The views expressed by the host on this show documented to be almost always right, 99.6% of the time.
It is Dependence Day weekend.
It's Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
And when we go to the telephones, whatever you wish to discuss, we can.
It's a golden opportunity for you.
Take over the content portion of the program, which, of course, is the most important portion.
But on content, where would we be?
So again, the phone number 800-282-2882, the email address, LRushball at EIBNet.com.
I hate to keep sending the bad news your way, but it is what it is.
New orders for U.S. factory products tumbled much more than expected in May, posting their sharpest drop since, well, the depth of recession and their first decline in nine months.
Now, does this mean, ladies and gentlemen, all those big unemployment checks are not allowing us to buy things?
Nancy Pelosi is out there saying that unemployment checks are job creators.
What do you think that people will be consuming out there?
There's a lot of people getting unemployment compensation.
May factory orders drop more than expected.
From CNNMoney.com, a job market and the economy need a serious jumpstart, but the stimulus program likely won't be able to do it.
This summer will peak the peak of the $787 billion Porculus program in terms of creating jobs and pumping money into the economy.
In fact, the Obama administration is calling it the summer of recovery because more than 30,000 miles of highways are being improved.
More than 2,800 water projects have been started.
120,000 homes will be weatherized.
This is the kind of stuff that might move an economic meter in the third world to sit here and talk about 120,000 homes being weatherized.
The simple fact of the matter is in this country, most homes are built weatherized.
Can we just admit so?
We are not a third world country here putting up shacks and huts like the president's brother lives in.
We don't weatherize homes.
We build them.
2,800 miles of or 30,000 miles of highways are being improved.
And 2,800 water projects.
This is the peak of the stimulus.
Look at, we told you earlier this week, and it's two, only 43% of the stimulus has been spent to date.
The remaining percentage of it is due to be spent later this year and in 2011 for Democrat reelection campaigns.
It's a slush fund.
It is not a job stimulus.
We've got a year and a half of it.
This is CNN.
I mean, here's the headline.
The big bang is over.
In other words, Obama failed.
We just shout it from the mountaintops.
Obama failed.
And the people reporting this, oh, wow.
Well, here comes the peak of the summer of recovery.
Living in an alternate universe, it's really simple.
If there are no jobs, there are no taxes being paid by those workers.
The revenue's down.
Our great big unemployment checks are not stimulating the economy.
By definition, they can't.
You can't, by definition, stimulate something by first taking away and then putting back.
You're not changing anything.
You take money out of the private sector in the form of taxes.
You send it back in the form of unemployment checks or welfare checks.
There's no net growth there.
You're just switching pockets.
By definition, there's no stimulus.
The White House credits the stimulus with funding between 2.2 million and 2.8 million jobs so far.
The figure is derived from a math formula based on the money that's flowed out the door.
Officials say at least 3.5 million jobs will be created or retained by year's end, which was the president's original goal.
And they have the nerve to say this.
Well, we've lost 8 million jobs, and Biden's out there saying, well, never going to reproduce all of them, refill all of them.
And Geithner and Obama both say that the days of the U.S. being the world economic engine are over.
And CNN says, officials say at least 3.5 million jobs will be created or retained by the year's end, which was the president's goal.
If this was the president's goal, then I rest my case.
It's on purpose.
If this was the president's goal.
Oh, this ought to be fun.
We're not going to jip it.
Senator, sorry, Vice President Bitney just took the podium at the funeral of Senator Bird in West Virginia.
And he's always good for two or three gaffes.
Somebody asked me, do you think this will be like the Wellstone Memorial?
I said, I don't think it's going to be like it's outside here.
It's outside.
They're going to be wanting to get inside as quickly as they can.
But I don't, it may well turn out that Clinton just finished.
But Clinton was a little political.
Are you surprised?
Clinton was a little political.
Clinton got a bigger round of applause than Obama got.
Well, it doesn't surprise me.
I mean, the Democrats, I'm sure, would much rather live in Clinton's America in the 90s than what they're living through now.
Even Democrats would.
I mean, you have to admit, folks, the Democrats, they've got to be more depressed than ever.
