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Dec. 29, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
December 29, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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That's right.
Absolutely right, uh Johnny Donovan, that's that uh uh handsome, charming Walter E. Williams.
And uh look, uh folks, there are a couple of other items that we need to talk about.
Uh one, I think it's uh kind of important for our nation, and that's the Duke University Lacrosse case.
And it turns out now, uh after having been charged with rape, uh three Duke Lacrosse uh players haven't been charged with rape, the uh rape charges have been dropped.
And it turns out that the uh at NIF, uh he's the uh attorney uh in um the attorney, I guess attorney general, uh his prosecutor, Michael Naufon uh district attorney in uh Durham, um he found out, well, there no DNA evidence.
And matter of fact, uh the it's no evidence at all that those lacrosse players had uh much to do with the girl anyway, and it turns out that she probably was not raped by the uh lacrosse players.
And uh and first uh the uh uh NIFO said that uh they raped her, and then uh then he said, well, since the d there's no DNA evidence there, uh well, they might have been using uh condoms.
And uh given the um our technology today, uh you can detect DNA uh if I shake your hand, uh there's DNA evidence on your hand from me.
And so um the guys might have been using a whole body uh condom.
Anyway, he's being uh he's being, I guess, uh brought up on charges by the uh bar for uh improper uh conduct, improper conduct like uh uh calling the uh young men uh hooligans.
Uh he violated the ethic rules because uh uh calling somebody uh a hooligan is likely to heighten public condemnation of the accused.
But here here's the here's the issue.
Why was this guy doing it?
Now, uh Nafong is a white guy, and he was running for election, and he needed the black vote.
And he figured that if he would charge these guys, these uh Duke Lacrosse uh players of raping this this black woman, that he would get uh the black vote.
And and indeed uh he did get elected to office with uh considerable amount of the uh black vote.
Uh he's running for re-election.
And I I I think it's uh it's part of a of a process that's going on in the United States uh now where uh people are using race for a number of nefarious uh reasons.
I don't think that he should be uh uh uh facing he I don't think that uh this uh guy Nephong should be facing ethic complaints.
I think that he should be facing uh firing from uh his job, and I believe that the uh defense uh lawyers uh for the uh Duke Lacrosse players ought to bring some kind of civil suit against the guy for a whole lot of money, and maybe he'll wind up in debtor's prison.
Uh there's another issue that's on the table, because the Democrats now have control of the Congress.
And uh I think they uh they're going to address the rights of terrorists.
Uh that is uh they're going to uh revisit uh according to this article, one of the most contention contentious uh national security uh issues uh deciding what legal rights must be protected for uh detainees held in the war on terrorism.
Well, how much rights do they have?
How many rights do they have?
Now a lot of people say, well, there's Geneva Convention.
Look, folks, Geneva Convention applies to men in Uniform.
Uh the it requires it it it applies to soldiers in uniform and they have to get uh decent uh treatment if they're captured.
It does not apply to terrorists or saboteurs.
Now think about this.
I believe during World War II, a Nazi submarine landed, I believe it was eight saboteurs off the coast of Florida and I believe Long Island as well.
They were captured, and President Roosevelt convened a military tribunal, and I believe most of them, if not all of them, were shot.
That's what you do to terrorists or saboteurs.
They're not in military uniform, and they don't have any blessings of the Geneva Convention.
And so and you know, there's another thing on this whole terrorism thing, and that is we we we c the world kind of there's kind of a uh underlying respect for terrorism in some places.
And but look, terrorism, uh terrorists exclusively target civilians.
Now, in our war on terror, the or the Western countries war on terror, we're not targeting civilians, although there there might be civilians killed or injured when we're trying to attack uh terrorists, but we're not specifically targeting them.
And what really got my crawl was during the the uh Israeli war in Lebanon, a newscaster was talking to uh a head or senior official in Hezbollah, and he was saying, talking about all the civilian deaths caused by the uh civil by the Israeli attack.
And the news per person uh said that um it didn't even ask him, well, you're dressed up as civilian and you're engaging in a war against uh Israel.
I I thought that was rather remarkable.
And but it seems like a lot of people say, well, we gotta treat these people nicely, as if we show the terrorists um more humanity, that the terrorists would show us more humanity, and I don't believe that.
So that uh might be one of the issues that uh that's coming up in 2007 that I think that Americans uh should be well aware of.
Now the if if a person's not guilty of terrorism, uh then uh by no means I think uh should he be punished.
But people who we catch involved in terrorism, I think that they should be punished, and I think the people at Gitmo are living a little bit too long, in my opinion.
