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Aug. 24, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:42
August 24, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #3
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That is absolutely right, uh Johnny Donovan.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882 to join us in pushing back the frontiers of ignorance.
And while we're at it, tyranny as well.
By the way, I believe that there was a lady she had to uh uh drop the phone the last hour, and she wanted to know how can she learn some non-Keynesian economics or where can you go?
And that that might be a question for uh many of the people in the audience.
There are two colleges that I recommend.
One you hear is spoken of a lot on the show, it's uh Hills, Hills Hillsdale College in Michigan.
And you know, one of the great things about Hillsdale College is that it's in the boondocks.
It is absolutely boring neighborhood.
And what that means, if you send your kid to Hillsdale, they'll come back with not only good education, but they'll come back civilized.
And the reason why they'll get a good education is because there's nothing else to do.
I mean of the study out there.
And uh I hope Larry Arn doesn't take offense by that.
And then also is uh Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania.
These are two uh civilized schools.
Uh and and you can count on Grove City being civilized because who do you think is on their board of trustees?
It is your one and only Walter Williams.
Here's what I want to do this hour, and I welcome phone calls on it because these are really some uh big issues that we are talking about, Tom Sol talking to Tom Sowell about and in that rush and others talk about.
Now, I think that our number one problem in our nation is rooted in morality.
Now, let me just talk a little bit about that.
It's not a it's not a sermon or church meeting and things like that.
But here's where I start in my thinking about all these issues.
My initial premise is that we each own ourselves.
That is, I am my private property.
You are your private property.
Now, if you accept the notion of self-ownership, then there's certain things that are moral, and there's certain things that are immoral.
For example, why is murder immoral?
It's immoral because it violates private property.
You're using my property, my body.
If you murder me, you're using my body in a way that I don't intend, that I don't want.
Why is rape immoral?
Again, it violates private property.
Why is theft immoral?
It violates private property.
And it and theft violates private property, it's immoral whether one person does it or a hundred people or a million people do it.
I mean, for example, suppose I see an elderly lady in downtown New York.
It's in the dead of winter.
She's sleeping on a grill.
She's hungry, she needs some medical attention and some shelter.
Now, I could walk up to my engineer, Mike Mamone, and say, Mike, give me your $200.
I can walk up with a gun.
Give me your $200.
And then having gotten this $200, I could go down and buy the lady some medical attention.
How many people in the audience would find me guilty of a crime?
I would hope all of you would find me guilty of crime.
I'm guilty of theft, regardless of what I did with the money.
Okay.
Well, most see, most of you can agree with that.
Now, here's where we have a problem.
Suppose the agents of Congress come up to me and say, Williams, you know that $200 you made last week?
That you had planned to buy a nice bottle of Chateau de Kim Sauternes wine with?
You will not do that with the money.
You'll give it to us, and we will go downtown and help the lady out.
Is there any distinction between those two acts?
Okay.
I find none whatsoever.
That is, both acts involve taking the rightful property of one person and giving it to another to whom it does not belong.
And what do we call that?
We call that theft.
Well, in the first case, that's illegal theft where I walked at the mic.
And where the agents of Congress walked up to me, that is legal theft.
It's just a matter of legality.
And for moral people, we cannot allow legality alone to be our guy because there are many things in this world that are or were legal but clearly immoral.
That is slavery was legal, that make it moral.
The Nazi persecution of Jews is legal, did that make it immoral?
And then here's another thing.
Now, suppose I walk up to Mike and take his money, but suppose I get two people to agree that I should take his money by force.
Would that make it right?
What about a million people?
What about 300 million people?
It makes no difference.
So if you start thinking about if your initial premise is self-ownership, then certain things are moral and certain things are immoral.
Now, in terms of our relationship with one another in the economic sphere, the moral way is the free market system.
Or some people call capitalism.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, don't think that we have capitalism in the United States because here's what a free market means.
It means that people can engage in peaceable voluntary exchange so long as they do not violate the property rights of others.
And there's a heck of a lot of regulation of exchange in our country.
So we don't have free market capitalism.