I mean, a year and a half, everything they wanted, unstoppable.
Nobody could stop them, and nobody has stopped them.
And they've got the own the car companies, the mortgage industry.
They've got tight controls over the bank business.
They got people in houses that have no business being in houses.
They've got, you know, all this utopian panacea stuff, and it's miserable, falling apart.
It doesn't work.
The evidence right before him.
Karl Roff was on Fox today.
He said that as of today, 48% of the stimulus has been spent.
And he pointed out that the Obama administration has spent $700,000 in stimulus jobs for every job it supposedly created.
Los Angeles Times economic rebound may be losing ground data show.
Home and car sales fall.
Manufacturing may be losing steam, but most experts don't see a double dip looming.
Oh, comforting.
Double dip?
Experts say no.
These are the same experts who are surprised by rising unemployment numbers every month.
If you go to page two of the LA Times story, which confidently says there won't be a double dip recession, I mean, manufacturing is losing steam and home and car sales are falling and economic rebound is losing ground overall, but there won't be a double dip.
On average, analysts are expecting U.S. payrolls to show an overall decline of 130,000 jobs for June because of layoffs of census workers.
Private sector employers are projected to have added 110,000 jobs last month after a disappointing increase, 41,000 in May, but they didn't.
Unemployment rate expected to tick up to 9.8%.
When was this thing written?
Well, it's 9.5%, but only because 652,000 people have stopped looking.
Washington Post.
U.S. housing market remains fragile despite low mortgage rates.
And get this.
It sounds simplistic, but it bears repeating.
No job equals no house.
That's Mike Larson, an analyst with Weiss Research, in a note to clients yesterday.
With so many Americans unemployed or underemployed, the housing market's going to keep hurting.
Wow, what a formula.
I wonder where this guy went to college.
I wonder how many degrees he's got.
No job equals no house.
Except it isn't true.
Have you heard of the subprime crisis?
A lot of people who didn't have jobs got houses.
Well, a lot of people may as well not have had jobs because they didn't have to show evidence they could repay the loans.
See, that's the problem.
No job does equal a house.
Not qualifying for a loan did get you one.
Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, New York Times factory jobs return, comma, but employers find skills shortage.
This story offers a depressing view of our manufacturing labor force.
I'd like to think it's not true.
You remember that call?
We had a call from Dalton, Georgia in the 90s, and it was a guy at an airplane manufacturing plant, and he was looking for qualify.
He couldn't find anybody.
High school graduates, couple years of college, he couldn't find anybody who had higher than a ninth grade math capability.
I'll never forget this guy.
And this is in the 90s.
Aircraft manufacturing, aeronautics, he needed some math experts.
He could not find them.
They didn't exist.
Factory, jobs return, but employers find skills shortage.
Now they're looking to hire people who can operate sophisticated computerized machinery, follow complex blueprints, demonstrate higher math proficiency than was previously required of the typical assembly line worker.
But see, that's where you're seeing the pain point, Baiju Shaw, chief executive of BioEnterprise in Cleveland.
The people that are out of work just don't match the types of jobs that are here and open and growing.
All candidates at a company called Ben Venue must pass a basic skills test showing they can read and understand math at a ninth grade level.
A significant portion of recent applicants failed to show that they could read and understand math at a ninth grade level.
The company has been disappointed by the quality of graduates and local training programs.
But I'll bet you they know all about conflict resolution.
And I'll bet you they've read Heather has two mommies and Zeke has two dads.
And I'll bet you they know all about how evil global warming is and how American corporations are destroying the planet.
And I'll bet you they think Al Gore is an oracle.
And I'll bet you they think that big oil is the biggest enemy of the earth and the people.
And I'll bet you they don't like the big drug companies.
And I'll bet you they hate Wall Street.
I'll bet you they've really been educated, but they can't do math at a ninth grade level and they can't read at a ninth grade level.
But they sure do understand that this country sucks and is causing the death of the planet because of global warming.
They know that.
They've been taught that.
They've been taught that the original settlers of this country were racist, sexist, bigots, and homophobes.
They have been taught that this country is inherently racist.
