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Nov. 18, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
November 18, 2005, Friday, Hour #2
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That is right, Johnny Donovan.
And I'm not only trying to sell my fellow Americans on the moral superiority of liberty, but I'm also trying to push back the frontiers of ignorance in our great nation.
And you can be on to help me do so by calling 800-282-2882.
Let me start off at this hour by talking about a column written It was July 29th in the New York Times by none other than Paul Krugman, who often passes himself off as an economist.
He teaches economics at Princeton University.
Anyway, for this column, he won the Forbes.
And you can see the prize that he won at Forbes.com.
And the prize was called the Dunts of the Week Award for his New York Times column titled French Family Values.
Now, in this column, Krugman asks, are European economies really doing that badly?
And he says the answer is no.
He says that Americans are doing a lot of strutting these days, but a head-to-head comparison between the economies of the United States and Europe and France in particular shows that the big difference is in priorities, not performance.
And so he's talking about, well, we have two highly productive economies that have made different trade-offs between work and family time.
Now, his assertion is essentially this.
He says that the income gap between European economies and that of the United States is not a result of lower efficiency.
It's a result of Europeans working less than Americans so that they can have more time with their families.
That is utter nonsense.
Now, let me give you some of the findings in actually a very, very good series of articles printed in the latest issue of American Enterprise.
And let's look at some facts for those of you who are listening to Americans saying we should be more like the Europeans.
Okay, fact number one.
Since the 1970s, America has created 57 million new jobs.
What about Europe?
Europe has created, since 1970, keep in mind, 4 million new jobs.
And most of those new jobs were in government.
Consider another little statistic.
Europe's proportion of world GDP between 1913 and 1998 has dropped from 34% to 20%.
That is, at one time, Europe had 34% of the world's economy, and now it has 20%.
On the other hand, the United States held its own at about 22% of global GDP.
In other words, even as global GDP was growing, United States still held 22%.
Here's another little statistic.
And think about this, these statistics, while keeping in the back of the mind what Paul Krugman said, that the big difference is in priorities, not performance, in terms of our economies.
Now, Carl Zinsmeister, in his article in the American Enterprise, he says that in France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium, approximately 25% of all workers under 25 are currently unemployed.
Why?
Well, high minimum wages, that is, in Europe, their minimum wages are approximately two times our minimum wage.
Then there's what they call employment protection.
And this employment protection makes it virtually impossible to fire people.
I understand in France, it can take up to two years to fire somebody, and then once you fire him, you have to pay him a certain percentage of the wages that he would have earned for a while.
Now, when you make it costly to fire people, you make it costly to hire them in the first place.
Now, we have a lot of nonsense coming out of Europe saying, well, they want to attack, I'm sorry, they want to attack the United States.
There's this leftist hate, particularly by the European elite.
And there's an article by, again, Kotkin, and he reports that 400,000 European Union science and technology graduates currently reside in the United States.
And barely one in seven, according to a recent European Commission poll, intend to return to Europe.
Now, it's not only the best brains of the world finding that United States is a good place to live, it's poor people as well who come to the United States.
Now, poor people go to Europe.
But there's a big difference between the poor people who go to Europe and the poor people who come to the United States.
That is, the poor who come to United States tend to prosper much more than they do in Europe.
Now, that might explain some of the problems, by no means all of the problem, that France is having with the rioters.
That is, in some areas, some Muslim and African communities, in France, 30% to 60% of the people who are under the age of 25 are unemployed.
They can't find a job.
Now, I believe that American success and European jealousy might explain a lot of their anti-Americanism, particularly virulent among the Europe's elite population.
Now, imagine some of the things that they say about us.
When asked, according to one survey, when asked which countries are the biggest threat to world peace, Europeans name the United States as often as, now get this, North Korea and Iran.
Countries deemed less menacing by the Europeans include, less menacing than the United States, include Syria, Iraq, Russia, China, and Afghanistan, and Libya.
Now, there's a German fellow, Olaf Gersman.
He has an article in this American Enterprise, in this recent American Enterprise magazine edition.
And he says, the title of that article is Europe's Not Working.
He says that nearly every top politician in Germany is on record giving a grave, smug warning about the danger of letting American conditions seep into the German economy.
Now, in Germany's debate, they're having an economic debate right now over their failing welfare state.
