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Nov. 21, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:16
November 21, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by our host on this program, now documented to be almost always right, 98.8% of the time, according to the latest opinion audit from our opinion auditing firm, the Sullivan Group in Sacramento, California.
Welcome back, uh folks, Rush Limbaugh, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis.
Great to have you with us.
We're doing open line Friday on Wednesday today, so we go to the phones.
You can talk about whatever you want.
You own the program, and we go to the phones.
Telephone numbers 800 282-2882, and the email address is rush at EIB net.com.
General Motors.
November U.S. sales on average or on track to meet expectations.
The top GM executive told Reuters on Tuesday.
Yeah, we're looking at the numbers for November.
We're making our numbers, said Bob Lutz, uh GM's chief of global product development at uh Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit.
Some days we're a little behind, some days are a little ahead, some days we're lots ahead, so on balance to me looks like we are making track.
There's no surprise in me as to this being true.
General Motors became an official sponsor of this program this past spring.
Uh Dawn, wait, you're you're still driving the Buick.
Dawn's gonna buy, they give us a car to drive every two weeks.
They switch them out, and Dawn loves this car that she is in and is going to get it.
Uh and it's it is cool.
So I want to, and I know Lutz.
Lots of lots at our cigar dinners in New York.
He's a uh fighter pilot.
Uh in fact, his business card has a picture of him in his flight suit in front of a I don't know if I don't have it in front of me.
Looks like it's an F4.
Um I don't know if he still flies it, but he uh is a really good guy, a great hobby.
Also, I have to tell you this, too, since I'm talking about sponsors.
Uh I've got a bunch of family in this weekend.
It's gonna be what's it gonna be?
It's gonna be close to 60 people all told.
It may be for Thanksgiving Day can be close to 70.
And folks, I have ordered enough food from Allen Brothers on uh on let's see, what do we what do we have Monday night?
Well, I've forgotten what what was it um what what a hit Well that's right.
We had these giant Allen Brothers pork chops, and then last night with a giant veal chops.
And tonight we're doing a combination of fillet and New York strip.
And then for Thanksgiving, we're gonna have I I'm even adding liver and onions to the Thanksgiving buffet.
Prime Rib.
The stuff that you get from these people, you cannot get in grocery stores.
You just can't get it anywhere else.
It is just out of this world.
Genuine prime, not the fake prime that they try to tell you you're getting it.
Nothing against grocery stores, by the way, but the amount of prime in this country is really, really small.
Only two percent of the beef is is prime, and most of it goes to restaurants, and Allen Brothers has opened up a retail division via web and catalog.
And of course, uh, we are a primary sponsor.
I am losing my voice.
Yeah, and that's another thing.
Since my North Carolina mistress yesterday started telling me I sounded tired, these guys, no, you don't sound tired at all, they were telling me yesterday.
Now all day long, they're telling me you sound tired.
Dawn and Snertley running scams.
I walk out of here during the break, and they're huddling and they're talking in snerdley's office.
And then they stop when I walk in there.
And Dawn says, You do sound tired.
You realize we were just talking about it.
And I know that that's not the case.
I mean, I am horse.
At any rate, ABstakes.com is the website for Allen Brothers, AB Stakes.com.
We're everything, right?
The turkey from yes, I'm paying for it.
You know better than to ask.
I don't, I do not take freebies from anybody because I don't want the obligation.
Yes, I'm paying for it.
Proudly.
We're getting a turkey, we're getting the ham.
Well, a couple, maybe three turkeys, seventy people.
This this buffet, I can't wait till you guys see this buffet.
Is I guess some of the family here watching in awe uh as the program unfolds before their very eyes.
But this buffet tomorrow is just gonna be it's gonna be astounding.
And uh most of it, uh the beef and the meat and all that's coming from Allen Brothers.
Uh if you haven't, if you haven't tried their stuff, I mean in front Saturday night for M U K U. Uh Sports Bar menu in the big viewing room.
And we're gonna take Wag U Beef, Kobe Beef.
We're gonna grind it up, well, form it into little sliders.
And their jumbo hot dogs.
I went out, I bought some expandable waistline shorts for this week.