They have been taught that this country discriminates and hates women, that women aren't compensated fairly as to men.
But they can't read or do math at a ninth grade level.
But I'll bet you they've been well educated into all the so-called shortcomings of the United States of America.
And I'll bet you, I'll bet you they've been taught the greatest president in history was Bill Clinton.
I'll bet you they don't know but one paragraph, if that, about George Washington.
I'll bet you that what they've been told about Abraham Lincoln is if he could have kept slavery, he would have.
And that that was the guy who's a leadership of the modern-day Republican Party.
I bet they've been taught that, but I'll bet you I know they can't read or do math at a ninth grade level.
But boy, do they understand how unfair this country has been.
I'll bet you they understand that the real owners of this country, the minorities, African Americans, Latinos, and Hispanics, continue to get short-shifted, continue to get disrespected, continue to be fired.
They understand all of that.
They understand every shortcoming in this country.
They understand how we have stolen the resources of the world, even though we are but 2% of the world's population.
But they can't read at a ninth grade level.
They can't do math at a ninth grade level.
They can't find basic jobs, blue-collar jobs that require ninth grade reading and ninth grade math.
But they sure as hell understand we're destroying the oceans and that we are polluting the atmosphere.
They understand that we are all driving cars and SUVs that are destroying the ozone level, but they can't read at a ninth grade level and they can't do math.
But they can count to 99.
They don't know anything above 99, can't do ninth grade math, can't read at ninth grade levels, but they can count to 99 because that's the number of weeks they get unemployment checks.
I had a music maestro Barry White and the love unlimited orchestra.
This is called My Sweet Summer Sweet.
You know, a wonderful genre of love song passed away when Barry White passed away.
What a...
What a set of pipes.
And Barry White was great for fat guys everywhere.
Barry White made it, I mean, it could happen to you.
It could happen.
You two could wear a white suit, have a glass of white wine sitting on a piano, and a sexiest looking babe sitting next to you and happiest she could be.
Barry White made it possible.
Now it's from Barry White to Bill Clinton, since we're talking about Lotharios here.
Bill Clinton was at the funeral of Robert Byrd today and said that Robert Byrd joined the Klan to get elected.
And that kind of made it okay for a while.
There are a lot of people who wrote these eulogies for Senator Byrd in the newspapers, and I read a bunch of them, and they mentioned that he once had a fleeting association with a Ku Klux Klan, and what does that mean?
I'll tell you what it means.
He was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia.
He was trying to get elected, and maybe he did something he shouldn't have done, and he spent the rest of his life making it up.
And that's what a good person does.
There are no perfect people.
There are certainly no perfect politicians.
You know, Clinton makes it sound like this good old boy from the hollers and the hills in West Virginia.
I'd say that a lot of people wrote these eulogies for Senator Byrd newspapers.
I've read a bunch of them.
By the way, I said Klu Klux Klan's Ku Klux Klan.
I misspoke Limbook and correct me on that.
But his country boy from the hills and the hollers of West Virginia, trying to get elected like all of us were.
Did something he shouldn't have done.
He didn't just go to a couple of meetings, Slick Willie.
He was a grand cyclops.
He got pretty close to one of the exalted Kliegel or Grand Kliegel.
He was an exalted Cyclops.
This was not just a casual association that Senator Byrd had.
Went to the phones.
Karen in New Haven, Connecticut.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
Very fine.
Thank you.
That's good.
I just wanted to let you know that, you know, I'm pretty upset about this unemployment for almost two years.
I have a neighbor who lost her job at the beginning of the summer last year.
I own a very small company.
The beginning of the summer last year, I could have offered her a job.
In fact, I did so.
And she said she was going to take the summer off and keep her unemployment going.
I offered her a job later on when I can still afford to give her a job.
And she said that Obama was absolutely fantastic and she was just going to enjoy having all this time off and collect her unemployment.
That doesn't help people.
Years ago, I was on unemployment.
I had to go out and actually get like two businesses to sign a form saying that you applied for a job and you did speak to somebody legitimately.
You couldn't collect without having that form signed.