Now, in that debate, American conditions is code for stiff competition, low taxes, minimal state intrusion, and limited duration of welfare payments.
Now, you know, the tragedy of all this is that there are many American elites that share Europe's anti-Americanism.
They are also against the American conditions, and they want us to have Europe's high taxes, oppressive regulation of our economy, and socialized medicine.
And they're particularly tuned to socialized medicine, you know, like Hillary care and Kennedy's pushing socialized medicine for years.
And by the way, folks, as a service to the listeners and to Americans in general, on my website, I have a little story called Dead Meat.
And actually, it's a documentary.
And those of you who think that Canada's healthcare system is what we should have in America should check that out.
And matter of fact, the title of the piece is Should We Import Canada's Healthcare System.
And it shows people who are dying.
And matter of fact, in Canada, if to get an MRI, a dog can get a MRI faster than you.
You just take your dog to the vet.
Matter of fact, maybe some Canadians are going to the vet for their MRIs.
I don't know.
And also the Americans, the American elite, they want us to share Europe's will, a lack of will to protect themselves.
In the past, the Europeans were unwilling to protect themselves against Nazism and communism.
And now, as we're going to find out in the last hour when I talk to Tony Blankly, they demonstrate an unwillingness to protect themselves against Islam that's hell-bent on conquering the West.
And so we and our children might be faced with pulling Europe's chestnuts out of the fire again.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
We're back, ladies and gentlemen.
You can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And this is Walter Williams sitting in for Rush and Rush.
We'll be back on Monday.
Let's go to the telephones.
Bob on his cell phone in Hartford, Connecticut.
Welcome to the show, Bob.
Yeah, hi there.
Sorry, I've got a lousy cell connection, but I appreciate you taking my call.
Okay.
I wonder if the Europeans who you cited in that poll who view the U.S. as a top threat to world peace may come to that conclusion because of our official policy promoting preemptive wars and most specifically our current preemptive war in Iraq.
You know, I remember when the Soviet Union was a country and they had a policy of preemptive strikes, and we really demonized them, rightly so for that.
I have no idea whether Europeans at that time would have rated the USSR up at the top of the list, but it seems to me that that might have something to do with their current views.
Well, I can't give you an answer, but I believe in preemptive war.
I'm not a warmonger, but I believe that if you deem yourself under threat, that you should get them before they get you.
I mean, it's kind of like, and I have this argument with some of my libertarian friends.
It's kind of like, if you live next door to me and you hate my guts, and I see you building a cannon in your window pointed at my house, I am not going to wait.
I'm going to get you before you get me.
Go ahead.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
I'm not sure that's how we should be sort of conducting our foreign policy, but with Iraq at any rate, it looks like what you thought was a cannon turned out to be, I don't know, somebody building a television stand.
Well, I'm not going to get into the debate about WMDs, but I'm very sure that Saddam Hussein wanted nuclear capacity, just as Iran wants nuclear capacity.
At one time, he did have weapons of mass destruction.
But let's look at this a little bit.
So far as the Iraq war, there's something in statistics called the Type 1 and Type 2 era.
Now, there's one error that we could have, and I'll ask you, caller, Jim, not Jim, but Bob.
I'll ask you, well, which do you think is the more dangerous?
Wait a minute.
You don't have the question yet.
That is, which would have been more dangerous for us to assume that Saddam Hussein.
Okay, let me go back.
Which is the more devastating error for us to make?
The error that we assume that Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons, but he really, in fact, doesn't, or the era that we assume that he does not have nuclear weapons, and in fact he does.
You know, I'll give you.
Which error is more costly?
Pardon me?
I think that the shortest answer to your question is that it depends on how you're defining devastation.
In other words, if you're concerned about the way this country is viewed in the world and whether or not we're viewed by others as a threat to world peace, then I would say that we would be wise not to shoot first and ask questions later.
Well, okay, but okay, if we did not shoot first and ask questions later, we could be shot first ourselves and then ask questions.
Well, we could be, but you know, when that's how we run a neighborhood, that's how you end up with chaos.
And then when that's how you run a country, I think that's how you end up with you.
I think we, you know, history has shown that, you know, for example, in the mid-1930s, when Germany was violating the Versailles Treaty, when Hitler was violating the Versailles Treaty, France alone could have wiped out Germany in 1934-33 when it was violating.