I have just thrown all discipline and the diet out the window.
You can do it for a week.
I mean, the trick is after the week's over, getting back on it, which, as a person of great discipline, I will have no problems in accomplishing.
All right, to the audio sound bites.
Clinton and Obama fighting it out over experience.
Mrs. Clinton, it is said, is now starting to take swipes at Obama, which is unique because normally the drive-by's portray Mrs. Clinton as the victim of these personal attacks that so dene demean the campaign.
But she is responding.
Obama, what he said was, and it is kind of silly.
Do you hear what he said?
Obama said, Well, I, you know, I I I lived abroad when I was 10 years old, and that has given me a perspective on U.S. foreign policy that other candidates don't have.
So Mrs. Clinton fired back.
With all due respect, I don't think living in a foreign country between the ages of six and ten is foreign policy experience.
I think having the firsthand experience with so many leaders that I have had over the last 15 years equips me to be a president who can start on day one.
That was yesterday in Creston, Iowa, at a campaign rally.
I think having the firsthand experience with so many leaders that I have had over the last 15 years equips me to be a was that hum hours or was that on the bite?
Hum was on the bite.
Uh uh over the last 15 years, it equips me to be a president who can start on day one.
This is like, yeah, she's got 35 years of experience standing up for kids.
She's got 35 years experience in bimbo eruptions, and that's it.
The experiences that she's had with foreign leaders, her health care program have all been disasters.
Here's Obama, a portion of his remarks in New Hampshire.
She went on to make up the point, as uh some of the Republicans have made that uh you know that she's made, you know, she's met with all these world leaders.
Uh and I, you know, uh I was wondering which world leader told her to that we needed to invade Iraq.
Because that's not that that is the conventional thinking that we're gonna have to break.
You know, if Obama's smart, and he's he started laying the groundwork for this, but he's not followed through on it.
But if he's smart, he would do a JFK and start this torch of a new generation business.
Because this election is gonna be the the last gasp of the baby boomers, the anti-war baby boomers in the 60s and the and the conservative baby boomers, of which I'm one, and they're gonna be represented by Mitt Romney or Rudy.
Uh that's it.
If if the if the if the Clintons lose in 08, this is pretty much the last gasp for the dying breed of the 60s anti-war crowd to get their arms around this country and shape it and form it in their image and what they want, which I said earlier is is socialism.
And so Obama is not a boomer.
And if he if he really wants to make some hay here and move, and he is moving up in New Hampshire, he's gotten a lot closer to her.
A big poll came out, some local poll up there, which cannot please Mrs. Clinton.
Lead was uh from twenty-four to fourteen or twenty-three to fourteen in in uh less than a month.
So he is moving.
Huckabee almost tied with Mitt Romney in a poll out today in Iowa.
And remember, my friends, it was I, a few short weeks ago, who asked you to consider outside the the prism of conventional wisdom, just how much the campaign would be shaken up if Huckabee wins Iowa, even if he finishes a strong second.
I know it's not December yet, and this is just a poll, but he is moving up, and so the Republican other candidates are going to start attacking him now.
They're gonna do it on the subject of his ethics and his tax increases when he was governor in Arkansas.
In addition to that, what happens?
I asked if Mrs. Clinton isn't the nominee.
I know it seems so unlikely and improbable.
But if she isn't, you know, everybody gets caught up in the media bubble and the conventional wisdom, and so many surprises can happen and probably will between now and the Hawkeye Calcai on January 3rd.
Now, here's Obama in Manchester, New Hampshire, speaking to students at uh at Manchester Central High School.
You know, got into drinking uh experimented with drugs a whole stretch of time where I didn't really apply myself a lot.
And it wasn't until I got out of college, or got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, man, I wasted a lot of time.
Now I've been in some reaction to this, Obama admitting.
He did in his book too.
He admitted that he had uh tried cocaine in the speech here, he admits to consuming adult beverages and uh you know flirting with illegal drugs.
Uh Rudy Giuliani has come out and practically defended him.
Oh, come on.
Everybody we the the days of having somebody with perfect life, a perfect past, those days are over.