Yeah.
This is just ridiculous.
Well, you remember Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi is selling health care.
So, you know, one of the reasons we want people to have health care is so that they're not job locked.
We want artists and creative people to be able not to have to work so they can sit at home and be creative and still have access to health care.
And it's essentially what the woman, your friend, you were trying to offer a job to.
I don't want to blow up my unemployment benefits here.
So, I know there's some, I'm sure, anecdotal evidence of a lot of this, people preferring unemployment check.
It's one of the problems.
We've got a lot of people who think being an American means being taken care of.
But I think a lot of these people on unemployment want to work.
I like a lot of them still do.
And those are the people that are genuinely frustrated because there's no improvement and there's no light that they see at the end of the tunnel.
Be right back.
This ought to be good, but we're not going to jip it.
Our microphones are there, but we're not going to jip it.
Obama is now speaking at the Robert Byrd Memorial.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is not a comfortable thing for me to do.
A man's passed away and all that.
Yesterday, Barack Obama fed the lie that is the Statue of Liberty.
In his speech on immigration yesterday, he totally miscast the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus' poem, The Great Colossus.
And he furthered the misconception that everybody has been taught and raised with.
It's almost as distorted as the real story of Thanksgiving, Statue of Liberty.
It makes it sound like the Statue of Liberty is the statue of immigration.
And it's not.
It was never intended to have anything to do with immigration.
Immigrant advocates have appropriated the statue for that purpose.
As we said yesterday, and I'm not going to repeat the whole thing, but you ought to go to rushlimbaugh.com if you want to find out the real history and truth of the Statue of Liberty.
The Statue of Liberty was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Statue of Liberty.
Liberty means what it means.
It's not the statute or statue of immigration.
Lady Liberty is stepping forward.
The torch, Lady Liberty, is guiding the rest of the world to liberty, not providing a beacon to the world's downtrodden to come to the United States.
That lore began as immigrants flooded Ellis Island.
And of course, you couldn't get to Ellis Island without passing by the Statue of Liberty.
And the lore began, oh, the Statue of Liberty, that beacon, hope, well, bring us, you're tired, you're poor, you're huddled masses.
That's not what it was for.
It's another one of these great institutions and traditions been bastardized to fit into a modern political template created by the American left.
So I have to do this again today.
Bill Clinton might play this play this soundbite again that we just played of Bill Clinton at Robert Byrd's memorial funeral in West Virginia.
This is a portion of Clinton's eulogy.
There are a lot of people who wrote these eulogies for Senator Byrd in the newspapers, and I read a bunch of them, and they mentioned that he once had a fleeting association with a Ku Klux Klan.
And what does that mean?
I'll tell you what it means.
He was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia.
He was trying to get elected.
And maybe he did something he shouldn't have done.
And he spent the rest of his life making it up.
And that's what a good person does.
There are no perfect people.
There are certainly no perfect politicians.
All right, now, the whole purpose here is to try to scrub the truth.
And again, the man has passed away.
But if the Democrats are going to continue to do this, I am going to hold them to the facts because they why even bring this up?
They could have gotten away without even mentioning this.
I mean, it's a long ago thing.
Why even bring it up?
They bring it up because they want to continue to distort it.
And you'll find out why when I tell you.
He's described as having a fleeting association with the Klan.
An exalted cyclops means he was a recruiter.
Robert Byrd formed a KKK chapter.
He didn't just go to a couple of meetings.
A Kliegel was a recruiter, and he was a recruiter for the KKK for years.
He formed his chapter in 1943.
He was still writing about the vital need for the Klan in 1946.
Well, yeah, fleeting association, repentant, making up for it.
Senator Byrd was so repentant, he opposed every civil rights movement.
Senator Byrd filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
He voted against both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas.
It wasn't until the death of his son in a car accident in the early 1980s that Robert Byrd said he had to rethink his feelings about black people.
He said in the 1980s that it finally occurred to him that they might love their children too.
That's Robert Byrd.
That Clinton said the fleeting association.
Somebody ought to tell Nancy Pelosi that perhaps the greatest American poet of the last century, Wallace Stevens, had a job.