But everybody said, well, let Hitler have his way, make this concession, make that concession, and it wound up the world losing 60 million souls in World War II.
Now, is that what we should have?
The answer, of course, is no.
We shouldn't have to.
I don't accept your analysis.
Wait a minute.
What would you have done after the fact now?
What would you have done in 1933 when Hitler was violating all the Versailles treaties?
Would you just let him continue and say, well, he did not attack us, so we should not attack him?
I don't accept the analogy between Iraq and Nazi Germany.
I just don't.
I think it's a false.
Forget it.
Okay, let's pretend it's a false analogy.
But what would you have done in 1933?
You want to know the truth?
I don't know because I just don't know enough about it.
Well, matter of fact, Bob, a whole lot of people took your position, and it cost the world 60 million lives.
Well, and I guess my last point would be that country taking your position.
Our country has taken your position, and I think it's cost us, among other things, among many lives, it's cost us our reputation in the world.
And that really was my original point.
Okay.
Well, thanks for calling in.
I mean, that's a vision of the world.
See, you know, that's a good thing.
I'm 70 years old, and I'm only going to be around for another 30 or 35 years.
And when it gets real bad, it's going to be people like Bob who's to blame for United States going down the tubes.
That is, tyrants of the world, they respect power and strength.
And we have power and strength.
Matter of fact.
We'll talk to the idea when we get back.
Walter Williams, holding forth for Rush Limbaugh.
He'll be back Monday.
And let's go to the phones.
We have Jim from Arkansas.
Welcome to the show.
Yes.
How are you, Miss Mike?
Okay.
How are you doing, Jim?
I'm doing fine.
Good.
I apologize for this bad connection.
I'm on a cell phone on my truck.
I've heard you enough times where I could say I agree with you 99% of the time.
But I heard you say something which is kind of troubling.
Your wife has heart problems, so you buy her a shovel so she can go shovel the snow?
No, it's a little small shovel.
Oh, okay.
It only lifts up maybe about three or four pounds of snow at a time.
Ah, okay.
Well, it wouldn't take her long then.
It would take her a long time because we have a long driveway.
I get you happen to buy a life insurance policy along with that shovel, too.
Oh, yeah, she has a good life insurance policy.
Oh, I'm sure.
Well, you know, well, I'm very thoughtful of, you know, how all this thing started a number of years ago for a Christmas present.
I bought my wife a pair of golf shoes.
Now, she doesn't pay.
Mrs. Williams doesn't play golf, but when she washes my car in the winter, there's a lot of ice, you know, forms, you know, because the water gets on the driveway is ice.
And she's slipping around, sliding around.
And so I got her some golf shoes because they have cleats on them so she doesn't slide around while she's washing my car.
Well, she.
And as I said, I always wrap these gifts nicely.
So I think it's a good idea.
I mean, it's a practical gift.
I'm a practical man.
I'm not going to buy earrings and all that stuff that's impractical.
Well, no, I guess you can buy her some tools so she can fix the house, too.
Well, once in a while, that's why she does that.
But I'll tell you what to do.
Why don't you try out some of my ideas and let me know how they work out?
Sure.
I'd like to see the expression on my wife's face when I buy her a shovel so she can go show up.
Okay.
Okay, Jim.
Thanks for calling.
And look, folks, let's get serious.
This is a serious show.
Let's go to Mike on the cell phone, Cleveland, Ohio.
Welcome Show, Mike.
Professor Williams, how are you?
Okay.
Good.
I was saying, you know, I've got a 13-year-old daughter, and I'm always amazed at the number of people that are so worried about how we're perceived in the world when I'm trying to teach her not to worry so much about what people think about her.
I just want to know your thoughts on that.
Well, of course, it makes a difference what others think of us.
And I think, you know, as individuals and a country, but we shouldn't dwell on it too much.
That is, we should do the right thing.
And I think that Americans, we have an awesome responsibility.
That is, liberty is a fragile state of affairs, as has always been fragile down throughout mankind's history.
That is, the normal state of mankind's existence is to be subject to abuse and control by others.
And that's the way it is in most of the world, even today.
Now, if liberty dies in America, I guarantee you it'll be dead everywhere in the world for all times.