Uh and and to have somebody uh admit these things, it's good to get it out there.
That's before the Clintons get it up.
Obviously.
Remember what's what's going on here.
I know he he talked about it in his book, but you remember Robert Novak's piece from last Sunday.
The Clintons have scandalous information on Obama, but they're not going to use it.
And in the process of saying that, they're using it.
There's scandalous information.
Folks, I'm gonna let you in on some.
I I might have mentioned this one other time, but there's there are there's a story out there that supposedly everybody in the drive-by media knows.
They don't know we don't know who it's about.
They do.
It's supposedly really, really scandalous.
It could blow the lid off of whoever the story's about.
And they are struggling with how and if to use it.
And everybody's wondering who's it about.
So this leak from Novak, or this this leak to Novak on Sunday is scandalous information about Obama, supposedly from the Clinton camp, uh, or that the Clinton camp has it.
Everybody's speculating, hmm, it might be Obama.
Now, Obama's gone out there since this leak happened, and yeah, cocaine and drugs uh wasted a lot of time.
That doesn't sound a lot scandalous.
Uh other people think it's about another candidate and has to do something with totally uh un un with not not at all together with uh with Barack Obama.
So it's lurking out there.
In fact, the LA Times, I think, even reported on this story that everybody knows about it in the drive-by media, but they don't know how to use it or if to use it.
I don't know what it is.
I haven't I have no clue, and I don't have a relationship that close a relationship with anybody in drive by media for them to tell me.
So I'm among those speculating.
Gotta take a quick break.
We'll be back and continue in a sec.
All right, welcome back.
Uh uh little fun and games going on here behind the scenes involving the broadcast engineer.
Rush Limbaugh on uh on Wednesday here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Right back to the phones.
We've got the real story of Thanksgiving coming up a tradition on this program.
I will read from my great work, see I told you so in the next half hour.
Joe and Phoenix, you're next.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Thank you, sir.
Um I just called it to get straight to it.
So, well, basically I opened a small business in Phoenix, Arizona about seven years ago.
And I was doing great.
In fact, we predicted to wait two years to get to even, and we were even at one year.
I figured we'd be doing okay by the end of three, we're doing great.
We've been building and building, but when you say you don't see a recession or anything serious going on, at least here in Phoenix, I see it, and the other people I talk to, small businessmen, you know, my business in last uh January when we go into a growth period for our business.
Wait a second.
Just a second.
What is what is your business?
Maybe we can save it here.
Well, I'd rather not say just because I don't want people to know what my situation is at the moment.
Oh.
You know, because I don't want my customers to know.
Well, you know, now we gotta catch 22.
I understand you you you've just described your business is in trouble, and so you don't want to identify it because that will depress it even further, and yet by identifying it on his program, we can save it.
Okay, I understand what you're saying, but I understand what you're saying.
You get if you want to keep it quiet, keep it quiet.
Yeah, I I understand, I appreciate that.
My whole thing is I've talked to a lot of places.
There's a sandwich shop guy right next door to me, and he's been saying the same thing for the last year.
We just keep seeing business going down and going down.
I spent a fortune last uh year on increased advertising because it was the time of year when our growth is biggest, and I thought if we really pushed it, we'd help to increase it, and it still decreased.
It may have decreased less because of that, but we were still on a decrease.
And now we're really getting to, you know, really hard times, and we're just kind of you know, we're you know, we're getting by, but we're just barely doing it, and if it keeps getting worse, I don't know how much longer we will.
It's your business seasonal.
Yeah, it's uh it's uh it's got two well, basically it's strong for about eight months out of the twelve.
What are the four week months?
Well, they they breaks down the part of it is in the summer, and the other part is this time of year during the holidays.
Mostly it's discretionary income, but it's not retail.
I see.
Oh, it's not retail.
Okay.
No.
Um, you know, if you go to Michigan, uh, you'll hear the same thing.
You'll hear talk of recession, depression, economic depression, this sort of thing.
And they're Michigan is in trouble uh for a host of reasons, mostly because of the way state and local governments have run the show up there.
Uh even in the best of times in the country, there are pockets that don't do well.