Uh there's another issue that was that's in the news, and that has to do with the uh former Senator John Edwards.
Um he's going to open his bid for the uh Democratic uh presidential nomination, and he's claiming an edge over his uh the field of other poem uh of uh possible nominees such as Hillary and how do you say this guy Obama, uh uh my my brother from uh uh Illinois, uh he might throw his hat in the ring as well.
But Edwards says that he's uh he wants to develop a universal health universal health care health health care plan, and I don't know whether he's talking about the Canadian plan that we're just talking about the last half hour where people have to wait so long, um and and matter of fact, one test, folks, uh so far as when somebody talks about the Canadian plan, ask them this question.
Go to cities like Detroit, Buffalo, uh Minneapolis, Seattle, and go to the hospitals in those cities, and you'll see many, many Canadian Canadian patients.
And but if you go to the other side of the border, you'll you see few or no American patients.
Now, Now ask yourself the question if the Canadian health care system is so good.
How come Canadians are rushing to United States for treatment?
Uh in uh emergency treatment.
And the caller the last hour, he uh I I forget what uh maybe it's from Ontario, yeah.
Anyway, I advised him to go to my uh website, and I just recently put up a little click about this uh Canadian who wanted brain surgery and the trauma that he had to go through in order to get brain surgery.
I believe he uh uh ultimately came to the United States.
Now, Edward says uh that he's also good on global warming.
Yeah, now last year, remember all those hurricanes that uh that hit us last year, and people were blaming it on Bush.
Bush was causing the hurricanes, and it had to do with global warming, and and and uh and former Senator uh uh uh John Edwards might have the uh same opinion about hurricanes.
But remember the predictions they were making about hurricanes this year, they're saying global warming is going to cause more hurricanes and and more weather trauma in the weather, uh weather trauma.
Well, I don't think there was a single major hurricane that hit the United States this year.
So what do you think about the uh predictions of climatologists when they can't get it right this year?
Why should we have any confidence in their getting it right?
A hundred years, fifty years from now?
Uh I don't know.
Maybe there's a simple answer to the to the question, and maybe a climatologist can call us and tell us why.
And then one final idea that uh that Edwards uh he says that he's pretty good at um dealing with an issue such as poverty in the United States.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have a cure for poverty.
And it is a cure that your grandmother or my grandmother could have given.
It's almost a guarantee that you won't be poor.
Now here's what you do.
You graduate from high school.
You don't have children until you're married.
You stay married and work at any kind of a job.
If you do those four things, you won't be poor.
Now, if you look at the Bureau of Census Statistics on people who have that characteristic, I believe the number is something uh between nine, six and nine percent are poor.
And so these are some sensible things, uh sensible measures not to be poor, because most people who are poor are those people who have had children without the blessing of marriage.
They uh dropped out of high school, they refused to take work, and they engage in criminal activity.
And so if you avoid doing those things, you will not be poor.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back.
Uh Walter Williams sitting in for rushing could be on with us by calling 800-1800-282-2882.
And uh we've been push pushing back the frontiers of ignorance, and uh let's now go to the phones and welcome Michael from Reading, Pennsylvania.
Hello?
Hello, Michael.
Um thank you for taking my call.
Um during your opening monologue, you said that the government controls the release of currency.
And my understanding was that Federal Reserve does that.
And uh are they not a private bank?
Well, um, there's there's a big argument about that, but they have they have governmental powers.
Exactly.
But they issue but they issue stock that's owned by commercial banks.
Yeah.
So so What's your point?
Well, I thought that that was supposed to be reserved to the Treasury Department.
Uh that I according to the Constitution, yes.
Well, and and so what what Congress has done is delegated some of its power to uh authority to the Federal Reserve.
Now, personally, if you want my opinion, I think we ought to get rid of the Federal Reserve Bank.
What do you think?
Thank you.
I or at best, as my uh uh late colleague Milton Friedman said, uh replace the Federal Reserve with a computer that will keep the money supply uh somewhere around uh related to our productivity growth rate.
And so he would say that uh you need to only increase the money supply by two and a half, three percent a year, depending on our productivity growth.
Okay, that was gonna be my next question.
But in general, I would repeal the Federal Reserve Act.
And keep in mind, if you look at all the justification for the first if you look back look at the Congressional Record and look at the justification for the Federal Reserve Act, uh, it was to um promote uh solvency in banks to prevent bank failures and also to create price stability.
And it turns out if you just do a simple before and after study, it turns out that there were more Fed uh bank failures after the Federal Reserve Act and less price stability after the Federal Reserve Act.
The first thing in their uh constitution is to prevent inflation.
Yeah, well, that's price stability, yeah.