That is, Americans, throughout our history, we've been at the forefront of protecting people from or protecting the world from a takeover by tyrants.
I don't care whether you're talking about World War I, World War II, or the war against the Islamic jihadists.
If we lose the war to protect liberties, it is gone for all times and all places and all people.
And that's an awesome responsibility for us.
And so in meeting that responsibility, I don't care what others think about it.
Now, I think there's a better way to meet that responsibility.
I personally think that the Congress should have declared war.
And I believe Tony blankly is going to say the same thing in the third hour when he's going to be on to talk about his book, The West's Last Chance.
I think that the United States Congress should have declared war against Islamic jihadists.
That's what the declaration of war should have been against.
Well, let me ask you: do you think that we would, do you think the people that are so concerned about how we're viewed in the world would have supported that?
And do you think that would have helped the argument that we are doing the right thing?
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
But I think after 9-11, the American people would have supported it.
I don't know whether we have gotten support from Europe.
Perhaps we would have.
But I think that the American people would have supported it.
Okay.
Okay, well, thanks a lot.
Let's go to John on the cell phone from Akron, Ohio.
Welcome to the show, John.
Hi, Dr. Williams.
Thank you for taking my call.
I wanted to say first that I'm a great fan of yours and very much enjoy when you sub for a rush.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Secondly, I'd like to thank you for dismantling Bob and the rest of the Neville Chamberlains of the world and their infinite position, which is, you know, we're doing the wrong thing, and we're very worried about the opinions of people who do not operate within the same moral sphere as us.
But when they're faced with very difficult decisions, as the example you brought up in World War II with Hitler, they're impotent.
They will do nothing.
That's right.
And they'll look for the United States to bail them out.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And ultimately, they'll lament the results irrespective.
So we cannot take their lead here.
We need to take the lead of strength and our own moral compass and not look for the world and their opinions to guide us.
I think you're absolutely right.
And as a matter of fact, after World War II, General Patton suggested that we take on the Soviet Union.
We did not follow his instructions.
We did not follow his suggestion.
And look what it cost the world.
Indeed.
I mean, we could have wiped out the Soviet Union.
Matter of fact, here's what I would have done.
If I were President Truman, after World War II, I would have sent the message to the rest of the world.
I would have said that if you start building nuclear weapons, we're going to bomb your facilities.
And namely, I would have kept the United States with a monopoly on nuclear weapons.
And as a result of that, we would not have spent trillions and trillions of dollars in the Cold War and many lives lost in the Cold War.
Sometimes, well, when you live in a world with tyrants, sometimes you have to do ugly things that you otherwise would not do.
Thanks for calling.
And let's go to Jeremy, Winston-Salem.
Hello, Dr. Williams.
Hi.
Hey, I'm 25 years old, so my opinion is probably fairly young and uninformed in many people's estimation.
But I have lived all over the world, and I would just like to raise the point that our reputation previous to our going into Iraq really wasn't worth keeping in the first place.
And what do you mean by that?
Well, in the Arab world, we were considered to be the great Zionist Satan.
We were considered cowards.
We ran from Mogadishu.
And that's after helping Muslims in Bosnia.
Oh, exactly.
Exactly.
We've basically been vilified because people just can't believe that America could be as good and wonderful as it is.
Well, you know, it's kind of two-faced anti-Americanism.
And that is, according to most surveys that I've seen, if you ask people anywhere in the world, which country would you like to live in, which country do you think they say?
Oh, United States, hands up.
That's right.
And they might profess a hate for us or whatever, but if you ask them, where do you want to live, it's United States.
I don't care whether you even talk to Muslims.
They want to live in the United States because they are free from the strictures of the Islamic faith.
They can have a drink in the United States.
Or they can start a business.
They can begin building a life for themselves that won't be taken away by the next guy who's got a gun.
That is absolutely right.
Thanks for calling in, and we'll be back with more of your calls after this.
Walter Williams here sitting in for Rush.
Here's a story that was in the Daily Times in Oklahoma City that really touched my heart.
And it's called Mom Makes Teens Stand on the Street with a Sign.
Okay, let me just read a little bit of it.
Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class, and talking back to her teachers.
So she decided to teach this girl of hers a lesson.
Guess what she did?
She made Karitha, that's her daughter's name, stand at a busy Oklahoma City section, intersection on November 4th with a cardboard sign.