I remember back in the eighties, it might have been the 70s, oil price plummeted ten bucks a barrel.
Great for the consumer, great for everybody that had to buy anything that had to do with oil, except for the domestic producers.
It was below what they could sell it for and turn a profit on.
They had to cap wells in Louisiana and Texas, and it put some people out of business.
So it was a dichotomy.
Uh so whether, you know, you may in your particular business, in your particular part of Phoenix or Arizona, uh, you might be experiencing uh a downturn in a recession.
Whether it represents something of a trend nationally uh remains to be seen.
What's fueling the national trend in speculation on a recession is the credit crunch and all the mortgages falling apart and the banks uh you know having to charge off these huge write downs for bad loans and so forth.
And so it's uh but you know the thing it th we may be well headed to recess.
I I don't know.
The thing that bothers me about all this is if you watch television, any any any business program, this stuff is designed for bad news.
Do you know that people who sell financial newsletters will hype crisis after crisis to increase their subscriptions?
People respond to crisis and how to deal with it from experts.
And so you've got you just got to be careful about the media bubble here and uh be a little bit independent from it because it's powerful in affecting your attitude.
Now I know you're helping it I've been hoping for a long time that it's just hype and that it you know this was just a momentary thing, and I hope still that uh you know come uh first of the year that it turns around again.
I'm just telling you, and you may be right.
It may just be a pocket here that's going on.
I can't uh answer for the rest of the country.
I just want to make sure you understood that you know I agree the Republicans are who I want to see in office.
I want more conservatives.
I want us to continue along that line.
I certainly don't want to see Hillary.
But at the same time, I wanted to let you know, you know, don't say just outright there isn't going to be a recession because there just may be.
Uh I'm not saying it's the Republicans' fault.
In fact, I'll blame it on the Democrats uh for sure.
But at the same time, it it may really exist.
Well, you look it.
Here's this is what I mean by the media bubble.
In last seven years, the focus last four years, four or five years, the focus in the media has been Iraq, and Bush lied, and Bush is incompetent, and Bush is a reprobate, and Bush is Hitler and Bush's all of this.
Iraq was unnecessary.
Now all of a sudden that's turning around.
So for the last seven years, the economy, which has been good.
We came out in 9-11, we came out of a recession, we've created gazillions of new jobs, wealth gap, every quintile is showing increases in wages.
The real economic news is good.
People in surveys say their personal economic situation is good, but they're worried about their neighbor.
Next year, Iraq as an election issue is going to be off the table, and the Democrats and the media who have been ignoring a good economy for the last seven years are all of a sudden going to start focusing on the bad economy because they are going to realize if they can convince enough people that the future is grim and bleak because of Bush's tax cuts or because of Bush's policies, anything they can do to get Hillary or a Democrat elected.
So all I'm saying to you is that the news next year about the depressed look at the stack of stuff I led with today.
Thanksgiving in the greatest country on earth, and you would not believe I had a half-inch worth of paper on all the doom and gloom and the misery and the pessimism people feel.
And I resent the hell out of it because it's unnecessary.
Not saying yours isn't.
You're in a business and you're having a downtime right now.
Uh but I th I'm just trying to warn you, it's gonna get worse in terms of of the people in your in your customers are gonna be told all next year, boy, a country sucks right now, the economy's looking bad, recession, oil prices, and so forth.
And the more they're told it's bad, the more they're gonna think it's bad.
And the more that they think their neighbors are hurting, the more they're gonna think it's bad.
So whether it's real or not, they're gonna try to make it real.
And I feel for you.
I agree with that.
And again, I'm like I say, I'm not trying to be pessimistic.
I'm gonna keep going every hope of the city.
I know you gotta you're you're running a business.
You've got to be realistic and especially honest about your projections.
I wish you the best.
Thanks for the call.
We'll be back here in just a second, folks.
Stay with us.
As usual, talent on lawn from God.
Half my brand tied behind my back just to make it fair.
All right.
I want to see what you people think about this.
Susan Cole wanted to fly her twelve-year-old son Danny from their Maryland home to Houston so that he could catch a football game with his dad who was there on a business trip.