Right.
So inflation since whenever they came in, like 1912 or something, yeah.
What's inflation since then?
Well, no, it it in the inflation rate, as I said earlier, price stability has been lower after the Federal Reserve Act than before the Federal Reserve Act.
And and one of the re and one of the see, my own my point of view, and a lot of people will disagree with me, but I have a number of colleagues that will agree with me.
I think that there should be private money.
That is, why should the government have a monopoly on money?
That is, I would if I had it my way, I would eliminate all legal tender laws.
And that is, for example, I would do two things.
Eliminate all legal tender laws, and then second, I would eliminate all taxes on gold and silver so that we can write contracts in gold and silver.
Let people decide what should be the money.
And we had uh we had private banking uh before the Federal Reserve Act.
What do you think of that?
Uh we're I'm not as familiar with that as uh I don't know.
Well they uh I I I strongly recommend some of the uh the writings of a of a of a former colleague of mine is George Selchan.
He's done a lot of public uh publishing in the uh field of uh private banking.
Do you need have you read a book called The Creature from Jekyll Island by Mr. Griffin?
Uh I I've just thumbed through it.
And I think it I think it's a worthwhile book.
All right from my uh view of it, but thanks for calling in.
Um folks, we don't have enough time to go for uh go be uh before the uh the break.
But I want to wet you whet your appetite.
Maybe I won't even get into it until the next hour, but I want you to stay tuned.
Uh New York and some other cities are going to enact laws saying that restaurants can't put trans fat in our food.
That is, we're controlling the restaurants.
And in Chicago, the city council passed a law saying that they can't serve Frog Gras.
Now, Frogras has a lot of fat in it, but I think that the reason why they don't want to uh serve Frogras is that they don't like the way that Frogras is made.
They say it's cruelty to animals is cruelty to ducks.
Now, why has all this stuff happened?
You know, talking uh restaurants doing this and restaurants doing that.
Well, if you can tell If the government can tell a restaurant owner not to permit smoking in the restaurant, well, the government can tell him to do many things in his restaurant.
Now, the smoking Nazis are a result of this, and I'm going to give you more evidence of that in the next hour.
So stay tuned.
Walter Williams sitting in for Rush, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And uh a little update, uh, folks, uh, from Fox News.
Uh they have a little crawler going across the screen.
And it says that Saddam Hussein's lawyers say that he will be going to the hanglins noose smiling.
Uh well, uh wait till the news hits him.
Um by the way, yeah, when uh speaking of the the whole uh issue in Iraq.
Uh people say, well, we're we're losing the war in Iraq.
Uh I think that's nonsense.
I think that our Americ uh American military fought the most brilliant battle in bringing down the regime of Saddam Hussein, both the uh the 1991 and the 2003 war will go down history as some of the most successful wars.
Now, the problem that our troops are having now is with the occupation.
And I think a lot of the problem with the occupation has to do with the rules of engagement and maybe how we fought the war.
That is, we fought uh the war uh in a very, very clean uh fashion.
That is, we minimize civilian capa uh casualties.
Uh we did not do like we did in World War II.
Uh that where and we didn't have any occupation, we didn't have many occupation problems at all in Japan and Germany.
And the reason why is that we just completely demoralize the people.
That is through strategic bombing and uh and just wasting the cities of Germany and Japan, they just had no fight left in them.
And so um, so that's uh maybe a lesson that we can learn from World War II.
And there's another issue that bothers me, and I should have brought this up a little bit earlier.
And I I think that we are losing some of our willingness to defend ourselves.
That is the West in general, uh, to defend ours.
I believe that we are in a culture war.
And I believe that we're not responding to these petty tyrants the way that we should respond to the petty tyrants.
Uh I I wrote a uh column uh several months ago that brought a little bit of controversy, and I said, you know, and with the whole Iran uh issue and its uh development of nuclear weapons, and here's Iran says that it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the map and they're and they're making all kinds of threats.
Well, folks, do you realize that the United States military possesses 18 Ohio class submarines?
That's in addition to all the other stuff that we have, 18 Ohio class submarines.
Now, an Ohio class submarine carries 24 nuclear um 24 uh uh ballistic missiles, and on each of those ballistic missiles, it has eight independently targeted nuclear warheads.
Now, in terms of dealing with Iran, I would just tell these people look, we're gonna try to find out where your uh facilities are for making this nuclear equipment.
We're not gonna send a single soldier over there.
We're gonna let the Ohio class submarines do it.
And I think that that would be a credible threat.
And uh we we that is we have the means to defend ourselves, the West has the means to defend itself against people who want to take over.
Uh but it lacks the willingness.