Now she's holding up a cardboard sign and it's a picture of her.
And the cardboard sign read, I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future.
We'll work for food.
And so that is a wonderful lesson by her parent.
And so here's what happened.
She's out there, Karitha's out there holding this sign saying we'll work for food because she's messing up in school because she's going to be a bum.
And a motorist, a passing motorist, called the police with a report of psychological child abuse.
Well, the police came up and talked to the mother and daughter for an hour, and no citation was issued.
But I wonder whether the police were laughing.
But, however, the police had to do their job.
So they reported it to the State Department of Human Services.
That is remarkable.
Now, here's a mother who cares about her daughter.
I don't know.
Well, times are changing, but at least we have one mother out in Oklahoma City, Tasha Henderson, who is looking towards her daughter's future.
I just think that's an interesting thing.
You know, I think that's one of the problems.
People being busy.
Now, I'm trying to figure my mother, she was very strict in raising me and my sister.
And she probably would have told the policeman to go to, you know, H-E-L-L, interfering with the raising of her children.
Matter of fact, I used to get whippings.
This is back in the 40s.
You know, the worst time to get a whipping is in the summertime.
And why?
Because the windows are open.
And your friends outside can hear you pleading, Mama, I won't do it anymore.
I'll be good.
And then you come outside to play the day later because you're getting your butt beat, plus being punished, kept in the house as well.
And the kids start mimicking you, you know.
And that is really embarrassing.
But had my mother been around doing it today, maybe somebody would have called up the Department of Human Services and said, child abuse.
Well, anyway, I'm none the worse for where.
But maybe Bob, who called in asking us to be pacifists, maybe he would have said, well, aha, that's why you're the way you are because your mother beat you.
Anyway, let's go to the phones and talk to Laura.
Welcome to the show.
She's from Erie, Pennsylvania, where it is snowing.
You're getting that lake effect snow up there, aren't you?
Yes, we are.
We're warm inside and toasty.
Hey, Professor Williams, I just wanted to thank you for an article you did that I read on townhall.com called How Not to Be Poor.
And I want to nominate you for the Nobel Prize in Economics because you're right.
It is not rocket science.
That's flattering.
Very, very flattering, Laura.
Well, the reason I'm calling you is because my son is also was working on a paper about poverty.
And he had the statistic that in 1960, 74% of black families were made up of married couples and 88% of white families back in the 60s.
But in 1995, it was only 36% of black families compared to 75% of white families.
And that the distinction for poverty is mainly, like you said, it's not a race thing at all.
It has to do with the welfare and the single parenthood and sex outside of marriage.
That is absolutely right.
And I want to congratulate you, too, because I think until liberal blacks like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley get on board with you and Bill Cosby, that the conservative bringing the family back together will not only affect poverty rates, but it will also lessen the STD rates because we just had the report that minorities are up to 50% of the new HIV cases.
And all the other things that are related to that one behavior.
And it lowers crime.
It lowers high school completion.
Two-parent families are very, very important.
And Laura refers to a column I wrote some time ago that avoiding poverty is not rocket science.
There are four things that you have to do.
One, graduate from high school.
Two, take any kind of job and keep it.
Three, don't have children before you get married and stay married.
And four, don't engage in criminal activity.
This is not rocket science.
We'll be back after this.
We're back, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And in the next hour, we're going to have Tony Blankly on to talk about his new book, The West's Last Chance.
Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?
Let's go back to the phones.
Thomas from Cocoa Beach, Florida.
Welcome to the show.
Oh, thank you for being you, Dr. Williams.
Thank you.
How have you responded to people who associate every economic indicator that is reported to either good or poor performance by the president, depending upon whether the indicator was up or down?
It drives me nuts, like he is the business cycle or something.
How do you respond to them?
I think it's nonsense.
I think that a president has very little capacity to do good for the economy.
Or bad either.
Actually, he has awesome power to do bad.
And then, again, what bothers me, I thought what you might have said, is when people say Ronald Reagan's tax cuts or Clinton's tax raises or whatever, presidents have no power to raise taxes in our country.
That is, that is delegated to the United States Congress.
That is, if you read the Constitution of the United States, you would never say that Bush cut taxes for the rich.
It would be Congress who cuts taxes.
We'll be back the next hour.
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