Danny had only flown once or twice.
He's a crumb cruncher.
And he had never flown alone.
So Susan, the mother, plenty nervous herself, last month took Danny to Baltimore, Washington International Airport three hours early and accompanied him to the gate.
She said, I assume Southwest Airlines would let him on early before the herd of passengers gets on, because I'm not even sure he's tall enough to reach the overhead luggage, said the mother.
She said a succession of Southwest employees not only refused to let Danny board early, but wouldn't promise to help him meet up with his father.
Oh no.
Southwest executive says that employees were just following company policy.
Southwest escorts children five through twelve, uh eleven, five through eleven who are traveling alone.
Once you hit twelve, you're considered a youth and not an unaccompanied miner, said Teresa Laraba, the airline's vice president for ground operations.
Each year across the U.S., hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied miners take the disguise.
Airline officials say that the holidays are second only to summer in numbers of solo crumb crunchers, making it a time of year that tests anxious parents and airline policies.
Now the airline said you're 12 years old and that's it.
You're 11, fine.
Now, my my personal take on this, and I know this probably is going to sound harsh.
But the airlines are not babysitters.
You know, they're not, it's it's not, it's it's not, it's not a kindergarten.
It's not a village.
You know, you don't throw your kid, I don't care what age, in the fuselage of an airplane, you never know who's gonna be on there.
Just expect the kid to be taken care of.
Would you let your kid roam around in a store, twelve years old while you're outside in the car?
No, you go in with them, right?
So, mom, fly him to Texas.
Fly with him.
Or make the husband come get him.
Or you go and stay.
What's the problem here?
Maybe she doesn't like football.
But this is this is one of these these things, you know, people have all these expectations uh of of things that somebody's gonna do something and it's not airline policy.
You may have you heard about, I'm sure you have.
The Saudi judiciary yesterday, Saudi Arabian judiciary yesterday, defended a court verdict that sentenced a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape.
The victim, the victim of a gang rape, was sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes because she was with an unrelated male when they were attacked.
The Shiite Muslim woman had initially been sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicted of violating Saudi Arabia's rigid Islamic law requiring segregation of the sexes.
The Ministry of Justice stood by the verdict on Tuesday saying that charges were proven against the woman for having been in a car with a man who was not her relative.
Now, we in America, we hear this.
It's like the Bush administration.
The State Department expressed astonishment Tuesday about a Saudi court sentence of six months in jail, two hundred lashes for a woman who was gang raped.
Why are we astonished?
This is who they are.
This is their policy.
This is their mentality.
What astonishes me is where the hell are the nags?
If anybody ought to speak up about this, it's not the State Department, it's a National Association of Gals.
You know, the now gang.
And of course, Mrs. Clinton, didn't Mrs. Clinton say something about this?
This is on I I don't have the quote, but she uh spoke up and disapproved mightily of this.
Wait a minute, Mrs. Clinton.
I thought we weren't supposed to interfere in the internal affairs of another country like a rock.
I mean, I didn't hear anybody shocked and outraged at all the rapes and the torture going on when Saddam Hussein ran the place.
Now all of a sudden we hear this and we are astounded.
This is their system.
This is their religion.
This is not the first time.
It's just the most egregious example we've heard here.
Here is Don in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thanks for Dr. McCall Ross.
And trying to catch her for five years.
Been listening since uh eighty-eight.
Um I consider you a professor of history.
Well, I appreciate that, sir.
Thank you.
And I equate you to Alexander Hamilton, who was instrumental, as you probably know, in starting this country.
Yes, except he lost a duel.
And I hope the comparison uh ends there.
Well, I would urge you to read the book.
Uh Ron Cherno wrote it.
I understand.
I pr I love I love Alexander Hamilton.
I was just joking.
But he did lose a duel.
Well, uh I would urge you to read it anyway.
It's a great uh eye opener.
Um I think a little less of Thomas Jefferson uh from the book because he and uh Adams Mano and Madison went out of the way to do negative broadsides against Hamilton in spite of all he did for the country.
And uh it sounded like the beginning of liberal uh you know, the same kind of stuff we're hearing today about destroying the opponent rather than anything else.