He was insurance executive.
He was a Republican.
You know, all these people worried about artists not having health care and so forth.
Anyway, Robert Byrd wrote to segregationist Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, 1944, I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side.
Rather I should die a thousand times, see old glory trampled in the dirt, never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wild.
Robert Byrd, 1944.
He was a recruiter in the Klan.
He does not have a fleeting association.
What I just read to you is Robert Byrd letter to Senator Theodore Bilbo, Democrat Mississippi, 1944.
Now, what does any of that have to do with getting elected?
As Bill Clinton said, what does that have to do with getting elected?
In 1946 or 1947, Robert Byrd wrote a letter to a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan stating, quote, the Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.
Robert Byrd, 1947, voted against Thurgood Marshall, Clarence Thomas, filibustered the Civil Rights Act, 1965, and he was a Democrat the whole time.
That's absolutely correct.
He was a Democrat.
And he was, you know, he was very close friends with a fellow segregationist, J. William Fulbright, Arkansas Senator, a person Bill Clinton has said is his mentor.
There is footage of Robert Byrd tearing down Martin Luther King, Jr., on the Senate floor.
It's been totally, what, scrubbed, expunged, done away with.
Nevertheless, here is Barack Obama, who, while he wasn't there, his heart was in Selma.
He went down there and he said so.
Giving a eulogy for Robert Byrd, who filibustered the 65 Civil Rights Act, voted against Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas.
Was until the death of his son in a car crash in the early 80s, Byrd said he had to rethink his feelings about black people, said it finally occurred to him that they might love their children too.
Might.
Not sure about it, but they might.
They had to rethink it.
Robert Byrd, well, folks, look, I know the man passed away, and I know that, but if these people are going to lie about the Statue of Liberty, if they're going to lie about the traditions and institutions that have made this country great, and if they're going to lie about each other, while at the same time accusing all of us of behavior we have never engaged in, of having thoughts we have never had,
while covering up some of the most vile acts and thoughts of members of their own party.
I'm sorry, I just can't sit here and let it pass by.
First lady is not attending.
I don't know why Michelle Mybel is not there.
But as has been said by several black civil rights leaders, Obama does not have authentic slave blood.
But Michelle does.
And maybe that's why.
We can only speculate.
Maybe she's in a skybox at a baseball or football game.
Who knows?
Thank you, Lord, for the nighttime.
Neil Diamond.
I was wondering now, 67, 66, 15 years old.
15 years old in Dallas, Texas at a radio electronics school, getting my first-class radio license, FCC first ticket, when I had my first COURS.
Yeah, at age 15 at some honky-tonk with some of the other students at the electronic school.
First-class test was hard unless you had the answers first.
And thank the Lord for the nighttime, playing on the jukebox in the honky-tonk.
Might have been 67, 1967 is what it was.
1967.
Here is Jim in Boone, North Carolina.
Welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
Hello.
Yeah, Jim.
Yeah, right.
Hey, this is Jim in North Carolina.
I'm an attorney and a longtime listener.
We love you out here and keep you in our prayers.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
Listen, the reason I was calling is because I was listening to the show yesterday when you were talking about the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination hearings.
And I really appreciated Tom Coburn's line of questioning because he asked her if she believed that there are rights that are inherent to us.
And she said she only believed in rights that came from the Constitution and from the laws.
Well, I agree with Senator Coburn.
Of course, the Declaration of Independence clearly says that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And interestingly, the Constitution itself actually gives support for that position.
If you look at the First Amendment, the 9th and 10th as well.
You will find that I think the Constitution incorporates the Declaration in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as well.
Speech and freedom of press, etc.
It says Congress shall make no law abridging our freedom of speech and our freedom to press and to assemble together our freedom of religion.
So what the Constitution does is it's designed to preserve rights and freedoms and liberties that we actually have inherently.
Right.
And that viewpoint is a viewpoint on her part.
He doesn't hear a word I'm saying.
A viewpoint.
Positive liberties, the belief that the government bestows rights.
Instead, these are rights that belong to us.