But let's look at what free market capitalism is.
That is, let's look at the morality of the marketplace in the following sense.
Let's say I mow your lawn, and you pay me $20 for mowing your lawn.
What is those $20?
Essence.
What are what's what's what those $20, what's that $20 mean?
Well, we can kind of think of the $20 as certificates of performance.
Okay.
I after I mow your lawn, I go to the grocer, and I tell the grocer, I would like to have two pounds of steak that my fellow man produced and a six-pack of beer that my fellow man produced.
And what does the grocer in effect say to me?
Says Williams, you're making a claim on what your fellow man produced.
Did you serve him?
Did you what did you do to serve your fellow man to entitle you to have a claim on what he produces?
Well, I say, well, I mowed his lawn.
And so the grocer says, prove it.
And so I get out these certificates of performance.
Some people call them dollars, pesos, marks, pounds, but these are essentially certificates of performance that proves that I've served my fellow man.
Now contrast the morality of that with the morality of government.
President Obama could say to me, or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reed could say to me, hey, Williams.
It's it's you don't have to get out in hot sun and mow your fellow man's lawn.
You can go sit on your butt and watch Oprah.
We will take what your fellow man produces and give it to you.
Contrast the morality of that.
That is, contrast the morality where we can get things from our fellow man without producing it, without serving him, versus the requirement that in order to have a claim on what our fellow man produces, we have to serve him.
One is immoral, one is not moral.
Now, getting back to this lady on this grate in downtown New York, she's hungry, she needs a medical attention and some shelter.
Well, I think that it is noble, praiseworthy and laudable to help your fellow man in need.
And I think that Helping one's fellow man in need by reaching into his own pockets to do so is praiseworthy and laudable.
Helping your fellow man by reaching into somebody else's pockets is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
And for those of us who are Christians, we have to keep in mind that when God gave Moses the commandment, thou shalt not steal, he didn't mean that thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in Congress.
It's an absolute thou shalt not steal.
And I'm quite sure that if you said, Well, God, I'm not going to be stealing.
But is it a res it a sin to be a recipient of stolen property?
What do you think God would say?
I think he would say that's a sin as well.
So to kind of recap a little bit, essentially, if you start off with the premise that of self-ownership, certain things are clearly immoral, certain things are moral.
Now, if if you start off that, well, you say, well, Williams doesn't, you know, the United States Congress owns Walter Williams.
Well, then there's certain things I can't do.
For example, I have no right to sell my kidney if my kidney belongs to somebody else, if it belongs to the United States Congress, but if it belongs to me, I have the right to sell it.
So that's that's how we have to look at things a little bit.
To start off with the initial premise of self-ownership.
And we can talk about peaceable free market exchange.
And matter of fact, for those of us, for those of you who will say, or some of the leftists say, well, capitalism and free market is oppressive.
Well, do a little study.
Do a little study.
And you go to international amnesty and rank countries by their protection of human rights.
And then rank countries on per capita income.
Then rank countries whether their systems are closer to free markets or closer to socialism.
And you'll find an interesting combination.
You'll find that those countries that are closer to the free market end of the economic spectrum, the people tend to have their human rights protected, and they tend to be richer.
Those countries towards the socialist end of the economic spectrum or the communists end, those are the countries that rank low in human rights protections, and some of the world's poorest people live.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Walter Williams filling in for Rush, who will return tomorrow.
Can you be on with us by calling 282-2882, but put a 800 in front of it?
One more thing before I get the phone calls.
Some of you have been waiting a while.
He was a very good economist, he's uh deceased now, named Frederick Bastiat.
And he talked about the seen and the unseen.
That's what a lot of things, a lot uh here's let me try to make it uncomplicated as possible.
It's very uncomplicated, but a lot of people try to make it complicated, is that there are many things that people support because they don't look for the unseen consequences of a particular uh act.
For example, the um national transportation safety board, I think that's it, they are recommending that we eliminate the option of parents to travel on airplanes by holding their under two years old infant in their lap.
And they say it will be safer if we have a have the kid restrain in some kind of seat.