Um but I I cannot conceive of where this country would be without your interdiction uh for the last twenty years in educating uh the populace um to listen to you on uh on history in general.
I appreciate that.
I really do.
Uh I I don't think though that Thomas Jefferson is the architect of partisanship.
Well, that's the way uh turn all uh wrote it anyway.
Um I mean to say that partisanship didn't exist before Jefferson, I'm talking about in court in the course of human history.
Well, yeah.
Partisanship, I mean are you are you are you trying to trace the origins of liberalism and the way it came out?
No, i uh I was just stunned uh because of all the accolades Jefferson has received and all the um nothing about Alexander Hamilton and what he's done for this country.
The guy that came like you from you know, from the from the bottom and fought his way to the top and made so many contributions to this country that it's it's unbelievable.
And yet Jefferson, of all people, uh, and sometimes not even using his own name, printed broadsides and negative newspaper articles and and politically uh did everything he could to destroy the man.
Um it's just I was just astounded.
Well, um that is it's an interesting perspective, and I know that I know that you have um that you have a point.
Um did you mention the name of a book?
Uh yeah, uh it's called Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
Ron Chernobyl, that's right.
Okay, look at I appreciate that uh Don, thanks much.
Uh uh.
One more thing.
I've signed on to your uh uh military um program, and I wanted to say hello to my guy in uh Fort Hood in the first infringing.
Oh, the Adopt a Soldier Program.
Yes, I think it's great.
I think everybody should get on board and support those guys for what they're doing.
Uh thank you very much.
I really appreciate you your kind words mean a lot.
Thank you.
Okay, no.
John in Cincinnati, you're next.
Great to have you with us today, sir.
Hello.
Yeah, hello, Rush.
Uh, happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you, you sir.
Uh, I just wanted to speak to the junior senator's uh experience, uh Hillary Clinton's experience in uh foreign policy.
Uh if I recall correctly, uh she gave Yasser Arafat's wife a big old kiss right on the lips.
Uh I mean, is that what we can expect?
Is that a good one?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, just a minute.
We're talking Sua Arafat.
Somebody had to kiss her.
Do you think I mean I just I may I can't imagine anybody wanting to kiss Yasser Arafat, and I can't imagine wanting to be kissed by Yesser Arafat.
Somebody had to give her but was it on the lips?
I what uh if I recall correctly, it was it was a kiss.
Uh that uh well, let me just say it wasn't the traditional like kiss on one side on the other side, and then on the other side, and claimed the Jewish community, and you know, here she is, Senator of New York.
And can we expect her to kiss the spouse of war terrorists during her reign as president of the United States?
I mean, as far as being the most intelligent woman, the Clinton would do that, really.
Well, the Clinton campaign when you when you mention things like this like this to them would say, Well, look, Ronald Reagan kissed Reza Gorbachev.
I mean, these things are just done.
This was this was protocol.
And then you used to are engaging in yet another personal attack against Mrs. Clinton and her good nature and she was by herself.
She was by herself, and it was not with with a Yasser Fett or her husband, that she was almost an envoy uh representing our country, and it was ridiculous.
She was foreign policy experience is ridiculous, period.
The bottom line is you're dead right.
She is unqualified, she's inexperienced.
In fact, I think, you know, in that sound bite that we played, attacking Obama for claiming that he has foreign policy experience because he lived abroad until he was age ten, she said, I'll be ready on day one.
I th it struck me later.
I think that was one of the slogans of George H. W. Bush in 1988.
When he was succeeding Reagan.
I'll be ready on day one.
I know it's not hers.
I have heard this somewhere else.
It's plagiarism.
She's stealing it from a bush, no less.
Back after this, folks, don't go away.
Okay, we're back.
Before we get to the uh the real story of Thanksgiving, I meant to I meant to mention this all day, and I forgot a good friend of mine, Pete Wayner, used to work in the White House now at Commentary Magazine, uh commentary magazine.com, and he wrote a piece uh with an associate, uh Uval Levin, not related to F. Lee Levin, wrote a piece that appeared in commentary, and it is just fabulous.