And I think that um our future generations are going to regret the spinelessness of the current generation.
Now don't get me wrong, folks.
I think war is an abomination.
But in many cases, not going to war is worse.
And we can kind of think back during the uh the the nineteen thirties when Hitler was violating the Versailles Treaty.
You're making uh weapons that he should not have made.
And in 1934, 35, when he is on when he was re-arming.
Uh France alone could have defeated him.
But the West uh in terms of uh uh uh appeasement, appeasing uh Hitler allowed him to gain the kind of strength that led to fifty or sixty million people being killed in World War II.
And so we have to ask this question, if we had preemptively attacked Germany during the 30s, we might have saved tens of millions of lives.
And so all the peacemongers that were uh saying that we should not fight, we should appease uh Hitler, shouldn't they feel somewhat guilty about these millions of lives that were lost in World War II that could have been spared had the West had the guts to say Hitler you're violating the Versailles Treaty and
we're gonna do something about it.
I think those people they ought to be condemned, those people who were who did not want to stop Hitler.
And I think it it's it's you know, and when you're looking at history, it's uh improper to make analogies.
Uh Iran is not uh where Germany was during the 30s, but if we allow Iran to develop nuclear uh weapons, I think it's going to be uh I think it's gonna be a rough time for the West, particularly the uh and and also the Middle East.
But but but ladies and gentlemen, this is a problem that's going to affect future generations.
Um but you know, for politicians uh uh today, all they're looking at is uh two years down the line or four years down the line when they stand for a re-election.
So they don't care what's in the long run interests of the United States, they care what's in their short run interests.
And I think uh tragically uh that's gonna mean uh tragedy for uh United States and also the West.
But let's take uh phone call from Bill from Chicago.
Welcome to the show, Bill.
Hi, good afternoon.
I just uh heard you say before about how the Canadians come down here for their uh health care because well your logic was ours must be better than theirs if they're coming down here.
And I was just wondering Well, it's available, they don't have to wait.
Well, I was just wondering what does it say when citizens from this country are going over to the Far East, especially India to get their operations.
Oh, yeah.
Uh and and many go because it's cheaper.
And then also uh some people go because they want a kidney or liver or a lung, and they want to buy one.
And where the sale of organs in the United States is illegal, uh, but the uh the sale of organs in India, I don't know whether it's legal or or illegal, but it gets done.
Well, I've never heard of that.
Oh, yeah.
How much do they go for?
Pardon me?
How much do they sell them for?
I I d I d I don't know.
But I think that I think that we ought to be able to I think they're selling a one's organs in the United States, I think ought to be legal.
I mean, if you ask the question, uh whose kidneys are mine?
No, I mean who do my kidneys belong to?
Now, if you say that George Bush or the United States owns my kidneys, well, I don't have the right to sell them.
But uh if I might ask you, caller, who do they belong to?
It would be the individual's kidneys, no one else can take them for something.
so so what's the test?
What's the true test of whether you own something?
Well, the true test of whether you own something is whether you can sell it.
That is, I own my car, and the proof that I own my car is that I can sell my car.
Or I I I have a tie on, and the proof that I own this tie is that I can sell the tie.
So would you also be in favor of prostitution?
Oh yes.
What about legalized drugs and get the government to get all the money from that instead of the criminals?
I would look.
Anybody who's wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Yeah, since we own ourselves, I think you have the right to do damage to yourself, and I think that using uh drugs, uh uh heroin, cocaine and and marijuana, I think that it does damage to you.
But I think that the person, if he owns itself, he has the right to do damage.
Now, the what the laws do, the drug laws they have we have in our country, we uh force people who are dead sent on destroying their own lives, let's say through the use of cocaine or heroin, destroying their own lives, we're forcing them to destroy somebody else's, some inner per instant person's life in the process of destroying their own life.
And so the you know, through gunfire and and and uh drug wars and and uh and activities that uh like that.
And then we also encourage by drugs being illegal, we encourage the corruption of officials.
That is the only way so much cocaine and heroin can get into United States is through corrupting officials.
And so here's my question.
My my question is, if a person wants to destroy his own life, should we require, should we have a system that forces them to destroy others live others' lives in the process?
Why not just allow him to destroy his own life?
And uh but see, you so far going back to your original question about or selling organs Look, if we could sell organs, I think that we'd have more organs available.
Uh that is people uh, you know, I I have I have two good working kidneys, I could sell one.
Or alternatively, I can just imagine.
I was telling my doctor this because he's against selling organs.
I was telling him, I said that I can just imagine when I'm dying, or when I'm de almost dead, I'm brain dead or whatever, and a doctor says to ask my daughter, can we harvest your father's organs?