That is the parents have to buy a seat for the uh for their baby And buy a little uh uh seat for him to sit in.
And they'll say, we'll be safer.
Flying will be safer.
Well, maybe so.
But some parents will not be able to afford to buy the extra ticket for the a seat for the infant.
So what will they do?
They'll drive instead.
And so driving is uh uh highway uh driving is far more dangerous than flying.
So there could be an accident on the road.
And the people in that accident, they could be dying or killed or seriously injured, and those same people, had it not been for the law requiring that you buy a seat for an infant, they would be flying and they would be alive.
So when you have a policy, such as uh the the uh National Transportation Safety Board calling for infant seats on planes, when you have policy like that, you have to say, well, yeah, the scene part of it is that air travels might be s might be safer.
But what's the unseen part of it?
Well, some people can't afford the seats, so they're gonna drive and they'll get killed on highway.
There's a whole lot of policy like that.
For example, the cafe standards.
Congress requires automobile companies to make cars that get high fuel economy.
Okay, so what do manufacturers do?
They make cars uh light uh that are lighter weight.
And so this contributes to highway fatalities.
That is, these cars that are lighter weight or less crashworthy.
And so the scene part of it is that oh, all the liberals and all the environmental wackos, they're saying, oh, isn't Congress wonderful get having cars that get fifty miles a gallon?
Like those little square cars.
What they call a square cars, uh I I don't know the name.
Yes, smart cars.
And yeah, and you know, and I sometimes I see people driving those smart cars and they look so pompous.
They holding their head up high, and they're probably saying to themselves, I'm saving the environment.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Mike said, it makes you want to tip it over.
That's absolutely right.
So anyway, that so that's the scene part of it.
But when con but see, Congress, I don't know whether uh uh Congress has the information.
They have the information that people are getting dying on the highways as a result of the cafe standards, but what do they care?
They don't care very much, they just say we want to make cars even more earth-friendly.
Okay, let's I just I had to throw that in.
It's a little bit out of sync with what I was talking about earlier, but I just had to throw that in.
Let's go to the phones to Nashville and welcome Steve.
Good afternoon, sir.
It's an honor to speak to you.
Thank you.
I was uh going back to your part about uh the uh Robin Hood mentality of Congress.
You know, I don't have any problems.
I'm not going to let you bad talk Robin Hood.
What Robin Hood, a lot of people say he was stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
Robin Hood was attacking the king's tax collectors.
So that makes Robin Hood a hero of mine.
Well, Jesse James is the biggest hero in Clay County, Missouri.
But then anyway, uh I don't have any problem, Dr. Williams, driving on the public roads because I pay gas taxes.
Uh matter of fact, in Tennessee, we have the highest gas tax in the nation, but we have the best road.
So I don't mind paying a high gas tax because I feel feel like I'm getting something for it.
But if I go down to the welfare office and apply and start receiving SNAP benefits, you know, that person never paid into a SNAP fund, so I you know, they what's what are SNAP benefits?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Um there's no such thing as food stamps in the United States of America anymore.
There are all on debit cards, and the benefit is called SNAP.
Supplemental nutrition assistance program.
Oh, okay.
There are no more food stamps.
So anybody that tells you food stamps, they're a little out of date.
They're kind of like the Robin Hood mentality, they're just kind of speed.
Okay.
So I you know, these folks didn't pay into a SNAP benefit fund.
So the USDA who administers uh what was formerly known as the food stamp program, they're just giving out money.
And no one has paid in.
Yeah, I don't mind driving on the road and paying gas taxes, but I'm trying to figure out how you can accept SNAP when you didn't pay anything into the Well, yeah, I I think one of the I think one of the greatest things that people like uh as a characteristic of mankind, he likes to live at the expense of other people, and Congress enables them to do that.
And keep in mind, people say, Oh, well, you need food stamps.
People would starve without food stamps.
And I asked them, look, just giving the example.
When the poor Irish were landing in Ellis Island and they were poor, they had nothing but the clothes on their back.