It fits the theme that we've been talking about all day.
They gone, they've gone the essay that says it all crime, drugs, welfare, and other good news.
While everybody thinks that the culture is falling apart, they've gone back 16, 20 years, looked at data, and found that it's being put back together.
Uh uh there are a couple of things that are not, but for the most part, drug use, uh uh uh random sex, uh crime, all these things are down, uh, including divorce.
Uh and and it's a I'm gonna put a link to it, uh Rushlimbaugh.com so that you can uh and read it, because it's it's exactly the kind of thing you need to have to counter all the pessimism that's out there, particularly about the culture.
Now, the real story of Thanksgiving, August 1st, 1620, Mayflower set sail, 102 passengers, including 40 pilgrims led by William Bradford.
During the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract that established just and equal laws for all members of the community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.
Uh where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from?
They came from the Bible.
And this is what's not taught, and this is what's left out.
The pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the old and the new testament, so they looked to the ancient Israelites for their example, and because of the biblical precedence set forth in Scripture, they never doubted their experiment would work.
But it wasn't a pleasure cruise.
The journey to the new world was long and it was arduous.
When they landed in New England in November, they found, according to a detailed journal written by Bradford, a cold and barrel and desolate wilderness.
Uh there were no friends to greet them, no houses to shelter them, no inns where they could refresh themselves.
The sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning.
During the first winter, half the pilgrims, including Bradford's wife, died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure.
When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, how to fish for cod and skin beavers for coats, and life improved, but they didn't prosper.
And this is important to understand because this is where modern history uh often ends.
Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks, as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of the old and new testaments.
Now here's the part that's been omitted.
The original contract that the pilgrims had entered into with their sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store.
And each member of the community was entitled to one common share.
All the land that they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well.
They were collectivists.
Now, Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this collectivism was costly and destructive, almost as that first harsh winter which had taken so many lives.
He decided to take bold action.
He assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage and turned loose the power of the marketplace.
Long before Karl Marx was even born, the pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism.
And what happened?
It didn't work.
Surprise, surprise, what Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and the most industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation.
But most of the world still experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years, trying to refine it, perfect it, reinvent it.
The pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently.
And what William Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every history lesson every kid gets.
If it were, we might prevent much of the needless suffering that was going to happen in the future.
Here's what he wrote.
The experience was that was had in this common course condition tried sundry years that by taking away property and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing as if they were wiser than God.
Bradford wrote.
For this community, so far as it was, was found to breed much confusion and discontent, retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.
For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service, they did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense.
That was thought injustice.
What he was saying, the pilgrims found that people couldn't be expected to do their best work without incentive.
So what did they try next?
Well, they unhouse unharness the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the capitalistic principle of private property.
Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products.
And what was the result?
Well, Bradford wrote, this had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.
Doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he?
Is it possible that supply side economics could have existed before the 1980s?
Anyway, in no time the pilgrims found that they had more food than they could eat themselves.
So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians.
The prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London, and the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted even more Europeans and began what became known as the Great Puritan Migration.
Now, aside from this program, have you heard this story before?
Is this lesson being taught to your children today?
Probably not, and so why not?
Can you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the pilgrim experience?
What if what if Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton had been exposed to these lessons when they were in school?
Do you realize what we face in next year's election is the equivalent of people who want to set up these original collectivist communes that didn't work, with nobody having incentive to do anything except get on the government dole somehow because the people running the government want that kind of power.
So the pilgrims decided to thank God for all of their good fortune.
And that's Thanksgiving.
And read George Washington's first Thanksgiving address.
Count the number of times God is mentioned and how many times he's thanked.
None of this is taught today.
It should be.
Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks.
You deserve it.
Do what you can to be happy, and especially do what you can to be thankful, because in this country you have more reasons than you've ever stopped to consider.
I'm getting all kinds of grief for my take on the Southwest Airlines story.
And I'm just out of touch.
I don't know.
Okay, tell you what, I'll make it up to you, folks.
I'll get up at five o'clock Friday and I'll go to a mall for a half hour shopping.
Just to get back in touch.
Have a great weekend.
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