and you get in a fight with the great John Marshall, folks? There wasn't a "unity" after 1800.
Jefferson was going to make this country and make this government as he thought it should be, within the arena of ideas. So this notion of unity and it's up to Bush now to reach out? It's time for the losers to understand they lost! It's time for the losers to try to figure out why they lost, and it's time for them to understand that reaching out to them and trying to bring them in as they exist makes us all losers. We don't want to lose anymore. If you leftists want to lose, stay out there where you are. Keep being who you are, saying what you're saying, acting as you're acting, and keep losing. But don't expect us to reach out and bring you in as you are after what you've done and said. But even in normal circumstances, that's not what winners do unless they're weak, have no spine, and don't feel justified in their victory.
Or unless they're like people that live inside the Beltway, conservatives who live inside the Beltway, who cave and want the approval of the liberals inside the Beltway so they go soft on their own beliefs. But that's not what's going to happen here. We're not going to reach out to people who are losing, who have ideas that are antithetical to what we believe in and try to bring you in as you are. It's up to you to win if you want the power that you seek. This is just more of the arrogance, the typical arrogance and condescension, even when they lose they think they are in power and ought to be because it's their birthright and entitlement. Many of them baby boomers who have this entitlement of self-absorption and importance, and until they figure all this out -- I know I sound like a broken record -- but until they figure all this out, their cycle of dissent shall continue, and it's happening at near tornado speed.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I got e-mails coming in from people questioning my sanity. "Rush, you think they're going to listen to you? They're going to accept your advice?" No, folks. I mean, we've talked about this before the election. You called and asked me what I thought they're going to do after the election if they lose. Ha! You haven't seen anything yet. It's only going to get worse. That's what I'm telling you. I guess I haven't made that clear. They're nowhere near realizing what they face, nowhere near having the ability. That's what I mean by "denial," to realize why they're losing. They're still blaming everybody but themselves. That's why they're going to dump on Kerry here shortly after he concedes, be a couple days, maybe, they'll start saying, "Well, this wasn't quite the candidate we wanted," and so forth.
But, you know, this business of the young people, the young vote, I started talking about. Where was the young vote? Every year they think they're going to get the young vote. They get the MTV Rock the Vote. How many years they had that voter registration drive and the P. Diddys out there. Young people didn't vote. They didn't show up. They may have registered but they didn't show up, and you know what that means? It means they weren't fooled by the lies from the Kerry campaign about the draft being instituted in January. The seasoned citizens? They weren't fooled by the phantom, always-present Social Security cuts. It's the same old tired, worn-out playbook that never has changed in my lifetime and they're not gonna change it.
I heard Reich on the radio today talking about what he's gotta do, what the libs have to do, got to stop talking more about health care and the minimum wage. Bring it on, Bob, let me hire the bus for you that takes you on your nationwide tour to rev up support for the minimum wage. I'll charter the bus for you. You know, Kerry in his concession speech yesterday, I heard he lectured the president when he made his phone call. If Kerry wants to be a good guy, what he ought to do is give the president his secret plan book, the one with his "secret plan" to create jobs, "secret plan" to conduct the war in a smarter, more effective way, "secret plan" to balance the budget while giving health care to everybody, and his "secret plan" for energy independence. If Kerry were decent that's what he'd give Bush, all of his secret, good ideas. |