I'm wondering whether in 1840s there was a food stamp program to welcome the Irish uh when they when they stepped off the boat.
And if there weren't a food stamp program, how in the world did they make it?
So when anybody tells you we absolutely need something, you should say, Well, what the people do before we had that.
We'll be back later on.
We're back, and it's Walt Wayne sitting in for Rush, and again, Rush will be here tomorrow.
And um I have a a young lady uh from uh Fairfax, Virginia.
She's uh uh I think all of a sudden she learned that her father is really, really uh smart.
But uh it's uh it's it's Devin from Fairfax.
Welcome to the show, Devin.
Hey Dad.
Hi.
How are you?
And you're going to instruct us in what?
What what now I I want to clarify, you have gotten smarter uh probably after I turned around sixteen.
Okay.
Since then you've been getting smarter.
Okay.
Say that again.
Since since I was about sixteen, I think you got smarter and smarter every year.
Yeah.
You you weren't so smart when I was about thirteen, fourteen.
Oh, okay, all right.
Okay.
Okay, good.
And then um so what I wanted to ask you, or what I wanted to get your take on, I know we've talked about it a little bit.
Um you and Tom were talking about uh some of our our politically active justices in you know, especially in the state of California and just you know, uh all over the United States.
And I wanted to ask you, where do you draw the line between you know what was established with uh judicial review in 1803 in Marbury versus Madison to what is perhaps the other extreme uh having justices kind of rule on political issues that maybe the legislator should be the legislature should be uh dealing with.
Well, I I I think it's uh I I th I think it's a very, very uh uh shallow line.
I wish you had called and asked uh uh uh Tom about this.
I I tried.
But but um I'm not absolutely sure.
I believe that there should be uh judicial review, but uh you're you're saying when judicial review uh uh uh turns into rewriting the Constitution.
Exactly.
I mean we have a couple of examples of judicial review, such as uh Brown versus Board, where states weren't doing what they were supposed to do regarding the Constitution.
They were infringing on, you know, in this case, uh African Americans' rights.
Well, and that was a result of incorporation into the uh uh of the uh Bill of Rights to the uh through uh uh what is it, the Fourteenth Amendment, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So when you look at something like when you look at something versus like Brown versus Ford versus um the overturning of proposation proposition eight, how do you how do you know?
Is that a political decision?
Does that have to is that uh justice um you know uh acting on his political feelings, or is that something that's that's constitutionally based?
Well, I I don't know.
I don't know.
Uh you have to speak to uh a far wiser person than I. But um I I think that it's clear that there's certain things that the uh that the court should not be doing.
Okay, for example.
Well, I'd say, you know uh th the interpretation of the Commerce Clause, uh, where uh let's say in I think it's wickard versus Philburn or something like this, where this guy was held uh in contempt uh or or he he violated the uh agricultural adjustment act by planting too much wheat on his corn of on his deal.
Or or or the f or the first amendment.
Uh first amendment amendment issues uh uh a kid is saying what yeah, like campaign finance reform.
Okay.
No, but that's that's uh where the courts have uh have ruled.
Yeah.
Yeah, right, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
And and and and I I actually myself, I think uh I think free speech is absolute.
That there should not be any restraints on free speech.
Now, you'll find you'll find one of the uh you people in law school, one of your judges will say, Well, what about uh uh hollering fire in a crowded theater?
Uh well, that's not a violation of uh free speech is a violation of a contract.
That is, I go to a movie theater and I expect to see a movie without being interrupted.
But however, if on the marquee it said um gone with the win, and during the show someone will holler fire in this crowded theater.
Well then uh I I think the person has a right to holler fire in a crowded theater because everybody knows that's what's gonna happen.
So it's not uh uh it's it's not that uh uh restriction on free speech, I think it's uh you know, it's contracts.
Okay.
Anyway, daughter, thanks for calling in and do your homework.
Okay.
Thanks a lot for calling in.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, that was my charming uh daughter who just moved back from uh uh Los Angeles and uh she has a wonderful job, and she's uh going to graduate school.
Let's go to let's go to John in uh Springfield, Illinois.