And my daughter might say, No, you can't take anything from my father's body.
I want him to be buried just like he came here.
But imagine a doctor saying to my daughter, we'll give you twenty thousand dollars for his kidneys, we'll give you ten thousand dollars for his livers.
I can just see my daughter say, cut away.
Do you want his eyes too?
And so what that would do, that would increase the supply of organs.
That's the wonder of the market.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, uh pushing back the frontiers of ignorance, and you can be on with us by calling 1-800 to uh 1-800-282-2882.
And let's go to the phones and welcome Bob from Wilkesboro, Pennsylvania.
Welcome, Bob.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for taking my call, Dr. Williams.
I have a economic question, and I thought you'd be probably one of the best people to answer it.
It's uh been in the back of my mind for years now.
Is there ever a situation where a company or an industry trying to drive down its uh labor costs and takes the manufacturing offshore, but actually in the end reduces the demand for their end product?
Uh well, I I don't know of any particular cases.
Uh I know that uh some companies, I think Microsoft uh had uh many, many call centers in India, and I believe that they brought them back uh to United States because they were not satisfied with the performance that they were getting uh from their call centers uh Overseas.
Well, I'll give you an example that's bothered me.
Um Boeing Airlines, they manufacture airplanes.
But their end product is not airplanes, it is passenger miles.
And if they if they build planes in China and don't pay the people enough to to buy tickets or the Chinese government restricts the travel of those people, uh versus building the the planes in America where the employees can't afford to travel.
Is there uh really a factor there that they haven't taken into account when they go for the whole No, I look I think businesses they're out for profits.
They want to make money.
And they're going to do the kind of things that will earn them the money.
And so I would I I would think that Boeing would never open up an airplane factory in China.
Matter of fact, China just doesn't even have the technology.
Uh to matter of fact, they were building a plane some years ago, and the plane is so heavy it wouldn't take off.
Well, Boeing has talked about it though.
Well, they you know they they can talk, but I'd like to see uh people put their money where their mouth is.
And so uh but the whole offshoring uh I I think it's um or outsourcing uh what people call it I think it's much ado about nothing.
That is, I think that a business is most efficient if it can produce for consumers goods at the lowest possible price.
And I believe that they help their investors also by producing goods at the lowest possible cost.
We're all richer.
And I wrote a column about this some time ago when people are complaining about offshoring and importing and and uh international trade deficits.
And I pointed out that if we were to become self-sufficient in everything, we would be a much poorer nation.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Just a couple more minutes, and we're gonna go right to the phone and welcome Terry from Sacramento, California.
Welcome.
Hey, uh that's wow, I made it.
To the point.
Um, yeah, I agree with you that a person's body is, you know, it's up to the person to take care of their own, to do what they think their own body.
However, we should not be the ones to have to clean up behind them, i.e., if they have to go to the hospital for injury or when they do damage, they go in the hospital to uh for the care and stuff like that.
And then and you know, you know what I'm saying on that one?
Yeah, yeah.
You're right.
You're saying that uh uh that one person should not be able to live at the expense of another person.
That's correct.
That is their body to do what they want with.
That that is right.
That is they have to bear the responsibility.
You know, give people freedom, and at the same time they have to bear their own personal responsibility.
And and you you know, for most of our history we have not had Medicare or the all these health care programs, and there's no evidence of people dying in the streets because they weren't getting medical treatment, stepping over dead bodies in the street, not in the United States.
And uh before, well, the medical care was not as expensive, and then there was uh the charity, I believe, by the way, as I said in the first hour, I think that charity is the best way to help our fellow man, and private charity is far more efficient than government charity because let's say a person goes to a doctor or to hospital that's providing private uh uh charity and the person is really messing up,
coming back with the same problem, the guy's gonna maybe they they're gonna get fed up with him and say, Well, look, I'm not gonna treat you this time's uh stupid.
And if and that will can convey a message to other people.
That is that if they know that one person is uh uh uh is held to uh held to account for his actions, then maybe other people will begin to account for their actions.
But if you tell people, look, no matter what you do, no matter how irresponsible uh you are, we're gonna make Walter Williams pick up the tab.
And uh, you know, through the agents of Congress.
Now, if you tell people that, uh they'll always be that way.
I mean uh we are becoming a nation of of of wimps.
We're we're afraid to tell people, look, as my mother used to tell me, if you make your bid hard, you're going to lie in it.
Or else sometimes she told me you're gonna stew in your own juice.
And that made me a little more accountable.
And but maybe it might seem cruel, but it's the best thing my mother could have done.
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