The Constitution actually sets out a set of negative liberties, which means it constrains the government from taking our liberties or infringing upon them.
That is such a big issue that I believe the Republicans should step up and filibuster her because it is a good idea.
Look, I agree with this.
I agree.
You'll also find the 9th and 10th Amendments specifically, I think, are where you can find the Declaration incorporated in the Constitution.
But, you know, this Charter of Negative Liberties, it's really Leftists, statists, Obama and Kagan, they look at the Bill of Rights and they see exactly what used the word constraints because it tells them what they can't do.
And as tyrannical-oriented, authoritarian-type leaders, I mean, you don't tell a Hugo Chavez what he can't do.
You do not have Fidel Castro constrained by a document that tells him what he can't do.
So you have people like Obama, and they want us to believe that their devotion to the government is based on good works and goodwill and justice, social, and all the other things, when in fact it's just a quest for power.
So you got a guy like Obama who's no different than Castro in the sense that, what do you mean I can't do that?
You mean I got to work under a document that says I can't do this and I can't do it.
I want a document that says what I can do to people.
And that's what Obama wants.
And that's what Kagan wants because that's what Obama wants.
A Kagan's a rubber stamp.
So, no, you're exactly right out there, Jim.
And I appreciate the phone call.
This is Charlene in Polden, Arizona.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Mr. Limbaugh.
I've got rush babies, and thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hey, but you know what?
I'm really fired up.
My son has an opportunity to buy a 1,500 square foot house with a garage on two lots for $20,000.
It's beautiful.
It's a nice house.
The lady passed away and her niece wants to sell it.
And my son offered her $20,000.
She said, okay.
The bank told him he had to have 20% down, which was $4,000.
So all he has to borrow is $16,000.
You know, they turned him down, and he's an Army man.
Six years in the military.
And they turned him down for $16,000.
Wow.
Can you believe?
He's got a credit score of $800.
Yeah.
Is this in Arizona?
Yes, sir.
Oh, I can, boy, I got things I can run down to you.
Did he have the $4,000?
Yes, he has the $4,000.
So he had the $20,000 to put down on it.
Other people who don't have any down payment were given full-fledged 100% loans.
All he needs is $16,000.
The whole place is $20,000.
All he needs to bury is $16,000.
He's got the $4,000.
Well, hell, we could raise that by 3 o'clock.
Well, boy, wouldn't that be a blessing?
He's, you know, I mean, he's been a soldier for six years.
And the bank turning him down.
Well, why did they say why?
No, look, we need all the data.
He's got a credit score of 800.
Why did they turn him down?
What'd they say?
He tell me.
He can't believe it.
He said when he called me and said, Mom, I went and did all my paperwork.
He said, when I told her about this place and it's three-bedroom, it's two full baths, it's got a garage.
It's a garage.
The more I think about this, I don't think it's anything to do with your son.
The banks won't loan.
They will not loan.
That's what I mean.
I think this is a result of the stagnant economy that we are in.
Yes, sir.
I don't think it has anything to do with being creditworthy.
No, he just wonders that they don't believe him.
He said that when he asked for the loan, when he told her about the place, her jaw dropped.
Has your son gone to the local or the nearest Acorn office to see they might be able to help?
No, sir.
We figure that the interest rate on that would be outrageous, like 14%, 16%.
We don't want to roll out.
You're talking loan shark rates there.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, let's see where else could you.
Have you thought about going to FHA?
Federal Housing Authority.
I mean, they still make FHA loans, even to people who can't put the 20% down.
A 1,500 square foot house with two car cars for $20,000.
Where is this house?
Well, we have one gas station and one post office.
It's just a small town outside of Prescott.
Well, you know what?
Outside of Prescott?
Yes, sir.
Tell your son to screw by in the house by the gas station.
Have a little soundbite here from the President Barack Obama at the Robert Byrd Memorial funeral.
And here's our president.
I want you to hear this.
Our president defining the quintessential American quality.
As I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent towards justice.
Like the Constitution he tucked in his pocket, like our nation itself, Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality, and that is a capacity to change.
Did you know that?
The quintessential American quality is the capacity to change.