How are you doing this afternoon?
Okay.
I appreciate you having me on your program.
Well, we're here for you.
Great.
Um I wanted to uh make a comment on your uh your conversation that you were having about morality in our current administration.
Um you had uh made mention that part of having morality is having taking responsibility for one's own actions or one's own uh decisions, and I just had a comment around the current administration with that.
Um it seems like uh for the last well now over eighteen months that our current administration has uh enacted economic policies um that have the effect of a band-aid.
Um they basically uh uh maybe ter temporarily fix the problem or overshadow the problem, but it doesn't actually solve it.
What problem are they temporarily fixing?
Well, housing.
Um you saw the housing numbers come out today, they're absolutely uh uh dismal.
Um, I I know, but they're not fixing anything, are they?
No, not at all.
The only thing that propped up the housing market there was that tax credit, and as soon as that tax credit went away, the numbers have uh have gone back in the tank and and could possibly be a strong indicator of a double dip.
Yeah.
Um that's been talked about.
And and you know, uh uh along those lines about uh what's going on in our economy, I would urge all of us, uh particularly those in the in this in this audience, that what we see in the Obama administration is really an escalation of the last eight years of the Bush uh Bush administration as well as the as the uh as the uh the Republican Congress.
That is, if you see, if you look at the increase in spending during the Bush administration, I mean it closely matches that of uh of the Johnson administration.
If you look at the unconstitutional legislation such as the no child left behind, the prescription drug bill, the uh tariffs on steel imports, and so I think that what we Americans we have to be uh um a little bit less uh party party oriented and more constitutional oriented.
That is the we have to we have to the c I'm I'm very sure that if Al Gore had won the election in the year two thousand and did things like no child left behind, great interference in our education, public education, prescription drugs, conservatives uh and Republicans, they would be up the wall.
Absolutely.
But George Bush uh did those kind of things and they just sat in silence.
So I think one of the points that I try to make is that we are all to blame.
And and and you see this even more if you pay attention to a statement by H. L. Mencken, H. L. Mencken, for those who have forgotten, he was a uh a political satireist for the Baltimore Sun.
And somebody asked H. L. Mencken to give a definition of an election.
And H. L. Mencken replied, government is a broker in pillage.
And every election is an advanced auction on the sale of stolen goods.
And so if we recognize if if H. L. Mencken is right that every election is an advanced auction on the sale of stolen goods, we that we we we tend to blame politicians, but ladies and gentlemen, we ourselves are to blame because politicians are doing precisely what we elect them to office do.
And what do we elect them to office do?
We elect politicians to office to use the power of their office to take the property of one American and bring it back to us.
And you say, Williams, look, that's insulting.
Not in Pennsylvania.
Well, imagine I'm running for the Senate in Pennsylvania.
I say I go back and forth across the state and I say, look, I've read the Constitution.
If you elect me to the Senate, don't expect for them to bring back highway construction funds, aid to higher education, prescription drugs, meals on wheels, etc.
etc.
Do you think I would make I would be elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania?
No, I wouldn't.
Now here's the tragedy, ladies and gentlemen.
The people of Pennsylvania would be acting I uh uh acting correct in their own acting in their own interests by not electing me to the Senate, because if I don't bring back billions of dollars in handouts to the people of Pennsylvania, it doesn't mean that Pennsylvania's will pay a lower federal income tax.
All that it means is that New Jersey will get it instead.
That is, once legalized theft begins, it pays for everybody to get involved.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back uh and rush will be back tomorrow.
A little tidbit before I go to the telephone.
Uh this is from the Daily Caller.
And it might be somewhere related to the controversy in New York City about the mosque.
And uh the only thing I'm worried about in New York is I can get outside get get away from the city before I'm struck by the bed bugs, because New York has a lot of bedbugs.
I asked Kit Carson uh to fumigate this uh studio.
I don't know whether he's done so.
But anyway, here's uh something in a daily caller.
Uh it says um the State Department's list of projects, it reveals twenty-six examples of federal funds going to fund construction, renovation, and rehabilitation of various mosques abroad.
The benefiting countries that are receiving State Department funds for their mosques are Bulgaria, Pakistan, Mali, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Benin, Bosnia, Herzegova, Govina, Albania, Egypt, Tunisia, and the Maldives, I think that's how you pronounce it, Yemen, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan.
And uh so the they're coming from the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, and it's putting millions towards these heritage uh preservation projects in developing worlds.
So anyway, those of you who are worked up about the mosques uh in New York City, you might uh contact the uh State Department and ask them about their funding priorities.
Let's go to Carol in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
Welcome to the show, Carol.
Hello, how are you?
Okay.
I just wanted to say about charities and the people given or the government given.
I think at the beginning of Obama's when he went in in January, one of the first things he was taking charitable deductions away from income tax returns.
Well, what I was gonna basically say is I don't think people understand.
If I give my neighbor, you know, as a person, twenty dollars, they get twenty dollars.
If the government takes twenty dollars from us to give to that same neighbor, they stuff their pockets, they give this to their friends and this, and that neighbor gets what, a dollar or two, maybe?
We should go back where the people are charitable.
The doctors and dentists used to take care of the poor people.
You know, when they started Medicare, that just drove the price of power of uh private insurance up.
You know what it is.
Every time the government gets involved, it costs everybody more money.
Even Haiti, they said the government only gave Haiti so much money, but all us private individuals gave like four times the amount of money or something, you know.
Are you with me?
Yes, I'm with you.
And I think that Americans are the most charitable people on the face of this earth.
Because they're stealing our money, and they want to give it to government's.
The way they want to like you said.
And by the way, to help countries out, uh poor countries like like Haiti, their problem is not foreign aid.
Their problem is internal.
Their problem has to do with private property rights, uh transparency, and all other uh issues having to do with uh with free free exchange.
And and you you should ask the question, you know, like there's this big earthquake in Chile, and some tiny fraction of the people lost their lives in Chile as lost their lives in Haiti.
Why?
Well, because the buildings were built sturdier.
Why?
Because the Chileans are richer.
Why?
Because the Chileans have private property.
Now, it does not make sense to spend a lot of money building a strong building that will last fifty or a hundred years when you're not sure whether you can keep it.
Whether somebody can come along and take it.
So private property is a very, very important input to the betterment of human beings.
And matter of fact, when you find areas where private property flourishes, you find areas where people are the riches.
Let's go to Dave in St. Charles, Missouri.
Yes.
Walter, I I have something I'd like to ask you to comment about.
Um we're talking about uh keeping up with old people.
People used to take care of their parents when they were old.
Uh when the Louisiana Purchase was surveyed at the meets and bounds, it was thirty uh six by six square mile uh the townships or so, and uh one one square mile of the thirty-six that resulted from the six by six was designated to support uh school for the children's education, et cetera.
And also in counties that that uh uh when in the rural areas, there was county homes.
Uh it was uh a home that was built into uh supported by the county from some land that the county owned.
Uh the income was used to uh pay for the uh indigent, the people who were elderly that didn't have relative or so or were otherwise incapacitated that the county was kind of obliged since no one else would take care of them.
So I think that's two services the government did that they provide a a land portion to help pay for both schooling in one case and uh indigenous easy and also uh elderly like nursing homes do now.
So so what so what are the implications for for today?
Well, um I'm just making a comment in terms of that was a case where I think the government did do some good that was laid out uh thought through uh when they did the whole survey, surveyed the whole Louisiana purchase, you know, meets and bounds and and uh designation was made, and so and a and educated an educated uh uh citizenry is is good for the country.
Well, thanks a lot for bringing that to our attention and we'll be back after this.
We're back uh make sure you stay tuned tomorrow.
Rush will be back.
And I'd like to say to Dave, I don't know I'm not quite sure of his argument, but the Louisiana Purchase almost caused the first secession movement in our country.
That is Thomas Jefferson, despite the Constitution, and contrary to the con to the Constitution, he purchased the Louisiana Purchase.
The people of New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts were so upset that they demanded to be excused from the union.
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